The sunflowers going into the combine's header. The header cuts the plant of and moves it into the combine for separating the grain from the rest of the plant.
Harvested sunflowers in the combine. They have a little more trash than normally, part of this is due to them being extremely dry.
This is what the sunflower looks like when it's ready for harvest. They aren't as pretty here as they are when they bloom.
This is what's left in the field after harvest. The combine chews up the plant and spits it out the back so there isn't much left. This field will be going to either corn or grain sorghum this spring. Normally grain sorghum is the choice for fields like this, but with the soil moisture we currently have and advances in corn's drought tolerance corn is becoming a viable option.
3 comments:
Hi Tom,
Just stumbled across your blog via twitter. Was fasinated to see your pictures of harvesting in snow! Doesn't that present moisture issues? I've just joined our family farm here in Southern Australia, where harvest starts at the end of spring and continues into mid summer. Keep up the blogging, you've been added to my Google Reader!
Jonathan
http://nerdfarmer.com/
Hi--is that a standard corn head you're using on your sunflowers? We planned to use our grain head for our first field of sunflowers last year, but the standing water made that impossible.
We are using John Deere row crop, also referred to as all crop heads. There are a variety of heads and attachments for combine heads for harvesting sunflowers, we prefer the row crop heads, because they can pickup plants that fall over. There is a bug that eats away sunflower stalks weakening them causing them to fall over. Reduced plant population and shorter varieties can reduce the chances of this happening without using an insecticide for them.
Post a Comment