I returned to John Hansman’s last week to deliver some more Foliar Opp for soybeans. The field below had Foliar Opp applied prior (at about the V-4 stage). Looking back at a previous blog, this was a field where there was concern over the population, after all the...
John Viertel
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Valmar Seeder & AerWay Cover Crop Follow Up
Jun 26, 2017
SOIL SERVICE, INC is a Valmar Dealer, and if you have an interest in seeding your covercrop this way, let us know and we will be glad to answer any questions you may have. Last fall we incorporated our cereal rye covercrop with the Aerway/Remlinger Harrow...
Evaluating Stands in Bean Fields After Rain
Jun 5, 2017
I have been getting out in the field with my hula hoop this week checking the stands in some soybean fields where there is a lot of cover crop residue. Because of all the recent rains and the residue, there seems to be some real variation in the populations,...
Soil Health Study Field 2nd Corn Follow-Up
May 22, 2017
I got back into the Soil Health Study field on Friday after one inch of rain Thursday night, and here is what I found. It is not hard to pick out which plants got the Crop Choice Starter program. In this side by side, the program was four (4) gallons of 9-18-9-1, one...
Hansman No-Till Soybean Field
May 18, 2017
Crop Choice Starter Program on Soybeans The pictures with this blog were taken May 16, 2017. I stopped by John Hansman’s no till soybean field, just north of Columbia, Mo, on Tuesday morning to see how his soybeans were doing after all the rain we had earlier this...
Starter Fertilizer & Soil Health Study Field Current Condition
May 12, 2017
Starter Program on Corn I spent some time in the SOIL HEALTH STUDY FIELD this morning. I was taking stand counts, digging some holes in the ground and looking at root systems, checking for insect damage- the kind of things that we all should be doing as our corn...
Recommendations for Applying Nitrogen
May 2, 2017
After a pretty decent April, we go into May wet! We had six (6) inches and more here in Central Missouri. There is flooding going on after the rain that we got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today, with more on the way Wednesday. Most of us have been through this kind...
Zinc Deficiency Cause and Effect
Feb 6, 2017
Last spring there was a lot of corn that had some nutrient deficiencies, mainly sulfur. However, some of the tissue tests which I had run came back deficient in Zinc. After doing some research on this matter, I found that 30-50% of soil samples in Missouri report a...
Start Thinking About Your Planter Setup Today
Jan 5, 2017
Kinze Planter setup last spring to apply Crop Choice starter fertilizer. Happy New Year! As it is snowing here this morning, I thought I’d put together some pictures of a planter that is ready to go to the field to plant corn. As you can see, we have installed...
Sugar E-Boost in 2016 Plots
Dec 20, 2016
Here it is the middle of December 2016 and the Holiday Season is upon us. It is the time to be with family and friends to reflect on 2016 and to look forward to 2017. It is also the season with a lot of food and sweet holiday treats. SOIL SERVICE, INC. has been...
Valmar Seeder and AerWay for your Covercrop
Nov 28, 2016
This fall we incorporated our cereal rye covercrop with the Aerway/Remlinger Harrow after broadcasting with fertlizer. Got a good stand! Now, there is another option, the Valmar Air Seeder mounted on the Aerway. A great way to do two operations in one. We are...
Soil Health Study Field Follow-Up
Nov 4, 2016
At this writing, we are hoping that your harvest is either over, or at least winding down, and field work is getting started. The cover crops on our farm in central Missouri are starting to look good after using the Aerway/Remlinger Harrow to incorporate them after...
2017 Fertilizer Incentives
Oct 7, 2016
It’s hard to believe that it is already October. Harvest is in full swing; good yields being reported from everywhere. Watch for our yield reports coming later. Starter fertilizer prices have softened from last year, and I want you to be aware of the fantastic...
5000 Stalk Devastator from Yetter
Aug 24, 2016
If you missed the SOIL SERVICE, INC field days last week, you really missed out on a lot of great information. Of course the corn and beans looked awesome in the plots, and there will be lots of data to go through after harvest this fall. However, the information...
Soil Health Study Update
Aug 12, 2016
Do the larger root systems on the plants on the right of the picture below peak your interest? I decided to go into the Soil Health Study field and dig some plants up last Tuesday. I also went to an adjoining field that has not received the Nutrient Recycling Program,...
Getting The Most Out of Your Soybean Crop with Crop Choice Foliar OPP
Jul 13, 2016
Getting the most out of your soybean crop.The rain that we have received at the end of June (and now more in early July) has really made the crops look so much better than they did a month ago. Wheat came out just a little early (with really good yields) and double...
Fallow Corn Syndrome: Causes and Prevention
Jun 29, 2016
There has been a lot of talk and several articles over the last few weeks concerning the uneven corn, especially in the areas where crops were not planted last year. What gets me is after talking to an independent agronomist yesterday, no one really seems to know what the cause is. Here are a few of the ideas going around:
(1) Some think it was because the soil mycorrhiza didn’t have the proper host last summer due to bare ground. (Even where there were a lot of weeds that were allowed to grow.)
(2) Some think it was because we had such a mild winter—that the freezing and thawing did not get rid of some shallow compaction.
(3) Others think it was because some growers cut fertility programs to save on costs this spring.
(4) Still others think it was just a function of the cooler, wetter spell after such good planting conditions and early corn planting.
Fungicide Application Tips for 2016
May 17, 2016
For the most part, corn planting is finished in West-Central Illinois, Eastern Iowa and Northeastern Missouri. Now it’s time to think about protecting that investment with fungicide applications. As I’m writing this, corn for October delivery is $3.52 to the river. That certainly makes finances tight, and we must evaluate the economics of everything we do more closely. It’s critical to do everything possible to increase per acre profit. Fungicide is one product that you can use to increase that per acre profit with very little effort.
Corn Crop 2016: Advice from John Viertel
May 1, 2016
WOW! In all my years of traveling the state of Missouri during the month of April, I don’t think that I have ever seen the corn crop go in the ground faster or under more ideal conditions than it did this year! After scouting some fields on April 28, the newly emerged plants look excellent. One field was almost in the V-2 stage, and there are probably some fields in Missouri that are further along than that. Emergence and population were virtually perfect. Weed control – excellent!
Crop Residue: Understanding the Basics from Planting to Nutrient Breakdown
Apr 30, 2016
Did you plant soybeans into a lot of residue this year? This practice is becoming more and more common all across the country.
The picture on the right shows a field that beans were planted into on Monday of this week. While part of the field was rolled, the majority was planted into the standing cereal rye. As you can see, there is a huge amount of cereal rye straw both on the ground and still standing. There should be no worries, right? The question is: what is going to happen to all that residue by this fall, and even next spring for the next crop? Will it break down and be easy to manage? What is happening to the nutrients that that cover crop has sequestered?
Reflection on 2015: Calculating the Benefits of CropChoice Starter and Sugar E-Boost
Feb 2, 2016
Thank you to everyone for their business over the past year. It has been just a little bit over a year since Andrea and I bought SOIL Service, Inc. We very much appreciate all of the kind words and encouragement that we have heard over the last 13 months. They are more helpful than many of you know. We all appreciate our customers sticking with SOIL Service through the transition.
CropChoice Starter fertilizer has come down substantially for 2016 when compared to its pricing for 2015. Obviously, grain prices have done the same, and the overall economics for 2016 are not looking as good as we have become accustomed to over the past four or five years…
Use SOIL BOOST PLUS and LANDOIL to Manage Weeds
Feb 1, 2016
As 2015 has drawn to a close, it is time to really start thinking about next spring and what you are going to do on your operation in terms of weed control in your crops. There are a lot of options out there and many terms being used to describe them, including: “weed resistance management,” “mode of action,” “herbicide group number” and “site of action.” Even back before the Roundup Ready® era, we at SOIL Service talked about herbicides and helping them work better for you! So now that pre-emergent herbicides are being used on a large scale again, different modes of action are being used post-emergence (in tank mixes), and new products are being introduced, here are what our products are and what they can do for you!
Clean Fields
Jan 1, 2015
In the above pictures, you should be able to see the size of both the soybeans and the weeds approximately 21 days after planting. The photo on the right is approximately 48 hours after the field was sprayed the first time with our Liberty herbicide program.
This particular field had been conventionally tilled and planted, but no pre-emerge herbicide had been applied. The next picture will show a strip that the sprayer missed with the first application. Yes, those weeds are taller than the soybeans.
So what do we need to take away from this? Even if a field is completely clean (conventional tilled or no till) weeds will get a foot hold very quickly, and if they are not managed in a timely manner, you will be trying to control them all season.
We have some recommendations to help have clean fields all season long:
• Make sure you start with a clean field
• Use a residual herbicide (maybe even two with different modes of action) preplant
Missouri Soybean Yield Results – 2014
Nov 1, 2014
The pictures above are from our Crop Choice Soybean Starter Fertilizer plot in Central Missouri. They are no-till planted in 30 inch rows after corn in 2013, with a cereal rye cover crop that was pastured heavily this past spring. The plot was planted on May 12, 2014 after a burn down application of Buccaneer and Authority (using SO-IL Boost Plus and Landoil), then the whole field was treated with 24 ounces of SO-IL Boost Plus, 32 ounces of Landoil, 32 ounces of Slow Release Nitrogen, 32 ounces of Liberty Herbicide (because some of the few weeds present were greater than 4 inches tall), and 2 gallons of FOLIAR OPP for soybeans, applied at the V-5 soybean stage. This program worked very well again this year, weed control was excellent.
The starter fertilizer plot was planted to see how our 3 gallon rate of 3-18-18-1 which included 1 pint each of Manganese, Calcium, and Zinc performed. As you can see from the results below, the program did very well.
No Starter – average of two strips – 65 bushels per acre
Starter program – average of 3 strips – 70.4 bushels per acre
That is an increase of 5.4 bushels per acre! With soybeans selling for $9 per bushel, that is an increase of $48.60 per acre!!
Healing the Soil: Preventing Sudden Death Syndrome
Sep 1, 2014
Is this soil-born disease affecting your fields this season? If so, you are not alone. Traveling around both Missouri and Iowa, I have seen it just about everywhere. I hear from my coworkers that it is in Illinois, too. So why has it hit so hard this year?
1. Planting time conditions – early planting dates into cool, wet soils.
2. Conditions at blooming stage.
3. Cooler, damp conditions throughout reproductive stage of soybean plant.
4. Cyst nematodes.
These are the reasons that we all are hearing, and we sure had them in this growing season. What these conditions do is trigger Fusarium in the soil to work much more efficiently to cause SDS and lower yields 20-40%, and in some cases, more.
Here is another theory. For the past ten plus years, we as producers have been using a lot of glyphosate in our bean production to control weeds. And, for the past five or so years, we have been battling resistant weeds with increased rates. According to Dr. Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology Purdue University, the increased use of glyphosate is causing a buildup of the chemical in our soil.
Wheat Management – Fall Tips
Aug 1, 2014
Question: What should your goal(s) be when planning for the best possible outcome of the wheat crop that you are going to plant this fall?
If you answered 100 bushel per acre yield, then here are some ideas that can help reach that goal.
1. Plant timely and do a good job! Use high quality seed wheat and choose a good variety. If planning on using bin run seed, it should be germ tested, cleaned, and if possible, a good seed treatment applied. Seeding rates varies depending on the seed quality, soil moisture, planting date, and if treated seed is being used. We are using 120 pounds per acre in 8 inch drill rows everywhere we no-till after soybeans on our farm.
2. Maximize number of tillers! You want to have a minimum of 70 tillers per square foot going into the spring green-up. This starts in the fall by doing a good job of drilling the wheat and having the proper fertility in the field.
3. Manage nutrients efficiently! Wheat doesn’t need a lot of nutrients in the fall. However, to maximize yield potential, it does need phosphorus to build its root system and begin to tiller in the fall. Cooler soil temperature in the fall as the wheat plant is getting started, makes it difficult for the wheat roots to take up enough phosphorus from the soil.
Starter Fertilizer
Feb 1, 2014
Yes, corn planting time is rapidly approaching!
The corn on the left side of the picture received 4 gallons per acre of Crop Choice® 3-18-18-1, one gallon per acre of SRN 28/72, plus 1 pint per acre of Zinc. Corn on the right received a standard dry program and no starter.
Everyone is talking about pushing the new genetics to their full potential. One of the best ways to do this is to use Crop Choice clear solution, 100% orthophosphate, starter fertilizer. With three different analyses to choose from, 3-18-18-1, 9-18-9-1, & 6-24-6-1, and also 0-0-30 or 0-0-29 if extra K is needed, a tailored program can be delivered directly to your farm ready for this planting season.
So what are the benefits to using a starter program?
In an early, cool, damp planting season, uptake of phosphorus will be limited. With 100% orthophosphate in Crop Choice starter, that phosphorous is placed directly with the seed so that it is right where the roots can get that first ten to 12 units of nutrients in the first 30-45 days of its life. That is a crucial time of the corn plant determining its ear size, very important to have that phosphorous there for the plant.