Every plant in the county has been hard at work. Weeds, crops, trees and otherwise have been taking in as much sunlight, water, and nutrients as they can.
Poking out of the leaves in the corn here, you can see a "Tassel" starting to unfurl. A tassel, is the male part of the corn plant, while the ears are the female part. When the tassel reaches maturity, anthers will pop out of it and start spreading pollen all around.
This corn is hybrid corn. That means it's half-and-half of two varieties of corn. The row just right of center is one kind, the rest of the rows are the other kind. In order to get a hybrid, only one variety must be allowed to pollinate the other variety. The common way to say this is that the bull row (the sinle row) fertilizes the cow rows. Perhaps a bit crass as far as analogies go, but aptly descriptive. Since all corn has both tassels and ears, the tassels must be removed from the cow rows to keep them from self-pollinating.
This is the machine for the job. It's called a "Hi-Tractor" as it's basically a tractor that is put up high in order to clear taller crops. Hanging off the front is the implement that will remove some tassels.
As with most implements, the concept is pretty simple. These wheels are rotated directly next to each other at a high rate. Any corn tops that are in the path of the wheels get grabbed and since corn is a segmented plant, it just yanks the tops right off, leaving them to fall to the ground...
Not every corn plant is the exact same height, so a few will be left behind. These will have to be pulled by hand. Labor crews will be hired to walk the rows and take out any stragglers.
As far as seed corn is concerned, this is one of the last steps before harvest, though there are some minor details left. I'll keep you posted as best I can.
We purchased a 472 High tract I looing for spec on hydrastact oil and hydrastact oil we have a ford ind.gas engine would appreciate some help thanks LWP
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