The scurs and the Weather Eye have developed a steam setting. Will we see the sauna or start to see the refrigerator ushering in fall? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with highs in the low 70’s and lows in the mid-50’s. Thursday, sunny becoming cloudy by evening with a good chance of rain. Highs in the mid-70’s with lows in the low 60’s. Partly sunny becoming mostly cloudy on Friday with a good chance of evening showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 70’s with lows in the mid-60’s. Saturday, mostly sunny with highs in the mid-70’s and lows in the upper 50’s. Mostly sunny for Sunday with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms by evening. Highs in the mid-70’s with lows in the upper 50’s. Labor Day Monday, mostly cloudy with a decent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 70’s with lows in the upper 50’s. Partly cloudy Tuesday with possible morning showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 70’s with lows in the low 60’s. The normal high for September 3rd is 77 and the normal low is 55. The scurs will be procuring the raw materials to manufacture weenies over the open fire and S’mores. Finding dry wood might be their biggest challenge.
Crop progress while I was gone on the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour was nothing short of impressive. Corn went from the milk line just showing to some hybrids with only about ¼ of the milk line still showing. That means it’s about a week away from physiological maturity, well out of the danger of a frost causing any yield reduction. Soybeans also roared along, with most being a full R6 now. Those that were well into the R6 stage before I left on the 18th are starting to turn in many cases. These are generally 1.4 – 1.6 maturity varieties that were planted earlier. Many of these same fields were relatively unattractive to soybean aphids and few required treatment when scouted. That’s the way IPM is supposed to work. Some final cutting alfalfa has benefitted from the August rainfall. Harvested before mid-month it should regrow sufficiently to survive the winter.
Harvest is upon us at least for some of our garden produce. I spied another zucchini, so now I can do some type of vegetable stir-fry on the grill some night. The green beans are just about ready to pick as well, so a meal of those wonderful fleshy pods would hit the spot. The tomatoes are slow to ripen although the yellow pear variety is starting to crank out a fair number now. The cucumber experiment was a failure as the vines just never got out of the blocks. Now powdery mildew has set in and that will likely finish them off. Too bad. Cukes are among our favorites. Also checked on the fall garden planting I’d done just prior to my heading out on Crop Tour and was happy to see most things had emerged well. The exception was one variety of snap peas. Luckily I planted two varieties and the Cascadia’s emerged nearly 100%. The radishes and salad greens also took advantage of our bountiful rain. On the floral side, the four o’clock experiment indicated that they breed true or did last year. All the seed collected from the red variety last fall all turned out to be red this year.
A quick survey of the yard showed the apples are coming down the home stretch. The Haralson tree is absolutely loaded and while the apples aren’t as large as some years, they appear to be of excellent quality. The Honeycrisp and Snow Sweet also have a fair amount of apples on them given that they are much younger trees. Even the old standby the Fireside has plenty on it this time around and they’re large. Eating one of those a day would definitely make me a regular columnist and then some. The crabapples are readying themselves for the migratory birds this fall as well as those passing through next spring. The trees were fed upon heavily this past spring by robins that didn’t have access to earthworms due to the frozen soil. There are a fair number of cedar waxwings already staking them out. And last but not least the pear trees still have pears on them. I picked up a couple green ground falls and brought them in the house for safekeeping. Some reading I’d done indicated they could be picked green and ripened inside, much like my experience with the pears in those Christmas fruit boxes. We shall see.
One of my fears coming back from the Crop Tour was the birds I’d been faithfully feeding since this spring would be gone. My fears were put to rest as a hummingbird greeted me about eye level near one of the flower pots and zipped around the corner of the house. I was nearly certain, too, the orioles would be gone. Their feeder had been licked clean, so I placed a couple dollops of grape jelly in it just in case. Later that afternoon a full colored male Baltimore oriole showed up. I thought I’d heard him hanging out in the trees in the yard. Then on Monday a male orchard oriole was at the feeder, chasing the house sparrows away from his stash. A male Baltimore was also unimpressed with their presence and let them know in no uncertain terms it was actually his feeder. Size matters in the bird world anyway.
While it’s good to be back home after a week on Crop Tour, participating the past 15 years is something I’ve become attached to. I’ve met friends from all over the U.S. and the world and this year was no different. I mean where else can you hang with Andy Holden from Great Britain and How Tuan from Singapore, who drive on the wrong side of the road just to mess with you? See a Tweet of Iowan Mike Berdo demonstrating his gymnastic prowess in a parking lot? Get to work with my former boss as an undergrad and mentor Jerome Lensing? Or get a big hug from Tyne Morgan? While the week is a grind with the time change and getting up at dark thirty only to dive into wet corn and soybean fields, somehow it’s still all worth it. When I pointed the pickup homeward Friday morning, I couldn’t believe how the time had flown by. I was tired although it was a good tired. Ruby would be happy to see me. And as Brian Grete informed me, I’d still have 51 weeks to recover until the next Crop Tour!
See you next week…real good then.