Air September 29 - October 5, 2006

Evaluating Wheat Stands

This is Ag Outlook 2006 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. With the preferred start of wheat planting time almost upon us, our thoughts immediately turn to wheat stand evaluation. Good soil moisture a month ago may be a little less great now, but we should have a great opportunity to get a good stand of wheat this fall. While we're talking about it, we've also got a good opportunity to double crop some wheat this fall. Soybeans should, for the most part, be off in good enough season so that we can move right in behind the combine and plant no till. This is working well for a lot of producers. And if you are thinking about following sorghum with wheat, think about spraying the field with roundup AFTER the grain has reached black layer or physiological maturity. This will hasten dry down of the sorghum and will also kill the sorghum plant allowing for better wheat stand establishment when planting no-till. And wheat following corn can be kind of dicey - variety selection becomes very very critical at that point and you may want to give me a call. Back to stand establishment. In general, here's one of those rules of thumb again, wheat populations in our part of Kansas should be in that 700,000 to 1,000,000 plants per acre. If you are planting in that 75 to 80 pounds of seed per acre and have an average germination of 80% then you'd be looking at a 900,000 stand or with an 8 inch drill spacing, that's 13 to 14 plants per foot of row. Don't let occasional gaps through you, but large gap areas of multiple rows could be an issue that we need to talk about. Give me a call if you think your wheat's a little thin! This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Evaluating New Alfalfa Stands

This is Ag Outlook 2006 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. We had a fairly good alfalfa planting window this year. We had pretty good moisture and it didn't immediately turn back hot and dry, in fact while it has gotten a little drier, it still hasn't gotten all that hot and it looks like September will end up below normal in temperature. But now we are looking at the alfalfa stands and trying to determine if we got a good stand, or a good enough stand to keep. Every pound of alfalfa seed planted per acre puts about 5 seeds per square foot. If you were planting in that 12 to 15 pounds per acre range that I recommend, then you'd be planting 60 to 75 seeds per square foot. Naturally, seldom do we see all those seeds emerge, in fact 50% would be pretty good. We hope to see, at the end of the first full season of alfalfa production, 8 to 10 plants per square foot. We can figure pretty good losses that first year to a whole host of different pests, and by the way, this fall has been pretty good for insect pests so be checking your stand. But anyway, I would hope that on a brand new planting of alfalfa, that you'd have at least 20 seedlings per square foot. More than that is fine, but fewer than 20 is concerning and you may want to give me a call so we can take a look at it - we may need to redo parts or all of that field come spring. If you planted roundup ready alfalfa, also check the instructions from your seed dealer. A certain percentage of those seedlings will not be roundup resistant and they usually want you to spray the stand fairly early to thin out those susceptible plants now, giving room for the resistant plants to grow. If you have any questions on your new alfalfa stand, please give me a call! This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Forage Sorghum Nitrate and Prussic Acid Testing

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 getting a lot of questions about nitrates in sorghum and even corn this fall. We've been doing the quick test on a lot of stuff and even been sending a fair amount off for lab testing just to be sure. In a nut shell, things are looking really good. In the quick test with acid, I've been seeing a lot of plants that don't even react, which is indicitive of very low levels. Every once in a while we'll have a "hot" plant, one that reacts fairly quickly, but they are few and far between and usually comes from a small plant a stunted plant or very close to the crown. On the samples that we've been sending in for lab analysis, we've been seeing the same thing. Nitrate levels are low, some of the lowest I've seen in years. So unless you have a very stunted field of sorghum or corn, I see very little risk in this years forage sorghum crop from nitrates. That said, however, remember that not every area had the fall growing conditions that we did. If you are buying forage sorghum feed, I would check it, especially if you know that it is coming from an area that did have some drought stress. The test is cheap, far cheaper than even one dead cow. We've had one sample tested for prussic acid and it was quite low. But prussic acid is one of those things that should disappear after frost - nitrates don't go away, prussic acid does. I would allow harvested sorghums to sit for two weeks before feeding to reduce prussic acid risk. I would keep cattle away from grazing small new shoots that come out after a light frost in sorghum, and in general just wait until after a good hard freeze before you start grazing sorghum stubble. This has been Ag Outlook 2006 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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