Air November 20, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. A lot of this wheat is looking pretty good right now. Sunshine and some warmer weather has helped a lot. It’s also helping to get a lot of musk thistle seeds sprouted. As grazed down as many of these pastures are it’s going to be very easy to get around out there and find those patches. Musk thistle hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in recent years, mainly because of that new kid on the block, sericea lespedeza. And while acres infested with musk thistle are dropping, we still need to stay on this one. Fall treatment with Tordon 22K is tough to beat! And we’ve still got time to sneak in some treatments on field bindweed as well. Call me if you need some ideas on herbicides for that one.

I want to talk about fertilizing bromegrass this morning. A lot of you have had concerns the last few years about your brome grass production, or to be specific, the lack thereof. A lot of this can quite frankly be blamed on the weather, specifically the lack of fall and spring rains. All the fertilizer in the world isn’t going to make a difference if we simply don’t get the rains at the right time. But all we can do is hope for normal weather and then fertilize accordingly and manage that brome to the best of our ability. What we have found over the years is that late fall fertilization, meaning November or December before the soil freezes up, gives the best yield response. If you want to graze brome in the fall then a split application with the first shot being in September and then the final application in late fall works well also. But the bottom line is, if you haven’t fertilized your brome yet, then now would be a great time. The second best time is February. We can fertilize in April and get a good protein jump, but this can be very risky if you don’t get timely rains! Another advantage with fertilizing in the late fall is that nitrogen source makes very little difference. With the February application we find significantly better results with nitrate vs urea. Naturally I like to see a soil test every couple years so we can fine tune fertilizer rates, but in the absence of that, my blanket recommendation is around 100 to 120 pounds of nitrogen, 40 to 50 pounds of phosphorus and anymore I like to add about 20 pounds of sulfur. Then if we can just get mother nature to cooperate, we should have a good hay crop!

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

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