AIR DECEMBER 16, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. Once again we have temperatures running so far above normal I don’t even want to think about it. For the first half of December were about 14 degrees above normal. What I hope doesn’t happen is that we end the month at our average temperature. Do you know how cold it would have to get for the next two weeks to get monthly average temperatures down to normal? And unfortunately, the National Weather Service released their extended forecast for the 20th to the 24th of December and they have Kansas with below normal temperatures and above normal precipitation. Maybe we’ve got a shot at that White Christmas afterall!

I need to break away from my December theme of the end of year things to do list and bring you up to speed on two wheat related items from an Agronomy update I attended Monday. First of all the problem of reduced wheat yield when wheat is no-tilled into milo stubble. There is a very real yield depression, there are big differences depending on what variety of wheat and what vareity of sorghum and it appears to be an alleleopathic effect causing death of seedling wheat plants. It can be overcome by several methods. First of all a double disking before planting seems to help a lot. There will be some more research next year looking at spraying stubble right after harvest with roundup to make sure it is dead as soon as possible and then waiting a couple weeks before planting. You can also make up for it by pushing seeding rates and nitrogen fertilizer rates. Seedings rates of around 90 to 100 pounds per acre and nitrogen fertilization rates of around 100 pounds per acre seem to help. It’s a little late to boost seeding rate for this year, but you can still get extra nitrogen applied. By the way, Karl 92 and Jagger seem to be some of the hardest hit by this phenomenon. I’ll provide more information on this as it comes in. Secondly is the issue of chloride fertilization on wheat. Some very interesting results coming from applying about 20 pounds of chloride (that’s about 40 pounds of 0-0-60) to most wheat varieties including most of the K-State wheats. We can test for chloride, it costs $3 but it needs to be a two foot profile like nitrogen to really mean anything, and that chloride can be applied with the late winter topdress. Call me if you have questions on this.

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

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page