AIR AUGUST 26, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. It’s hard to believe that we’re almost into September already. School’s started, Labor Day is just around the corner, can frost be very far away?? Well, I hope it’s a ways off yet, but as crazy as this year has been, it’s hard to tell!

I can’t remember the name of the comedian but he or she had a saying, it’s always something. This year is a classic example of that. I hadn’t seen a think anywhere about insect problems in soybeans, in fact the soybeans were looking really really good. I was out about a week and a half ago in my father in laws soybean field and walked out with a couple of small cloverworms on my pants leg. Then the end of last week all heck broke out. Green cloverworms have a velvety light green look with a couple three whitish stripes going all the way down their body. If you get one of these rascals in your hand they will curl up and then explode open jumping all over the place. Green Cloverworms eat leaves and even small pods. Granted, a lot of feeding damage looks worse than it really is and that’s why you can’t go by feeding damage looks alone. The only sure way to know where your field sets is to count worms! Get a light colored towel and go out into your field. Lay the towel on the ground and bend the beans over from one side only and knock them hard with your hand. Do this for all the beans in one foot of row then count the number of cloverworms on the towel. You may get a few other caterpillars, but only count the cloverworms. Remember two magic numbers, 7 and 15. After checking the population in several places in the field if the number of cloverworms per foot of row is less than 7 you probably don’t have much to worry about. If you have over 15 then treatment should be considered. If you have between 7 and 15, go back and check in about 5 days. Two other things to keep in mind are the size of the cloverworms and the number of weeds. If there’s a lot of weeds it takes fewer worms to justify treating. If you have a lot of small larvae it means there’s a lot of feeding yet to come. Don’t spray if you don’t know - you’ve got to decide for each of your own fields, don’t just do what your neighbor is or isn’t doing. And if you absolutely don’t know give me a call and we’ll go out and take a look!

This is Chuck Otte, County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '98

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