Boots In The Field Report

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie answers the question of if freezing and thawing will take out a compaction layer and if it could actually make it worse. He also speaks with University of Tennessee State Specialist Ryan Blair on how the growing season went last year and about the expansiveness of the Extension system throughout Tennessee.

In this week’s Boots in the Field Report Ken Ferrie answers some questions coming in from winter meetings: Will a spring or fall horizontal tillage pass put in more of a density layer?, Was it allelopathic toxins in the cereal rye ahead of corn that caused such a yield ding?, Will there be a cap to CI payments per farm operations?

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie answers a question from a Beyond The Basics viewer from Southwest Ontario. The viewer was asking about nitrogen carryover in red clover, where is the best place to reduce nitrogen in the overall nitrogen program when using red clover, and does it pay to use a nitrogen stabilizer in that situation.

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie shares his concern on the December 12th drought map for the “I” states and advises growers to close tile gates, if they haven’t already, to keep what water they have from getting away. He also answers the question from a Beyond the Basics viewer about how deep to pull samples in long term no-till fields. Ken advises that it could be beneficial to pull a couple of stratification samples, checking the top three inches compared to the next three. A good amount of uptake of nutrients happens in the top three inches but in a drought year the next three inches become very important. Ken also talks updates on the CI score front for farmers

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken talks with Jared Bergan about the stats from this year’s hybrid flex plot: hybrids added, operations and locations participating, record for highest and lowest kernels per bushel. Ken also answers a question from a Beyond The Basics viewer about how soil test values can be helpful in hybrid selection and placement.

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie covers the last of the Hybrid Ear Flex plots that came out this past week, hard pulling conditions, and considerations for growers contemplating going from narrow to wide row beans.

In this week’s Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie takes a peek into the results that came off the host of plots that came out last week, from N rate, planter fertility, corn nematode, fix/flex, to bean tillage and row spacing plots.

The rain events are creating some delay for harvest and tillage work and but it also brought lower soil temperatures to get growers closer to safer anhydrous application conditions. While more often growers are concerned in dry falls about sealing for anhydrous, Ken Ferrie warns that too much moisture can create smearing from the knives, preventing a good seal and creating Nitrogen loss. In this episode he is able to share Sullivan Agro’s results of their 8 variety, 3 planting date bean study done in Canada. Ken also covers plot results on bean fungicide, using AMS and starter on beans and high-speed disk versus vertical till. All this and more in this week’s Boots In The Field Report.

In this Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie covers harvest recaps getting called in. Fields that got that heavy rain in August have high ground out yielding low ground, beans that turned too quickly showing premature death from disease, and harvest loss proving to be an issue for some field conditions. Ken recaps the fungicide and insecticide plot that came out and the outcome of 2 fix/flex plots that came out this week. In addition, he advises growers to check their WAAS satellite if having issues with GPS signal.

In this Boots In The Field Report Ken Ferrie reports on initial review of soybean plot data that came out this week. He advises that the research crew will have to look at a lot of variables: planting dates, varieties, maturities, row spacing, rainfall timing, rainfall amount, tillage, use of covers and more. While the data may vary widely this year, it will give growers excellent data to find field advantages and identify field weaknesses if they take the time to make sure they are collecting good data and noting the anomalies in the field.