Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 14 Entries. Friday, January 1 View Page Good luck on your 2016 growing season!!! For me it will be 1600 pounds or split!!!   Friday, January 15 View Page Raxil Pro Sheild we buy it in 220 Liter totes and is key when continuous cropping Wheat, Barley, Rye. Raxil Is designed for Cereals but it has the concentrations in the 3 main chemicals i am looking for and works well for both a contact and systemic protection 30 days out. I have used it as part of my seed treatment on pumpkins for a few years now. At some point disease buildup would be to much when continuous growing pumpkins unless you know how to manage the disease pressure when it comes. Also have my special sauce which is the major vigor trigger in Canola and works great on Pumpkins early stage. Raxil Pro Sheild active ingredients; tebuconazole....... 3.0 g/L prothioconazole…15.4 g/L metalaxyl………. 6.2 g/L   Saturday, April 16 View Page Well looks like i will be jumping into seeding soon Wheat will be going down soon and I will be seeding Canola early May. With an 86 foot seeder sowing wheat goes pretty quick seeding about 60 acres an hour. You seed quite a bit slower in canola, even emergence is key for success in Canola.   Saturday, April 16 View Page Setup has a 950 Bushel tank. Just tank loaded is right around 100,000 pounds   Saturday, April 16 View Page We could use an escalator on this bad boy. This setup is exactly identical to what i will be seeding with this year.   Monday, May 16 View Page I love nature. A few weeks back a deer ate the top off my 2323 Meier so it's toast. Most all my plants were germinated April 20th. I used store bought soil which i always use for my seedlings and it was hot. Hot meaning i got a bad batch where they didn't mix the fertilizers very well and i got some fert burn. Lucky i used some other potting mix for my trial vigor hormone and those plants are doing very well. The treated plants are so so susceptible to heat they require double the sun protection but growing at twice the rate. Still not much to see all the plants at this stage look the same. Will post some picks when it gets interesting.   Thursday, May 19 View Page And the hits keep rolling in. My 1427's are my best plants way way ahead of the 2230 Wallace and the 2185 Brant. The leaves are big and the plants on the 1427's going fast. The issue is the rooting system is not at pace with the rest of the plant. A tiny bit of wind came and flopped over one if my 1427's. The plant was staked but didn't help and it cracked the main vine. I yanked it out and then presto I dug out one of my backups using a 5 gallon pale with the bottom cut out and side of the bucket cut so I could get it around the plant leaves. Within 10 minutes I was back in business. Check out the size of the stump already.   Thursday, May 19 View Page This photo was meant for the above entry May 19th. I was having issues uploading it from my phone.   Friday, May 27 View Page Updated my above ground watering system. I have two options from above, one is an ultra fine mist that just cools when the days are hot and the other is a sprinkler system with rotor heads that throw small water droplets to irrigate the places my drip tape misses. I been playing around with a few growth hormones this year. The vigor i received from some trials have given me what appears to be 6 extra days ahead of my other plants. Their is a trade off with the growth i have been using as the plant was not rooting at the same speed of the forward growth, so i was alternating with my rooting hormones. The rooting hormones basically shut the forward growth down and focus on rooting this has to be done when you have a few cloudy days as the stress from direct sun would cause issues. It's a fine balance but i been playing around with these for years now and have a good system in place. For me growing the plant has always been very easy I know when to push them and I look at the forecast temps to see what they will be uptaking. If the temps are looking cold i run synthetic fertilizers to keep things going. Transitioning into fruit growth is where i always seem to have issues, after day 40 my numbers drop like a sack of rocks. I got a tip from Cecil this year that kinda of turned on light bulb for my patch. I have also been running real CO2 this year in two of my greenhouses and the results were so profound it's almost laughable. I was keeping them around 1800ppm during the day and they have now outgrown my greenhouses and since out in the 400ppm normal air they have drastically slowed down. For me automation is key since i can be gone for 5 to 7 days at a time for work. So having redundant systems in place to monitor my soil moisture is key.   Tuesday, June 14 View Page Been Cold and wet past 10 days and forecast is more of the same. High's between high 50's and mid 60's with lows in the mid 40's where i am. But i have some cold weather tricks up my sleeve. This is one of my smallest plants and i am riding the line of almost too much as you can see the leaves are nice and super dark green but getting bloaty if the weather changes to sun i might be in trouble but lucky i am using this plant for some trials so no loss. Looks good for now tho.   Tuesday, June 14 View Page Surprise surprise another 6 lober just popped, this one is not perfect. Last year half were 6 half were 5 lobers in my lower patch. Terminating secondaries currently 28' wide. Each growing cell is 33' wide and i have 3 growing cells. My germination dates were close to the same as last year april 20th. Although this year i am only growing 7 plants so i didn't need to spread out my germination dates like i did last year. My upper patch was not automated and i spent way way too much time in my patch that is why i am not growing up their ever again. This year I perfected my automation and only spend about 30mins tops a day burring vines, which i hate but goes super quick.   Tuesday, August 2 View Page I have not updated in a while, I have been busy traveling for work. I am super lucky that i have my stuff automated or i would be hooped. I wanted to post this picture as it shows 2 things. First look at the nodes and you can see how successful my rooting hormone works on pushing out roots everywhere. Even in the direct sunlight the roots are forced out. Second my secret weapon that i have been working on for the past years is still in development and this picture show what happens when too much is applied early on. This year i applied this to my biggest pumpkin plant which was taping just over 700 and last week my biggest pumpkin split apart almost like in the picture. What this concoction does is forces and tricks the Xylem and Phloem to flow 24/7. I won't apply to my other big pumpkins this year in fear of splitting them until i get the proper dose correct. I might use this in conjunction with salicylic acid which may provide more elasticity to the cell structure inside the fruit when growing at rapid rates.   Thursday, August 25 View Page It's been an interesting year. We have had unprecedented amount of rain from mid April until the beginning of August. It's caused some issues in my patch where my soil's holding capacity is very high and with all the excessive moisture has rotted out 3 main vines so far. One at 6 feet, one at 10 feet and another at 12 feet out. The three that rotted out were the Brandt 2185, Wallace 2230, Carley 1427. This year i have lost some very impressive pumpkins due to my own applications of trying to push the envelope. My secondaries are the size of coke all over. Recently we have a pretty good heat wave and while i was out of town my cooling and watering system was turned off. I think that extra stress of trying to feed the pumpkin and keep the plant alive shut this pumpkin down in the picture. I will throw it on my scale to get a confirmed weight on the weekend.   Monday, August 29 View Page It's still growing, skin is baby smooth which i am surprised normally by this size my pumpkins skin is getting rough. Just starting to get some signs of color.