Pioneer

I just got home after dark after attending Bruce Goodwin's annual Pioneer field day down 28. I always learn something and have a good time because I was his county agent 25 years ago. That just doesn't seem possible. Most of his customers and attendees were my friends and I served them to the best of my ability.

I forgot to take the Droid so I don't have a picture handy but I took plenty and will try to upload one tomorrow. The corn wasn't as green as yesterday's aerial picture taken at Jeff Littrell's near Rochester, Minnesota.

The tastiest part of Bruce's field day is the slow cooked pork loin. It is always delicious. Add Carol's cheesy potatoes, the big pot of slow cooked, old fashioned green beans and a few fresh sliced tomatoes and you have a meal you can't buy anywhere.

I saw the pink leaves and the lesions on the stalks like I have seen in all of my travels. Some varieties are worse than others like everywhere else too but it has more to do with the gene pool that's been added to it, not the pedigree itself.

One smart young man I have been tutoring the last few years ran up to greet me and asked what I thought about this GMO thing. I said what to the leaves and stalks look like? Why, they are sick he answered. Yep, we walked across the plot and compared the pink leaves and lesions. He said I knew you would tell me the truth.

What do we do about it? Not one darn thing until the seed industry sees the next two crops perform poorly and start scratching their heads and wondering, what's happening?

There is one thing we can do though and that is give the plant every chance we can. We can do that with balanced soil, gypsum where we can get it, SabrEx on the seed, and a series of foliar sprays from Jeff's cookbook and some Procidic and other antibacterials thrown in.

I had several ask me about SabrEx because the word is out, the corn is better with it. That alone is a small part of the bandaid we will have to use before the corn industry figues out we have a major problem.

Problems aside, it was a very enjoyable evening with my friends. We talked for 3 hours. Pioneer has come along with their soybeans and Bruce's plot is excellent. But it also had a wierd leaf symptom, soybean veinal necrosis I think they called it. I have to look that one up.

Thanks Bruce and Carol and Randy and all your help for such a wonderful evening on a beautiful, sunny southern Ohio September day.

Ed