Air July 26, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. It is county fair week. If you need to find me for an emergency, come to the county fair grounds. In the meantime, plan to stay tuned to 1420 Country for periodic updates. If you want to see any of the exhibits, you’d better make it out before Thursday evening because everything is released at 8:30 Thursday night. And let’s keep our fingers crossed that we make it through tomorrow without any triple digit temperatures. We’ve got a lot of good looking exhibits and good looking livestock at the fairgrounds so come on out and spend an evening at the fair.

Not surprisingly we are seeing some disease and insect problems show up. Gee, imagine that, insect problems this year! Specifically, we have tentatively identified some grey leaf spot on corn. As we see more corn in the area we are going to see more corn diseases. The highest levels of damage occur with serious infections prior to tasseling. This is showing up late enough that I wouldn’t worry too much about it. However, as you are selecting hybrids in future years, ask your seed corn dealer if they have gray leaf spot ratings for their hybrids and use that as one of your selection criteria. We are seeing a fair amount of moisture stress in soybeans now. Just mark those spots in the back of your mind, because this is where we are going to be seeing the worst charcoal rot later on. Not much we can do now except a rain dance! If you are seeing individual soybean stems die then suspect soybean stem borer, flag the location and give me a call so we can check it out. This is another new pest and one that we are trying to find out just how widespread and how serious. I saw a few adult borers last year, they are a gray beetle with long striped antenna, so we know they are around. We are getting reports out of Riley county of armyworm larvae in bromegrass fields. These were small enough and numerous enough that treatment would be warranted. Keep an eye on your brome fields and waterways. And finally, we are getting a lot of reports from nearby areas of not only european corn borer activity but southwestern corn borer as well. I’m probably more concerned about infestations in milo fields. Start looking for milo plants with neat rows of holes across the leaf. If you’re seeing a lot of this, give me a call.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2000, hoping to see you at the fair!

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