Monday, July 1, 2019
Goodbye, June. It seemed to go by fast. It is over 90ºF today, and you can feel the humidity. Summer has arrived with gusto!
John is out today in the JD 4730 sprayer, stopping the weeds in some soybean fields. He scouted the fields this morning with our consultant from Nutrien, Greg Anthis. Together, they formulated a plan for the timing of some herbicide applications for the coming week. Now, it’s up to John to work the plan.
I took a look at the remaining DCB fields to be planted. The soil is simply too wet today. I was able to plant DCB at 3 locations last Saturday, and after scouting yesterday, I determined that I could begin again today to plant DCB. The rain storm last evening made a change to that plan. The DCB fields received .4 to .6″, and I was counting on the 90º+ temperatures to dry them down appropriately today. After touring those locations this afternoon, the report for planting is “not yet”. I am hopeful that tomorrow I can return to DCB. The neighbor who was baling the wheat straw has completed that work. He was very diligent.
During John and Greg’s scouting trip this morning, they also discovered some of our corn fields with ‘green snap’. During last evening’s storm, we had winds over 40 mph. That velocity puts strong pressure on the rapidly-growing corn stalks. This rapid growth stage often makes the stalks a bit brittle, and more susceptible to damage from strong winds.
You can see some corn stalks that were broken off in last night’s storm. This is evidence of ‘green snap’.
It is the time of year when I would prefer to be out during the day with the little JD 7130 and the bush hog, cleaning up the appearance of the roadsides along our fields. That will just have to wait…planting season is not quite over yet. In addition to the DCB, there are more than 100 acres of soybeans to replant at Huey. The recent floods took out large areas of a pretty nice stand of beans, but the field is too muddy today. Plus, the flood-damaged corn fields in our White River bottom-land fields may dry down in time to replant some soybeans where the corn was killed in the flooding. It will be a day-to-day decision, as we monitor the soil dry-down and consider the date on the calendar. I am affected by the experience of doing some replanting of soybeans on July 13 last year. It was not a happy result. A very late frost and dry November would make July-planted beans more productive and easier to harvest.
What to do?
