Harvest has started off to a slower start this season and Agronomist of Cornelius Seed, Craig Allaman, believes that is due to the farmers waiting for their crops to dry out:
“The good news is that it has dried down. There’s field coming out around Little York at 17% moisture. Which is very low for this time of year. It’s time to get out there. When we get that low we start showing at that a little more, have little loss that way. We sure are not going to spend a lot of money on propane, which is a good thing. It’s time to get it out of there. Stalk quality is decent for the dryness we have had late in the year. That needs to be a hybrid by hybrid decision. Make sure you are getting those hybrids out that may be have cannibalized the stalk a little bit more and are a little bit iffy in stalk quality,” reports Allaman.
Beans are also beginning to come out, which is ideal before the moisture gets too high. Allaman states that with one more rain, the lower leaves will be knocked off and the beans will be fully ready for harvest.
Diseases are never a good thing, especially when it comes to a farmers’ crop. Allaman reports that our area had some grey leaf spots set in late this season, which caused some of the corn to shut down a little bit early.
Looking in surrounding areas, Allaman has heard reports of a fairly new disease called ‘tar sports’:
“It’s usually a disease that sets in pretty late and it will literally look like the tar that gets on the bottom panel of your vehicle when you drive through fresh roadwork. What we are seeing a little different this year it seems to be maybe combining with another disease or two, so you have a couple of disease complexes there together. It usually sets in late enough when it’s by itself that we haven’t really seen any yield issues. I think there’s going to be some additional testing or yield results this year that may show that in conjunction with another disease it may be an issue,” Allaman states.
Most of these diseases that are present are due to significant amounts of rainfall for that area.
Allaman has also seen and increased use of Dicamba in our area with fewer reports of drift issues compared to last year.
written by Kelsey Crain
