Air May 12, 2004

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone.

I'll give you more information next week, but for now mark May 26th on your calendar. We will be having a wheat variety plot tour at AgriPro's research facility on Ascher Road starting at 7 p.m. This is a great chance to see a lot of varieties planted side by side - don't miss it!

I want to follow up with the frost from ten days ago. As expected we are starting to see damage. We have heads that are now emerging from the boot with varying degrees of damage. Look for heads that have the top part obviously smaller than the bottom part of the head. Those upper florets were killed and have stopped growing. They soon be turning white and shriveling. It's still hard to say how much this is going to hurt yield, because we know that weather permitting we can get 3rd and 4th berries filling on those lower parts of the head to compensate for the damage on the upper part of the head. I have yet to see any heads that were completely killed by the frost and upon examination of the small flower parts in those damaged heads, the healthy looking florets do have healthy looking floral parts so this bodes well. The hot windy temperature has also been taking a toll. My rule of thumb is that every day of May weather that is above 80 or 85 with high winds, you can pretty well just knock another bushel off the yield potential. I know, just all sorts of good news.

Then you add on top of that the fact that we have a chance of rain the rest of the week and we've got alfalfa to get mowed. I know some folks got their alfalfa mowed and put up last week and they may be feeling really lucky right now. But for everyone else that still has alfalfa standing, should you cut it and risk getting it rained on or let it stand and lose quality that way? Well, I just keep going back to that study out of Kentucky from many years ago which showed that if alfalfa was ready to cut and there was rain in the forecast, that you should not cut it, if the rain would be gone in 24 hours. If it is ready to cut and you've got three days or more of rain, you will probably lose more quality letting it stand than if you put it down and let it get rained on. Not a good option either way!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2004.

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