August 4 2011

Greetings,

Thanks to everyone for coming out to the field day! It was a muddy mess, but at least there was no rain during the day. We still had over 125 people in attendance and had some good information exchange.

July was a very busy and disheartening month to say the least. 7.16 inches of rain, hail, and wind. We always need to count our blessing. But this year is giving many in agriculture and beyond a lot of headaches. We were able to harvest winter wheat last Friday, and with what I am hearing from South Dakota, the general consensus is a poor crops. Ours did not average 30 bushels. Hail damage was estimated at 30 percent. Bacterial and fungal diseases were present as well as viral. Protein from the mix hauled into the elevator was 12.1, test weight 56.6. The rotation where flax or soybeans were the previous crop faired much better. I estimated they should be in the 40 bushel range with out adjusting for the hail.

It is amazing to watch a crop try to fight back from damage. Corn that is broke over with a sliver of tissue still connecting the stalks is growing up to light and trying to make an ear. The beans are coming back pretty nicely on the plots, but more severe damaged beans to the west of us are not looking so good, and weeds are coming fast. I have notice bean aphid populations increasing, so we need to keep track of them as well.

It was interesting to note that the flax faired very well in the storm. The hail adjuster said it is pretty tough. The only flaw is when the bowl get ripe, hail can break them open.

We just finished with the last seeding of our radish variety trial. All varieties came up well, as rain was plentiful. Weeds, especially pigweed are bad. The trial is being done in the front alley and weed pressure is heavy. One of the reasons to delay cover crop seeding is to avoid some of this early weed pressure, as latter in the summer weeds don't tend to germinate quite so fast.

Some early reports from spring wheat harvest do not sound much better than the winter wheat. Our spring wheat is a couple days from preharvest Round Up, so will find out in a couple of weeks.