Air August 11, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

A little bit of rain is always nice and we appreciate the cooler weather, but is cooler weather what the crops really need? Some thoughts on that in a minute. If you are still cutting prairie hay, STOP! I know you need the hay, but cutting after early August can do more harm than good, and the quality is going downhill real fast at this time. If all you need is mulch then wait and cut the hay after October 1st. But we run too great a risk of not getting root reserves back where they should be with a mid to late August cutting.

Daily highs in the 70's and low 80's certainly makes for a comfortable summer, but is it what the crops need? Okay, for corn, it's far enough along that it'll simply delay dry down a little bit and shouldn't cause problems unless we start to get a lot of rain and then we'll have concerns about mold and aflatoxin in the ears. Soybeans can grow fairly well in cooler weather and this certainly helps extend the soil moisture that we have, especially when the pods are filling like right now. We don't want to get into the situation of a late wet spell like last year that really delayed harvest, and given the growing season so far, I don't think that's going to happen. But milo is another story. Milo needs heat. It is a tropical grass and it likes it hot, or at the very least, warm. Night time temperatures that drop below 65 degrees are not good. In fact temperatures down below 60 really shut the milo plant down and it takes a lot of heat units to get the plant turned back on. At this point of August, we need to get that plant headed out and flowered. Milo is interesting in that once it flowers, virtually all hybrids, short to long season, take the same amount of time to reach physiological maturity. It's the time from germination to flowering that makes the difference. And it's just exactly years like this that make me favor the medium maturity hybrids over the longer season hybrids. Based on average fall frost dates, we know that if we can get milo blooming by August 14th, we have a nearly 100% chance of the grain reaching physiological maturity. But delay the flowering until August 24th and we're down to an 85% chance of maturing and just five more days puts us under 75%. I like the cooler weather, but the milo needs some heat!

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

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