Air June 20, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Wheat harvest started rolling over the weekend and earlier this week. I think a lot of folks are going to find a real mixed bag or results. Sandy and clay areas and especially 2137 seemed to have been hurt by that early hot spell back in May. Yet late last week you could 20 feet in some fields and go from dead plants with shriveled berries to plants that had full heads and were still plenty green. Hopefully harvest will be over before we know it, and then what?

I often feel that we have a lot of good opportunities following wheat harvest that we often miss. First and foremost this year is my concern with shriveled wheat blowing through the combine and then sprouting as volunteer. You may not think that wheat curl mites and wheat streak mosaic are a problem in this country, but they can be. I had the opportunity to see a field in central Dickinson county this spring that was just hammered with wheat streak. We need to control that volunteer wheat following harvest. If we continue to get these nice showers, we will see some volunteer wheat. If we are in a good rotation post wheat harvest is also a great time to work on problems like shattercane, johnsongrass and field bindweed. These nasty weeds are all going to be actively growing the middle of most summers and offer an excellent opportunity for control. Call me if you need some control recommendations. If you have some good straw this year, consider baling it up in small square bales. We get a lot of calls at the extension office from folks looking for wheat straw for dog bedding or garden mulch. It may be a dusty sweaty job, but at a couple bucks a bale, the straw may be worth more than the grain!

This may also be a good year to consider double cropping some beans or sunflowers. If you can notill these crops in, it is amazing how little rain it takes the rest of the summer to get a harvestable crop. If you are planting double crop beans I would also encourage you to put down a little nitrogen and phosphorus as starter fertilizer. It’ll help get those beans off to a quick start and may make the difference between getting a crop and not getting a crop!

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

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