Air September 4, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. A lot of calls, questions and concern regarding West Nile Virus in recent days. I want to reiterate that this is nothing to panic about. There are a lot of other factors around you that are putting you at much greater risk, such as driving down the road and not getting a flu shot this fall! Far more people died on the nations hiways over the Labor Day weekend alone than have died all year from West Nile Virus. And influenza will kill many more people this winter. If you want to help your odds, wear your seat belt and get a flu shot! Take precautions to reduce the risk of mosquito bites, just like you have always been doing. Make sure that you are not creating mosquito breeding places around your property. They like shallow standing water and only need it for about a week to complete a life cycle. Forget about spraying for adults, it does very little good.

Next Monday night, September 9th we will have an educational meeting on sericea lespedeza. The meeting will be held at Freedom Park which is just south of Exit 301 on I-70 and it will start at 7 pm. The main focus of the meeting will be to help you recognize sericea lespdeza and then discuss its real risks in Geary County and how to control it. Geary County Noxious Weed Director George Erichsen, and State Extension Range Management Specialist Paul Ohlenbusch will join me in discussing all these facets of this "newest" noxious weed. Sericea is a serious problem, and a far worse problem southeast of Geary County. Locally, we have it, but it tends to spread very slowly and is generally only where it was intentionally planted years ago or where it was brought in as a contaminant in grass seed mixtures OR with hay for feeding or mulching new roadside plantings. What we’ll see Monday night is where it came in with mulch hay and you can tell to the line the area that was mulched with this hay. While the sericea has become well established in the construction area that was reseeded and mulched, the sericea has yet to move into the adjacent native pasture area. I encourage all ag land owners and managers to attend this meeting. If you have a plant that you suspect might be sericea, please bring it along so that our experts can take a look at it and tell you what you have.

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

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