Summer...

Spraying a few acres of soybeans with a drone pictured below. This past week we received over 3" of rainfall which made it too wet to get the sprayers in the field. We called our neighbor who owns a drone and below are pictures of him applying three gallons per acre of water, insecticide and fungicide to the soybeans. We do this to try and kill the stinkbugs before they and chew on the immature beans inside the pod and ruin them. An added benefit is we kill the corn rootworm beetles before they can lay their eggs in the soil for next year's corn crop. By keeping the rootworm populations low or zero, we can plant a corn hybrid that does not contain the BT trait in it to kill the rootworm larvae when they are the chewing on the corn roots next spring and ultimately save us a little money as well as allowing us to plant better performing hybrids next year. We also apply a fungicide to ward off any diseases and help the beans mature more slowly which in turn we believe will allow them more time to finish the beans inside their pods making them larger and thus more yield. Summer is flying by and the kids will be going back to school soon. State Fair starts this week!