Air August 1, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Once again, it happened. We had county fair and it rained. It rained quite nicely and it appears that all the county should have received a minimum of 2 inches of rain last week. Talk about a life saver! Now is when it’ll be critical to get out there and get weeds and volunteer wheat controlled in the wheat stubble. With this rain there WILL BE volunteer wheat coming, along with a lot of other weeds. Don’t let them get ahead of you.

It’s the first of August. The next six to eight weeks are very very critical for your native grass. It is at this time that the grass will store up most of its critical reserves for winter survival and growth early season growth next year. Grass that goes into winter in a weakened state, like last year, will be slower to green up next spring, will be less vigorous and more subject to invasion by weeds and undesirable grasses. I saw a lot of hay already cut in mid to late July. This is good. In fact, if you don’t have hay cut by about the first week of August you should really just forget it, especially this year. The quality goes to heck from here on out and the grass just doesn’t have a chance to come back and restore those root reserves. If all you want is some mulch hay or bedding, then wait until late September to cut it. I also want you to be checking out pastures for their condition. What should you be looking for? Grass, desirable grasses to be specific. While we will be getting some additional growth thanks to the rain, we need to have plenty of growth to produce food to be stored below ground. If you already have grass that’s as smooth as a table top, you need to pull cattle off that pasture, now. Or at the very least, cut the stocking rate in half. You can’t wait until early October, when you go out to pull the cattle out of the pasture, and decide that the pasture may have been a little overgrazed. The damage is done and you’re already behind the 8 ball. You need to get out there NOW and evaluate that pasture. If there isn’t enough grass there now to carry a fire next spring, you need to start pulling cattle. I’ve been saying all summer that all pastures were hurt last year and we need to start healing them. If you abuse that pasture two years in a row, you will have a mess next year that’s worse than then one you have right now!

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

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