Professional service from a professional firm

Soil Testing Available

Soil testing is available by field, subfield (by landscape position &/or soil type) or by grid. Please call the office for a quote.

Corn, soybean &/or wheat consulting: Our goal is to provide wheat growers with season long crop management advice. To accomplish this we work with growers helping make decisions for managing every aspect of the wheat crop.

Variety selection is tailored to fit the geography, soil type, tillage level and acreage of the individual grower. We stress the importance of diversity within varieties so that all of one’s eggs are not in a single basket. Typically our growers will have 25% early, 50% medium and 25% late maturing wheat varieties. Often these three categories are subdivided so that 4-5 varieties are used on the farm. This allows us to use the varieties themselves to split our risks associated with early planting, winter hardiness, spring freezes, lodging potential, foliar diseases and head scab. Some growers initially balk at not having enough early maturing wheat, but our plan is to never have the combine waiting on the wheat while at the same time not having the wheat wait on the combine.

Preplant fertility in wheat is often not given much consideration. We feel that this important management step should not be taken lightly. Variances in previous crop, tillage amount, planting date and variety characteristics dictate that care be taken to ensure that adequate, but not overabundant, amounts of fall nitrogen be available to get the crop off on a good start. Phosphorous, potassium and pH levels also should be given the appropriate attention to ensure the season long health of the crop.

Tillage has become a hot topic of late with many growers experimenting with no-till wheat. No-till has proven to be beneficial on wetter soil types offering the grower the ability to make spray applications more timely. There are numerous difficulties brought on by switching to no-till that growers should be aware of. Variety selection is more challenging since no-till brings increased winter kill, more variable nitrogen availability, more risk to spring freeze injury and increased potential for head scab. We feel that conventional tillage is still more profitable on ground that is well drained.

Weed control is often not considered until spring. As consultants our job is to scout the fields, starting in the fall, to determine if and when an herbicide application is necessary. Most weeds have emerged by mid fall and are easily controlled if weather conditions permit. Timely weed control is one of the ways to increase the profitability of wheat. We rely on our experience and data from our test plots to help us educated decisions on weed control. There are several options available, but there is usually only one best choice for a given situation.

Insect control is often not given much thought until after the problem has gotten out of hand. Having a consultant that is monitoring many fields in the area provides the necessary forewarning of any potential problem. Aphids are the main insect pest in wheat. Their feeding alone seldom causes great concern; rather, it is the Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) that they vector that can greatly reduce yields. A considerable amount of work has been done to determine threshold levels to trigger aphid control measures. It is our philosophy that these threshold levels should fluctuate depending on the time of year, yield potential of the crop and whether or not a trip across the field is already planned.

Spring nitrogen is one of the more intricate management strategies we employ. This is also an area where a consultant has an advantage by being able to closely watch fields of varying fertility to determine when and how much spring nitrogen is needed. We feel we can more closely gauge the needs of the plants by using tiller counts and monitoring plant color and growth characteristics. Most areas benefit from split applications of nitrogen. This method allows us to deliver only the amount of nitrogen the plants can utilize while keeping growth in check and minimizing leaching losses.

Foliar disease control is often ignored by many growers. This is another problem where prevention is much easier to accomplish than the cure. By closely monitoring fields, knowing the varieties in question and being able to understand how disease management works a good consultant can wisely select the best fungicide program for a grower. Often our increased level of management of the crop has led to the necessity of a fungicide. For example, higher nitrogen rates, a thicker canopy and increased yield potential can place the crop in a category where fungicides are more economically feasible.

Hopefully this brief description of our services will interest you to further investigate intensively managed wheat production. Unfortunately we do not offer our consulting services in all areas where wheat is grown, but if you are interested in other services we provide such as grower meetings click here.