Air July 31, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. Thank you to all the 4-H parents and volunteers who helped make last weeks Geary County free fair such a success. Thanks also to 1420 Country for all their wonderful coverage during the fair.

Rains over the weekend have perked up everyone and most of the plants and crops. While we are not out of the woods, we have hope once again! Now the question that many are asking is, was it enough rain to do any good, or is it too late. For full season soybeans and milo that weren't past critical stress stage, meaning dying, it is in time to do some good. Every inch of rain from here on out will basically get us another 8 or 9 bushels of milo per acre or another 5 bushels of beans. The corn will be helped if it had gotten far enough along to have adequate seed set and still has three or four green leaves. It won't add much yield to the corn, but it will help the corn hang on to what yield it had. Double crop beans, what few went in, probably hadn't even sprouted until the rain this weekend. There isn't enough time for beans emerging on the first of August to make a crop unless we have the warmest September and October on record. You may want to just let those double crop beans grow and then harvest for hay or graze them before frost. How about the full season beans and milo. Do you let them continue to make grain or do you harvest them for forage? That is truly a case by case, field by field situation. If you are going to cut beans for hay, you have to do it while they are still holding on to a lot of leaves. Stems don't have much feed value, it's all in the leaves. I'd stop any forage harvesting for a week to see what this weather is going to do. If we don't get some more rain in another week, we'll be back at a critical juncture for much of the soybean crop. In other words, we'll just need to hang on and wait and see. A lot of the corn that's being harvested is being testing for nitrates and is coming in with elevated levels. Much of it is going to be safe to feed after ensiling. We are also still trying to track down more information on the bacterial bolus that will help cattle handle higher nitrate feed and will keep you posted on this progress. And pastures sure greened up, but we still need to be monitoring them very closely and reducing stocking rates to protect some of that new growth!

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

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