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Any guesses what they were planting

R

rrlund

Well-known Member
Kcm's tractor pic today reminded me of something I saw a week ago Monday that had me scratching my head. Out west of Lakeview Michigan on M46,when I went west,there was a big FWA New Holland sitting there with a tool bar on it with a planter unit out on each end of it. It was about the width of the outside rows of a six row planter. That's all there was on it,those two units,nothing else.


When I came back home a few hours later somebody was out planting with it. I can't figure what in the world would have been planted that far apart. A vine crop I'm thinking. Pumpkins maybe? It looked awful wide for those even,but then I've never grown them commercially.
 
They plant sweet corn seed like that. Plant 4 female rows on a 6 row setup. 2/3 weeks later plant the 2 outside male('bull')rows.
 
I?d bet that they were planting the male rows for seed corn. That was probably Rader Farms you saw, and they do grow seed corn.
 
Seed corn. The male seed matures at different times than the female, so they have to plant it separate so it's all productive at the same time.

Paul
 
Could have been. It was on the south side of the road just out a little ways beyond the State Police post. Why wouldn't they just use the outside rows on the corn planter?

I thought maybe it was Johnson over by Amble planting pumpkins or something.
 
Some,ya,but right here where I am in Montcalm County,we used to be the biggest pickle producing county in the US and my best memory is that they were in narrower rows than that.
 
Guess you'll have to go back in a couple weeks and see what is growing. Unless they were using very accurate GPS, multiple plantings on the same field would be pretty "iffy." Like my late father-in-law used to say, "Guessed rows."
 
Paul ...... same thing for humans ..... my friend was a junior high school teacher and he said it was no accident that the boys in that level of school grades were behind the girls in development by 2-3 years. Otherwise, they would have had a lot more problems than they did.
 
I saw a seed corn field where the male rows were taller than the female. I assume planted earlier.
 
Ok, I gotta ask..... How the HECK do you tell a male kernel of corn from a female kernel?? *lol* Have never heard of male and female corn.
 
It's NOT the kernals, it's the whole plant, female rows make the seedcorn, male rows just tassel and
pollinate the female rows. The tassels on the female rows are pulled or cut off as soon as they appear.
Seedcorn company normally leaves the male rows, farmer can pick/combine, but yield is normally poor. Seen
seedcorn companys chop the male rows before picking female rows too.

Little town I grew up in +/- 5000 people had two seed corn companies, kids detasseling for several weeks
every summer was just the way things were done. I rouged my first year, cut volunteer corn out of seed
fields, suckers, even cut volunteer corn out of ajacent bean fields, then detasseled. Second summer got
on a cutter machine, lot better riding above the corn where you got a breeze, no mud, no dew, very little
pollen. Lot of guys in our neighborhood grew seedcorn.
 
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