One week til the party's over

That's my guess as to how much time we have left before significant damage starts to occur to our crops from the drought.  We watched 3 times yesterday afternoon and last night thunderstorms approach Winnebago county and then split apart and go around.  I'm happy for the folks up along Interstate 90 and over west of Algona that were able to pick up rains.  For the rest of us the next few days don't look too promising with highs near 100 again.  The only thing this rain gauge has had accumulate in it in the last 3 weeks as you can see is some runny bird shit.  At least it's getting used by someone!

Despite how dry it is, the crop still looks very good driving by on the road.  Our soybeans are a lush, dark green and other than a few hill tops pulling back, look great.  We have a few weeds coming through the herbicide applications that we made about a month ago but overall control was very good.  We plan to go out in the next week or two and walk some beans to get rid of the waterhemp and velvetleaf that are left.  Soybeans are in the R2 to nearing R3 stage which means they are starting to set pods on the bottom part of the plant.  Our plan is to spray fungicide and insecticide likely next weekend or early next week for our last trip across the beans.  If it doesn't rain or doesn't look like it will rain, we may reconsider. 

Last weekend I went out scouting and found a lot of rootworm beetles in one of our conventional fields feeding on the silks of the corn plants.  There was some actual silk clipping going on which can impede proper pollination so we had our local aerial applicator come fly on some insecticide to knock down the rootworms.  I scouted our other farms and didn't think the pressure they had warranted a trip so we've let them go.  Our early planted corn is all pollinated and the late planted corn that went in the 10th of May is starting to pollinate now which may be a bad thing with the 100 degree heat forecast for the next few days.  It will be interesting to go out and look at how successful the pollination was over the last 10 days later this week.  From what I looked at this week, it looked like most ears had pollinated 30 kernels out of 40 potential long by 16 rows around.  If those can hang on and not abort, that would equate to 170 bu corn assuming a final stand of 32,000 harvestable ears and that we got moisture to fill the grain out.  If we could get 170 bu/A corn, it would be a miracle looking at the current forecast.  My guess is that things will be closer to under 140 bu/A for our area without rains.  I read somewhere this week it takes 9" of soil moisture to fill a corn crop from silking to black layer.  We're about out of soil moisture now so we're going to need some big rains in August to hold on to the pollinated potential we have now. 

I went back again to our plowing vs strip till corn on corn line this last week and looked for differences and saw them again.  The strip till appears to have tasseled about 2-3 days sooner and is much more even in tassel emergence than where our plowed ground is.  It will be interesting with the drought stress to see how this comparison plays out for the rest of the season.  I hope that our strips will provide an advantage but am not holding my breath.  If it doesn't rain, no practice will make a difference.

I really hope we can luck out and catch a shower on Wednesday when the next frontal boundary comes through and that this pattern changes.  If not, I'm going to offset my potential losses by investing heavily in the local liquor store as I think their business could be booming over the next few months.  It's do or die time. 



July 1st, 2012-Two from Tassel

It's hot and getting hotter and drier by the hour.  The forecast doesn't sound that promising this week either with  only a slight chance of rain coming tonight.  Hard to believe that 10 days ago we got 2-3 inches of rain and we're already bone dry again.  I just got back from scouting crops and doing some digging and the profile has very little moisture left in the top 8 inches.  If we don't get rain this week with the high temperatures forecasted, I'm afraid we'll start to see issues with pollination that will take place over the next 2 weeks. 

Our corn planted on April 25th is at V14 and has 2 leaves to emerge before the tassel is out.  Typically it takes about 3 days in temperatures like this for a new leaf to emerge so we will likely have tassels out by next Sunday to take pics of.  Hopefully there are silks out at the same time.  One of the problems with drought stress around pollination is the uneven emergence of silks matching up with pollen shed.  If  the 2 don't allign, you can have big problems.  Despite the heat, the corn looks phenomenal so far.  Green from top to bottom and very few signs of disease or nutrient deficiencies.  I did find one plant last week that may have had the start of Goss's Wilt developing on the farm that suffered so much wind damage earlier.  Not much of a surprise. 

The good news is that after digging a few corn root masses, it looks like we have very little rootworm pressure on our conventional corn and a very dense fibrous root system established in the zones.  I'd venture to say we have more fine root hairs than what I'm used to seeing from our conventional tillage days.  We still have some soybean residue left between the rows in our first year corn but much of it is gone.  I don't know how much of an advantage we have from a moisture preservation standpoint.  When I dig in the strip, the ground comes up very easily and seperates well.  When I dig between the rows where no tillage has been done it's a different story...big hard chunks of compacted soil.  Seeing how compacted the soil is in between the rows in both our corn and soybeans has got me re-thinking my approach to not doing any tillage besides my fall stripping...especially with our corn stalk residue.  When soils are that compacted between the rows, oxygen becomes depleted and residue breakdown is slowed to a crawl.  If we don't break the residue down well over the summer months, we will have more residue to contend with next fall and next spring going back to corn. I've been visiting with my friend Sheldon Stevermer about this over the last week and we've been kicking around some ideas in how to possibly address this without doing too much damage to the soil structure we're trying to establish and maintain.  Over time in the strip till system, the compacted layers should be marginalized by the increased soil life and biology that promotes natural aereation and porosity.  It's obvious by this video we have  a few years to go before we're there.

Residue mat holding moisture

Compacted soil between the rows

Loose soil under the zone

Our soybeans are the biggest that they've ever been going into the fourth of July holiday but it seems that they are lagging behind the neighbors that are using conventional tillage.  They look uniform and even but just not as bushy and impressive as fields that were tilled.  I'm thinking that there are several reasons for why we're seeing these differences:

1.  Lack of oxygen in the soil system from less tillage and compacted soil between the rows
2.  Root masses running into high salt load from my aggressive fertilizer program last fall
3.  Poor varietal placement on my part on one field

I will say after walking and doing some digging last night that the mat of cornstalk residue is definately retaining more moisture than tilled fields I've dug in.  I was able to find enough moisture to ball up soil underneath the mat which was encouraging.  Hopefully this translates into an advantage if things stay dry.  Weed control is fantastic with the exception of some volunteer corn that clumps that may come back with any moisture we receive.  I can find no waterhemp to speak of emerging after our post-emerge treatments completed a week ago. 

Overall, our crops have never looked so good before the 4th of July.  This isn't a function of strip till as everyone's crops in my area look the best they ever have in my opinion despite the tillage system.  This is however probably the most scared I've been about the amount of potential that could be lost if we don't get a rain in the next 10 days.  We will go from 250 bu/A corn potential to 150 bu/A or less pretty quick if things stay dry through July.  With new crop corn at $6/bu, that's a huge revenue swing in the balance.  I feel fortunate though as we still have a chance while others in Illinois, Indiana and the SE cornbelt are already toasted and discing corn under.  When you dig and see how dry our soils are right now, we're not that far away from the same issues. 

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.  Enjoy the 4th holiday!