Moisture swings provide ideal field trial conditions

GROVELAND, Ill. — In the first half of the growing season, the crops in Brad Zimmerman’s locale faced dry conditions early on to heavy rains in June.

He looks at these weather swings as an opportunity to “make lemonade out of lemons” with one of his field trials.

“We had 10 inches of rain in the month of June and so any deficit that we may have had has been closed up. There are ponds out there in areas and it’s kind of spotty,” he said.

“There’s been as much of an inch of difference in certain storm patterns in a one-mile area. Here in Tremont, we’d get an inch and a half and at home we’d get a half-inch and that’s a mile away. That was kind of a trend there for a while there when the haves would get it and the have-nots would not get it.

“We’ve been trialing some water stress mitigation products that we applied with a drone, so that worked out nice. We’re applying a couple of different experimental products with the drone in 10-acre plots in areas of the field that have some ridges. They worked the field and where they planted it there was kind of a valley every 30 inches, so water tends to pool and gather there. That was a pretty good experiment to do in those fields and we had plenty of rain to create some water stress.”

Tissue Sampling

Zimmerman, a fifth-generation farmer and founder and CEO of SeedOnomy, has been doing a lot of tissue sampling to check the plants’ needs, if any, and sees a trend with potassium.

“The feedback that I’m getting is guys feel like they’re short on potassium, which kind of puzzles us this year in terms of we’ve had plenty of moisture. So, diffusion shouldn’t be an issue of getting that into the plant, but we always struggle getting potassium into the plant, and most of us don’t realize it until we measure it,” he said.

“We’ve got to try and figure out why that is. I think one of the reasons is that while plants will feed freely on nitrogen, and we’ve got plenty of nitrogen out there, they’ll do it at the expense of potassium. You can have one or the other, and you can try and have both, but it seems like we error on the side of nitrogen most of the time, and then potassium is hard to get into the plant.

“So, a lot of times we’ll rely on mid- to late-season foliars to get that in or put it in with our sidedress applications.”

Scouting For Diseases

Zimmerman was asked if he had seen any disease issues in crops with the wet, humid conditions as of July 2.

“We’re just pre-tassel right now. We have a couple fields starting to tassel. The corn plants are pretty healthy, and they’re able to fend off most of these diseases while they’re feeling good,” he said.

“Now, once pollination happens and the plant starts to put all its energy into creating that seed, then we’ll probably see some more diseases kick up. I haven’t seen any tar spot yet. For southern rust, we need a hurricane to blow that in, so we haven’t seen much of that yet.

“Plants look really healthy around here. So, guys are pretty optimistic that this is gonna be a really good corn crop.”

As corn fungicide applications begins to ramp up, Zimmerman said he’s received a lot more questions about nutrition and foliar feeding.

“We’re even seeing some guys do a pre-tassel nutritional application,” he said. “We don’t see much disease out there, but kind of a proactive approach of keeping that plant healthy and able to fight off disease, and the Brix level’s high, so that they can stay healthy longer. So, maybe instead of having two fungicide passes, maybe get by with one. There’s a lot of that going on.

“There’s more of that going on in soybeans, as well. Guys are doing multiple passes with some boron, molybdenum and cobalt, things like that. They’re looking for different ways to do things and want to learn more, and so it’s been a lot of fun this season so far.”

Slow Soybeans

Zimmerman is also looking at ways to help soybeans get off to a quicker start.

“It seems like this happens every year. Soybeans seem like they’re taking a long time to take off, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s having trouble metabolizing the herbicides that we’re using,” he said.

“We did an experiment this year where we didn’t use seed treatments on our soybeans. I’m really impressed as to the health of the plant, the greenness of it. It’s taken off.

“So, I think the combination of some seed treatments and the heavy residuals that we’re using to try to control waterhemp are causing that plant to slow down or not be able to grow as fast as it wants to and capitalize on the sunlight.

“It was dry here for a while, so it seemed like they didn’t grow, but it seems like once we hit the solstice on June 20, then they really take off.”

Zimmerman used a soybean starter this year that’s bio-stimulant based.

“We’re noticing that a lot of it is branching and that the clusters of soybeans are much tighter together and much more numerous. So, the beans are shorter. They’re a little bit bushier, but there’s more branches, and there’s more budding going on, too,” he said.