End Of Season And Harvest: A Time To Monitor, Evaluate And Prepare
GREG PFEFFER
DEXTER, MO.
Welcome to DuPont Pioneer Talks Crops. This information is provided by the Pioneer agronomist serving your community.
We are reaching the end of the 2014 season, but there is still plenty to do to make sure we bring home the best possible yields. One of the biggest areas of concern we still face is insect infestation, and vigilance is needed to ensure that pests don’t rob yields this year.
Continue to monitor soybean insects in particular. Insect pressure has continued to be low in the North Delta, but we have been picking up stink bugs, bean leaf beetles, and Japanese beetles. The University of Missouri threshold for stink bugs is one per foot of row during grain fill. Be sure to use labeled insecticides for control.
As harvest nears, now is the perfect time to consider what worked and what did not in your 2014 production cycle. This should include an evaluation of variety/hybrid performance, population, standability, soil fertility, and weed control measures for each of your fields. There are many ways to do this that will easily fit into your regular work plan.
Monitoring weed control from the combine seat is an excellent way to survey weed escapes and what weed challenges to expect for next year. Also, check for inconsistent yielding areas in the field. These areas are especially evident from the operator’s seat during harvest.
Be sure to soil sample the very high-producing areas and the very poor-producing ones as a portion of your fall soil sampling program in order to understand what makes the high-yielding areas so strong and the poor producing areas so weak. Then create solutions appropriately to try to bring the whole farm average up for the coming year.
Wheat planting is also right around the corner. High-yielding wheat can be achieved by managing fertility, insects and disease. There were some definite challenges for seed wheat production in 2014 due to head scab so be sure to inquire early about seed and consider planting a high-quality, treated wheat seed. Fungicide seed treatments are a must – they help ensure winter survival. Insecticide seed treatments are gaining traction for fall aphid control.
Some other tips to improve yields: split-apply nitrogen, spray for aphids in the fall and spring, apply fungicides for foliar disease control and head scab at flowering, and control weeds early. With the right environment, we can hope to make higher wheat yields this next year. ∆
GREG PFEFFER: Agronomist for Pioneer, Dexter, Missouri
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