Blog

In the interview, “A Farmer’s Journey with Miscanthus: Part 1,” we learned about Steve Schomberg and his involvement with growing miscanthus for the University of Iowa power plant. Steve has also been working with Koch Angus Farms, a cattle production farm near Letts, Iowa for the last four...

Over the last two weeks I have received a few calls related to identifying a “new form of waterhemp” in Southwest Iowa. In reality, we do not have a new form of waterhemp, but a condition referred to as ‘fasciation’ (Figure 1). While this can occur in many plant species, plants like cacti and...

Growing up on his family’s farm, Steve Schomberg learned the importance of environmentalism by his father. Conservation and sustainability remained central to Steve’s life while he worked at the University of Illinois, which is where he first learned about miscanthus and its use as a biomass...

 Iowa State University Extension and Outreach in Pocahontas and Sac county will hold meetings to discuss the effects of the current drought on crops and livestock.

The Sac county meeting will be held on Thursday August 6 at the Sac County Fairgrounds 4-H Building at 416 Park...

Crop scouts and field researchers now have a new tool at their disposal to help correctly estimate disease severity and insect defoliation in field crops. The new online tool has been created by the Crop Protection Network and can be...

With several severe weather events in Iowa this month, reports of lodged corn are coming our way. Often times, a small part of the field is flattened and would be difficult to see from the edge. I encourage you to get out into cornfields and see how your stands look this month. In some cases,...

While the western part of the state continues to be on the dry side, parts of central and eastern Iowa got hit with some storms this past week resulting in wind and hail damage. Besides the dry conditions and storm damage, herbicide injury in soybeans, gray leaf spot, potato leafhoppers, and low...

The storms that moved across Iowa late last week and over the weekend brought rainfall, but they also brought some strong winds and hail. For those folks dealing with wind or hail damage, the first step should be to communicate with your crop insurance agent. Additionally, below are some...

Each year, decisions on planting date and cultivar selection are the major deciding factors on yield potential. Under current, year-to-year variable weather patterns and future climate change these decisions have become much more important. And there is a known knowledge gap on how future...

Now is the time when decisions to apply a foliar fungicide in soybeans are being made. As you are making that decision, this is a quick reminder that fungicide resistance, particularly to the quinone outside inhibitor (QoI) fungicides (FRAC Code 11), has been found to be widespread in Iowa in...

There is no question that dicamba injury across the Iowa landscape in 2020 is the most extensive it has been since the introduction of dicamba in the 1960s. ISUEO field agronomists and commercial agronomists in several areas of the state report nearly all non-dicamba resistant soybean are...

Extension specialists in Iowa and Minnesota are again collaborating to provide a series of short webinars for farmers, ag professionals, Extension personnel and other interested parties from July 14 to July 23. The theme is “Essential Row Crop Management" for summer 2020, with a focus on key...