Air October 8, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. It has been an very interesting year and a complicated fall. About the 25th of August I think everyone figured that we'd have all the beans and milo harvested by now. Then it rained and now nothing is moving very fast. I have a few thoughts about that, but first I want to talk about flowers in your pastures.

The plant that is turning a lot of pastures yellow right now is annual broomweed. Notice I said annual. It is going to die with the first frost. Do Not, let me repeat DO NOT waste your time spraying it. Annual broomweed moves in where there is not much grass growing. The cure for it is better weather and reduced stocking rates. The only thing I want you spraying your pastures for right now is musk thistle. Musk thistle is also taking advantage of the lack of cover right and the good rainfall we've had. There are a lot of rosettes up and growing right now. A quart of 2,4-D and one half pint of Tordon per acre is great for controlling musk thistle in the fall of the year. DO NOT waste your time spraying the yellow flowers in the pasture.

Now, lets talk about this late harvest we're getting. With many producers in a wheat rotation we depend on getting those beans off in good season to get the wheat in. So with soybean harvest delayed it starts to put us into a bit of a time crunch. And if you were thinking about trying to follow some milo with wheat it could be even worse. Okay, if you are planting wheat after soybeans and it is past the 20th of October, then you need to increase your planting rate. I would increase it about 35 to 50%. If we get into early November and you are still trying to get wheat seeded, increase your rate by 50 to 100%. It may sound like a lot of seed, but we are trying to make up with the decreased tillering that will happen with more plants. You will wind up with the same number of heads, just not as many tillers per plant. The later into fall we get, the more critical it becomes to have seed treatment on as well. For right now, it probably doesn't matter if we have a fungicidal seed treatment on. But a month from now the weather is cooler and it becomes more critical. It's an interesting fall, let's adjust our management to account for it!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003.

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page