This week on the Boots In The Field Report podcast Ken Ferrie advises that now is the time for the pest boss to lay down the first line of defense. He recommends cutworm and armyworm traps going out wherever you have green cover, setting up wireworm and grub bait stations, and putting out gopher and vole bait traps. Most problems are very manageable if caught early enough. When the population grows too big, then you start to run out of options to manage and avoid a reduction in yields. Scouting for the 2023 crop starts now.

Episode 297: Boots In The Field Report March 31, 2023

One of the founding pillars of Crop-Tech Consulting is integrating a systems approach to farming. Crop-Tech is continually adding to their expertise and services. To aid in this process, CTC conducts over 150 test plots every year and works in conjunction with Farm Journal to gather research data on the industry’s equipment, practices, and technology. The Boots in the Field Report features Crop-Tech Consulting agronomist Ken Ferrie. He will keep you up-to-date by describing what he is seeing while in the field. 

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In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie covers planting progress, replant reports, stand evaluations, sidedressing information and predictions of the ugly corn phase. He also gives his perspective on the wind and water erosion we have seen this spring.

Episode 336: Boots In The Field Report May 30, 2024

Planting is nearing a close for most operations, but the jobs of the pest scout are just getting rolling. Ken covers what they should be on the lookout for in this week’s Boots In The Field Report. Scouts should be evaluating corn fields for crusting issues and dust storm damage and soybeans for crusting and PPO damage to make hoeing and replanting decisions. They also need to be evaluating timing of post spraying, noting any fields that are experiencing a pre-plant herbicide failure that would need post spraying moved up and fields that are stressed from dust storm damage and need to wait for new growth before post spraying to not over stress the crop. Heat units are significantly moved up compared to a normal year, so scouts need to be watching for cutworm, corn borer, cucumber beetle, June bugs, and flea beetle now. And due to a large number of fields worked in unfavorable conditions, scouts need to take note of fields that now have a compaction layer that needs to be addressed this fall before fields could be taken into or go back to no-till. Due to the large amounts of rain, scouts will also need to be pulling nitrates to check for Nitrogen loss.

Episode 335: Boots In The Field Report May 22, 2024

Ken Ferrie walks through considerations for planting strategies for this time of year and field moisture conditions in this week’s Boots In The Field Report. Since the window for pre-solstice flowering has passed, focus for planting switches to getting the corn in the ground. Areas that have bathtub rings might need a strip freshener to open up those soils to dry out and whether it is the strip freshener or the planter, make sure they are dancing on top to avoid putting in compaction in these wet fields. Covers that escaped a timely kill, will cause a bigger carbon penalty, but might be better off living at this point to help dry out the soil through transpiration to be able to get in and plant. Ken also reports some growers are seeing PPO damage on beans due to splashing.

Episode 334: Boots In The Field Report May 9, 2024

How well or long seeds will survive underwater depends on many factors including hybrid/variety type, seed quality, how far along the crop is, and temperature. In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie walks through steps to take as fields dry out including using drones/scouting to figure out how much replant seed might be needed, noting fields that need to be scouted or ponding spots that need nitrates pulled before sidedressing. He also advises growers to get hoes ready to help fields before they develop a crust, utilize spray drones to help take care of herbicide that didn’t get on before rain, take care of cover crops that haven’t been killed, and wheat that needs sprayed.

Episode 333: Boots In The Field Report April 30, 2024

After Thursday morning’s frost warning is through most of Central IL will be moving to a green light for planting corn and will hold most likely till the end of planting. Green light is in regards to temperature, if field moisture is too high, then growers have to wait for that to dry out first.  Due to weather, several fields have a heavy cover of weeds, crop scouts need to keep an eye on these fields for cutworm and armyworm presence even if they were tilled. Seed quality continues to have a larger number then normal falling into poor quality, if growers haven’t sent off a seed sample may want to keep back a small sample that they can send off later if field shows stand establishment issues. The warmer weather will help lessen some of the risk on these lower testing seeds.

Episode 297: Boots In The Field Report March 31, 2023

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