June 15 2007

Remember-Field day July 12!

June 15, 2007

Again, again, and again another heavy rain. 3 inches even for the last 2 weeks, 2.5 for this week. If you can get across your wheat or get a plane, I think it is a pretty safe bet to use fungicide this year. We were able to get on Proline and Folicur last Saturday at early flower on the winter wheat. We had put on 8 oz of head line at jointing. The spring wheat received 2 oz tilt just prior to jointing with the weed spray. Maybe tomorrow I can get back in with headline on the spring wheat. Today it is pretty soggy, but then the forecast is not the best. The the 3 point sprayer works well on the MX305 and goes across the plots pretty nicely with out much damage unless there is standing water. The plots are on the higher ground so there has not be too much drown out, but they are wet affected. The sloughs are getting big and have reached the point where they are flowing out to the east through the culverts. I think the crops look pretty good. The corn is a little uneven from the wet weather. Soybeans are up nice and easy to row. I am happy with most of the flax this year. We used the concorde this year and where the depth was set on the shallow side we got a real nice stand. The wetter the ground and the deeper the seeeding the less stand. There is a fair amount of leaf disease on the winter wheat with a little showing up on the spring wheat. Remember fungicide is not a 100% cure. As I mentioned before, with lining the plots up with RTK we are planting across rows in some cases, and we all know that is not the best method, and as you can see in the thumbnail of the soybeans the stand suffers. If the soil would have been drier the residue managers could have been set a little deeper. We have seen that with aggressive settings, on hills. with 3 and 4 inch washing rains you form gullys. That is certainly not our mission. That does not mean we have to give up on the strip till. If we can set the strip till machine to build mounds, and with good guidance there should not be a need for aggressive residue manager settings.

I noticed our corn plots showing interveinal chlorosis in spite of in furrow zinc application of 1 pint zinc chelate. More than likely the wet weather is the cause.

In the last couple weeks we sprayed the flax with bison advance and select, proline and folicur on the winter wheat, lumax on the south bulk area, and Round up and Resource on the soybeans.

Next on the list, spray fungicide on spring wheat. Pull volunteer round up ready canola out of beans. Spot spray canada thistle and look for grain aphids. Trim up the alleys.

Remember our field day is coming up rapidly. This year we very excited to have Joel Heitkamp from KFGO coming to do his afternoon show live from our plots from 2:00-5:00. We have a board meeting scheduled for next Wednesday to work out a schedule, so stay tuned for details. As always we will have a good lunch, the soil pit, tours of the plots, and a lot of good discussions.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager