Just quick crop update; locally wheat is moving along quickly. If thinking of doing preharvest to clean up bindweed and perennial sow thistle. Preharvest is one of the best timings to control these hard to control perennials. Also with the volume of this year’s crop it is sure to speed up harvesting by making sure the straw is dead at harvest.

Corn is waist to chest high in a lot of fields. If wanting to do fungicide, timing will probably be in a couple of weeks at tasseling. With the dry weather have  not seen a lot of disease pressure yet.

Soybeans are coming along nicely. Conventional tilled  fields are taller and more advanced than no till fields. Most early planted fields are flowering. If wanting to apply a fungicide timing is close. Again with dry conditions there is very little disease present and risk of white mold infection is low. If weather changes and we start to get rains then that will change. Some of the resprays on grasses have not worked, especially on foxtail. If you snap the grass plant at the base of stem, if dead the centre will be brown, if it is still green the respray has not worked.

Seeing signs of compaction from last fall. With the dry spring and summer some sins are more noticeable than other years were we had more rain fall.

Seeing soybean cyst nematode in Benmiller area. To check, dig plants and wash in water.  As they dry off you will see the small egg sacks on the roots. Don’t confuse them with nodules.  Egg sacks are only a couple of mm long and flat along the root hairs

With dry weather spider mites will show up around the perimeters of fields. Plants will take on a red or rusty colour spider mites are size of speck of sand . A perimeter spray will stop them before they move further into the field.

- Wayne Wheeler CCA-ON