AIR September 15, 1999

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Just a quick reminder that the Kansas State Fair is off and running and goes through Sunday September 19th in Hutchinson. I was down there all day last Friday and it’s looking pretty good!

We’re just on the leading edge of everyone getting fired up to plant wheat. Wheat planting time always raises a lot of questions. First of all, do you need a seed treatment? If you are using new certified seed it probably doesn’t need treatment. Seed treatments, for the most part, are simply to control bunt and smut and to some extent seedling blight. Most years, seedling blights are not a problem. If you run into cold and wet conditions on top of cool soils at the time of plant emergence then blights can be a problem. That’s a combination we seldom run in to with wheat. A few treatments will also protect against fall foliar diseases. The most common seed treatment, vitavax doesn’t. And a few will have insecticide that will control wireworms and if you use Gaucho you can even get protection against hessian fly and fall aphids that carry barley yellow dwarf. Gaucho is generally too expensive to justify UNLESS you are planting really early. My rule of thumb on fields you are keeping back is that the seed treatment is cheap enough to use on fields that you are growing for seed wheat. If not every year then at least every other year. We’ll have a little bunt or smut every year, but it takes several years to really build up a bad problem. The next question is whether or not you need starter fertilizer. To answer that you really need a soil test, but it seems like a lot of folks don’t want to go through that effort and expense. Probably half the fields out there don’t need phosphorus to grow good wheat. And there’s almost always enough nitrogen to get the plant up and growing. So you can spend a little time and less than $10 per field for a soil test OR spend 6 to 12 dollars per acre for starter fertilizer, just in case you do need some. Phosphorus uptake is fastest in warm soils and slowest in cold soils. Most of our wheat is planted into fairly warm soil so it’ll use the phosphorus very efficiently in October. But it’s your field and your money so I guess it’s your call on where you’re going to spend your dollars!

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

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