Sunday, May 27, 2012

I Am Glad Cathy Went To Church


It is Sunday morning, I am at home and the crop Gods appear to be on our side.  It is almost enough to make this guy smile. 



We should have chased the dairy men out into their poor hay crop sooner.  It always rains at hay making time


If height of the wheat crop determines yield, we are in trouble.



I was out putting up some wheat signs this week and it is embarrassing how short the plants are. 
Pioneer told us that 25R40 was a short plant.  It barely covers the bottom of the stake.  What they never told us was 25R56, shown here on the right side of the picture below, can be just as short as 25R40.



Personally, I believe we will be surprised at how good the wheat yields will be.  Forget the straw, grain yields will be very respectable because wheat is a dry land crop with a high degree of drought tolerance built into its gene pool.  Test weight will be extremely high.

Conventional wisdom would lead us to think that there is no point in applying fungicide this year.  It has been dry and the fusarium risk is almost zero.  I don't agree with conventional wisdom.  The newer fungicides, Prosaro and Caramba do a lot more than just control fusarium.  They also control leaf rusts and septoria.  Without the fusarium risk we have some flexibility on timing.  We can wait a couple of days past the perfect fusarium timing and still get the other disease control benefits.  That said, this week will be the right time in many fields for wheat fungicide.  Go get it done.





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