In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken answers a question that came in during Session 1 of Beyond the Basics. While soil tests can not detect if a disease is present in the field, it can give indicators to how the field will handle disease pressure. Healthy plants handle stress [...]
In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie warns about making sure the anhydrous is sealing as it is too expensive to let gas off. He reports that some strip-till growers are struggling to get good strips in current weather conditions and advises that they might have to move to [...]
If you are wondering if a recent event in your soybean field is causing pod abortion (sprayer application, heavy rain, etc) you can look on the ground to verify the effect.
Non-GMO growers should be on the lookout for corn borers. Ken recommends putting out a trap to be aware of the amount of pressure in your corn fields, especially as plants reach 18 inches or taller. Once their presence is detected, then he recommends pulling the whirl in the shot hole plants to [...]
Planting beans early to encourage pre-solstice flowering is focusing on adding more pods at the base of the plant. The pods need to be ½ inch or longer in length to make them more stable before the rows close to be able to hang onto those pods. Adding 2 pods per plant can [...]
Ugly corn phase happens in the period when the transfer is made from the seed roots to the crown roots. Sometimes stumbling in this phase can be indicators of a non-uniform seedbed.
Soybeans can also experience a carbon penalty if they are V4 or smaller when the carbon penalty period hits. Depending on size of the bean, it can take a couple of weeks to come out of the stall.
As nighttime temperatures get above 65 degrees we start to see the effects of the carbon penalty. The explosion of the microbial population can cause issues for growing plants if not managed properly.
Ken and crew grabbed some footage today to help growers evaluate marginal fields to see if replant is the best option. Beans in the I-80 corridor that had 4 nights of frost are causing calls about marginal bean fields leading to questions about replanting. The early planted beans come at a yield premium [...]
The Sins of Spring presentation has caused a lot of questions about how a tillage system with TWO compaction layers (shallow and deep) was beating one with only one deep layer and how a vertical format was beating them both by quite a margin. In this in-depth Boots In The Field Report, [...]
