1. Announcements and Weather Outlook

White mold continues to show itself in soybean crops, even those that were sprayed twice (R1 and R3)! Remember that at this point, there's really nothing you can do for that crop. Just try and harvest that field last (to not spread it to your better fields) and clean your harvester well afterwards. For every 10% increase in affected plants, you can expect a yield loss of 2-5 bu/ac. So if 20% of your plants are infected, you could see a loss of up to 10 bu/ac. Pretty substantial if your expected yield is around the state average of about 50 bu/ac. Of course, the yield loss is greater if damage causes the plants to lodge or leads to dockage.

Cover crop planting season is here. There is still plenty of time to plant a great cover crop that will achieve your goals for that ground. Check out this short article for info on fall oat, wheat, and rye, and check out the links at the top of the page to learn more about other cover cropping strategies.

Winter grain planting season is nearly here. Here are the results of the 2023 small grain variety trials:

2023 Red Winter Wheat continued:

2023 Soft White Winter Wheat Continued:

Weather Outlook:

2. Growing Degree Days See: Climate Smart Farming Growing Degree Day Calculator. 

Check your location, planting date, and silking date. Silage corn needs 750-800 GDD (depending on hybrid maturity) after silking to reach a whole plant DM of 32%. Under typical late season dry down conditions we can expect the crop to reach 35% DM four to seven days later (Remember that we can expect to accumulate 20-25 GDD per day, or even up to 30, so this is not a large window). For more details, see this article. No matter what the numbers say, always check your crop!

3. Pest Monitoring

Potato leafhopper (PLH) in alfalfa - PLH season is just about over, so this will be the last week of reporting!

Huge thanks to Emily Anderson and Ashley Bound of CCE Chenango, and our local FFA chapters who swept many of our region's alfalfa fields this year with funding provided by the Chobani Community Impact Fund.

Action thresholds are determined by comparing average crop height and average number of potato leafhoppers per sweep (at least 3 sets of 10 sweeps in different parts of the field) using a 15" diameter sweep net.

*No action needed if crop is within 1 week of cutting. If not, use a short-residual insecticide.
ns = not swept this week