Air May 4, 2005

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone. Well gee, I guess we probably need to talk about the weather again this week. Continuing cooler than normal weather, no, cold weather looks like it might finally break and move on after about ten days. A cold snap and even a frost in late April isn't that uncommon. But a week and a half of this nonsense is a little bit unexpected.

Let's start with wheat and then we'll talk about corn. Has their been damage to the wheat? Yes. The problem is that it'll be a couple more weeks before we know how much. In most field the damage will be scattered sterile heads, mainly in low lying areas. Based on what I've seen, we will see scattered plants with dead growing points, meaning dead heads that don't even come out of the boot. Now, to add insult to injury, we have two other issues to deal with right now. An increasing amount of the wheat is showing drought stress. It's short, it's getting that funny blue look that drought stressed wheat gets and it just isn't doing well. It needs a serious rain. And the forecast isn't real encouraging that this is going to happen, although it is looking better. The 2nd insult is that it appears that we have a rust epidemic getting ready to explode. I've been looking at a fair amount of wheat Monday and yesterday and a lot of it is showing that tell tale yellow flecking that wheat get's when it's been infected with rust, but the pustules aren't developed yet. If the weather warms up later this week, rust could just explode in a lot of fields. The only reason it hasn't already is probably because of the darn cold weather we've been having. I haven't told you a lot other than to hang on, it could get even more interesting! Now on to the corn. We've had a lot of seedling corn that has seen some pretty heavy frosts. Fortunately, most of the corn is plenty small yet which is good. The growing point is still below ground and protected from the freezing temperatures. HOWEVER, the corn needs some warm weather. It can outgrow the frost damage, but the longer it sits there in cold soil, the more likely it is to develop seedling and root rot diseases even if it was fungicide treated. I think it is premature to start thinking about tearing it out and replanting. There's a lot of economics at play there. Let's just sit tight and watch how the next 7 days unfold and I think we'll see some improvements!

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

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