April 29 2010

Greetings,

Interesting spring this year. Early start but very wet and dry at the same time. Conditions are all over the board. We have not had a whole lot of rain, 0.80 the weekend of April 24. It dried out very rapidly on Tuesday with the wind and sun. Wednesday was a good planting day and now we have rain on Thursday. I would not have a guess on how much corn has been planted, it depends on how early people started and what their ground is like. The local Forman Cenex says the guys are farther along to the east of us, maybe about 1/2 done, with the western areas a little wetter and people just getting a good start. Some corn is coming up in the area already. Not much wheat is being planted. What was put in is coming up nicely. I have put in corn too early and got burned, so I was not excited to start on the plots mid April. I was able to get a little more than a 1/3 of the plots in yesterday, and things worked well. The unstripped soybean stubble was a little wet. I used residue managers but was very conservative. Any low ground was pretty wet. Landscape makes alot of difference.

The flax is in and was sprayed with Callisto a couple days after planting. I have had pretty good luck with that system. Winter Wheat has been topdressed and is growing rapidly. The winter wheat on flax and soybean stubble looks great. I am cautiously watching the winter on spring as there is a lot of volunteer spring wheat. Even the cover crop overwintered so I sprayed that out with a quart of Round-Up and pint of 2-4D. The spring wheat is up well. The alfalfa plant last fall is thick. I have had a little leaf injury. I am not sure if is from the occasional frost or carry over chemical. Will have to investigate that a little further.

When it drys up the planters will be rolling again.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager