Figure 1 a-b. A Saunders County producer is conducting research on his farm near Colon to see if applying 35 pounds of additional sidedress nitrogen per acre will pay back in increased yield. Contact a UNL  Extension educator for help in designing a research trial for your farm. See more information. (Photos by Keith Glewen)

 June 22, 2013

Keith Glewen, Extension Educator in Saunders County: Many corn fields in eastern Nebraska are expressing nitrogen deficiency for a number of reasons. Figure 1a is a field of corn where nitrogen deficiency is apparent. The second photo (right) is a grower who is using on-farm research to determine whether it will pay to apply 35 lb of additional sidedress nitrogen per acre. The UNL Nitrogen Calculator does not recommend an additional nitrogen application.

Jennifer Rees, Extension Educator in Clay County:  Crops are growing rapidly in south central Nebraska where corn is between V6-V8 (6-8 leaf) for the most part. Quite a few farmers were side-dressing and hilling corn the past two weeks. It never fails that corn looks a little stressed after this as moisture is released from the soil and roots aren’t quite down to deeper moisture.

We're installing watermark sensors for irrigation scheduling and finding good moisture to 3 feet. The driest fields are those that were converted from pasture last year. Pivots are running in some fields because corn looks stressed, but area sensors indicate there’s plenty of soil moisture. We would recommend allowing crops to continue to root down to take up deeper moisture and nitrogen.

Leaf and stripe rust is visible in wheat and wheat is beginning to turn. We had some problems with wheat streak mosaic virus in the area again affecting producers’ neighboring fields when volunteer wheat wasn’t killed last fall. Alfalfa is beginning to regrow after first cutting and we’re encouraging producers to look for alfalfa weevils. All our crops could really use a nice slow rain right now,  (See more on crop conditions in central Nebraska in JenREESources's Extension Blog.)

Steve Young, Extension Weed Ecologist, West Central REC, North Platte:  Pumpkins are progressing nicely in western Nebraska. Both our early and mid-spring plantings (Figure 3) are doing well with the near normal conditions we’ve had since late February. We will be installing our third and final planting (late spring) in early July. The goal is to show that planting dates can be altered to reduce inputs (e.g., weed control and irrigation) and still maintain quality and yields. Within these three planting dates are weed control treatments to assess the impacts of weed removal timing. This is the third year of our studies on pumpkin. This year, we are working with the Golden Spike Tower and the Great Plains Girls Softball team as part of an educational science project.