Air March 16, 2005

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone. The wintery weather they were talking about didn't materialize, at least not yet, and I don't know that anyone is disappointed. And while the ground is still moist, the vegetation is starting to get dry and we could use some precipitation.

The longer days and warmer weather are really getting the wheat and alfalfa to green up and start growing. We're fortunate that the warm weather in January and February didn't bring the crops out of dormancy unexpectedly early. But now that the growing season is under way, afterall we are halfway through March and 4 days away from the start of spring, we need to be paying attention to those early season crops. Last year we had some fairly intense, albeit spotty, cutworm problems in late March. We need to keep an eye on this again this year as we often find that these problems span multiple years. What you want to be on the lookout for are areas that started to green up, in either wheat or alfalfa, that then suddenly start going backwards, turning brown, and growing. If it is a frosty morning, go out once it starts to warm up and start looking around the base of those plants for small dark colored caterpillars. They may often be hiding in residue or under clods. Sometimes you can see a nice worm like hole going into the soil. You can follow this and often find them hiding underground in the heat of the day. Once you have a problem area and we can find the cutworms, we'll need to decide if treatment is necessary and that is predicated by the size of the cutworms. If most of them are big then the problem has about run its course. But if they are still small or midsize, we may have to consider treating. Now, don't automatically assume that all thin or bare spots in those wheat fields are cutworm related. I have been in some fields that were kind of spotty looking this spring that were not cutworm related. We had more residue in some of those soybean fields last year than we'd normally expect. When we notill planted the wheat into those fields, the planter may not have punched all the way through that residue, so the seed was planted not in the soil but in the residue. In these areas, if you dig down and find those struggling plants do not have the crown in the soil, then that will be the cause of the problem. Some of these plants will die, some will survive, but at this point there's not much you can do about that.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2005.

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