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...