Blog

There aren’t great answers to contend with the root cause (pun intended) of the uneven corn this season. The unusual weather conditions that started last winter and extended into this spring, and long periods of stress magnify small differences within fields and improves the odds of seedling...

A Twitter campaign has been started to track corn and soybean diseases throughout the country. While scouting this summer, farmers and agribusiness professionals are encouraged to tweet a photo with the name of the disease, county, and state to either...

Cover crops have become quite popular in recent years, not only from a soil conservation and water quality perspective, but also due to their potential to be an additional forage source for livestock producers. To better understand how cover crops can be used as a potential forage source, Iowa...

Check weed sizes vs. herbicide rates so you can maximize herbicide effectiveness. I am getting calls on some pretty sizeable weeds in fields, especially ragweed and waterhemp. Some of the ragweed (and marestail in some no-till and min-till fields) is already beyond being able to consistently...

It seems too early in the growing season yet to be seeing corn diseases like Northern Corn Leaf Blight (NCLB), but I happened to spot a few corn plants with NCLB lesions on them in an isolated area in a corn field in southeast Iowa. Why are we seeing NCLB so early? 

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One of the less rewarding tasks of pest management is gleaning information from pesticide labels. Because of the complexity of labels, many people rely on guides produced by universities or distributors to identify solutions for pest problems. While these guides are convenient, they are not...

After a busy week at a meeting in Michigan, Virgil Schmitt and I visited the Muscatine County farmer with Palmer amaranth to assess the population.

This farmer first discovered Palmer amaranth...

Most of Iowa has not received high precipitation amounts this spring, however, some regions have–most notably western Iowa (see maps). Wet springtime conditions typically raise the question about the status of applied nitrogen (N).

Increasing sprayer travel speed causes the controller to increase boom pressure (and decrease droplet size). If field conditions have you running behind and your sprayer travel speed has increased 20–25%, consider using one size larger nozzle tip to minimize drift potential.

Although most of my research projects are outside, I occasionally do work in growth chambers and greenhouses. This week, I started a seed treatment evaluation for soybean. I'm looking at 12 different treatments and seeing how soybean aphid responds. Working in more stabilized conditions takes...

A lot of farmers worked some long hours to complete fieldwork over the weekend because of the predicted rainy weather. There have been some heavy rains in extreme northwest Iowa early this week, but much of my area has missed those heavy rains. And, as a result, a lot of fieldwork was completed...

Yesterday, I was asked to help confirm an identification of a few beetles in a cornfield near State Center, Iowa. They ended up being striped and spotted cucumber beetles. Sometimes the striped cucumber beetle can be confused with western corn rootworm; however, it would be unlikely to see adult...