Air May 30, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. As we prepare to close out the month of May, and we still have two days to go, the jury is still out - it sounds like it could be one of those good news/bad news situations. Let’s just sort of wait and see what the rest of today and tomorrow brings us!

Speaking of good news/bad news, I’m sure many of you are seeing some of that wheat turning that off white color real fast. The good news is that in many fields it isn’t as bad as it looks from the road. What you’re seeing is about 2 days of hot weather short of a real disaster. Remember back two weeks when we had that really hot weather? That’s what caused the damage. Plants were running short on moisture. Then we had a little rain and cooler weather and it stopped the worst damage right in its tracks. But it took a few days to show up. This is not frost damage. If you get out into those spots (and again, I’m talking about most, but not all of those areas) you will find that plants are still alive and kernels are developing. The real whitish color is from awns that burned and some secondary glumes and seeds that died. If this had been frost damage, those heads would be totally dead and empty. If your field has gotten or gets enough rain, it will stop any further loss of yield and I think you will be surprised at how much grain you get out of those areas. The one concern is the rapid loss of leaves in those fields. Some have dried due to moisture stress and in some cases the cooler weather brought on rust very quickly and we’re losing flag leaves rapidly.

You need to be keeping an eye on your alfalfa stubble fields also. The cooler weather brought the weevil adults back into the fields and many fields are being sprayed for adult weevils and cutworms. If you have patchy green up or no green up, don’t just assume that it was dry weather. Get out there and start looking around. If its dry weather you will find no evidence of new growth. If it’s insect problems, you will find new growth that is being kept chewed down. Remember, you can’t see this from inside your pickup from the road. This is down on your hands and knees time so you can dig around and get up close and personal with your alfalfa plants!

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

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