 |
Comments From Terry Olson
Cell phone—515-835-7151 Well if we north central Iowan’s EVER wondered what it is like to live in the Amazon region of South America, I think these last 3 weeks is about as close as we would like to get. Mosquito’s the size of hummingbirds, monsoon type rains and a decaying stench helped put everyone’s attitude in the dumpster, which was full of thrown out flooded basement items. You didn’t need a brown bag to help you with your hyper-ventilation, because the air was so thick with moisture, we were already starving for oxygen the way it was. The good news is we are located in one of the state’s “safe zones”. Don’t get me wrong, we are too wet, but compared to other areas of the state, crop conditions look pretty good. We are starting to see some fungi diseases rear their ugly heads in the corn acres (gee, I wonder why) and a lot of sudden death is popping up all over the place, but the consensus is if you venture much outside United’s trade territory, things look considerably worse. With all the wet weather we haven’t been able to utilize our test plot area, but we have still met out to our facilities at the Main office. Last meeting, Steve Barnhart, stressed the importance of checking your corn stalk quality over the next month. Detecting stalk rot early could mean harvesting a little earlier than you might like, but save you hours of tangled aggravation. Dan Bjorgland mentioned that with all the sudden death syndrome showing up, you’ll want to designate those fields to a very tolerant bean and try to avoid as much compaction as you can. Brian Thilges covered some of the options we could explore on coping with some of the Roundup tolerant pigweeds in the bean fields. A pre-emergent herbicide down as well as the right rates of Roundup with the right additives were suggested. If you haven’t attended one of these meetings, I would highly recommend them. They are informal and informational and the comrade is great. And remember “By working together, keeps us United”. Have a safe harvest…………8-16-2010……TLO
| |
| |
