Air June 13, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Time keeps flying by and the wheat is moving real fast. AS always, we find ourselves at the mercy of the weather. A quick reminder about a meeting for anyone who owns and operates a farm truck. Tomorrow night, at 7:30 PM at Junction City fire station #2 on Lacy Drive we will have an informational meeting about farm trucks. Sgt David McKee with the Motor Carrier Inspection Division of the Highway Patrol will be on hand to discuss, farm truck regulations, safety and answer questions. There’s been a lot of frustration and anguish over this issue, and while we can’t solve any of our disagreements with the current law, it would behoove us to better understand the law. I’ve visited with other county agents around the state, and the same thing is happening in many parts of Kansas, we haven’t been singled out. There’s also a lot of bad information floating around about what does and doesn’t happen in other states and maybe we can put a lot of that to rest.

The Karnal Bunt situation is getting concerning again with it’s discovery in Texas. I don’t think we have very many custom harvest crews come through here, but if you do use an out of state custom harvest crew you may want to call me for some guidelines of how to protect you and your wheat crop. Karnal Bunt is a serious and nasty disease and one to take seriously.

As that young milo gets up and growing we really need to keep an eye on it this year, especially if you did not use Gaucho treated seed. We’re going to have chinch bugs, at least in some concentrations in some fields and we’ll just have to deal with that as we move along. I’m more concerned right now with early season greenbugs. We didn’t have a lot of early season aphid problems in most alfalfa fields. The cool weather kept those numbers down. Low numbers of aphids also means lower numbers of predatory insects. With some of the south winds that we’ve had, an early season greenbug outbreak is not out of the question. A lot of early season greenbug development occurs in Texas and Oklahoma on wheat. As the wheat has matured these greenbugs may just be waiting to move north. Get out there and start walking those fields!

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

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