From the Fields: You play the cards that you’re dealt

All of the corn has tasseled and most of the corn has already been pollinated. I am scheduled to get fungicide applied by crop duster on my corn acres very soon.

Soybeans are planted in 30-inch rows and have already canopied and bridged the gap between the rows. Thankfully, knock on wood, I haven’t seen any major outbreaks of weeds or issues at this stage of the game.

I just finished my third-cutting alfalfa and will have it fertilized before you read this update. We had an excellent stretch of weather during the third week of July with cool evenings and low humidity during the daytime hours.

It has been an exceptional year and all-around extremely wetter-than-normal growing season. When it rains, we see inches — not tenths.

The soybeans and the alfalfa fields have seemed to have benefited better than the corn, but there isn’t much we can do other than play the cards we are dealt.

The cornfields looked great at the time of emergence, but field conditions quickly became a soupy, soggy and sloppy mess with an abundance of rainfall, which made it even more difficult to sidedress fields in a timely manner.

When the wheat heads were trying to fill, we were experiencing droughty conditions, but throughout the unfortunate timing during the lack of rain, we still managed to reap 70 bushels of wheat to the acre.