We have been very busy irrigating the plots this week. This is our primary concern/worry because from planting up until this point we have only received 3/100ths of and inch of rain. Drought stresses are apparent on all of the plots. Larry is working night and day to put water on everything to keep it alive.
We've also been busy installing the moisture probes, which is a lot of work. The first pic is me measuring the proper placement for the probes with a tape measure before Jared drills a pilot hole. Jessica, who you see in earlier posts performing our inspections, is very good at supervising!
We put 3 probes/plot in the stress mitigation area. Within each plot we place a probe in the row, 7.5” from the row, and at 15” from the rows. The probes are 60” long and measure where moisture is being removed within the soil profile so we can detect depth of rooting in each treatment. These soil probes are really important because they show us what's going on with water beneath the surface and give us vital information about how the traits are performing.
These pics show Jared and myself using the bucket augers to accurately dig out the Moisture Probe holes.
This is an extremely taxing job, and you can see the look on Aaron’s face which shows how hard these things are to pull back out of the ground.
