45 Story Idea? Email Paul.Nolan@Farms.com Better Farming | April 2024 beans early, even in the last days of April if the ground is fit, to increase the yields of your last-planted soybeans. There is a chance that some early-planted soybeans will not live. In that case, replant. If you plant early every year, there’s a one in seven chance that you’ll be replanting some acres. If you delay planting, the first- planted of your delayed plantings may yield great, but your last plantings may yield less. A lot of good things have been said about two-pass weed control. Onepass weed control is an oxymoron – just like army intelligence. Bite the bullet and pay the extra cost for twopass weed control. You should plan for the 2024 planting season based on your experiences over the last few years, not just in 2023. Last year was unique in many ways. For instance, we had a lot of wildfire smoke in June. This probably helped trigger some high wheat yields because the sun prevented moisture loss during wheat head fill. The smoke may have also affected corn silking and pollen shed. Most hybrids produce tassels, and then the silks emerge, but last year, silks emerged first in many fields. The silk emergence is critical for the timing of fungicides to reduce DON. The silk is a single cell that accepts pollen. The pollen grain grows down this silk to fertilize the kernel. When conditions are right, the spores of the disease which cause DON travel down the silk tube to start the disease that produces DON. But not every hybrid acts this way every year. Some are blaming the early emergence of silks on the smoke, when this is a hybrid characteristic. This year, watch for silk emergence, not tassel emergence, when you are timing your fungicide application to reduce DON levels. A friend of mine told me this story about her husband, who saw a great deal online for 74 pairs of underwear for $12. So, he ordered them. But he received 74 pairs of disposable underwear. If the offer seems too good to be crops: the lynch fileS Have 911 numbers for all your farm locations. AJ_Watt/E+ photo
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