Air April 25, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Heavy rains last Friday night brought everything to a screeching halt. It looks like we’re about to gear back up again and we have sunshine and warm temperatures to get everything hopping.

We need to continue monitoring our alfalfa fields. The cold weather the first of the week slowed down the alfalfa weevils for a few days, but it certainly did not stop them. The hard rain may have washed some of them off, but we’ll still find more. The alfalfa is growing fast, but I think we are still far enough away from first cutting that a treatment may be needed. Get out of the pickup, start walking through the filed and look for damage. If you say the damage from the road, you are already past the best treatment time. There’s not really any new alfalfa weevil insecticides, so use your old standbys. Starting to pick up a little leaf diseases in wheat. Most of what I’ve seen has been speckled leaf blotch in no till wheat. Some tan spot is starting to show up and leaf rust may not be far behind. The good news is that the winter was severe enough that there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of over wintering rust pustules. We’ll have to wait for them to blow up from Texas. A few more days like the end of last week, though, and it won’t take long for that to happen. I was looking at some corn Monday that had been in the ground only four days. Seeds were sprouting fast and looking good, but now with the rain, we can expect a real flush of weeds. For all of you who intentionally waited until this week to burn, thank you. For those of you who waited until this week to burn, but really wanted to burn last week, it was better that you couldn’t burn, thank you wind. I want to remind pasture owners, renters and managers that we are still recommending a lighter stocking rate this year. Ten acres per pair may seem like a lot, but it may be the way to go. For pastures in better condition, one pair per 8 acres would be acceptable. If you aren’t burning your pasture this year, then it would be a good time to plan your brush control strategy with herbicide. May and early June are the best times to control brush. Different species have different best control times. Call me for dates and chemical choices.

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

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