Air May 10, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. With all the excitement about the pasture rental rates last week, I completely forgot to update everyone on soil temperatures and insect happenings. Soil temperatures are warming quite nicely now with an average the past seven days of about 64 degrees and a range of 62 to over 66. In bottom line terms, you can be planting almost anything now. The forecast for the week is for continued seasonal temperatures so I don’t expect a drop off in soil temps. For you home gardeners, about the only thing I wouldn’t be planting yet is Sweet Potatoes. Sweet Potatoes like soil temperatures around 70 degrees so hold off another 10 to 14 days. Get your planting mounds ready, but let’s not start just yet.

As many of us suspected, this is turning into a buggy year and we’re only a third of the way into May yet. Alfalfa Weevils are starting to wane. If you haven’t treated yet, you are probably close enough to normal cutting time that I would just cut and keep an eye on regrowth. In most fields, the predatory insects have taken out the aphids. If we maintain this warm weather and a little on the dry side, potato leafhoppers should be slow to develop so hopefully we won’t have a repeat of last years problems. Corn, soybean and milo growers need to be on your toes though. We’ve got a lot of things out there working. In corn we have been seeing flea beetles, billbugs, wireworms, and thrilling news to everyone, a little chinch bug damage. Corn growers, you need to be out there looking at your emerging stands. If the stand is going backwards, some rescue treatments may need to be applied. In many cases replanting is not necessary, you just need to control the bugs and the corn will regrow. For the first couple of weeks, corn has it’s growing point below ground and it can survive a lot. Later on it can be easily killed, but right now it’s pretty tough. Soybean growers need to be on the lookout for the bean leaf beetle. This small red to light tan beetle with spots on its back is normally not a problem. But, if we start getting populations of seven or more per foot of row on small soybeans we may have to spray. And milo growers, I would seriously be planning to use a planting time chinch bug treatment, at least on your border rows. The outlook is looking good for the chinch bugs, which is bad for the grain sorghum.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2000.

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