Second planting of bell peppers on white plastic (first planting is on black)
2025 field work
- Thread starter BCClone
- Start date
Second planting of bell peppers on white plastic (first planting is on black)
Are you basing your thought on a great crop from the USDA reports? Or have you had the opportunity to ground-truth different areas? Unfortunately, I haven't gotten out much this year, so I'm just relying on what people are sharing.
Are those raised beds supplied by drip irrigation? Why the change to white vs. black plastic?
Not sure where you’re located but P is probably 4th in line of concern with nutrients. In NCIA we should probably worry about N,S in wet years with K needing built up to push high yields. High P levels haven’t shown nearly the results of pushing N,S and K
yep, they have drip lines down the middle. This farmer is a high input guy and just spoon feeds for maximum yields. It's a great place for me to get absolute yield ceilings on new hybrids.
Black in the spring warms the soil and helps the plant... by the time summer a large portion of the black is now covered by plant canopy.
White is for when summer is just starting. Black plastic would melt these plants if planted into.
albedo
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One thing missing? The tire track would not be visible at my place. It would have water standing there. And that would make it hard to feed the crop. But feeding the crop that way is a great way of doing it.
this is pretty sandy soils just off the dunes of lake michigan. The entire 2 county streak from north to south on the west side of michigan has this good soil WITH lake effect cooling. veggies, orchards and chicago millionaire summer homes.. Its actually pretty cool. Eastern Michigan way less fun
Are the grass strips permanent? Do they provide benefits Iowans wouldn't be aware of? My first guess would be keeping the sand from blowing.
nope, its wheat. they leave about a foot for wind protection. 100% sand blasting
I always pop into New Buffalo when I'm out there working during the summer. Not very hard to find a nice lake house to stay at a little further east too. Love that area.
I like talking about veggie production. I came from a corn and soybean farm in western iowa. never even thought about large scale vegetable production until getting this job. I love it.
Tar spot, southern rust in corn!. Bean leaf beetles and disease starting in beans. Little story, last year had corn sprayed and supplier talked neighbor into a test strip next to mine. Neighbors corn went 20 bu. Per acre more on sprayed corn. Monitor records and he commented how much better mine stood and yielded.
nope, I have not. That would most likely fall into our processing side of the business (I dont know this for a fact)... but lots of the soups, frozen food growers in southern minnesota, michigan, ohio all on our processing side....
cheaper varieties with higher footprints (hundreds of acres)....
I'm hoping to actually get with a pepper grower near Saginaw who has fabricated their own pepper harvester.
My growers are all mostly hand picked (other than large sweet corn)... using H2A workers.. these dudes are great but they each get a minimum of $17/hour or something. can be the most challenging part of their operations. but needed.
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