The one-stop-shop to hearing everything you need to know about what is happening in your fields this week.
This week’s featured agronomists are:
Easton Schuch – Le Sueur
Hailey Dykes – Pine Island
Erin Stackhouse – Morristown
Pete Collins – Stewartville
Eric Soley – Ellsworth
Scroll down to hear from your local agronomist.
WEST
Belle Plaine – Le Center – Le Sueur
Easton Schuch
Let the fertilizer fly!
Our corn is finally starting to really take off with the heat we are finally getting and at times seems to be growing by a collar a day. With the crop really shooting up this past week it’s prime time to start to get our fields on the list to be side-dressed. Before we know it that corn is going to be a foot tall, if it isn’t already, and is really going to be wanting that second shot of nitrogen and sulfur. This will help keep it moving while its switching off of its seed reserves. Do not forget, especially with the hot days ahead of us, we really should make sure the nitrogen we put out there is protected and stabilized. With warm days, sporadic rains, and high fertilizer costs we don’t want to be leaving those inputs vulnerable to mother nature.
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EAST
Pine Island – Cannon Falls – Goodhue – Lake City
Hailey Dykes
Corn and soybeans have changed drastically over the past week. Pre-emerge herbicides are holding fantastically this year in both and have been helping to control weed pressure going into post spraying. We are now busy post spraying and side-dressing corn and will start to get into heavy post spraying beans in the next week. In some areas we have been seeing a few issues with soybean emergence due to a hard crust, but a majority of fields have turned around with the rain we have been getting.
With first cut alfalfa come and gone, we have been sweeping many fields throughout the area. Alfalfa weevil larvae have been ramping up in numbers over the past week of sweeping fields. In some fields we have seen populations of larvae and adults double, warranting a spray treatment. Leafhoppers have been present but we have not seen thresholds being met to warrant spraying for them alone. When already spraying insecticide on your alfalfa, adding in Kriss + Ascend into the tank can help to increase tonnage, as well as alfalfa quality in high management alfalfa fields.
If you have any questions about your fields this season, talk to your local Ag Partners agronomist.
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Left: Sweeping alfalfa & finding high alfalfa weevil larva |
CENTRAL
Morristown – Wanamingo – Kenyon
Erin Stackhouse
Variable Rate Side Dress Nitrogen
We are staying busy working on variable rate sidedress recommendations for this growing season. We have been seeing a large amount of variability in the soil nitrate results. Fields with manure applied are specifically are seeing huge variability swings. We have also been placing numerous Enhanced Learning Blocks into our prescriptions, to make sure that we are applying the correct rates in areas. It will be exciting to review all the accumulated data this winter!
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| Nitrate sample results from a field that had fall hog manure applied (across entire field). The variability is amazing, ranging from 12.6ppm to 50.7ppm. We are striving for 30ppm. | Prescription recommendation for same field pictured to the left. The grower chose to insert a minimum Nitrogen rate, which is why you see product (red area) going on parts of the field that tested to have sufficient N. The gray square is our strategically placed Enhanced Learning Block. |
SOUTH
Elgin – Lewiston – Stewartville
Pete Collins
Xtend and Enlist Are NOT the Same
We have been getting numerous questions regarding this subject. It seems like once or twice a week we are initiating conversations where these two, vastly different traits, are being interchanged. The picture below is from a customer that thought he had all Enlist (E3) soybeans when in fact, some of them where XtendFlex. Both can be sprayed with Liberty and Glyphosate herbicides. But only the Enlist can be sprayed with Enlist herbicide. The picture below is an example of what happens to Xtend soybeans when sprayed with Enlist.
I had a customer that only needed a couple bags to finish planting his soybeans. He had a couple bags left over from the year before, so he thought this was the perfect opportunity to use them up. The problem was all the soybeans he had planted were Enlist tolerant soybeans. The three leftover bags from the year before were Xtend soybeans. Luckily, we had the conversation before spraying them with Enlist and he remembered using the old soybeans. We had to treat that field separately for the rest of the year.
Please let your Agronomist know if you have a mixed trait package or are not completely sure. It could save headaches nearing the future.
Have a safe summer and enjoy your family and friends!
WWAS
Ellsworth
Eric Soley
June is National Dairy Month, a time to pay tribute to the dairy farmers of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Alfalfa weevils have decided their gift to the dairy farmers would be to wreak havoc on their hay fields after 1st cutting – for the second year in a row. We are seeing some very hard hit fields, especially on lighter soils, where the weevils have fed hard where the windrows were laying in the field. We’ve been busy spraying these acres over the last week.
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| Alfalfa weevils celebrating National Dairy Month in large numbers | Alfalfa weevils hitting the fields hard, especially where the windrows laid |
A lot of our soybean acres are getting ready for their second pass of herbicide soon. A common question we get is when is the right time for that second application? I’m more worried about how many days it has been since the pre was put down, than I am on how tall the soybeans are. When we get close to that 30 day mark from the time of the pre application is the time to get going on the second pass. I’d rather have a grower wondering why they are out spraying a clean fields vs wondering why they didn’t spray a week earlier. With the heat that we have had this week it will not take long for any germinated waterhemp to reach the 4” tall mark, where they become very difficult to kill. Be early on the spray and remember the importance of residuals with this next pass on your soybeans!
