Nov 11 2010

Greetings,

It has been a good fall. Corn is all done before most of the beans were started last year! Yields have been good, moisture low and prices high, well at least until today. But, they are still good. Never like to see a big drop, but that's how markets seem to work.

It is always fun to look back over what was a good year. But, no matter what, things never go good for everyone. Where I live the excess rain over the past years resulted in a 50 to 75% prevent plant rate. 75 miles west things dried out. And of course hail has to come every year for some. We did have a good year at CCSP and had some pleasant surprises.

This year strip till gave a 6 bushel yield increase overall with some varieties having a much higher response and one actually had a negative response. I never thought when we first did this last year variety would make such a difference. There were two reps for each variety and in each rep the varieties expressed similar results. This year did start out good for corn, but the cold spell in May caused problems. Somebody will probably sort this all out this winter, but for know, the combination of planting dates, variety, and soil drainage caused dramatic yield swings.

Another surprise at CCSP was the bio strip till. 2 of the 3 plots were the 5th 6th highest yielding plots. We have been working with various cover crop scenarios over the last couple years and thought the bio strip till was intriguing. The KH rotation is soybeans-winter wheat-corn. We decided to plant radishes in 30 inch rows following winter harvest along with peas planted between the radish rows in august of 2009. The soybean units could not be slowed down enough to plant a reasonable rate of radish, so the radishes were very thick. The units did a nice job of planting peas so population for them was good. In the spring of 2010 corn was planted into the radish rows. The radish plants had completely decayed by planting. Some pea residue was evident. The 3rd plot that did not yield exceptionally well was wet with some drown out. We are excited to try and expanded amount of bio-strip till plots with the possibility of some dedicated planting/fertilizer equipment. Stay tuned.

The soybeans yielded in the low 40s which seemed to be on par for the area. In looking back, both corn and beans had their weak moments. The beans did not actually look good until mid July, but that seems to be the nature of beans. They are much more affected by late season condition then early.

I will be posting detailed information of the corn yields as soon as we get finished with the outdoor work. I can only hope this nice weather would go on but reality usually sets in much too fast.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager