Hands on Field Scout Training

 Greetings all,

 Now that the season is starting to take shape, we can set our Hands on Field Scout Training dates.  These are above and beyond our field scout schools, this year’s is slated for this Friday, May 28^th in Plainview. 

 The Scout Schools are awesome, but designed to be an introduction to the pests, crops, beneficials, plant diseases, plant mapping, and crop damage that anyone scouting cotton, corn, or sorghum fields will see over course of the summer scouting season.

 For the Hands on Field Scout Trainings we are actually in the field applying what was learned at scout school, targeting the topics appropriate for the crop stage the area’s crops are entering.  To accomplish this I am opening up the roughly biweekly trainings for our PPM field scouts and interns to all interested AgriLife personnel for free and company or private early career ag professionals for $75 per training date.  Our first training will be Tuesday June 1^st at the Halfway Experiment Station at 9am.  We may move to several nearby fields if we need to and we should be finished before noon. 

 Below is our target dates for all the 2021 Field Scout, Hands on Training Dates.  All dates are subject to change depending upon weather and current crop and pest conditions.  If possible, please RSVP a few to several dates to attend through our Plainview office at 806-291-5267.  If these tentative dates change, we can quickly notify everyone on our RSVP lists.   

 

Targeted Field Scout Training Dates	Training Topics
Tuesday, June 1, 2021	Plant per acre stand counts, thrips in cotton, early season cotton, corn, and sorghum agronomic stages, weed ID, seedling diseases, beneficials, and wireworms
Monday, June 21, 2021	Early cotton squares and calculating % fruit drop, plant bug and whole plant inspections, proper drop cloth and sweep net use, beneficials, grain crop whorl stage pests, early spidermite and aphid detection, herbicide damage ID, agronomic stages
Monday, July 5, 2021	First bloom detection and NAWF determination, drop cloth and sweep net use, fruit drop calculation and estimation and basic plant mapping, foliar and secondary cotton pests, corn borer and ear feeding pests, spidermite detection, agronomic stage ID, PGR data collection, quick disease ID
Monday, July 19, 2021	NAWF and peak water use irrigation scheduling, conducting good whole plant inspections, proper drop cloth, sweep net, and beat bucket use, corn borer and ear feeding pests, spidermites, SCA scouting, head feeding pests, current issues
Monday, August 2, 2021	Bollworm scouting, conducting large plant whole plant inspections, estimating fruit drop, NAWF and agronomic stage measurements, irrigation scheduling data, SCA and spidermite scouting, head and ear pests
Monday, September 20, 2021	Cotton harvest aid data collection, gaging boll maturity, NACB, and % open boll, late season pests, end of season irrigation data collection, late grain crop management

 

 

Thanks everyone!  Hope to see you soon!

Blayne