In our part of the state the rains have been sporadic but it seems like everyone is still getting showers. In the areas that are saturated, these additional rains continue to stress those areas of the fields. Additional problems associated with waterlogged soils are developing. In the good areas, those acres continue to improve.
In the corn, the most predominant issue that we are addressing is the western bean cutworm. We have scouting traps in the area and we continue to monitor the traps to see the moth counts.
In the counts on the western bean cutworm, there is no correlation or specific pattern in regard to what we are catching in the traps and what we are actually seeing in the field. It is important for producers to be out walking in the fields and not just relying on the moth counts in the traps. We haven?t come up with a conclusion about why that is. The western bean cutworm is something I would really encourage everyone to monitor very closely.
In addition to that, we have seen high levels of European corn borer in non-GMO corn. We are also seeing higher populations of Japanese beetles. We are going to monitor those and will probably be spraying insecticide in the first couple of weeks of August.
Right now we are starting to see foliar diseases in the corn. There is a little rust developing. We?re entering the time of summer where we get the dewy mornings so gray leaf spot and northern corn leaf blight will probably become an issue. We sprayed a couple hundred acres to address the insect problem and we applied a fungicide as well. Our foliar disease levels are low at this time but we are anticipating with all of the humidity and moisture we have that those will increase.
We just continue to get rains and it will be important for us to get an extended growing season this year to help the replant acres, but the early planted crops are right on track and doing well.
