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As for me, we’ve sprayed 900 acres of burn down as of today getting ready to plant corn, beans, and cotton. Tobacco greenhouse is seeded and another few days and the burn down sizing will be done and we can start getting tobacco land ready.
Mr home garden has been sa do sadly neglected. But I’ll get the peppers and tomatoes in.
I planted 1/2 acre of 4 varieties of tobacco last year in order to develop and test a new product… Organic MH-30 !!
Got 4-6 weeks of good sucker control with one application with the 2 top formulas… I’m looking for a couple places to test again this summer, if anyone is interested, holler back….
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!What is organic mh30. Is it still maleic hydrazide? I’D guess not. But if it works it works.
Heck, tobacco companies don’t even want conventional growers using it anymore. Though most still apply a small dose right around topping so it has plenty of time to dissipate, they would prefer you don’t. And they do test for mh residue on cured leaf.
No… it’s not “maleic hydrazide”… that stuff was/is ‘dangerous’… I just call it that so ‘bacca folks would know what it is…. The official brand name is still undetermined….
We tested seven different formulas…. 100% natural/organic plant growth regulators in different combinations and strengths last year… This year we want to test the top three again…
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Earl Wernsman had it right when someone made mention of the demand for organic tobacco, “that’s for people that don’t want any nasty carcinogens in their nasty carcinogens.”
Damn funny.
McCallum
Hadn’t heard that one… Earl could be right…
Organic Tobacco is a significant crop in the Old Belt and in parts of Kentucky where there were small farms who couldn’t get production contracts with the Big Tobacco companies…
Some of ya’ll, especially those looking for alternative answers, may also remember there was a “scientific report” back in the ’70s that attributed cancer and tobacco to curing methods, not the plant. Basically, the premise was that Indians and others had been smoking tobacco that was air dried for hundreds of years with no increase in cancer rates and the cancer rates only jumped up when curing by wood, then oil became popular…. and that the wood smoke and oil fumes were the culprits, not the plant.
The was also a lot of R&D done in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s developing ways to use green tobacco in pharmaceuticals….
Both were buried silently…
dontworryaboutit13 at gmail.com
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school![/quote]
Earl Wernsman had it right when someone made mention of the demand for organic tobacco, “that’s for people that don’t want any nasty carcinogens in their nasty carcinogens.”
Damn funny.
McCallum
That’s my take too.
Bill, the deal with curing was mainly what was called tobacco specific nitrosamines (tsna) from mixing combustion byproducts with tobacco. In the 90s everybody had to retrofit their barns with enclosed burners and heat exchangers. It was mainly a liability defense measure for the tobacco companies. But it caused curing fuel costs to go way up so there was some backlash. But eventually everybody fell in line because they wanted a contract.
We now have our heat exchangers pressure tested annually and if leaking it is several grand to fix.
Best of the old, best of the new is some good damned wisdom. Agriculture and the “local, healthy food” movement can intersect with the people who don’t want to just preach, like mentioned above.
I’ve also had to teach my kids about how generally meaningless “organic” is. The key is finding stuff without additives, that is (at worst) minimally processed, or in stuff that IS mixtures or blends, has a SHORT list of ingredients.
For me, this is less about modern juju and more about my crippling migraines (which did sadly get passed down, though less frequently in the chill’uns).
It’s also good to shop at stores (unlike Walmart and on the other end of the spectrum but just as bad, Whole Foods) where you can trust more of what they say when they offer something up as “minimally processed” etc. Locally, I like Publix, Fresh Market, and Trader Joe’s. All pretty honest places where you get what you pay for.
The concept of organic is great but the way it is implemented in today’s world leaves much to be desired. My usual supermarket is a local chain from Winston-Salem – Lowe’s Foods. Depending on the location it is either similar to Food Lion or more similar to Trader Joe’s in upscale areas. I live about equidistant from 2 locations one to the west in Yadkinville and one to the east in Lewisville. They is some ways are like two different stores. Each has pros and cons. In season I grow much of my veggies and some of my fruit but I have not done much to extend the season. Last summer with a church group I visited the home of a retired couple that have a large veggie growing operation dedicated exclusively to providing fresh veggies to soup kitchens, food banks and similar nonprofit groups. Of course they have a lot of money so they can hire help to make it all work. Their personal garden is dedicated to providing for those two and as a test platform for ideas for the larger grow operation. I saw some ideas there I think I will try in my garden.
As to the DDT I mentioned earlier it was used here when my grandparent’s had a tobacco farm at this location. It is not something I plan to use but I also have to plan for disposal.
If your soil temps are 45*F (Zone 6 and above) or higher…
plant your taters tomorrow…The moon is straight down…
Otherwise wait 28 days….
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Soil temps in the Eastern part of the state hiding around 60. Freaky February. I know two big farmers planting corn in duplin and Wayne county next week.
semi False Spring….
PPP…
I’m looking at warmer than average daytime highs and 35-50 degree nights for the next 15 days… I think that’s too big a swing to plant corn especially if the ground gets wet…
don’t know what the rush is…
unless you want to harvest in July….#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!False Spring? Or early yields?
Let you know in a few weeks…..
We won’t plant till mid to early March. The biggest benefit of planting early lately has been you beat the heat and drought. We can get the corn pollinated well before the hottest days of summer and have less risk of incomplete pollination.
Heck last year we had about 250 acres of early corn that was frosted on heavily 3 times when it was between 3&6 inches tall. Burned it to the ground but Never skipped a beat and averaged 170bu/acre. These modern hybrids are much more frost tolerant and deep planting means you need more than a frost to kill the plant since the growth point is still below ground. A deep heavy freeze is still a risk.
That’s field corn…
But three Springs ago it was 23*F on March 27-28 up and down I-95…
I’m not saying ya’ll Big Boys don’t know what you’re doing…. but you still you got to get it out of the ground, regardless of the weather…
——————–
Last year in New Hanover County, I planted sweet corn every two weeks from early March until 1st of June…
Didn’t get a stand until the 3rd planting… due to the fact that we had April in March and March in April…
Now… that was all UNTREATED seed, which was required by the “Organic” rules and regs…
There’s a reason why you don’t see “Organic” roasting ears in the grocery stores…
Also had something going on I’ve never seen… In places there was whole rows of Corn with female flowers and NO male flowers, and on each side both flowers… which ain’t too good….
Never did figure that out exactly, nor did my ‘experts’….
——————–Un-irrigated corn can be tricky in the best of years…. you got to get an inch of rain twice… when it just starts to tassel and ’bout 10-14 days later… the rest of the crop you have more flexibility….
If you don’t know how to farm, it don’t make a damn what’s on the bag!
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!No arguments from me Bill. Nobody knows what they are doing with weather like this. Every year we have a few in the area competing to be the first to plant corn. Nuts to me, but I don’t have the cash flow they do. They can afford the losses we can’t. And most have an irrigation system they can turn on it the temperature drops to provide a little insurance against a mild freeze.
My idea is get the seed delivered the first of March. About the 15th start looking at the weather, make a judgement call based on the forecast, and hope for the best. Keep planting into April until you run out of land.
There are few careers as risky as agriculture. Take every dime you have, put it in the ground, hope conditions are favorable, all while your sales prices are dictated by weather in Brazil. The good years are good and you hope to keep going through the bad ones. Basically everyone has made enough the last ten to get them through the next 5. But lots of them spent it on big toys with green or red paint and are looking at trouble ahead. Especially the way the tobacco and sweet potato markets are looking.
I’m a simple gardener so a lot of these things are beyond my means. I am anxiously waiting on seeing who my apricot tree fared. In full bloom Saturday, One the verge of frost Sunday morning and a low temp of 31 F this morning at 3:30. Now 33 F. I hold out little hope but I might get lucky – for now. Even more important for me is the status of my fig.
My garden stuff will come a bit later.
The local farmers have been spreading fertilizer but far as I know have not planted anything – no doubt that will come soon.
Some idiot “down east” will put cotton in the ground before April 15th and win the prize in more ways than one.
Two points of emphasis when the size of the operation increases by multiples:
1) mental agility/fighting tunnel vision
2) financial acumenThose are by far the two biggest road blocks to year in year out success for any operation I have encountered.
McCallum
There’s a typo in my last post…. that crazy corn had Male Flowers (tassels) and NO Female flowers (silks)….
——————-PPP… years ago Farming — big and small — in some ways was perhaps easier…
If you were uncertain about when to do something or just learning, all you had to do was go to Store and listen to the old farmers “discuss” the situation…
Then, following one simple rule, make up your mind…
“Don’t ever the first or the last to do anything.”
In all but the most extreme seasons, you’d do aw-ite…
—————
There’s three generations now, of Farmers and Farm Hands, who have not been “raised”… and a whole lot of closed up Stores…
All the “new” Farmers learn out of the books first, then go to the field… which is backwards in a lot of ways…
The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and others do a good job with education and support, but they don’t teach ’em “how to bend over and stay down” nor “how to sweat”… two essential Farming skills…
The other thing they don’t teach is this…
“You don’t ‘tell’ the Farm what to do… you ask the ‘Farm’ what it wants to do and listen and take what she gives you…”
Farming is not a “manufacturing” business.
much like a good wife….——————–
McCallum…. Robert Penn Warren, et al, in “I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.” (1930) said the same things…
I recommend that one for anybody…
Like I said earlier…. You got to take the best of the old ways and the best of the new ways…
Ya’ll have a good one!
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!
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