When to Push Forward And When To Give Up on Your Crop?
Kevin Matthews offers crucial insights on determining when to continue investing in a struggling soybean crop versus when it’s time to just give up. Despite severe drought in June, delayed rains in July revitalized the crops, highlighting the importance of not giving up prematurely.
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00:00 Hey, we're talking about throwing in the towel. When's it time to throw in the towel on a crop? And when's it too early to throw in the towel even though 00:05 you're tempted to, I've got Jason Worley with Natures and I've got Kevin Matthews. We're doing this right before the field day, 00:09 which may be upset because of a hurricane. We hope not. And Kevin, you have some very tough conditions in North Carolina 00:15 for your growing season this year. I'm sure that you were tempted, especially on your 90 year giddy ground more than once 00:20 to throw in the top talk To me. No doubt. So we went the entire month of June with zero rain. 00:26 We had some soybeans that we really thought we wasn't gonna harvest. I mean, they looked really bad. 00:31 The rains finally started coming in July and some areas was later to get rains and others. But the beans turned around and responded. 00:39 A lot of our late planted corn has responded quite well. But what we've done is, is really delayed the maturity 00:45 of these soybeans because they just sit still for 30 days. They couldn't grow. I mean, 00:49 you've seen it all over the state in the south, a lot of crop. And so now we're doing what would, 00:54 traditionally we would spray our R two R three fungicide application, put some folders in and walk away from it on a normal routine. 01:02 But we, we gotta pick up that extra. And these beans is rebo, they've gotten more pods on and we've got to fill those pods 01:10 and make all we can make. You're a Fertility expert, not a seed man, but you've been around this your whole career. 01:14 Soybeans can hang around and almost look like they're gonna die for a lot longer than corn in general. 01:18 Right? Right. So did you have any of your customers, any people that you're out in the field say, Hey, I'm thinking about being done with this. 01:24 And you had to counsel 'em and say, do one more treatment just in case All of them. Yeah. Yeah. They said, you know, we, what do we got? 01:30 What are we dealing with? What we gotta work with? Yeah. The thing of it is, is that a soybean plant, 01:34 like Kevin was just talking about, we give up on it too early. Yeah. And we, we leave a lot of yield 01:39 that we could have captured. And the thing of it is we got, we're spraying beans now from R one to R six. 01:44 Okay. On, on soybeans. We're at R three right now on these beans. So why give up on 'em? Now we need seed size. 01:50 Okay. Now these are irrigated. The person watching this can say easy for you to say That's gotten water mine have it. 01:56 Mine looked like crap. What's your response? So our dry land beans actually look very much like this. But what we're seeing is if you, 02:02 you have these small tags up here in the top, here's, here's one that is just tagged off. That's a pot. We gotta feed that thing out. 02:09 And on our dry land, what you're seeing is a plus of those up in the top of the plant. And when you see that flush of them, you gotta feed 'em. 02:15 Even though these down here may be at R three, maybe even you could see 'em some at R four possibly. You got new growth up here and, 02:22 and that could be 25% of your yield, 30% of your yield extra that you didn't know you was gonna have. We 02:27 Are recording this literally 12 hours before a hurricane is supposed to come through here. If we get five inches of rain on some of your dry land acres 02:34 of soybeans, does that actually help 'em? I mean, assuming it doesn't flood them, is that five inches? Is it too little too late? Is it too much, 02:39 Too late? No, we, we are getting adequate. We've started getting adequate rains and soybeans responded well. 02:45 But Damien, what I highly recommend is if, you know, we get this tropical air up here, we get this moisture on the east coast is we're setting 02:52 ourselves up for potential diseases late Season. So if we get this rain, once it dries enough 02:56 to get in there, fungicide, do you put on his products? Also, does a fertility pack need to go out at R three R Four? You need to put 03:02 on a good kay acetate product. You need to put some micros in there and you need to put, in my opinion, 03:09 I'm gonna have a sugar product in there. And you know, a good phobic product. If you can get that something, you just, 03:15 whatever your budget will allow, but protect that plant. There's a lot of, a lot 03:20 of your profit is in the top half of that plant. And By the way, even on your non irrigated, that's to your point, you e curse your customers and, 03:26 and people you're advising Don't throw on the towels too soon. It's still only late July. It's only mid-July. 03:31 It's only 1st of July. I know you're dry. That's the thing. Especially about soybeans more so than corn. 03:36 Yeah. Because you should think about this with these soybeans, you know, with this yield we've got right here, 03:40 Kevin, have we got enough? Did we nodulate enough to get to that look at a 70 bushel crop? 03:44 Yeah. You mean, or just at 70 bushel soybeans, how much nitrogen it takes Yep. On that. So it's a good thing to look at. 03:51 Like you was talking about having some more nitrogen to it being Yep. More potassium to the bean. Okay. 03:55 Or run especially a, like a good micro pack like we talked about. Yep. Because that's the things we need. Seed size. We need, 04:00 Were you doing those three and four weeks ago when people were contempt to throw in the 04:04 tile? Is that when you're doing Those? We had, we had some in some and some bottom land. Okay. 04:06 Where farmers were seeing, I can't give up, I gotta have some average out. Yep. We had some river bottoms that we did look after, 04:12 but I'll tell you, we set, we parked the, the sprayers for nearly three weeks. Yep. It looked so bad. 04:18 I mean they wasn't, there wasn't no fertilized nothing but water was going to help 'em. So The answer there is you didn't throw in the tile, 04:23 but you put a pause on things. You look at a little pause. So your advice to somebody that's wondering, how do I know when it's time 04:28 to throw in the tile on my soybean crop? Well, when, When, when they're dying out and ain't no leaves on you, you pretty well done. 04:34 You need to, in all serious sustainment, you need to really understand your, your development of your soybean plant. 04:41 You need to understand what a R five R six growth stage is in that plant. And re the key to yield is number of beans 04:49 and the size of the bean. The weight and size go hand in hand. When you get that big bean, you're going to get big yields, 04:57 but it takes a lot of beans. So that R four is when we're using a lot of energy to make that bean really big. 05:05 And that's when these fuller applications can make a significant difference. As long as you can get 'em with the right product, 05:12 get your water balance right in your carrier so that these plants can translocate those nutrients into those pods. 05:20 Yeah, I think we're gonna call it right there. I think that's what we need to know. It is a time to throw in the towel on the soybeans. 05:24 You say most people do it too early. They do way too early And, and you say keep treating. You can understand why he kinda stressed. 05:30 You're looking out there. He said, I'm throwing money out the door. But This is a year to really push this crop for a yields 05:35 that we're, I mean our, our our commodity Price, it won't take bushels Bush, I mean it Bush Got Kevin Matthews, his field day's coming up. 05:41 Jason Worley with Nature's one of our business partners. In fact, you should know about Nature's 05:45 'cause if you were an extreme Ag member for seven $50 a year, you'd get access to information from the trials, 05:49 the labs out here at the end of the year. All that data is for you to look at if you're a member. You also get a direct line of communication 05:54 with guys like Kevin to go a little deeper on the topic. Most importantly, you also get special 05:58 offers from companies like Nature. They paid for our members to go to Commodity Classic the last two years. 06:03 Check it, Outre, ag Farm. All the other videos are free except for the webinars, which the members can go to a whole library 06:09 of information stuff just like this. Check it out. Damien Macy come at you from Matthews Farms in Kula, me, North Carolina, 06:15 where there's an awesome field day happening here tomorrow.
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersKevin Matthews
East Bend, NC