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Crop Watch

Corn Borers, Spider Mites, Thrips, and Leaf Hoppers

Another page on the calendar gets turned over and we enter the month of July. It is typically the month with the hottest temperatures and less rain received than the crops use, so the plants are relying on deep profile moisture to form the pollen, extend the silk and...

Soil Health & Crop Growth

The cropping tightrope walk of 2021 in the Midwest continues. As was reported earlier this week over 50% of the Midwest was in the abnormally dry to some stage of drought. In a year where grain prices have soared due to low supplies and the financial success of...

Our Late Frost

The 2021 growing season is shaping up and several challenges have already been imposed by nature. Lack of heat, shortages or excesses in moisture, late frosts, and now an excess in temperatures, the entire season seems to be one high wire tightrope walk where each...

Crop Status

As the season progresses into late May there appears to be a big discrepancy for soil moisture levels between different sections of the state. In central Iowa and west, last week consisted of five days with rain but barely one inch of accumulated moisture. That will...

Dry Weather Advice

The first portion of the 2021 growing season, the planting routine sprint, is well underway is all parts of the Midwest, and complete or nearly complete in the central part where the planting progress entered a twilight period when it was shut down or running at a...

Spring Events

After one of the fastest warmups and snow melts in late winter we are now encountering we drop into a period where the temps are double digits cooler than normal and snowflakes are predicted for early this week. After the much-delayed planting seasons of 2018 and 2019...

Weather Observations

For about two weeks it was debatable whether or not spring had arrived. Night time temps in the low 20s and daytime highs in the low 40s are not real warm and do not spur soil warmup or plant growth. Now in the last few days the daytime temps are above 60-70 degrees...

Management Improvements

Spring has arrived and this year we don’t have to wonder when the snowbanks will start getting smaller. Instead, much of the upper Midwest has been having unseasonably warm weather for three to four weeks and have been able to ditch the warm jackets and start working...

2021 Expectations

Who would have ever believed any weather forecaster that in the middle of the two- week long period of -15 to -20 below if they had predicted temps in the mid-40s to low 60s of higher in late Feb thru early March? There seemed to be a better chance of seeing 40 below...

Cropping Cautions

I spoke too soon. Just when I mentioned that the winter had been rather mild with no subzero temps that were dangerously cold, as in 15 to 25 below actual temps, one of those polar vortexes broke loose and made a break for the Mexican border and actually gots that far...