Minnesota Crop News

In this week’s CropCast, Dr. Jochum Wiersma, University of Minnesota Extension small grain specialist is the guest for the podcast hosted by Dave Nicolai, Extension crops educator and Dr. Seth Nave, Extension soybean specialist. Jochum discusses the increases in both interest and acreage in winter grains in Minnesota such as winter wheat, winter barley and winter rye along with the renewed interest in growing other summer small grain crops such as oats.  Jochum provides a history of small grain production in Minnesota and an outlook for the future of small grain crops, he also reviews how the selection of small grain crops is influenced by changes in crop rotation, pest reduction and economics. For example, he discusses how rotations can control or reduce disease, insect and weed pressure. Thus, crop rotations can aid in the diversity in crops grown which can spread out fieldwork and harvest time and reduce risk.  Jochum also talks about the yield and genetic potential of grow...

Are you worried about a repeat of last year’s season when Fusarium Head Blight caused problems across Minnesota and not even oats escaped this disease’s wrath? University of Minnesota Extension will hold seven hands-on small grain disease management clinics across the state before any decisions need to be made about fungicide applications in the coming month. These clinics will be held at the on-farm small grain trials near Rochester, LeCenter, Benson, Fergus Falls, Oklee, Humboldt, and Strathcona and will focus on which fungicides to use and when and how to apply them, including updated nozzle recommendations. The date, times, and location details are as follows: Rochester – Tuesday, June 10th from 10:00-noon at the Lawler Research Farm northwest of the intersection of Collegeview Road NE and 70th Ave NE (Google Plus code - 2MF4+CWH, Chester, MN) LeCenter – Wednesday, June 11th from 10:00-noon at the Ruth Hoefs and Ron Pomnji Farm northeast of intersection of Lexington Road and 201s...

Today on the Nutrient Management Podcast we discuss on-farm research. On-farm research has been here for decades - so what's new about it? What are management practices that might be easier to evaluate and which might be more difficult? What are the design criteria that farmers need to have in place in order to be successful? What kinds of problems have the panelists encountered while conducting on-farm research, and how might those problems have been avoided? How can farmers participate in University of Minnesota on-farm research projects, and how might it benefit them? All of this and lots more on today's show. TRANSCRIPT Guests: Brad Carlson, Extension educator (Mankato) Daniel Kaiser, Extension nutrient management specialist (St. Paul) Fabian Fernandez, Extension nutrient management specialist (St. Paul) Matt Pfarr, Extension educator (Mankato) Additional Resources: On-farm research How to do research on your farm On-farm research (YouTube) Nutrient Management — Click here...

Jackie Estrem, UMN Extension Educator- Sustainable Agriculture, Stearns, Benton, Morrison, & Sherburne Counties, and Taylor Herbert, UMN Extension Educator- Crops, Wright, McLeod, & Meeker Counties The Alfalfa Harvest Alert Project, also called Scissor Cut, continued this week with samples taken on May 26th and 27th. Recent cool weather has kept alfalfa growth slow, but as RFV’s near target range, many farmers are ready to cut. Windy conditions have resulted in varying amounts of lodging across the region. Aphid populations of note have been identified in southerly sample fields, but no significant levels of alfalfa weevil feeding or other disease have been reported. While not many weevils have been reported yet, be on the lookout for them, as it’s likely they will be hatching very soon. The goal of the Alfalfa Harvest Alert program is to alert growers to start the first cut of alfalfa when the crop is at a level of quality and yield potential that meets their specific need...

Jane Boerboom, MDA Facility Management Unit Supervisor, Tana Haugen-Brown, UMN Pesticide Safety and Environmental Education Extension educator, and Sally Raymond, UMN Pesticide Safety and Environmental Education Extension educator What is pesticide rinsate? Pesticide rinsate is the mixture of a pesticide(s) with water, solvents, oils, commercial rinsing agents, or other substances, which may be produced during the washing of pesticide spray equipment, changing of spray mixes, and pesticide container rinsing, cleaning out of pesticide storage tanks, and other similar activities. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) recommends minimizing the amount of rinsate created and preventing the creation of hazardous, unusable product. Some ways you might reduce or eliminate generated or stored rinsate include: Washing your equipment in the field where the application is made. Mixing only the quantities of spray mix needed for an application and use all of it at the application site. Imme...

One key difference between winter and spring wheat is that winter wheat needs to vernalize to trigger the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth.  This accumulation of cold units occurs when soil and ambient temperatures are roughly between 32 and 50°F. Last fall was very dry, and despite seeding the winter wheat on time, the seed lay in dry dirt for several weeks. Several of you have asked whether this winter wheat would have vernalized to produce grain this season.  Ideally, you want to accumulate those cold units in the fall after seeding, and a seedling, even if it has not reached the soil surface yet, accumulates those cold units.  That accumulation will continue in the spring if needed There is no way to tell if an individual plant has accumulated enough cold units to transition from vegetative to reproductive growth until jointing or stem elongation is underway. As wheat reaches the four-leaf stage, the plants will become more erect.  This is referr...

Jackie Estrem, UMN Extension Educator- Sustainable Agriculture, Stearns, Benton, Morrison, & Sherburne Counties, and Taylor Herbert, UMN Extension Educator- Crops, Wright, McLeod, & Meeker Counties The Alfalfa Harvest Alert Project, also called Scissor Cut, continued this week with samples taken on May 22nd. For many of the fields sampled, cool weather this week resulted in slow alfalfa growth. Windy conditions have resulted in varying amounts of lodging across the region. Aphid populations of note have been identified in southerly sample fields, but no significant levels of alfalfa weevil feeding or other disease have been reported. As a result of last week’s cool weather, some RFV’s are holding up a little better than initially expected. On the 19th, some fields showed an increase in RFV. It has been observed that forage quality can sometimes improve over time when temperatures are cool. This is most often seen in the fall. In many plant species, a reduction in the produc...

You may have watched YouTube videos of an Amish community moving a barn by simply having hundreds of men lift and carry the entire structure;  Many hands make for light work. The picture below is a testament to the above proverb. While the coleoptiles of individual seedlings punched through the crust in this picture, it also shows how the combined power of about  30 coleoptiles heaved a nearly foot-and-a-half-long section of crust to reach the surface.    Spring barley emerging from under a crusted soil

 Angie Peltier, Extension educator - crops,  and Phyllis Bongard, Educational content development and communications specialist While the viral pathogen that caused COVID-19 changed many of the ways that those in agriculture interacted during 2020, the threat from plant pathogens remained real and unchanged. If weather conditions favor the interaction between a susceptible soybean variety and a virulent soybean pathogen, disease will occur. In 2020, members of the UMN Extension crops team launched a new online program called MN Digital Crop Doc ( z.umn.edu/digitalcropdoc , Figure 1) to assist you in diagnosing diseases in the field.  If you have disease symptoms developing in one of your soybean, corn, small grains, or sugarbeet  fields this summer and are wondering what might be causing them or you are simply looking for a confirmation of your own diagnosis, the UMN Extension crops team would like to help. Figure 1. Digital Crop Doc website How does Digital Crop Doc...

By: Dan Kaiser, Extension nutrient management specialist Travelling around Minnesota the last few years, it has become apparent that the concept of “base saturation” is alive and well across the state. I recall one person commenting that they have moved on to a more advanced fertilization strategy by looking at cation ratios for managing crop nutrients, which inherently comes back to base saturation. I figured it would be a good time to lay out what base saturation is and what the current research says about it when it comes to managing crop inputs. What is base saturation? The idea of base saturation and cation ratios are not new. Some of the earliest research dates to the 1940s and 1950s, so this is not a new concept. We know that the cation exchange capacity (CEC) is the capacity of the soil to retain positively charged ions (cations), which can be considered bases. The cations include potassium (K), calcium, magnesium, and sodium, as well as hydrogen and aluminum. The theory is tha...