Friday Field Walk: Crops Are In; Let The Spraying Begin

Pests and diseases sometimes develop in patterns, and sometimes not. To get a sampling of what is happening in the Midwest, Michigan Farmer, Indiana Prairie Farmer and Ohio Farmer editors have teamed up and lured in, or more accurately roped in, a couple of observers in key parts of their states to report every two weeks on what's happening in their fields. Click on the map to see where each reporter is commenting from.

Friday Field Walk: Planting In Between Rains

Reporting From Indiana
Bill Pickart: We are in very good shape here, but everything is not perfect. Some corn is knee-high, but some fields are also uneven, probably because they were planted a little wet. Rain has become spotty, with some areas getting 0.75 inches earlier this week and some places received basically none.

There was a week of no rain before that so it gave guys a window to get caught up on spraying, and let other guys finish planting beans. There certainly is no prevented planting in this area. It's also totally different so far from 2012. Stands look pretty good, although a few cool, cloudy days slowed growth and caused some purpling to appear.

There are isolated cases of chemical carry-over due to extreme drought last year. We also have some soybean fields that need to be sprayed very soon. It's always amazing to me how weeds grow well no matter what!

I realize in some places people have problems. We hope they're resolved soon because we need a good production year for 2013!

Jim Facemire: Things are looking up for crops after a very slow start. We finished planting soybeans the first weekend of June. Crops that are up look pretty good, with good stands. It is far different than a year ago when we were already dry. We have good moisture now, and don't anticipate running our pivots for irrigation for a while yet.

I've seen a couple of no-till fields hard hit by slugs in the area from when it was cooler and wetter. They say May was above normal on temperature here, but it doesn't seem like it compared to last year. We've had very few 'hot' days yet. Based upon how the planting season started, the area seems to be in decent shape right now on crops.

Reporting From Ohio
Luke VanTilburg: Sidedressing is completed for the most part in our area. Quite a bit of post spraying is being done. We noticed a lot of corn that was planted the week before Mother's Day leafed out underground. It seems the sudden 20 degree drop in high and low temps on Mother's Day weekend caused that corn to leaf out underground. I have not noticed it in the fields that were planted afterwards. I am doing standard deviation tests on corn stands now to calculate the differences. I flagged several plants that leafed out underground several weeks ago. Some made it up and some did not. I am going to watch them throughout the growing season to see what, if any, kind of ear they put on. This past week we put out several test strips of RyzUp and Stratego on corn and beans to see if it has any effect on performance. Some post spraying of beans in our area, but not much. Haven't noticed any insect pressures yet. Overall, things look very good in our area. Hopefully, we continue to receive ample rainfalls and moderate weather.

Dan Corcoran: Busy, busy, post spraying corn as efficiently as I can and also needing to spray beans. No fun. But I am glad we finally received some rain. After Mondays half inch we have breached the one-inch mark for June. The crop overall is looking good. We still are battling slugs in a few places and the beans have beetle damage.

Our hay progress has slowed but looking for the next dry spell to finish first time. Our alfalfa will be ready soon for second cutting.

Reporting From Michigan
Janna Fritz: For the most part, planting has wrapped up around the Thumb area. In between the rain showers, farms have struggled to get the dry beans and remaining soybean acres planted. There are some replant concerns where there were significant rains. There has been a significant push to apply the first round of herbicide to the sugar beets, corn and soybean acres. Wheat is headed out and seems to look good now as a result of the rain. Fungicides have also been applied on the wheat. Our corn is between the V3-V4 stage. First cutting for hay is also coming off.

Friday Field Walk: Corn Planting About Done, Beans Underway

Richard P. Dobbins: As I reported last time, planting is completed. Our earliest planted corn is now at stage V5. Now that the corn is entering that stage, we are going to start applying fungicides. We are now halfway through side dressing of corn.

We did have some weed escapes, and we did a small amount of re-spray.

We just received anywhere from 1/4" to 3/4" rain on the 10th.

We sprayed half our soybean crop with glyphosate and our residual spray. I've noticed other farmers also spraying soybeans.

Even though it's been fairly dry, the crops are looking pretty good in our area. In the past week, a lot of first cutting of alfalfa has been baled in our local area.

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