Airing September 5 - 9, 2005

Non-traditional fertility products

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. Every time the price of fertilizer takes a jump, these products come out of the woodwork. For lack of a better term, I will call them non-traditional fertility products, or perhaps better put, products with fertility claims. With some of these products you can improve soil health, or use them as a seed treatment and avoid costly starter fertilizers. They make claim to make nutrients more available. Those that claim to be soil activators always crack me up. Sure, I'm a skeptic, I admit it. But it's my job to be skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be true. I've started to see the product advertisements in recent weeks as wheat planting time approaches. Some of them even make claims of having been tested at K-State or perhaps shown to produce higher yields in county agent trials. When you start to see these claims, start to look at the fine print, ask lots of questions, and then follow up with some questions to me. If the ads or the sales people start quoting research, ask for multiple years of replicated data from land grand colleges. They are often picking one test that was unreplicated. I won't explain how test plot replication works, but what it does do is allow us to test, statistically, the research results to see if there really are significant differences. I've been doing this job for over 20 years now, and you know very few of these products are ever around for more than a few years. I have file folders filled with lists of these products, what they contain, what the claims are, and what they really do, if anything. The bottom line has been and continues to be, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Beef Stocker Conference

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. I'm probably preaching to the choir when I say that profits in agriculture are going to be tougher to come by in the months ahead. Call this one of those duh! moments. So it is to our benefit to take advantage of educational opportunities when they come along. We are in an excellent location to have fairly easy access to a lot of those opportunities. The annual Kansa Beef Stocker Conference is coming up on September 15th. That's far enough of wheat planting time that you can afford to take a day off, heck at this rate it'll probably be a rainy day. This great event will be held at the Manhattan Holiday Inn. Registration is $30 and you can pay that at the door, but you may want to phone in ahead of time that you are coming. Registration starts at 9:30 with the program starting at 10:30. That registration includes lunch at the Holiday Inn and if you can stick around until 5 p.m., there'll be a tour at the Beef Stocker unit and an evening barbecue. That's a pretty good deal for only $30. Now, if you haven't been to the Beef Stocker conference before, this isn't just another meeting where some K-State folks blow in, blow off and blow out. Several of the speakers, over half of them in fact, are from the industry. You'll have folks talking about traceability and the issues that go along with that whole kettle of fish. You'll hear about whether preconditioning is something you should consider. Allie Devine, formerly Kansas Secretary of Ag and now with the Kansas Livestock Assoc will talk about legal issues facing stocker operations. You'll also hear about how weight variation impacts stocker operations and startegic use of antibiotics. It's going to be a great day, call me at the extension office for more details or to register. This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Dry down herbicides

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. We've got some odds and ends for crop production this morning. We're still keeping the caution flags raised for sorghum and soybean insect pests. We should be about to move out of that window of problems, but double crop fields or late planted sorghum fields are still going to be at risk. If you see something going on in your field that you just don't like the looks of, give me a call and let's investigate it. If it's something that we can do something about, let's move on it while there's still money to be made. I've fielded more questions this year on herbicides to dry down corn or grain sorghum than I can remember. In some cases we're trying to get the plant killed so maybe we can harvest a little sooner, or perhaps we're trying to knock down some weeds to make harvest go a little easier. And just by coincidence, most of the glyphosate products, i.e. Roundup and it's clones, are labeled as harvest aids, or sometimes called dessicants. You can spray both corn and sorghum to control weeds and to help aid harvest. But a few things to keep in mind. The grain has to be physiologically mature. Most of our corn is already there, much of the sorghum has a ways to go yet. Generally speaking, that means black layer and we want grain to be 25 to 30% moisture when you treat. 25% would be better. One good reason to spray a sorghum field ahead of harvest is to get the milo plants killed so you can no till wheat back into the plants quicker. We know that if you don't get those plants killed before planting, there will be a serious reduction in wheat yield the following year. We can eliminate a lot of that yield depression by spraying the sorghum with roundup a few weeks before harvest. This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Pasture Weeds

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. There are a lot of things starting to show up out in pastures that are or will be causing heartburn for more than one pasture owner or pasture manager. One that I have been seeing quite a bit of already is called snow on the mountain. This is a green plant with white edges on the leaves. It has milky sap like a milkweed. And this year it is big and plentiful, but not everywhere. It is really going to move in where the soil has been disturbed or where the pasture is severely over grazed. The next one is our old friend broomweed. It is just getting ready to bloom and there are pastures that will turn yellow again this year. What I want you to do is pay attention to those pastures where you see a lot of it and those pastures where you don't see it at all. Take a look at the difference in the stand of grass. Now, the quick response is to say that these weeds are taking over and pushing out the grass and we have to spray them. Unfortunately, you will be getting the cart before the horse, or more correctly, you'll be confusing cause and effect. These are weeds that you will not see in good stands of native grass because they can't get established. They only move in AFTER the grass stand has been compromised by weather or more likely by overgrazing. People don't like me to say that, but it's the truth. Most pastures that have been fighting broomweed should be showing less of this over the last two years. If it is increasing, then we really need to talk about your pasture management. Yes, we can make a very expensive application of Tordon 22K next June and reduce broomweed and snow on the mountain. Or we can start to modify your pasture management and deal with it that way. One is a temporary fix, the other is permenent, your choice. This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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