Brassicas issues
Whitetail Deer
Planted purple top, beats, and okra border and soybean plot. Purple tops were doing great until about one week ago. Starting to lay over and die now though. No visible insect issue. Did I plant them to early or am I missing something in the insect department?
Can you take a picture and post on here? what did your soil sample say? What part of country? Whats been the weather temps like and rainfall? What fertilizers did you use? Did you use any herbicides? When was your planting date?
Did you check the soil and if so, add fertilizer? I have found, especially in soil lacking nitrogen, that brassicas does poorly and vice versa.
another thing most wont do but you can to be sure.....
pull a plant tissue sample. For $25 bucks you'll learn a lot about what's actually happening.
Soil tests are level 1 plant tissue is "whats going on now"
Arkansas. A cooler summer than normal, but 93-95 with bad humidity the last week. Soil sample: dug several holes over the 1.25 acres mixed it up in a 5 gallon bucket. took two samples from bucket. one was ph 4.8 and 5.0 even. one called for 0-120-160 and other 0-80-120. Before getting the sample back, I decided to go with the recommendations on Eagle website of 0-70-120. I ended up with 81.9-81.9-141.9 mix. Beans are doing great. Some beans are outside my fence so I may just let it ride until deer eat the outside border then replant this fall with wheat, oats, clover mix with a little brassicas mixed in and see how that goes.
A couple things people overlook....
soil organic matter... sulfur boron
for most brassicas, those 3 things are very important. Many brassicas people plant are more cool season crops and when the temps get real high that is not what they are built to handle. So, the trick to keeping early planted brassicas/turnips/sugar beets going is to look beyond n-p-k. I keep getting incredible pics sent to me every week of brassicas and it's soooooo cheap to add a stress pack to your fertility program, i'm not sure why people don't do it.
Also, i'm also seeing really good results with clipping my brassica plots. We are now below normal on july rainfall and my May "sweet brassicas" are looking alive and thriving due to clipping.
Note, brassicas are a stample for the new zealand grazers and some brassicas get grazed 5 times. Some brassicas really compete well with grazing, clipping and others don't.
