The 2015 Orr Center Field Day presented by the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois will be held on Wednesday, July 22 at the Orr Center, which is located on Route 104 four miles west of the junction of Illinois Routes 104 and 107.
Tours will start at 9:00 AM, by group with the last group leaving by 9:20. The tour will take about two hours, and will be followed by lunch provided by UI Extension.…
Some rain has fallen somewhere in Illinois nearly every day for the past 3 weeks, and rainfall totals for this period exceed 7 inches – two to three times normal – over more than half of the state (Figure 1). This has a lot of people wondering if enough nitrogen remains in the soil to supply the corn crop.
Daily high temperatures have averaged close to normal over the past three weeks, while night temperatures have been 3 to 4 degrees above normal,…
Rainfall in April and May has been about average through most of Illinois, at least until the downpours the last days of May. This has allowed timely planting and a good start to the crop in most areas, and has allowed nitrogen management to be carried out more or less as planned by most producers. Warm temperatures during some weeks of May are moving crop development along, and much of the N planned for application after crop emergence has already been applied.…
Fields days organized by Crop Sciences and Extension at the University of Illinois and by other institutions will focus on crops and pests, with speakers talking about current crop issues along with information from previous research. Each event will offer CEUs for CCAs.
Following is the schedule of crop-related 2015 field days organized by University of Illinois Crop Sciences and by several other institutions.
Event
Date – start time
Food
Contact
Urbana – Weeds
June 24 –…
While research shows that the last 10 days of April is on average the best time to plant corn in Illinois, expectations of below-normal temperatures in most of Illinois during the last week of April has some wondering if it makes sense to plant now or to wait until temperatures warm up.
Averaged over the past 22 years, Illinois corn producers have planted 16% of the crop by April 20. NASS reported that 15% of the crop was planted by April 19 this year,…
Most corn producers have planned their spring N program for 2015, and many have already started to implement their program. Such plans might include fall ammonia application, early spring application of ammonia or another form of N, or plans to apply all of the N at or after planting. In recent years there has been a trend towards more applications per crop, and it’s not unusual today to have N applied three or four times on the same field.…
A lot of anhydrous ammonia is going on this spring, and in many fields the hope is to plant as soon as practicable after NH3 application. This brings up the question about potential for NH3 damage to seeds and seedlings.
Seed and seedling damage from spring-applied NH3 is relatively rare in Illinois, but it can be quite damaging, and we want to minimize the chances of it happening. Such damage is rare is because NH3 converts readily in soil to the ammonium form (NH4+) which is held on soil exchange sites and is not damaging to plant tissue.…
Along with the continuing emphasis on getting soybean planted early – in late April to early May – comes the question of soybean maturity rating, and whether early planting benefits fuller- or shorter-season varieties the most.
Planting date
Figure 1 was updated with the 2014 data from our planting date trials in central and northern Illinois. The change compared to the response I showed a year ago is mostly from the large response to delayed planting at Urbana in 2014.…
In April 2014 I wrote on the topic on N fertilizer on soybeans, reporting that our research at the University of Illinois has rarely shown a benefit in yield to applying N fertilizer during the middle part of the season. But it seems that some people, perhaps reacting to testimonials of high yields after using N fertilizer in the high-yield conditions of 2014 remain convinced that adding N fertilizer “makes high yields higher.”
Of course, most producers who got high yields –…
In June with wheat harvest underway, I asked people to send in grain samples so that under an NREC-funded project we could measure P and K levels to try to sharpen up our nutrient removal numbers.
We got a few wheat samples. We also, thanks to the Illinois Soybean Association, found a way to get a good number of soybean samples to measure P and K after they are tested for protein and oil.
Our real need now is to get corn grain samples from the 2014 harvest.…