We are now getting into the important main part of the growing season. Most of the corn crop in in the V2 to V4 growth stage. The largest corn I have been in so far was actually near Fremont, NE at late V5. So far outguessing the weather has been near impossible. Rainstorms in the spring and early summer are supposed to move west to east. Recently the rain producing fronts and clouds are running clockwise, counter clockwise, east to west, west to east and sometimes disappearing altogether. It could best be described as ‘Helter Skelter’. In southern Minnesota around Albert Lea they had ten straight days with rain in late April, then went the entire month of May without a drop. Last week when I was scouting fields in western and northwest Iowa expecting hot and dry conditions, I had aa hunch and took a rain jacket along. Again, the rain clouds that showed up on radar had moved past my location and to the east. Over the course of an hour both storms moved to the west and I got rained out of the fields. caused to call a rain out. In both cases the farmers and their fields were needing rain badly, so thanked me for visiting their fields and bringing rain along.
Personally, I am not a believer in man-made climate change. The climate has always changed and this is because of sun cycles and the gravitation pull of the larger bodies in our solar system. A friend who runs a major observatory for NASA acknowledged that we actually in a long term cooling cycle. Now is there climate manipulation? There are too many installations around the globe and too many patented ideas centered around the manipulation to not think there is a lot of truth to the matter. The question then is who or what is in charge and what is their ultimate goal. Do they wish to give us perfect weather, heat and moisture for our crops or the opposite? Our military sector has always wanted to manipulate the weather to their advantage.
This was another strange planting season, and maybe similar to most of the last decade with abnormally warm conditions in early April, followed by a plunge into the deep freeze for two to three weeks. That early warm spell only lasts ten to twelve days and the guys with common sense have to wait a week before they take a chance of getting bit from a cool down? That happened again and many observant corn growers are seeing lighter stands in many fields. Was the cause cooler soils causing cold water imbibition? Or was it seed with a lower than normal cold germ and vigor due to unfavorable weather conditions or poor fertility management on the part of the seed company site managers during the 2022 growing season? Can desiccating the seed fields affect the young seedlings negatively? If you compared the fertility management of the seed fields versus the practices and range of products used by the champion contest growers, we know the contest winners start with a firm plan which addresses nutrient needs by growth stage and hope to keep their plants free from stresses. Their intent is to feed the plants on a regular basis to help keep the plants in an offensive mode. Instead, their approach needs to treat the plants like new livestock where you don’t provide all the nutrition needed by the crop right at the start of the growing season. Instead, they need to treating their corn and bean plants like young livestock, give them access to feed at regular intervals and not only at one or two intervals. A good mantra is healthy plants make healthy grain and offspring.
I am going to write a short column this week due to wanting to attend a Regen Ag conference being held just south of Iowa City. So, I will touch on a few pertinent topics.
The first is that the weeds and their biology seems to be changing faster than the herbicide companies can develop new products. Testifying to that fact that everyone is having problems in controlling several plants we call weeds. A big reason why is that both of our main crops get planted, grow and get harvested at the same times and get infested with many of the same weed species. Pigweed, lambsquarter, velvet leaf-which is bad in appearance but are not generally yield limiting.
Having a dominant third crop would help. The most obvious candidate will have to be a grass crop since those have more massive root systems such that they pump a lot for sugar into the soil helping to increase soil organic matter. Do so will increase the soils’ moisture holding capacity, which helps drought proof our crops. This third crop would be harvested earlier to upset the weed’s seed formation schedule. While soybeans fit well in a corn/SB/corn/SB rotation they do not build organic matter. In a thin tank type discussion last week, it was acknowledged that a Corn/SB/Wheat rotation would build OM faster.
This third crop will have to fit into a farmers’ machinery fleet and arsenal as well as the grain handling network already in place. That way the end users can depend on a supply to pull from.
Weed Thoughts
Last week was the beginning of the post-emergent spray season where fields typically receive their rescue sprays meant to take out any surviving broadleaves. The biology of the weeds have changed dramatically in that in the early 1990s if a person ran the row crop cultivator within the May 20th to 25th to kill any emerged weeds, no weeds except Venice mallow emerged after that date. Now it is common to see waterhemp seedlings germinating in the last half of August and going to seed. It is possible to count 40 to 60 small water hemp plants per foot poised to form seeds. That is over a million small weeds per acre and requires close to 99% efficacy to be termed acceptable.
There are definitely more SB being planted into standing cover crops. Eventually those cover crop plants will collapse to form a mat that lowers the germination dramatically. In fact if the China located herbicide factoried companies decide to cut off our soybean herbicides the obvious programs will be to move to covers as the answer.
Keep an eye out for more information out on the Terminator 20 from Australia being applied thru an electrostatic sprayer. They were talked and written about thirty years ago and a degreed engineer has made changes to them. They will be demoed late this season.
Insect and Pest Control
Two possible candidates for insect management are getting more publicity and are likely to penetrate the market more. The first might be chitinase products produced through the processing of formerly discarded shrimp shells. Sprayed on the plants or soil, both the crop plants and microbes in the soil will produce the chitinase enzyme which dissolves insect parts and fungal strands. The Chinese have been using these for centuries with centuries of good performance. We feel it might be the key for control of the Gall Midge.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.