The field corn is in leaf stage 6. It is past the milk stag and into the doe stage. The field corn shows some window paining from the cereal leaf beetle, but looks very good. The field corn was sprayed with nitrogen on Wednesday, the day before.
The alfalfa field was cut once already this season and will be cut this weekend for a second time. Usually alfalfa is cut when about 10 percent of its flowers are in bloom.
The wheat field still has moisture issues as it continues to dry down. The wheat field also contained many mature cereal leaf beetles.
The popcorn was recently planted this past week and will be the red and yellow variety.
The demonstration plots are looking fairly well, but there are a few issues. The pepper plants are suffering from too much water and perhaps too many woodchips from the mulch used last year and this year. The plants are showing leaf drop and a much lighter leaf color. They were sprayed last weekend with a mixture of one gallon water and one tablespoon epsom salts (magnesium). They were also fertilized today as well. The strawberry plants showed some powdery mildew, which may have come from the straw (wheat) that was used. The hop plants showed some tent caterpillars.
Below are the summaries for the insects caught in the three insect traps.
- Trap 1 (Black Cut Worm) – 3 black cut worm.
- Trap 2 (Fall Army Worm) –2 flies of the diptera species
- Trap 3 (European Corn Borer) – 1 each of European Corn Borer and chaffer bug.
