Cropping Issues in Northwest Minnesota

It is difficult to believe that with Labor Day weekend fast approaching summer and the 2025 growing season are winding down. In my travels in northwest Minnesota during the wheat and sugarbeet pre-pile harvest, I have captured a couple of pictures of ‘low-hanging fruit’-type actions that one could take that would assist you in your battle with weeds in years to come. These include managing weeds on field edges, harvesting around (not through) weedy patches, taking notes about weed management successes and failures in 2025 and rogueing weeds. Edge of field weed management Consider pulling out the mower and spending some quality time in the mild temperatures, fresh air and sunshine to mow down all of the tall weeds growing up along the outside edges of your production fields ( Figure 1 ). Mowing and blowing the chaff in the opposite direction of your production field ensures that weed seeds are deposited outside of your field. Mowing may also help to destroy a significant proportion ...

Until recent days, the 2025 growing season had been largely uneventful for the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council-sponsored scouts that traveled the countryside scouting soybean fields this year in northwest Minnesota. Today, I decided to take a drive about 20 minutes away from the Northwest Research & Outreach Center (NWROC), stopping at corn and soybean fields along the way to see whether there was anything that folks may have an interest in learning about. I was not disappointed. Corn disease and insect injury Insect injury There was evidence of considerable insect injury on ear tips in a corn research trial at the NWROC in Crookston ( Figure 1 ), with many kernels sustaining injury. In addition to the physical injury caused by northern corn rootworm beetles ( Figure 2 ), picnic beetles and other pests, there was evidence of opportunistic pathogens that took advantage to colonize remaining kernel tissue. Figure 1.  Feeding injury on kernels near the tip...

Last week took me on a trip to northern Minnesota soybean fields with problems in need of a diagnosis. In a field of otherwise phenomenal looking soybeans, there was a very large patch of soybeans that were visibly paler, shorter and thinner (nowhere near closing rows) from the road. First things first. Upon entering the field, I made a beeline for the dividing line between the gorgeous, healthy soybeans and the sickly soybeans. It is this area of a field of plants that can provide the quickest clues as to the cause of the problem. I gently dug up the plants to inspect the roots, as pulling plants from even moist ground may help to obscure the cause of the problem. There was evidence of the plant encountering a compacted layer of soil. This could be easily observed by all of the taproots taking a sharp turn to the right or left and not growing straight down. However, the taproots prevailed, breaking through the compacted layer of soil to again grow downward ( Figure 1 ). Figur...

Now is the time to check alfalfa stands Late last week, as I walked through an alfalfa field on my way to a 2024 corn field that will be planted to a soybean experiment this spring, alfalfa re-growth was spotty at best (Figure 1). A look from a distance hinted at decent survival and regrowth, but upon closer inspection, many of the green plants observed were dandelions....  Figure 2 illustrates that the lack of insulating, protection-providing snow cover didn't kill every plant. Figure 1. An alfalfa stand near Gary, MN in late April 2025. Note: most of the green is dandelions.  Figure 2. Some lone alfalfa crowns showing signs of life surrounded by many more that were not.  Assess plant health, plant population and stem density There are three things that one should look at to determine whether an alfalfa crop is likely to be productive enough to keep, needs rehabilitation or should be scrapped and another forage crop seeded. Briefly, from multiple areas of the field, 1) d...