May 14, 2007

Well, my "good feeling" about getting only a 1/2 inch of rain was short lived. Our total rainfall on the plots from Thursday thru Sunday was 4.08 inches. To the west things got worse. Up to 8 inches in the southwest part of Sargent county with 8-9 inches extending to Aberdeen. There are probably some people with even higher amounts so, we are wet again.

Field work is starting around here once again. I have an 8 acre chunk of bulk area that we plan on putting in a variety trial, just 2, and a fertilizer trial. I want to keep this pretty simple as we will be straightening this area out with RTK as well. This means that some spots will have corn being planted right on top of the old corn rows and some row will be in the middle where they should be. Then it will be on to soybeams with some spraying in between.

The weather forecast got a little ahead of itself and I was able to get the winter wheat sprayed. The growth snuck up me so I hope there will not be any damage. I used Everest as it has some activity against foxtail barley and no carry over into next years corn. I was at the edge of the application window but we will see how it works. Overall the winter wheat is getting hit hard by tanspot. I put in 8 oz of headline in the mix to take care of it. The winter wheat planted on the wet plots looks very good, (click on the thumbnail). That does not have too much disease. I know from experience that no-till winter can look a little rough at this point in the game.

Some of the corn took a beating in the heavy rain. The stip till plots going down hill had some pretty nasty erosion, washing the seed out in places. Convention till has some of the same problems. Where there was no strip till and little disturbance from the residue manager, there is much less erosion.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager