Crop Watcher 06/24/11

Todd Easton Coles County June 24 2011: Another week of steady progress on mother natures part this week but no progress on the producers side of the equation as a short 2 inches of rainfall kept sprayers parked most of this week. Even the later May planted corn fields are almost chest high by now not quite a foot shorter than the early April plantings and both have big potential that will be determined by the next couple months weather. Crop Protection dealers are out setting up fungicide application plans and with the wet humid weather pattern so far I'm betting we will see the yellow Air Tractors make alot of rounds this summer. Since last weeks report the bean crop growth has accelerated seemingly overnight with many fields quickly closing up their rows. It has been frustrating not being able to get the sprayers out to eradicate the growing weeds. I don't often get specific with what we do on our own operation but one thing I am very glad we did in this difficult bean spraying year was apply a burndown with residual ahead of the bean planter in some of the fields with the idea of combating glyphosate resistance. So far it has had the added bonus of keeping those fields much cleaner despite the delay of our post application and will be done on all of my bean acres next year.