Air June 5, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. After the heat and wind late last week and over the weekend, cooler weather and rain was a welcome sight yesterday! The question that several of you have been asking is whether that hot windy weather hurt the wheat. My feeling is that it did take some of the potential yield out of the wheat, perhaps as much as a couple of bushels per acre. Even with good soil moisture conditions, hot dry winds are going to hurt grain filling. The big difference between us and areas of western Kansas is that when that hot windy weather hit, we had moisture to keep the plants going, many western Kansas fields didn’t and that may have been the death knell for those fields.

Since many pastures did not get burned this year, it would be a good opportunity to get some brush and tree control in order. While every woody brush species has its own best treatment time, we do know that the first half of June is usually the best catchall time if you have a little bit of every brushy species you are trying to control. One thing to keep in mind when trying to control trees and brush in pastures is that it will not be a one shot, one year process. It took several years for that problem to develop and it’s going to take several years to get it under control. I prefer to see woody plant control take place as a concentrated effort on the individual spots as opposed to pastrue wide blanket spraying. It may take a little more time, BUT the resutls will be better and the non-target beneficial forbs will not be wiped out in the process. We have several good choices for brush control including remedy and crossbow but there are also times when 2,4-D, dicamba, grazon, tordon and a newer product called cimarron may be in order. Now comes the inevitable questions, What about mist blowers? The bottom line is that I do not like mist blowers for use with brush control herbicides. It is illegal to use some herbicides with mist blowers and you are quite frankly ill advised to ever use a mist blower with any herbicide. The problem is that you have very little, if any, control of the herbicide application once it leaves that mist blower. You may get very good control, but you may also set yourself up for a herbicide drift lawsuit. Take a little more time and use those powerful herbicides in a manner whereby you can stay in control of where that treatment is going!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

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