Air October 20, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

It sure was nice late last week and over the weekend to drive around the county and see the status of harvest and how much wheat is planted and up. I swear that wheat can sprout in almost dust conditions. Which may be good. But at least we have a periodic chance of showers in the forecast - that's more than we've had some years. A few folks have been asking about still trying to get some brome grass planted (don't even ask about alfalfa) and I'm a firm believer in the old farmer saying of planting bromegrass (or fescue for that matter) in any month with an R in it. Keep in mind that the later we get into October and on into November the less growth you're going to see out of those seedling grasses. In fact in some cases you may see nothing until next spring. And yes, the stuff really can germinate under snow cover!

Wheat planting is moving along very well, especially compared to last years debacle. Harvest slowed down some last week as producers moved into soybean stubble fields to get wheat planted before moving on to the grain sorghum. We are past the middle of October, okay into the last third of October so if you still have wheat to plant, it's time to start kicking up the rates. Prior to now, under most conditions, I was recommending 70 to 80 pounds of wheat. I'd now start pushing that up to 80 to 90 pounds of wheat and after November 1st, 90 to 100 pounds. What's the logic of this? The later you plant wheat, the less tillering you will have. Each plant will have fewer heads and there's also a chance that the heads will be slightly smaller. To compensate for the reduction in head size and the reduction in tillers per plant, you simply try to establish more plants, or in other words, create as many seed bearing flowers as possible. You can't compensate totally, but it is worth the added seed cost to increase seeding rates quite a bit to offset the weather induced negatives. I am very hesitant to recommend planting notill wheat after milo. If you can disk it down good first it can make all the difference in the world. IF you want to try it, increase seeding rates to 120 pounds per acre, and increase nitrogen and phosphorus application rates about 25%. Again, not the best situation, but we can compensate somewhat!

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

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