Next issue will be posted June 28. Read previous issues through our calendar of issues.

Scouting for vegetable diseases

Daniel S. Egel
Extension Plant Pathologist
Southwest Purdue Agricultural Center

The key to managing vegetable diseases is to anticipate. Attempting to manage a disease after its appearance is not as effective as preventative management. This is true regardless of whether one is considering fungicide applications or cultural controls such as crop rotation.

If preventative management is the underlying theme to vegetable disease management, why should one scout for diseases? Doesn’t the concept of scouting for disease imply reactive management?

Let’s think about the word scout as a military term. Scouts precede the army in an attempt to determine the enemy’s whereabouts and movements. In so doing, it is possible to react to the enemy’s movements and to prevent an enemy surprise attack. In this sense, scouting is both reactive and preventative. Vegetable disease scouting should be the same.

Preventative schemes include crop rotation and variety selection. Management schemes that include these factors have to be developed prior to the growing season. However, the length of time between crops, which crops should be included in the rotation and what disease resistance is needed in varieties are questions that can only be answered with knowledge of one’s own cropping systems.

Occasionally, knowledge gained in scouting will cause one to make rapid changes in management. For example, a fungicide application schedule may change based on the appearance of an unanticipated disease.

The remainder of this report will cover some do’s and don’ts of scouting, how recognizing patterns is critical in scouting, how to differentiate between diseases and other problems and finally, the place of diagnostic laboratories and manuals in diagnosis.

Once you decide to start scouting, set up a regular schedule. It is not sufficient to ride by a field with the window down or look at the plants from atop a tractor. Make a point to set aside some time, say once a week, for scouting. If this seems undoable or the following seems pretty complicated beside the other items you have to know and keep track of (it is complicated!), it might be worth considering hiring someone to scout for you.

Items needed for scouting include: 1) plastic bags for sample plants, 2) a permanent marker to write on the bags, 3) a 10 or 15X hand lens, 4) a shovel to dig up plants, 5) a clipboard to write down observations, 6) digital camera (optional, more on this later). Better have a hat, some sunscreen and water.

Walk through your fields in a regular pattern; say a ‘Z’ pattern. Regardless of the pattern chosen, make point to go through the entire field instead of around the edges. It might be a good idea to be sure to hit areas that you suspect of problems. For example, a low area might be more likely to have a soilborne disease such as Phytophthora. An area that gets shade from nearby trees might stay wetter in the mornings and have more foliar disease.

An effective scout will learn how to recognize patterns. Some patterns are obvious and do not indicate a problem. For example, plants of different planting dates will be different sizes. A bit less obvious might be why the plants in one area of a field are chlorotic (yellow) and stunted. This area of the field might have been too wet. Or a soilborne disease might be present. To determine the difference between these two possibilities, one might dig up a plant and examine the roots.

Before one can determine whether roots or any other plant part appears healthy, one must know what a normal healthy plant looks like. This is another key concept and will require one to find and carefully examine a few healthy plants.

Some patterns will be man-made. Irrigation, fertilization and cultivation will often create regular patterns which can be differentiated from the more or less random patterns produced by a disease. Foliar diseases often create lesions in a more a less random pattern on a leaf (Figure 1). Nutritional disorders, on the other hand, often manifest themselves along leaf margins or veins. Remember that old leaves often become chlorotic or even necrotic as they senesce. However, if new growth begins to appear chlorotic or necrotic, there might be reason for concern. You may have learned to recognize a good many vegetable disease problems by site. However, there may come a time when you observe a problem that you suspect might be a plant disease, but you aren’t sure. What do you do next? One possibility is to compare your symptoms with those of a diagnostic manual or website. There are many excellent resources available.Many seed and pesticide companies produce excellent manuals. Your county extension agent should be able to point you to resources that your land grant institution might have.

Figure 1: A diagrammatic representation of symptom types on a simulated leaf. A) Healthy leaf B) Scattered lesions in a pattern typical of an infectious disease. C) Veinal chlorosis typical of a nutritional disorder. D) Marginal chlorosis typical of a non-infectious pattern.

It might make sense to send your sample to a diagnostic laboratory. Before the season starts, find a diagnostic laboratory that suits you and determine their policies. Some general rules follow. Never pull a plant out of the ground for diagnostic purposes. Dig the plant up, wrap the roots with soil separately, and send it by a next day courier. Don’t send in the worst plant in the field. Send in a plant with symptoms beginning to show. Dead plants tell no tales. If possible, send in a few plants with a range of symptoms. Be sure to note details such as the service requested, the severity of the problem, size of planting, soil type, recent pesticide treatments, etc.

Some diagnostic laboratories will accept digital photographs. Take the time to download your photos and look at them closely before submitting them. In my experience the biggest problems with digital photographs is they are too distant to show details of the problem or are out of focus. Make sure to describe what it is in the photograph that you want the diagnostician to notice.

This has been a very brief tour. Just one more thing: there are individuals at land grant institutions like myself whose job it is to work with people like you. If you have more questions, contact your state university and find out more.

Editor’s note:
Here are some of the diagnostic labs available at land grant institutions:
Purdue University: http://www.ppdl.purdue.edu/ppdl/
Michigan State University: http://www.pestid.msu.edu/
University of Illinois: http://plantclinic.cropsci.uiuc.edu/index.html

Supporting growth in retail sales of organic packaged foods requires food manufacturers to have reliable, consistent supplies of ingredients.

These are exciting times for organic farmers. The growth of organic food sales in the U.S. and elsewhere has been well documented. The largest food retailer in the U.S. has announced its intention to expand its organic product offerings. The success of organic products becoming mainstream and part of many grocery shoppers’ baskets offers vast opportunities for those willing to be part of the organic supply system.

Various authors and researchers attribute this growth to a broad range of factors and have placed the growth rate of retail sales of organic grocery products at about 20 percent per year (rounded) over the past few years. The Food Institute reports the market for organic and natural products together increased 15.7% in 2005 to $51 billion. Recent evidence and testimony indicate that this growth rate is constrained by supply limitations, implying that the realizable growth rate in organic food sales is approximately somewhere between 20 and 40 percent per year, depending upon product category and retail channel. Of course, it is difficult to exactly ascertain lost sales from insufficient product volume.

The recent push by retailers to expand their organic product offerings can only be accomplished in two primary categories: fresh and packaged. If we look at product introductions in the broadly-defined packaged food category, new products are introduced at a rate of thousands per year (down from nearly 20,000 per year in the mid 1990s, according to the USDA, 2002). Although the market is currently experiencing a broad array of product introductions designed to take advantage of whole grain formulations and trans-fat labeling requirements, many food manufacturers are wisely hesitant to introduce organic versions of their products due to concerns over the reliability of ingredient quantity and quality. In short, food companies cannot commit to the public and retail channels until farmers are willing to commit to food companies (or their aggregation channels).

Consider the following facts. In November 2005, the USDA reported that there were 122,500 acres of organic soybeans in the United States. We must assume that all of those soybeans found a market. Furthermore, the same report indicates that there were 105,500 acres of organic corn the same year, all of which we can assume found a market.

Now let us introduce two hypothetical products into the consumer channel. Both are owned by multinational companies whose brand value is closely guarded and which will not be sacrificed for the sake of gambles. All of the following data is fictitious and is only used for illustrative purposes. However, to get a feel for the magnitude of commitment, one actual product was recently reported to be introduced with a $50 million marketing campaign.

The first fictitious product in our example is being developed by a snack food company that wishes to introduce an organic corn snack. The company has chosen the corn variety that works for both its process and flavor needs. Average yield on irrigated acreage is 115 bushels per acre. The economics of product introduction indicate that the company needs to market 30 million pounds of the corn snack product annually to make it worthwhile (which is a very low estimate for a new product). Further assume that cleaning, shipping and drying result in a shrink of approximately 20 percent, indicating that the company can sell 80 pounds of product for every 100 pounds of corn it purchases from farmers. In addition, the company is reluctant to rely on the average yield and wants to grow 25 percent more acres than the average yield indicates, in order to not run out of the corn variety upon which the product is based.

So, how many acres does the company need to contract? About 7,300 acres of corn, which is seven percent of all U.S organic corn acreage. More importantly, this corn acreage is likely to be already spoken for, indicating the company is going to need to buy out existing contracts or find new acreage. Developing new acreage means the company has to find at least three times as much acreage among farmers, or 22,000 new organic acres, because of crop rotation constraints.

The next hurdle facing the company is the development of a commitment from the farmers of these 22,000 acres to supply the company with the specified variety for many years into the future. Why would the company spend $50 million or more on a product rollout with only a one-year assurance of supply? Imagine what failure to deliver on the second year’s production would do to the company’s brand image. This company needs a one-third commitment (one-third of the acreage) from farmers of 22,000 organic acres for multiple years. But what farmer wants to put their entire corn crop in one variety? That complication causes even more multiplication, implying the need for accessing more farmers that can commit less than 100 percent of a larger acreage.

Now consider the second product. Let’s assume it is an organic product that uses soy as one of its ingredients. However, instead of having a .80 process yield like the corn snack, it has a .2 process yield (one pound of finished product per five pounds of uncleaned soybeans). With everything else being equal, this product requires slightly more than 27,000 acres of soybeans, which is 22 percent (or more than one-fifth) of all the organic soybean acres in the U.S. Again, due to the expected three-year minimum crop rotation, the company needs to contract with growers who control three times that amount of acreage, or more than 80,000 organic acres. And without multi-year commitments from these growers, the company cannot be assured that it will have enough raw material to meet its needs in the years ahead.

In the current environment, the retailers have indicated that they expect food companies to develop and introduce more organic product offerings, either through new labels, product line extensions or other means. The challenge to food manufacturing companies is to solve the problem of ingredient supply reliability in the years ahead.

The most effective mechanism for lining up supply commitments is multi-year contracts. Multi-year contracts can be advantageous for both parties. First, they line up supply chain participants behind the products. Second, they provide a mechanism for farmers to learn from repeated crops the aspects of quality and service for which they can expect to be paid in future years. Third, they can allow for increasing the volume of repeat purchases from supply chain customers in the future as farmers and processors learn how to compete for valuable business in these markets.

So, what does this imply for growers? Get to know your customers’ needs. Have more than one channel, more than one customer. Find out how committed the participants in the supply chain are to the new volumes which are to support the new products. Take advantage of contracting acres with payment based on production. And understand that competition from external production markets may affect prices from year to year. Organic feed grade soybeans that were $18 a few years ago have been about $11 this past winter. But $4 organic feed grade corn of a few years ago is now about $5.50. Multi-year contracts will likely provide for price fluctuations, so be prepared.

The growth of organic packaged products and livestock products will require creativity in developing expanded volumes in supply chains. While there are some risks, there are likely to be substantial rewards.

References
The Food Institute. http://www.foodinstitute.com/dailyupdate/update0602.htm
USDA, 2002: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/May2002/frvol25i1e.pdf
USDA, 2005: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Organic/

Soybean rust hotline for Indiana growers

Greg Shaner
Department of Botany and Plant Pathology Purdue University

Purdue Extension has established a Soybean Rust Hotline. The toll-free number is 866-458-RUST (7878). Callers will hear a brief message about the status of soybean rust. As the season progresses, the message will contain information about scouting and control
recommendations. The message will be updated weekly for the next month or so, and probably more frequently once soybeans reach the flowering stage.

More detailed information about soybean rust can be found at the USDA soybean rust website http://www.sbrusa.net/. The commentary for Indiana on the USDA web site will be updated whenever the phone message is updated. The website offers the advantage of containing information from many states.

Minnesota hosts international conference on animals in organic production

Jim Riddle
Organic Outreach Coordinator
University of Minnesota

From August 23-25, 2006, the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus will be the international epicenter for organic livestock producers and researchers, when the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) holds the first-ever international conference on organic livestock.

Leading organic livestock researchers and producers from throughout the world will share state-of-science research findings and production information during the three-day event. Complete information about the conference, including on-line registration, can be found at:
http://www.ifoam.org/events/ifoam_conferences/IFOAM_Animal_Production_Conference.html

The conference will begin on August 23 with tours of organic livestock farms in the Twin Cities area, including lunch and a tour of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. http://www.arboretum.umn.edu/

During the conference’s opening evening, the keynote message will given by Dr. Fred Kirschenmann of Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. He will discuss: Animals in an Organic System Exploring the Ecological, Social, and Economic Functions of Animals in Organic Agriculture.

Dr. Mette Vaarst, DVM, of the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, will speak on Sustaining Animal Health and Food Safety through Organic Methods during the morning keynote on August 24. His keynote address will be followed by workshops on organic poultry, dairy, sheep, hogs, and beef, as well as organic livestock standards. Groundbreaking research will be presented on differences between antibiotic-resistant bacteria on organic vs. conventional livestock farms.

Noted author, researcher, and acclaimed speaker Dr. Temple Grandin will present the evening keynote. Dr. Grandin, an autistic woman who has developed humane livestock handling systems used worldwide, will present Animals in Translation, which explores how animals see the world.

The evening of August 24 will conclude with a dance party in the North Star Ballroom, with music provided by The Pheromones!

Dr. David Wallinga, MD, from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, will give the morning keynote on August 25. Dr. Wallinga will discuss Antibiotic Resistance and the Organic Alternative. There will be workshops on humane treatment, biosecurity, animal health, market access, milk quality, and food safety.

The closing keynote will be given by Jim Riddle, the UMNs Coordinator for Organic Agriculture Outreach, who will discuss Fostering Organic Livestock Research Priorities and Preferences. The program will conclude with reports from session moderators on key findings of the conference, along with a conference resolution, presented by Angela Caudle, IFOAMs Executive Director.

Sponsors for the conference include Organic Valley, Newmans Own Organics, Northland Organic Foods, Stonyfield Farm, Indian Herbs, Horizon Organic, FiBL Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, MOSES Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services, Organic Choice, OTA Organic Trade Association, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the University of Minnesota.

Delicious local organic food will be served throughout the conference, with donations from Gardens of Eagan, Organic Valley, Stonyfield Farm, Nancys Organic Yogurt, The Wedge, French Meadow Bakery, Coop Partners Warehouse, and Cornercopia, the UMNs Student Organic Farm on the St. Paul campus. 

For more information, contact:
Jim Riddle, Organic Outreach Coordinator, University of Minnesota, Ph/fax: 507-454-8310
email: jriddle@hbci.com.

Note: This article’s source is Ag Answers, http://www.aganswers.net, a partnership between Purdue Extension and Ohio State Extension.

Ohio State University scientists are tackling a deep-rooted thorn in organic farming's side. John Cardina, an associate professor of horticulture and crop science, and colleagues will target perennial weeds -- specifically, how to control them without using synthetic weed killers and how those methods affect crops, the soil and a farmer's bottom line.

The research will focus on vegetable crops, which tend to fare poorly when competing with weeds, and on the three-year transition period from conventional to organic production. The OSU project will evaluate transition strategies that both improve the soil and control perennial weeds. It will share and further work with the findings in an ongoing "learning community" of farmers, researchers and Ohio State University Extension educators.

Spurring the effort
Farmers' voiced their concerns at field days and through other sources indicating that perennial weed species, not annual ones, were most likely to be poorly controlled by current methods. Farmers helped develop the plan, including selecting which treatments to study. Their farms will host some of the research.

The scientists, all with the university's Organic Food and Farming Education and Research program, call perennial weeds "among the most serious impediments to the adoption, expansion and sustainability of organic farming."

The reason?
Long-lived vegetative parts -- roots and the like – let perennial weeds regrow quickly after cultivation and survive in a place year after year. Annual weeds don't do that. Cultivation usually wipes them out. They survive to the next year only through their seeds. Quackgrass, bindweeds, Canada thistle and yellow nutsedge rank among the culprits. So do pokeweed, hemp dogbane, Johnsongrass and broadleaf dock.

"Our central hypothesis," the scientists said, "is that biologically based and properly timed control efforts, integrated with soil-building measures, will provide effective and economical transition strategies that can be readily adopted by organic and transitioning farmers."

They'll test that hypothesis in scale-appropriate production-system experiments at OSU's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, Ohio, and in on-farm studies on a half dozen or so Ohio organic farms. The tests will determine how perennial weeds respond to various practices. An outreach effort will share the new knowledge.

"The on-farm studies will follow perennial weed populations in whatever rotation and management strategy the cooperating farmers choose to use," Cardina said. "We want to learn how perennial weeds respond to real-life farming situations and how farmers respond to changes in those weed populations."

The project will look at a range of crops, including peas, squash, lettuce, sweet corn, potatoes, tomatoes and others. Each particular strategy tested will determine the crops that get used.

"For example, one strategy will be clean fallow with soil-building cover crops during the three-year transition period," Cardina said. "At the other extreme will be multiple cropping with tomato and cabbage in year one, bell pepper and broccoli in year two, and squash and lettuce in year three."

Study findings could aid in future organic farming expansion. The research is supported by a four-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service.

Note: This article’s source is Ag Answers, http://www.aganswers.net.

A few adjustments to machinery can make a good winter wheat crop even better at harvest, said Shawn Conley, Purdue University agronomist. Setting up combines to kick out grain infected with Fusarium head blight can improve the marketability and value of a farmer's wheat crop, Conley said.

So far, Indiana's wheat crop shows few signs of the disease, also known as head scab, Conley said. "The biggest issue I think we'll have this season is dockage, or outright refusal, of an elevator accepting grain with scabby kernels," he said. "Market prices are very good for wheat and we want to make sure we can capture as much of that price as possible. By limiting the possibility of dockage, that only enhances our bottom line."

Head scab is a fungal disease that attacks the wheat head where ears of grain -- or spikes -- develop. The disease can interrupt a wheat plant's grain-making ability, resulting in low yield. The Fusarium graminearum fungus also produces deoxynivalenol (DON), a compound extremely toxic to humans and livestock. Wheat grain with even trace amounts of DON is difficult to market.

Scab-infected kernels are smaller and lighter than healthy kernels. Conley advised farmers to prepare their combines to blow scab-infected wheat back onto the field.

"One of the ways we can alleviate some of the issues at the elevator is by turning the air up a little bit on our combines, in order to push the scabby kernels out the back so that they don't get mixed in with the rest of the grain," Conley said. "In terms of setup, calibrating the combine per wheat variety is important. Most varieties have enjoyed this cool weather period we've had and should have larger kernels. You'll be able to identify the wheat that has scab because it will be shrunken and shriveled, and it won't be as plump as the rest of the wheat."

To learn more about organic growers reporting at the New Agriculture Network, see their brief biographies in the “about” section of this web site.

Indiana
South Central Indiana—Dale Rhoads
Note: I wrote the following report on June 6. What I can add at this time is that it seems to us that every June is the real win/lose time of weeding. We are turning things toward a win, but we still have a lot of work to do. The only other thing to report is that the past week has been very cool, highs in the low 70s and lows in the 50s.

June 6—Weather has ranged from highs in the 90s last week to cooler temperatures this week. Rain has been intermittent, with either too much at once or not enough. The biggest way weather has affected our cropping system for much of the spring has been how it has affected germination of salad greens, which is about half of our production. Earlier we had some cool weather that delayed germination of salad greens beds. The past several weeks it has been too dry, affecting germination timing. We have been getting rain, but not quite enough or several days apart or several days later than forecasted. The point is that I should have been watering to ensure germination and was not thinking that there was insufficient moisture or that forecasted rain would not come.

We grow most of our salad greens on a stale seedbed. We till an area and let it sit for two to three weeks to germinate weeds, plant into the weeds, wait until a day or two before the crop is to germinate and then kill weeds with organic herbicides or LP Flaming. With the cool weather of several weeks ago weeds were not germinating on the stale seedbeds, we had to go ahead and plant and then the weeds germinated at the same time as the greens causing more weeding than we like to have to do. Then the same sort of thing happened with it being a little too dry. In one week we planted, waited the right number of days, killed the weeds and then it was not wet enough so the area sat for an extra four to five days before germination occurred, allowing enough time for more weeds to germinate and hence more weeding to have to do.

All of this is my fault management-wise. Basically, the cooler spring has fooled me about germination timing and watering needs, so I have to do a lot more weeding than what it good for us in order to have a crop. Also, related to weather, is that all crops are growing slower than what we typically see this time of the year. The plus side is that the salad greens areas that have not been ready due to slow growth have been compensated by the multiple harvests on the first plantings we did earlier in the year. Another benefit is that some pests have been suppressed with the cooler weather.

Currently we are buried. If controlling weeds is a war then we are losing the battle right now. While still trying to get basil and peppers transplanted, the weeding and weed control on the areas already done are getting out of control. We have been stringing up tomatoes in the greenhouse. Weeding, weeding, weeding! We are also succession planting on corn.

We have been harvesting lettuce. Moderate-sized heads this year of at least a pound, nothing super big. In addition to salad greens harvesting, we’ve been harvesting several kinds of kale, cilantro and chard. Typically this time of year we start planting mostly lettuces for our salad mixes. We have been trying some floating row covers over big hoops over the Asian greens and this is really working well, the greens are growing fine and are beautifully bite free. We have appreciated having the extra to bulk up the slow growing lettuces and it keeps our mix nice. The customers like it also.

Fruit wise we are going to have a good crop of Asian pears, a fair amount of apples, some peaches, and cherries should be starting soon.

We may be loosing battle with the weeding right now, but I am planning counterattacks. Slowly we are getting everything that needs mulching mulched. I am using the organic herbicides in new ways to get an edge. For instance, I had some weeds in half mature lettuce and using the herbicides took me one-eighth the time of weeding. Once I get all the tomatoes in the greenhouse tied up I can herbicide weeds and get the mulch and the rubber mats we use on the paths in place.

Illinois
Southwest Central Illinois—Floyd Johnson
We have gotten kind of dry in some areas. We finished planting soybeans on Friday (June 9) in dry ground. We got .3 inches of rain on Saturday at home, but I haven’t made rounds to see if we got that everywhere or not. We could use more, but we need to get cultivation done, too.

Currently, we are trying to catch our breath. My nephew got married this past weekend and a local town had their festival and my one daughter flew in for Irish Days. The other daughter stayed and she is flying out today, which is why I was not on today’s conference call. When I return from Midway airport today after dropping her off, I will get back on the tractor and catch my breath from catching my breath.

I need to cultivate corn as soon as possible and then hoe soybeans. I still have to spread micro nutrients, then hoe soybeans again, and rip corn with a between-every-other-row ripper about 14 inches deep. Then, it might be about time to cultivate corn again and start on soybeans.

Questions
I have a problem with what I call Cheat on a patch and I guess my optimism is giving out as it hasn’t gotten any better in several years. The seed head looks like oats and discing just aggravates it. If you do manage to cut any loose, it balls up whatever it comes into contact with. Which brings me to my question…what harrows work best with high residue?

Central Illinois—Dave Bishop
The weather here has been excellent overall with adequate moisture. Currently, we’re cultivating corn, making hay, weeding and setting up drip irrigation on vegetable crops. We will plant the last of the sweet corn this week. In the next two weeks we’ll be mowing pastures, tending vegetable crops and making second cutting hay.

Question
Has anyone been using corn gluten on vegetable crops?

West Central Illinois—Anne Patterson
I’ve seen 1.8 inches of rain over the past two and a half weeks with three very hot days (June 1-3) of 93 degrees. I pulled out the shade cloth for covering spinach and mesclun. Now the past five days I have left the shade cloth off due to cooler temperatures in the 70 to 80 degree range. Between the rains I have been able to complete all summer crop transplanting of peppers, melons, watermelons, sweet potatoes and artichokes. The second crop of sweet corn, pole beans, bush beans, winter and summer squashes have been direct-seeded. Cut flowers and perennial and annual herbs have also been planted. Currently I am working on building a new herb plot and ongoing planting of flats of head lettuce and Chinese cabbage. The beds, which aren’t mulched, are being weeded. Over the next two weeks I plan to weed and mulch an acre of hazelnut bushes and keep up with weeding.

Questions
Weeds in asparagus?

West Suburban Chicago—Steve Tiwald
Rainfall has been almost adequate. We received 2.2 inches this past Friday-Saturday (June 9-10), which was welcome in light of our concerns about drought continuation. We grow 40 different vegetables and herbs. During the past couple of weeks, we direct-seeded parsley, parsnips, rutabaga and turnips, plus more carrots and beets. We transplanted from the greenhouse to the field lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, summer squash and winter squash.

Northern Illinois—Dave Campbell
Last week was very dry, which enabled me to get back into the fields, although a two-inch rain this past Saturday morning (June 10) will keep me out of the field until at least Wednesday afternoon if it doesn’t rain Tuesday evening. I finished planting corn on June 2. Corn looks fairly good. I’m also done rotary hoeing corn. I did much moldboard plowing and disking of ground going to soybeans last week. I’ve been walking wheat fields and pulling out Canada thistle. I hope to start and finish planting soybeans within the next seven to 10 days as it is getting late for soybeans. I plan to start cutting hay later this week as well as cultivating corn for the first time.

Iowa
Northwest Iowa – Paul Mugge
It has been very dry here, in fact no rain since the last call. There is moisture down below, but the top soil is very dry. I have a corn field that was planted in very good conditions and germinated well and produced a good stand. After three rotary hoeings, the weed control is very good, but the nodal roots will not grow through the dry top soil. This leaves the plant with only the main root and when the wind blows, the plant just falls over. I have lost several thousand plants per acre. The conventional guys are talking about poor root systems also. We need rain.

The oats and flax look bad. The flax is flowering, but is only about one foot tall and weeds are going to be a serious problem again. Likewise, the oats are starting to head, but are only about one foot tall. It is way behind the fall triticale, which headed about three weeks ago and is three feet tall. However, I wonder what the very hot weather did to it.

Currently, I am baling hay and cultivating soybeans. The corn is all cultivated the first time. In the next two weeks I will finish cultivating soybeans and cultivate corn for the second time.