Air April 11, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. There has been a lot happening in the plant world the past week. It almost feels like we’ve gone from 3 weeks behind to almost normal in just a few days. We have a lot of spring time events that are normally well spread out that are happening all at once. Let’s dive in to this hodge podge collection of topics this morning.

Soil temperatures have risen rapidly as we expected they would once the sun came out and warm weather arrived. Probably the biggest mover and shaker the past week has been the warmer than normal overnight lows. We should be seeing overnight lows around 40 right now, not the mid to upper 50’s or even into the 60s. Minimum soil temperatures are running in the low to mid 50’s and rising fast. Good time for planting field corn, maybe just a little early yet to plant soybeans... But that could change by next week. Wheat is jointing left and right. A week ago we had about 5% of the wheat jointing, and now we’re fast approaching 50%. If you have cattle on wheat you need to decide fast if you are going for grain production, or if you want to forfeit some of that grain production for the added forage benefit. As fast as the wheat is growing, you can probably squeeze the cattle onto fewer acres, graze that out and get your grain off the remaining acres. As of yesterday, alfalfa weevils were hatching and active. The fields that I was checking were all below threshold, but that will be changing fast. Those smaller plants can not tolerate near the level of infestation that larger plants can. With the current value of alfalfa hay we probably need to be treating this small alfalfa at about 1 larvae per stem. Insecticide choices are about like last year. With an early season treatment go with the higher rates to get 14 to 21 days of control and then start checking again at 14 days post treatment. Finally this morning, pasture burning. It is too early. Period. I was looking at our two indicator grasses yesterday morning. These grasses, Indiangrass and Big Bluestem, need to have ¾ of an inch to one inch of new growth before we burn. Both of these just had started a new shoot that was still below ground level. You sow what you reap, and if you continually burn 2 to 3 weeks early, you will convert your pasture from bluestem to Kentucky Bluegrass and brome, and then you’ll have a real mess!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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