Farmers are pulling out their planters and drills in central Illinois and heading back into fields to patch fields hit by heavy rains last week. In many cases, it’s a proactive step to prevent weed flushes using soybeans as the solution, according to Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill.
“If you’re going into beans, narrow those rows up, drill them if you can,” Ferrie recommends. “Get those populations up to 190,000 to 220,000. Remember, these beans are going to be short. So, if we’re going to keep the weeds down, we need them planted thick.
“Some guys are putting soybeans into the cornfield if their herbicides are allowing them to do that, and that’s not a bad idea, either,” he adds.
And while Ferrie acknowledges that it’s a “pain in the butt” to go into those cornfields to cut a patch of soybeans late-season, it’s even worse to deal with a crop of waterhemp or some other broadleaf weed that will go to seed and be a problem in 2022 and years beyond that.
Assess soybean yield loss. If you planted early-season soybeans that were hit by heavy rains in the past week or two, you’re likely to see while scouting that they have aborted some flowers and pods.
“Unfortunately, I do expect that to show up on yield monitors this fall,” Ferrie says. “You’re going to give up some of that premium you’d hoped to have, though I still believe there’s a good crop out there.”
When scouting water-damaged soybeans, you are likely to see coloring that varies from yellow to nearly white, marking those areas most likely to have high soil pH.
“These are the zones – if you’re interested in experimenting with foliar feed mixes – that are good candidates for you to go into and try to get some iron back into the plants,” he says.
Consider your nitrate situation in corn. In checking for nitrates in fields, primarily in Livingston County, Ferrie says he has both bad news and good news.
The good news is there is more N available to the crop than Ferrie expected to find. The bad news is where it’s located.
“When we compare low ground to high ground, the low-ground nitrates in the second foot are higher than those in the first foot and some of the surface N is denitrified off,” he says. “But it’s still within reach of the corn roots, because of how deep they got in the dry June. If this corn was 6” tall, we would have trouble. But where we are today in this corn crop, that’s all still very accessible N.”
Ferrie says to check lower areas in fields where water ponded, as those are the areas that had both leaching and denitrification going on.
Despite inclement weather, Ferrie says most corn stands look good. “So let’s not let them run out of gas as they’re trying to finish,” he encourages. “Look at your soil test maps, and those areas that you label with N loss, make sure you’re pulling a sample out of those N-loss areas. Anywhere you saw corn slow up and show a little bit of yellowing, that’s a candidate to go in and pull a nitrate test just to make sure that we’re not going to have any bad surprises (at harvest).”
Northern rootworm gains ground. While Western rootworm is the dominant variant in Illinois, Ferrie is starting to see the Northern beetle show up in his area.
“With the Northern you’ve got the extended diapause as well as some of the trait resistance that they run into in Iowa, so keep an eye on this pest,” he says. “With the beetles flying now, we can start to do root washes to look for damage and evaluate and rate our rootworm situations. You’re looking for how well your traits did and any indication that you might be starting to see resistance build.”
Each fall, Ferrie says farmers planting non-GMO hybrids on rotated ground without insecticide call him and ask if they can get by with that practice again the following spring.
His response is to evaluate your specific situation. “Go out into your non-GMO, non-insecticide fields and start digging some plants and evaluate how much rootworm feeding that you have on those plants. Wash them off, take a good look at them. Take a picture of them if you’re not sure about what you’re seeing and bring them by the office here, and we can help you look at how much damage potentially is out there. We don’t want rootworm to sneak up on us and get caught with down corn.”
Disease pressure is picking up. On farm visits this past week, Ferrie’s agronomic team saw some Physoderma brown spot in the corn.
“Of course, that’s where water stood in the whorl. So that one is fired up on us, as well as common rust,” he says. “We did see a little bit of GLS but most of that was showing up in the corn-on-corn fields.”
With this week’s forecast for rain in central Illinois, Ferrie expects disease pressure to pick up.
“With the moderate temperatures at night, I expect to see some white mold show its head especially for our northern customers,” Ferrie says. “We’ve got beans from V7 to R3, so a lot of fungicide will start going on the beans as this weather allows.”
Student scholarship available. For farmers attending this summer’s Farm Journal Corn & Soybean College at Ferrie’s facility in Heyworth, consider the scholarship that’s available for a high school senior or college student.
“If you know a high school senior or college student interested in ag have them go to our website to apply (https://www.croptechinc.com/cbc/),” Ferrie says. Click on the Corn & Soybean College tab and then on to the scholarship tab.
