Air August 24 - 30, 2006

Soybean outlook after the rain

This is Ag Outlook 2006 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. The rains that we received from the 15^th to the 20^th were welcome in many many ways. And not surprisingly, all of a sudden we've got a lot of soybeans that are looking a whole lot better. They're putting on new growth and many fields are blooming like crazy and setting pods. But now the question is, will those beans make anything this late in the season? My answer is yes, but now let's go through the validation of that answer. First of all, once a pod is set, it's going to take about 30 days to get a decent sized bean in that pod - and if the weather is cool, you can just start adding days. So as long as we don't have a hard freeze before the end of September, we'll probably be okay. If you had full sized pods and beans we're just really starting to fill, it'll take less time than that obviously. Now, you're certainly not going to get 60 bushel beans out of some of these fields, but 25 to 45 bushels may not be out of the question. The reason some of these bean fields are blooming so heavily is that the plants didn't have much of a bean load on to prevent blooming. Plants that already had a good bean load on, may put on a few more leaves, but it's unlikely that you'll see a lot of blooms. The probable scenario is that those fields will go 50 to 75% of what they might have done without the heat and drought stress. If that's good enough for you - then let them go to maturity. But if you have need of some hay, as in you know you have a market for it or have livestock that could utilize it, then let the plants put on some more leaves, and then cut it for a hay crop! This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Controlling Volunteer Wheat

This is Ag Outlook 2006 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. You can try to put a value on the rains we received recently, but in my book, it is priceless! One thing that this rain has done is to start sprouting a lot of seeds. Fallow fields and wheat stubble fields that were looking pretty barren of anything green are now taking on a real nice green hue. There's a lot of weed seeds and cheat seeds that have started sprouting, but there's a lot of volunteer wheat coming along in there also. And that's great, let it grow, up to a point! Volunteer wheat is a magnet for everything you don't want to get into your new wheat crop. This includes several leaf diseases, like tan spot and speckled leaf blotch and you can't rule out rust, though this year it's probably unlikely. But more importantly, it can serve as a great reservoir for wheat curl mite and aphids. Both of which aren't going to do that much damage from their feeding, but both can carry devastating disease issues. Our rule of thumb is to destroy volunteer wheat soon enough so that we have a two week window of brown before we start wheat planting in adjoining fields. Fly free date is October 5^th. Two weeks prior to that is September 21^st. You want that volunteer wheat destroyed and dead, not just dying, by the 21^st of September. If you are planting before the 5^th, I don't have much sympathy if you develop a problem. Be a good neighbor and get that volunteer destroyed. If you want some early pasture, then still destroy the volunteer and plant some triticale about the 10^th of September instead of risking what that volunteer might bring you! This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

This is Ag Outlook 2006 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. I've been talking a lot about the importance of forage testing over the past couple of years. And you're probably tired of hearing me talk about soil testing - but none the less, here we go with some more on it. How many times do you truly balance a ration for your cattle? Or do you just start putting out some hay and maybe a little grain and the amount of hay will depend on time of year and how much you've got stacked away someplace? I'm willing to bet that prairie hay is sampled less than any other hay you put up. And you just start feeding it as filler as you need to going through the winter. If you go, by the book, as they say, then prairie hay is going to have a protein value of about 5.3%. Just enough protein to make it useful in nutrition, but not a principle source of protein. I had a producer sample his prairie hay this year. It was good looking hay put up in mid late July. It came back at almost 6 1/4% crude protein. Now that may not sound like a lot more than the 5.3% from the book, but it can make a difference when balancing a ration. On the other hand, another producer brought in some soybean hay. They bit the bullet, before these rains came, and put it down with a lot of leaves. It looked pretty darn good. It came back at 14% protein. Which isn't really all that bad, but if you were using this hay in a ration and using the book value of 18%, you can see that the cattle wouldn't do very well on it!! The bottom line is, you can't tell as much by just looking at the hay as you might think. Take the time to sample it and get is analyzed! This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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