2022 Observations

Summer is well underway here in south-central Iowa and with about another week we will be sitting very good on our fieldwork. This year with the condensed spring we have been about two weeks behind prior years but we’re working through it and sitting in a good spot with spray acres. As we look into the next few weeks items that come to mind are insects and diseases. We have seen a few things starting to pop up here in the last few weeks especially on the insect side.

In soybeans we are mostly starting to see insect feeding. Japanese beetles have shown up last week and will continue to feed for the next couple. I haven’t seen too many been leaf beetles in the fields yet but usually we tend so see them together. When there are multiple insects feeding on the soybeans the added effect could warrant spraying for them. I have not seen too many diseases on soybeans or corn but with the wet and humid weather last week the environment is conducive. We are a week or two away from spraying corn so make sure to keep an eye out for any diseases and still consider a fungicide on the good fields or the corn that responds well. At SFG we have a lot of data in corn that responds to fungicide whether the disease pressure is large or not.

On the soybeans we have about 3 weeks before we will spray too many. The optimum time is at R3 when the pods are starting at the top of the plant. Whenever we spray soybean fungicide we are almost always putting insecticide in with it. It seems to have a 1 + 1 = 3 effect and we get really good benefits from adding in the insecticide. Again pushing the better fields tend to get the best return even if spraying all the acres is not in the budget. Reach out to any of us at SFG if you’re thinking about gaining yield yet in 2022.