Hey everyone, this is Brad Hagan from Daviess County, since my last blog post, a lot of progress has been done with the “Summer Project.” More questionnaires have been given to more farmers. Their participation in the project is very helpful in providing information about the pivot irrigation systems in Daviess and Henderson Counties. Since Lauren Settles, the Henderson County intern, and I have the same project, we have been able to work a lot together on getting everything set up. All together we have 16 farms that we will be monitoring. Things we will monitor weekly are: rainfall outside the pivot, rainfall inside the pivot, soil moisture inside the pivot, temperature, humidity, corn growth stage, and wind speed.
In addition to weekly observations, we will also be taking 3 different samples at 3 different growing points of the corn. These different samples will be compared to samples from a nitrogen enriched area in each field. First we take tissue, soil fertility, and soil nitrate samples at the V5/V6 stage of growth. We come back and take the same samples at V9/V10 stages. Finally, samples will be taken at the VT/R1 stage. We do these samples in a regular area of the field and in a nitrogen-enriched area in the field. These samples will show a comparison of nutrient uptake to farmers and allow them to determine if using fertigation or chemigation in their irrigation pivots will be profitable.
To do all of this, Lauren and I have been working on putting together rain gauges, prepping irrometer soil moisture indicators, and making excel sheets to organize data. We have begun to make farm visits setting out the rain gauges, installing irrometers, spreading urea fertilizer, and taking soil and tissue samples. Next week we should be able to start supplying information on the samples to the famers, and begin collecting data regarding soil moisture in relation to pivot water output, and rainfall. Throughout the rest of the summer we will be able to compare the nutrient uptake of areas with extra fertilizer versus those without extra fertilizer.
Besides working on my summer project, Clint Hardy, the Daviess County agent, and I have been making farm visits to look at soybean and tobacco field damage. These farm visits are very interesting and informative. They are little investigations to figure out what is causing the problem so farmers can take appropriate measures to fix it. We determined that too much nitrogen was the cause of one farmer’s tobacco damage, while slug damage was the cause of another farmer’s soybean damage. Often times we send plant samples to the lab to make sure that the problem we diagnosed is really the problem.
Along with summer projects and farm visits, this summer we have planted 16 different soybean and corn plots around Daviess County. Once the weather dries up we will plant one more soybean plot. I am looking forward to what the rest of the summer has in store for me.
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