July 6, 2006

Remember: Our field day is Thursday, July 13, starting at 5:00 at the Cenex fertilizer plant. Click the button above for more info.

The hot dry weather, reminiscent of the 80's, has seemed to have returned. It is hard to believe that as we drive around the plots that only a couple of months ago the sloughs were over part of the roads and the only way to get around was a 4 wheeler! So far, we have not had a lot of crop stress. I have seen some rolled up corn late in the afternoon a couple of days, but as the roots keep going deeper there is ample moisture as we definitely started with a full profile. I have observed some cracks forming that you could lose a large wrench in however. There is some scab in the winter winter wheat. Conditions were favorable for development. We did apply folicur at the proper time, but we will see at harvest what we have. If you can make it to our field day next week you will have a chance to talk with some of the wheat experts. The winter wheat, CDC Falcon, is just starting to ripen. I have heard that there are soybeans aphids not too far to the east of us. I have not found any at the plots yet. The earliest beans in our area are flowering. We have a lot of different planting dates as some producers planted beans ahead of the corn do the lack of dry ground. The beans in our plots were moderately late. I have applied the first shot of round up and will be applying the second in a week or so. We managed to catch a 1/2 inch of rain June 30th which seemed to perk things up a bit. Quite a difference from last year!

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager