The irrigation season is wrapping up (Finally! It’s been a long year). As you start getting ready for harvest, we are starting our extractions to insure the probes are not in the way of the harvesting crews. Currently we have marked all the seed and silage fields ready for extraction. And, many have already been pulled. As you start evaluating your fields and making decisions as which ones will be first harvested, keep us in the loop. It’s usually best to figure it takes about a week to for us to get a probe removed after we mark it ready for extraction. In emergency situations we can sometimes get it out quicker, but there aren’t any guarantees, so advanced notice is better. When we’ve extracted a probes we will post a note on the recommendation tab just like the notes we’ve be been doing all summer. So, if you have a question on if the probe is still in the field, check your recommendation notes.
This past week we’ve had the opportunity of evaluate some fields that growers suspected that the water management was having an affect on the crop. We walked out to the probe in those situations and did core hand samples. In all soil water status of the probe and what we hand sampled matched perfectly. However, we did notice parts of the field that had some issues. In diagnosing those agronomic factors we found early necrosis from southern rust and other leaf diseases, spider mites, compaction, N deficiency, crown root rot, and over all shallow root development. Any and all of these things can cause early plant maturity which can lead to ears tipping down and/or bean leaves are cupped and/or changing colors. The early maturity and early plant death is being caused my many differing agronomic issues, put the water management was ok in all our field visits. But, the good news is even though there were spots in the all the fields that had some problems, over all the corn looked very good. Some of the beans we think will be hurt by the early maturity but there isn’t much we can do about that.
Once the season is over, we will produce and send to you a report for everyone of your fields that had a probe in it. This report will all the information that is required for NRCS funding. If you want, we can send that report directly to your NRCS rep. We just need an email address.
As always, if you have any questions about a specific field or water management strategy on a field, feel free to give one of us a call or stop in at our office.
