Air August 4, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

Well, we all knew that we would have to have some real heat or it just wouldn't be August in Kansas. On the up side of this heat, we do have good soil moisture, for a few more days anyway, and the milo has sure needed some of this weather to get it headed and flowering! If we can get that milo plant flowering before August 14th, we expect a 100% probability of the grain reaching physiological maturity before an average first frost hits. Once we get past mid-August, we start rolling the dice.

With all the rainfall that we had in June and July, the brome fields showed some great regrowth after harvest. And with many producers losing some of their hay to floods this year, there is a very strong interest in cutting that bromegrass a second time. My response to this is NOT NOW. Bromegrass is just like alfalfa in that when you cut it, given sufficient soil moisture and warm enough temperatures, it immediately starts to regrow. To start this new leaf development it must reach down into the roots and utilize carbohydrate reserves. The bromegrass plant has to take money out of it's savings account to regrow the leaves you just took off. Think about those brome fields the last four years. Virtually every summer of those four years, after harvest, the field just set there brown and dormant until fall. That was very hard on those bromegrass plants. Right now, those brome fields are finally getting a chance to redevelop lost root systems and develop new tillers to replace the ones lost the last four years. Sure, you can get a good cutting right now, but at what cost to the brome field and future production. I know many of you need the hay, but let me offer you an alternative. Just let that field continue to grow until about October 15th. By then the plant is shutting down for the winter. Removal of leaf material at that time will not stimulate regrowth and the forage quality will still be very good. Bromegrass quality doesn't start to go down until we've had several hard freezes in late October or early November. So in mid-October you can cut that brome or go ahead and pasture it. Then in November or December fertilize the field and you'll be ready for another good bromegrass hay harvest come 2005.

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

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page