Cropping Issues in Northwest Minnesota

This article was written by UMN Extension educator Angie Peltier.

Little brings more contentment than walking through a corn field in the early summer, particularly if it is a nice, sunny day, with a gentle breeze.  When walking through a neighborhood corn field over the last week, I had a couple of observations: the plants had a nice, green color, appeared to be evenly sized, spaced and healthy overall and many had tillers, or small stalks growing from the base of the plant (Figure).

Pheromone traps. Some corn and soybean pests such as black cutworms (BCW), armyworms and corn earworms are unable to survive the Minnesota winter, migrating northward each spring with the aid of weather systems.

Each year University of Minnesota Extension IPM specialist Bruce Potter coordinates and reports on the monitoring of BCW moths migrating into Minnesota through a network of pheromone traps.  These traps do two things, attract and trap moths.  Small pieces of rubbery lure material are impregnated with synthetic sex hormones (pheromones) like those that are given off by female BCW moths.  Male moths are attracted to the lure and are trapped in glue when they investigate the trap expecting to find a mate (Figure).

The following article was written by University of Minnesota Extension's Jodi DeJong Hughes.

The University of Minnesota Extension is holding an exceptional Soil Health Expo on Wednesday, Sept. 9th from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, to discuss and demonstrate soil health management tactics being implemented in west-central Minnesota.

The rain storms that fell over the last week over much of northwest Minnesota brought rain to all, and way too much rain to others.  The North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) stations tell the tale. For the week of June 4 through June 10, rainfall totals at twelve NDAWN weather stations ranged from a low of 0.85 inches in Grand Forks to a high of 5.45 inches in Kennedy (Figure 1).