Rain Prep.

So everybody but everybody was out in the field on Monday trying to get some field work in before the rain.  Over the weekend the weather service was forecasting a half inch of moisture, with maybe a half inch of that being snow.  Both pre-emerge herbicide and topdressed nitrogen need some rainfall to do any good, and we'd all been waiting for some time.  

Problem is, on Monday morning they backed off the rain forecast to 0.15"  Not great, but better than nothing.

I chose to spend my day getting pre-emerge herbicide on my dryland acres.  I double checked the label to see just how much rain I needed in order to activate the chemical-- and the label said "adequate".  With that sub-adequate piece of information I decided it was now or never. We have had some incredibly warm weather, and my primary goal this time of year is to get pre-emerge in the ground before kochia starts to emerge.

Shots fired.

Trying to keep things weed free.

I found out when I was at the Coop getting my chemicals that Mark was topdressing our seed production field of SY Monument, so I ran over to snag some pictures.

And on the way over I saw that the Lear's had their sprinkler going on our field of SY Sunrise. Sure enough-- they were watering in some freshly spread dry nitrogen fertilizer.

Anyway, our rain sort of fizzled out...

0.02" of rain is adequate, right?  Right?  [sigh]