1. Field Observations

Soybeans are beginning to flower (think about fungicide if you're approaching canopy closure!), winter grains are at/nearing harvest maturity, while our most advanced corn crops are at v10.

Insect pest pressure is still relatively low in all crops, but keep an eye on soybean aphid in untreated beans and potato leafhopper in third-cutting alfalfa. The midsummer stretch will bring us high temperatures and potentially long dry periods, which are prime conditions for insect development.

2. Growing Degree Days as of July 6th (See: Climate Smart Farming Growing Degree Day Calculator)
Growing degree days (GDD) are calculated by taking the average daily temperature and subtracting the base temperature for development of a given organism ((High + Low)/2 - base temp = GDD). For corn silage, we are using base 50/86, as corn development starts at 50 degrees F and ceases above 86. Check your location and planting date:
Planting dates around May 10 are seeing GDD around the 15-yr avg.
Planting dates around May 15-20 are between the 30- and 15-yr avgs.
Planting dates around the latter part of May are seeing GDD right around the 30-yr average.
Good news for haying and harvesting grains, but bad news for growing crops: the forecast looks mild and dry through the weekend.
We may see some thundershowers next Tues/Wed, but so far nothing else on the radar. Watch for insect populations to boom…

3. Pest and disease monitoring

A. Black cutworm (BCW), western bean cutworm (WBC), true armyworm (TAW), and fall armyworm (FAW) in corn.

This week, trap numbers remained low. Next week will be the first numbers of western bean cutworm and fall armyworm, while we will continue to monitor true armyworm for a few more weeks:

B. Potato leafhopper in alfalfa.

Many folks have recently taken second cutting, or will very soon. I will resume monitoring next week. Not holding my breath for the low numbers to continue!

C. White mold in soybean

If your crop is flowering and you're approaching canopy closure (see pic), risk of white mold is currently high. This pic is a screencap taken from the SporeCaster app, showing canopies at high risk (over) and no risk (under) for white mold. Download here.