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Shearing Evergreens
Shearing is an excellent means of maintaining a compact and dense evergreen with a more formal appearance.

Financial Record Keeping Software: A comparison of Quicken and QuickBooks
As fall nears many producers are beginning to gather their records to prepare for taxes. From these records many important operating decisions are made. Agriculture producers often use computer software to keep financial records. While there are software packages tailored for farm and ranch businesses, many producers successfully use general commercial software such as Quicken® or QuickBooks®. Both products can be useful for an agricultural producer’s record keeping. The question which often arises from producers is, “which one do I need”?

Starter Fertilizer in Winter Wheat
Winter wheat planting season is soon at hand. Questions often abound on the issue of fertilization rates, timing and placement. Over the years, a lot of research has focused on starter fertilizers or split-applying nitrogen (N) and other nutrients. In general, phosphorus placed with the seed has been shown to increase tillering and total grain yield. Nitrogen is more uncertain, due to the possibility of salt burn and the associated yield losses.

Why Are The Tree Leaves Turning Yellow?
Chlorosis, a condition where the leaf veins remain green but the surrounding foliage turns pale green or yellow, is a common occurrence on certain tree species in South Dakota.

Choosing the Perfect Christmas Tree
Christmas tree lots are already beginning to spring up around the state and Thanksgiving marks the start of the Christmas tree season, with more than 30 million trees being sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Root Weevils: Accidental Invaders
The latest insects to find their way inside South Dakota homes are the root weevils, a kind of beetle characterized by a distinct snout on the front of its head.

Soybean Production: Cost-effective pest management practices
Chemicals were one of the most expensive individual costs in soybean production, behind only to seed in the non-land cost category. The average cash-rent soybean production farms incurred a crop chemical cost of $39/ac in 2015, an 88% increase from 2010.

Trees & Drought Stress
Trees require a lot of water to meet their functional needs and long-term shortages can influence their growth and survival.

Asparagus
One of the keys to growing healthy asparagus is to allow the plants plenty of time to develop the big ferny stems, starting about the first of July. This ferny growth produces the carbohydrates that the plant needs to grow and also store up for the winter and next year’s initial crop of spears.

Reed Canary Grass: Possible Prussic Acid & Alkaloid Issues
Prussic acid issues with reed canary grass are poorly understood and may go unrecognized if they occur. This article addresses a little-known but interesting aspect of the biology of reed canary grass.