Since my last post, the rains have certainly been timely and adequate. Crops look fantastic. We applied fungicide to the beans using 360 Undercover to spray under the canopy of the soybeans to thoroughly cover & protect the foliage from disease. We also had fungicide flown on the corn to try to help protect the big yield potential it has from disease and also to mitigate some stress added by the recent heat.

I recently purchased a UAV (drone) to aid in scouting the crops. It has been fun to learn to fly and take aerial images with. It has already proven valuable in evaluating how well different corn hybrids handled the wind from some of the recent storms.

One of our biggest challenges this year turned out to be weed control in the beans. Our pre-plant herbicide worked well, and we were able to spray post-emerge herbicides timely when the weeds were small. However, we are finding (as are many in the region) that herbicide resistance is a rapidly increasing problem. In corn, we were able to add a herbicide to the program that took care of any glyphosate resistant weeds. In our nonGMO beans however, we are finding that some weed species are quickly developing resistance to conventional herbicides as well. As we look forward to new weed control technology for soybeans to becoming available, we have, for the time being, resorted to pulling out the old row-cultivator and garden hoes and gloves to take care of the weeds that have escaped the herbicide program!

Harvest will be here before we know it, and we will soon be getting equipment ready. Elevators have been keeping the truck quite busy the last couple of months moving grain out to make room for this year’s crop. It will be exciting to see how this crop finishes out!