AIR NOVEMBER 4, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. When I spent last week talking about late wheat seeding I had no idea we were going to get as much rain as we did. All of this rain greatly changes the whole outlook for the rest of the fall. More on that in just a moment. A quick reminder for swine producers to mark down Thursday, November 19th on your calendar. The Annual Swine Industry Day will be in Manhattan at the Holidome from 8:15 to 3 p.m. There are some great presentations on the program and as always a great lunch at a nominal price. If you need more details give me a call.

With anywhere from 3 to 8 inches of rain over the past week it sheds a whole new light on field work the rest of the fall. We all know that ground doesn’t dry out real fast in November and December, in fact our best hope may be for freezing weather to get the ground solid enough to finish harvest. I think that any more wheat planting has to be very questionable. Even with no till planting into standing stubble of anykind we are probably talking 2 to 3 weeks before we could roll, and that’s two to three weeks with no more precipitation. That’s going to be putting us so late in the season that you really have to question if you won’t be better off planting something else come spring. Oats might even be a better option than super late wheat planting. There were a lot of fields that washed, or went under water and wheat that was already up as well as seedling and established alfalfa in many areas have probably been lost. It is definitely too late to reseed alfalfa if a stand was lost due to flooding. Fortunately you should be able to safely reseed next spring without any concern about seedling toxicity. Now, we are probably going to wind up placing a lot of ruts in fields as we try to get fall harvest finished up. That’s expected and unavoidable. We’ll just have to work through that problem next spring. But what I really don’t want to see is fall tillage work going on in the next couple months. Barring unseasonably warm and windy weather it is unlikely that the ground will get dry enough to truly work soil safely without compaction and other wet soil problems such as clodding before spring. Most compaction problems are brought on by the operator and are usually caused by impatience. Take your time, it’ll dry out soon enough next spring. And if you can’t think of anything to do this fall other than field work, give me a call and I’ll come up with a list for you!

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

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