July 31, 2006

As I sit here waiting for the elevator to open at noon, I am pondering combining in 102 degree heat. Yea, with out an air conditioner! We sure get spoiled fast. My father's generation would have thought us a bunch of wimps.

Any way, since we last visited we did get another nice shot of rain, even if it was only a 1/2 inch it tied in with the 1/2 inch we got just a couple days previous. I think it was enough to move some nutrients to the corn and beans and spur up the root growth to get to deeper moisture. The corn and bean seemed to look a lot better.

I am seeing aphids in the soybeans. As usual with most bugs they are un-even. If they act like the other aphids I am used to they will multiply rapidly under these conditions. I do hear that hot weather will slow them down, others say they will speed up. Since these critters are relatively new to the area, I think we will have to wait and see what they do. I plan on spraying as soon as I get the wheat off the borders of the soys. The talk is that if you spray for aphids you will encourage spider mites so you should throw in some lorsban or possibly some dimethioate. You may want to check this out to avoid spraying twice.

Our corn is mostly silking. The planting dates ran from May 18 to June 1. Don't think we are going to have to worry about heat units.

We took a little winter wheat off Thursday, the moisture was 16, so with the little dribble of rain and high humidity it did not change much the last couple of days. The protein was 13.5.We just took a pass through another plot and it weighed out as 62 bu/acre. There is a lot of variation do to the early wet conditions, so yields will depend a lot on the that.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager