One of the staples for growing healthy, high-yielding crops is to maintain good soil fertility. That’s why most agronomists will suggest soil sampling every two to three years to evaluate how your fields are holding up. These tests however are not always the easiest to read and many farmers often need help interpreting the results. Here are some key tips and areas to focus on when evaluating your soil test report. 

1. Variety Selection. Select varieties that are best suited for your operation’s needs, whether that’s based on maturity for harvest timing and soybean double-cropping, straw and/or grain yield, management level, or a combination of these needs. In addition, maturity and harvest timing may be important for timely manure management, summer drainage tile projects, or timely cover-crop seeding. Utilize data from universities, third-party testing services, seed companies, and local performance-based product recommendations from your Beck’s representative to help select the best varieties available. University of Illinois research from 2013 and 2014 shows a 20 percent difference in grain yield just by selecting top-performing wheat varieties.

I have received a number of calls from customers over the past few weeks, so I wanted to provide some updates on a few of the hot topics as we continue to monitor the development of our corn and soybean crops. 

At the moment, Liberty^® (glufosinate) is the only post-emergence herbicide available to control glyphosate and PPO-resistant Palmer amaranth and waterhemp. So naturally, we need this herbicide to perform to the best of its ability. There are a few things you can do to enhance the efficacy of your LibertyLink^® herbicide program. Below I have outlined the best management practices for post-emergence Liberty applications.

A lot of our early planted corn is already in the reproductive stage, or will be within the next week. A majority of the phone calls I’ve recently received are from farmers asking “should I spray a fungicide?” This is a tricky question. On one hand, you don’t want to throw money at a corn crop when it’s not warranted, but on the other hand you don’t want to lose potential yield by not protecting your crop. So the million-dollar question is, “what should I do?”

With wheat harvest officially underway across southern Indiana, I wanted to offer you a few tips about harvest and planting double crop soybeans.

When preparing to harvest wheat, the ideal moisture is between 14 to 20 percent. Below 14 percent moisture we start to see yield loss and we could also run the risk of a rain lowering test weight and quality. Air drying wheat will give you the best quality. For long-term storage, make sure to dry your wheat to 12.5 percent moisture.

As the southernmost agronomist for Beck’s, I’m usually the first one to see which pest(s) will be the worst, and this year is no exception. Although I haven’t seen much disease or insect pressure (up to this point), I have received numerous calls about yellow tops, white spots, or purpling in corn. With that, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to explain some of these “corn syndromes.” 

Over the past week I have been called to numerous fields to evaluate emerging soybeans that are weak, injured by feeding or herbicides, or were impacted by seedling disease, primarily Pythium (root rot/damping off). I wanted to take a minute to discuss PPO-herbicide injury.

Given the cool, wet conditions we have been experiencing, I wanted to take the opportunity to send a timely update. Now is a great time to evaluate fields we have already planted. Chances are, some of your fields are up while others are taking a bit longer.

May can be a busy month. Most of us are planting soybeans, post-spraying corn, spraying burndown ahead of beans, and/or checking on maturing wheat. We have a lot happening all at the same time.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of the things I keep an eye on and field scout for during this busy month. My intent with this article is not to give you a “how-to” for each of these, but rather to let you know what you should be looking for and thinking about from a crop diagnostic perspective.