AIR September 1, 1999

Thank you Larry, and good morning everyone. Here we are on the first of September... Boy if that isn’t kind of scary. Start making plans to go to the Kansas State Fair. The fair dates are September 10th though the 19th, and of course that’s in Hutchinson. If you are thinking that there’s no need to go to the state fair because it’s always the same thing every year.... Boy are you in for a surprise. I was down to a planning meeting last week and I have never seen so many changes. New buildings, things moved around, new attractions - it’s going to be a great time. Stop by the Extension Office for a calendar of events or just pick a day, pack up and go on down.

Like I said, it’s September 1st. By the end of the month there will be wheat planted. I’ve kind of laid off this the past few weeks, but it’s time to put it back on the front burner - you need to make sure that you’ve got that volunteer wheat destroyed pretty soon. The rule of thumb is, any wheat that is within ½ mile of any other wheat, should be dead two weeks prior to planting of the adjacent or nearby wheat crop. That doesn’t mean that two weeks before planting you spray with roundup. Roundup takes 7 to 10 days to kill a plant so two weeks plus ten days you spray with Roundup. If you are going to plow or disk or field cultivate, then you can do that two weeks prior. Once that plant starts to die the wheat curl mites leave and try to find an alternate host or more wheat. About two weeks, under the best conditions, is about all that they can live off of a host plant. Wheat curl mites do not have wings, but they are rather small. The can crawl a few feet, but they can blow a long ways in wind. We know that they can easily go ¼ mile and under the right conditions they can go up to ½ mile and still be alive. In general, the closer your wheat is to volunteer wheat the more likely you are to see some wheat streak mosaic problems. Okay, how about the old plan that you want to graze off the volunteer. Welllll, if you really want to graze wheat, till up the volunteer, pick something with good grazing potential and preferably with a little Hessian fly and wheat streak mosaic resistance. You’ll get better forage yield and less disease problems. One final thing this morning - we’ve got that big last holiday weekend of summer coming up - drive careful and drive sober!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '99

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