Stay Humble, Work Hard, Be Kind. My first week of work here at Harveyville Seed Company sure was a whirlwind! From preparing the lessons for the 1st HSC Garden Camp, to driving a forklift for the first time, and even getting out to customer fields it sure was full of great learning opportunities. One thing that I have learned in my short time on the job is that there is no "normal day" here at Harveyville Seed Company.  One minute I could be making lesson plans for the Garden Camp and another I could be meeting with Curtis the safety trainer for HSC. You just never know what your day may have in store, it sure is a surprise!

     Nevertheless, the first five days on the job have been memorable! I have met lots of great people - including my co-workers, learned valuable skills - such as driving a forklift, and even had some good laughs and made a few memories also! I'm excited to see what the rest of the summer holds, and to push myself outside of my comfort zone.

"In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into Growth, or To step back into Safety" - Abraham Maslow. 

     Wake up, it's time to learn! Day 2 of the intern training provided a large sum of new information. United Suppliers brought in US PhD Agronomists to teach us all about insects, diseases, corn & soybean growth stages, and even weeds! 

     During their presentation they talked about all areas within agronomy and we did a little weed identification towards the end. To me, honestly, a weed is a weed "no good". So identifying weeds was a bit challenging to say the least! The agronomists provided us with great resources including the United Suppliers Crop Protection Guide & the 2016 Guide for Weeds, Disease, and Insect Management to assist us in our internships and also to use later on in life. All in all, the internship orientation was great! I met a lot of great people, learned new information, and even left with a backpack full of resources that was sponsored by Kevin Dieckmann, who is the United Suppliers Crop Sales Representative for Harveyville Seed Company! 

     The drive home from Nebraska was a bit entertaining. Of course it had to start raining as I passed through Lincoln, NE and it just so happens that the wind-shield wipers weren't quite doing their job. So being a stranger to the Nebraska area and also finding myself in the large town of Lincoln, I navigated to a Target in hopes of finding replacement windshield wipers. Well, let's just say Target is not the 'go to' place for windshield wipers. After about an hour of frustration and buying a set to only return them because they conveniently did not fit I decided to just hit the road once again and leave the problem as it was. It just so happened to not rain one drop on the remaining drive home - go figure!

     As I pulled back into the small town of Harveyville, I reflected on the lessons that I had learned from this great trip: 

3. When you need windshield wipers - DON'T go to Target (even though it is a great place to shop) ! 

     You know you're on a good road-trip when strangers wave at you simply because you are driving a pick-up, 1 way roads get you completely and utterly confused, and a 5 hour drive seems like all day. This was all just the start of the intern orientation that I attended in York, NE on May 19th & 20th put on by United Suppliers. 

     The first session was kicked off with introductions by each of the 16 interns present and then by United Suppliers staff, including Richard Rowe who led two sessions over "Understanding Yourself & Others". A key component of this workshop was the DiSC assessment which is a personality test that individuals can take to learn more about themselves and others. I fell under the C (conscientiousness) category and my classical pattern happened to be "Perfectionist" - go figure! This was a great exercise that allowed each intern to discover their personality type and how to work with others who fall under a different category other than themselves. 

     You should always end a hard working day with a little fun at the end, and this is just what we did. Bowling at Cosmic Lanes provided for a good time where pizza and strikes were enjoyed by all throughout the night!

     Hi everyone, I am Nikole Cain and I will be interning with Harveyville Seed Company for the summer of 2016. For those who do not know me, I am a Mission Valley High School 2015 grad and am now attending Kansas State University pursuing a degree in Agriculture Education with minors in Leadership Studies and Animal Science. I am a member of the K-State Women's Rowing team and I have a strong passion for agriculture.

     Some of my responsibilities for the next few months include organizing and hosting the 1st Harveyville Seed Company Garden Camp. This is a community outreach project aimed for 8-12 year olds in the surrounding Harveyville area to teach the concepts of "food to fork", where our food comes from and how it grows. This is a major concept that needs to be taught even in rural areas, such as Harveyville, considering the average family is 3 times or more removed from the farm. The Garden Camp will be the perfect opportunity to provide the youth in this area to get their hands a little dirty and gain some knowledge and have some summer fun along the way.

     Another major project that I will be working on throughout my internship is increasing and promoting the social outreach of Harveyville Seed Company. Through Facebook postings, Twitter feeds, and even this blog the hope is to connect with more people and to keep those interested and aware of Harveyville Seed Company updated and informed on the latest agriculture news and what is happening here at Harveyville Seed Company. After all, business and people thrive through interconnectedness with their surrounding community and supporters.

     I am excited for this journey with Harveyville Seed Company and plan to learn a little, teach a little, and enjoy life a whole lot along this wonderful ride!

Last week I had the opportunity to go to KARA Field Day. This event was held at K-state and consisted of several seminars that covered anything from insect and weed management to new technologies in Agriculture. The purpose of this field day is to inform agronomist and certified crop advisors (CCA) about current issues in agronomy. One of the more interesting sessions was one on precision agriculture. In the session it talked about new yield monitor technology, Variable-rate seeding and fertilizer, as well as drone technology. The new yield monitor tech promises to be more accurate then the older generation, which allows this data to be utilized much more. Producers can then variable rate their plant population and fertilizer based on the yield data from the monitor as well as other data. This can be done continuously as the producer is going through the field. This allows producers to plant higher populations and fertilizer more in more productive ground and visa versa in lower productive ground. While yield data and variable rate tech is great another technology that can aid in crop scouting and mid-season decision-making is drone technology. Drones are used to scout fields for disease, weeds, insects, and other problems more quickly then by foot. This allows farmers to change management based on agriculture pressures that may pop up. In addition to this drone cameras can also be modified to produce images in the near infrared spectrum. The reason this is important is it can give you an estimate of how healthy plants are depending on how much near infrared rays the camera reads. This can show plant health stress even before visible signs show the stress. Overall these new technologies look to make agriculture more efficient and increase crop yields overall.

As temperatures have been on the rise this past week you may have noticed corn starting to react to the temperatures. Because of the hot temperature corn may begin to curl its leaves during the hottest part of the day in order to conserve moisture. By conserving moisture it will also begin to slow transpiration rates in the plant, which means it will start to grow less quickly. This slowing of transpiration decreases the rate of photosynthesis in the plant meaning less sugars are produced, which limits its growth. The thing is that different varieties respond differently to heat and some will curl their leaves quicker than others. A quicker response can be a bad thing if the heat and/or drought stress ends relatively quickly because this means that growth was limited during that short time. On the flip side it can also be a good thing if the stress persists for a long time. This is because the plant is attempting to conserve water, so, if a plant is fast to leaf curl this means that it has been more efficient with its water, which leads to a higher yield. This is something that varies from hybrid to hybrid and different hybrids have different resistances to heat stress. Some hybrids could have leaf curling very severely but end up yielding rather high if it has a high tolerance for heat. All in all the amount of heat damage is related to the length of high temperatures and low rainfall as well as the hybrid of choice.

These last few weeks at Harveyville seed have been a huge learning experience for me and hopefully for the different producers in the area as well. This past week I had the opportunity to put in a nitrogen and micronutrient plot. This included several different products that were foliar applied with herbicides. In all, five different test trips and one check/control strip were made. Symbol release was applied in the first test trip, which is a micronutrient product with sulfur, boron, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. SRN 25B was applied next, which is a slow release nitrogen product with boron. Test trip three had Symbol and SRN 25B applied together. The fourth had Smart Trio applied, which contains nitrogen, sulfur, boron, manganese, and zinc. The last trip was another application of Symbol Release. Because of the year I look to see a large response from the different applications of nitrogen. SRN 25 B I look to be very beneficial to the plot and my prediction is that the trips with it applied will yield the most.

Also this week I had the opportunity to look at corn that had experienced hail damage as well as some corn that had standing water on it. The hail-damaged corn appeared to be damaged rather badly but luckily the plant was not damaged below the growing point. (Pictures are attached below) This means that it should recover in a few weeks with only around a 10% deduction on yield. 

The drowned out corn is different story. In the low spots of fields it is rather apparent that the plants are starving for nitrogen and should have a side dress application of N. If they do not receive this it likely that losses will be 90% or more in these areas. All in all, the wet weather has been very hard on plants because of the loss of nitrogen.

With the wet cool weather we have been experiencing, disease pressure among Kansas crops could become a bigger issue then normal. Fungi cause most crop diseases and growth of these organisms are favored by wet conditions. Diseases can be a yield-robbing problem by causing damage to the foliage of the plant or by directly affecting the grain of the crops. There are many classifications of diseases and include mildews, rusts, smuts, blights, galls as well as others. Mildews typically look like a white fuzzy area that appears on the leaves or stem. This fuzz is actually part of the fungal pathogen itself. Rusts appear as red or orange lesions or pustules on the plant. Smuts are sooty gray or white fungal growth that many times affects the reproductive parts of plants. Blights are dead leaf or stem tissues as well as wilting that are caused by pathogens. Galls are tumors in a plant of increased foliage growth that are caused by fungi, which can affect healthy plant growth. Good news is that many of the times these types of diseases can be prevented either early application of fungicides or a later application typically just before the reproductive stage of the plant. Also other ways of preventing an infection from happening is by selecting a resistant variety to the disease in question. Also cultural control measures such as crop rotation, good planting timing, and proper field drainage are also factors that could help to prevent an infection.

Northeast Kansas has been experiencing an unusually wet and cool weather pattern. Over 15 inches of rain has fallen in Osage City in the months of April and May. This is over 6 inches more then the average rainfall during these months. These abnormal conditions have lead to corn exhibiting unusual yellowing that looks very similar to nitrogen deficiency. Because of the large amount of rainfall and the cooler days the corn has not been able to absorb enough nitrogen efficiently thus leading to the lighter green color of the plant. This appearance of the corn is much more apparent in younger plants which have a less developed root system. Luckily for producers this yellowing color and stress will have no direct effect on the yield until after leaf stage 5. Typically the plant will green up once warm weather sets in and crop growth will return to normal. There is a small chance though in more sandy soils that nitrogen did leach below the root zone and may be unavailable to the plant. Also in heavier clay type soils, N may have escaped into the atmosphere due bacteria undergoing denitrification. This process generally takes place in the absence of oxygen and rain saturated conditions causing oxygen to be less abundant in the soil thus increasing denitrification rates. Both of these processes could uncharacteristically increase N loss early in the season and applying side-dress fertilizer could be an option for some soils. These conditions also show products such as N-Serve from Dow AgroSciences and other nitrogen stabilizers could work to help prevent the loss of N due to the denitrifying bacteria.