AIR OCTOBER 28, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. Just a reminder to everyone that Geary County Extension Council Elections are this week. You can stop by the Extension Office through Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. and vote for members of the Program Development Committee. You’re probably going to be in town sometime today or tomorrow anyway so stop by and vote! And remember that the general election is next Tuesday, November 3rd. I won’t editorialize for long here, BUT your vote does count. IF for no other reason it gives you the right to complain, because you were involved in the decision making process. No Vote, No Complain!

Thanks to the ongoing rain we’re moving into the inenviable position of probably planting way more wheat in November than we really want to. We know it’s going to hurt production so what can we do to compensate? First of all we need to get that planting rate boosted. Later planted wheat tillers less and has smaller heads so we need more plants to compensate. From now through about the 10th of November I’d boost planting rate about 33% higher than normal and from November 10th through about the 20th I’d boost it 50%. If it is after Thanksgiving and you think you still want to plant wheat, let me try to talk you out of it, BUT if you’re bound and determined to plant, double your planting rate. Next we need to look at fertility. We know that we are planting in cooler soils and cooler soils have slower phosphorus uptake. Even with high soil phosphorus levels we can see a response to starter fertilizer. I would encourage adding 10 to 15 pounds of nitrogen and 30 to 45 pounds of phosphorus as a starter fertilizer. It is doubtful that extra potassium is needed, it seems to be the phosphorus that does the most good. I would like to have that in direct seed contact if at all possible. This starter fertilizer is even more important on double crop following soybeans or milo. We’ve seen some pretty poor stand establishment in wheat following beans and milo, especially no till, and this can be compensated in part through starter fertilizer. Make sure with your starter fertilizer though that you don’t have more than 20 pounds per acre of nitrogen or nitrogen plus potassium in direct seed contact. Later planted wheat is going to suffer some yield reduction. But with good management we can get around some of that!

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

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