How’s harvest going? Plugging away, bins full and making space…? all done?

According to #OntAg - about 98% of Ontario's #soybeans have been harvested and 76% of grain #corn harvested as of Sunday evening - November 3rd, 2024. Thank you for your participation, will poll again Friday November 15th! Full report (with the last two year's progress to date) available at

How’s harvest going? Bonus points if you can guess the song I riffed.

Will start tallying tomorrow afternoon… how’s harvest looking?

2024 Cropwalker Harvest Progress Survey – Combines, Trucks and Buggys. Combines, Trucks and Carts. Whatever you call it, please post percentage of corn and soybean harvested and county below. Harvest maps posted mid week. RT’s appreciated.

Will conduct our next poll on the weekend of Friday October 4th.

How's soybean harvest coming along? Started? Some in the bin? Done?

One article from this week's issue. Message from Darel Walker CCA IN on spraying late for tar spot He is addressing the issue of growers who do not want to spray for Tar Spot until corn is at the blister stage Now, on to the bigger issue: should we be spraying corn later for tar spot than for other foliar diseases? According to Dr. Darcy Telenko, Purdue's plant pathologist, who has researched this very question for several seasons at the Pinney Purdue Farm, the 2-star answer is NO! Her studies have consistently found that spraying a foliar fungicide for tar spot performs the best on yield response when applied between tassel emergence and blister stage. Tar spot has a 2–3-week incubation period. This means it takes 2-3 weeks after infection before a black tar spot lesion is visible. Fungicides do not cure diseases that are already established, they only provide protection from infection for 2-4 weeks after application. Even the best newer fungicides with three modes of action only provide protection for about four weeks. So, if you wait until milk stage to spray, you may already have allowed three weeks of infection before spraying. This advice is for a one-pass approach. Darcy also tested two-pass approaches for tar spot and while a V12 followed by an R3, milk stage, treatment did provide better tar spot control, it did not yield any more than the one pass applied at blister stage. Editor’s note: you need to maintain green plant tissue at the most critical stages of grain fill (the start of grain fill). Trying to overthink how grain fill works will get you into trouble.

Wanted to share one article from this week's issue. Q – I want to run some trials on my farm to improve my crop production, where should I start? (JZ) A – Here is my focus when running trials to better understand crop response to management. 1. How is yield made with the crop you are working with? What are the components to making yield, when are those components determined, and how can my management affect them? 2. What inputs are required to grow the crop? What are the top three inputs from a cost perspective, and do I have a good understanding of how my management responds to using them? 3. If I have not been benchmarking fertility program through soil testing and/or plant tissues to determine where I may have gaps in my fertility program, this might be a good place to start. Set up field pins to go back to those same spots again so that you are consistently measuring change in the same areas. Here is a corn example. Yield components – number of cobs, number of kernels (girth x length), kernel weight. Number of cobs – function of final plant stand Girth – stress at 6-8 leaf/hybrid specific. Length – stress at pollination/hybrid specific Kernel weight – stress during grain fill/hybrid specific Input Costs – in order of cost per acre – highest to lowest: 1. Seed 2. Nitrogen 3. Phosphorus 4. Weed Control 5. Potassium 6. Fungicides/Insecticides 7. Sulphur 8. Micros

Wanted to share one article from this week's issue; Differences in herbicides in the same group (PJL) Dr Peter Sikkema @psikkema1 of University of Guelph gave an interesting talk at the Certified Crop Advisors conference. He has found that categorizing herbicides by groups has some limitations when talking about resistance. His research shows that weed resistance is not always to every herbicide in a group. He gave an example where water hemp was resistant to 3 out of 4 herbicides in a group but the 4th herbicide in that group controlled waterhemp that was resistant to the other herbicides in that group. He further found showed that resistance to specific herbicides can be a local or even a farm thing. A weed that is resistant to a certain group of herbicides on one farm may not be resistant to all the herbicides in that group on another farm. Makes sense. If a lot of acres are sprayed with the same herbicide and a few with a different herbicide, when resistance develops the farm using a different active from the same group may still be getting control.

Wanted to mention - 2024 will mark @PatrickLynch13's 40th year writing a weekly agronomy newsletter, with @TheCropwalker being the current iteration. In 1984 Pat started writing a weekly agronomy newsletter while working on the framework for what would become the largest crop consulting program in Canada. At 40 weekly issues per year, Pat has written content for over 1500 issues, with enough words to fill 30-35 books. Congratulations Pat!

According to #OntAg - about 99-100% of Ontario's #soybeans have been harvested and about 82% of Ontario's #corn is in the bin as of Sunday evening - November 26th, 2023. This was our final poll for the year, thank you for your participation! Full report available at: