Yost Farm at Murdock, Minnesota, is approaching the finish line with its silage season. Mike Yost says the wet growing season delayed silage chopping and is resulting in a below-average crop. “The ears were very mature, but the plant itself, with all the excess moisture that it accumulated throughout the growing season, was just very green. It held a lot of moisture in there, and I think that’s what kind of delayed our chopping season as we had to wait for that plant to dry down.” West-central Minnesota faced persistent rain in June, July, and August. Yost says it has been too much rain to overcome. In addition to silage corn, the farm is also harvesting dry edible beans and opening up sugarbeet fields. The rain also influenced weed control. “In the edible beans and these sugarbeet fields, you really notice a prevalence of waterhemp on every field, and that was a significant challenge for us,” said Yost. “We did some hand labor and walked the fields because the spring applications, quite frankly, we weren’t able to get into the fields because they were too wet,.” Yost says there has also been a ton of cercospora leaf spot in the sugarbeet crop.
