May 6, 2014 Soil Temperature & Weed Concerns

I took a soil temperature reading (6 inch) at 8:30 am this morning 1 mile south of Plainview. 

                                66°F / conventional till / cotton on cotton / pre-irrigated.

                While this reading is a touch lower than ideal for cotton planting, when evaluating the weather for the upcoming week, we note a warming trend that looks to stay.  Cotton should be ok, soil temperature wise, to plant.  I have a much larger concern about the lack of moisture, dry conditions sucking out all of the costly applied pre-irrigation, and our ability to irrigate up a crop.  There truly are few of these problems a gentle three inch rain would not alleviate.

                As I make preliminary rounds through the county, I am finding an alarming number of weeds already emerged in several of the area’s potential cotton fields.  These weeds have been flushing with each and every pre-irrigation.  In some cases, a select few weeds have come through pre-plant residual.  In others without any applied residual, the number of emerged weeds looks to be 5 or six fold.  In seasons past, these weeds, regardless of number, were a minor concern as we could count on Roundup to clean them up with the first pass.  I no longer feel this is the case.  In fact I could make the case that these already emerged weeds have been at least 90% of our problematic weeds in recent seasons.

                I urge producers to get a quick scout across their fields to confirm or disavow the presence of these seedling weeds before the planter heads to the field.  We still have some pre-plant knockdown with residual options that has a good chance of taking these weeds down before the planter leaves seeds among the weed patches.

 

Please call or come by with any questions,

Blayne Reed

Planting Time and Soil Temperatures - May 1, 2014

May 1, 2014

Planting Time and Soil Temperatures

 

                It is planting season again, time to get another season’s crop up and growing.  The best way of doing that is with a good start.  The first step in getting any summer crop started well is planting and planning for good soil temperatures, especially for cotton.  Even though environmental and soil moisture conditions are far below any desired level, we have been get the annual question again, “What is the soil temperature today?”

                Cotton gets off to its best start when planted in a recommended 69°F consistent temperature soil (roughly 64°F bare minimum with a week’s worth of warm weather on the way).  Sorghum requires a 57°F recommended consistent temperature (roughly 55°F bare minimum with a warming trend to follow).  Corn needs a minimum of 50°F and no freezing temperatures and a general warming trend following planting.

                So, where do we stand today following the latest cold front?  I took a soil temperature reading at 8:30 this morning at the Halfway Experiment Station in western Hale County.  The soil temperature was 52°F in a fairly dry, conventional till field situation. 

                With at least a week’s worth of warmer weather on the way, we should be in good shape to continue any corn and sorghum planting.  I would recommend we wait on those soil temperatures to raise ten more degrees before cotton is planted.  We will continue to post additional soil temperature readings here early next week.  IF the weather forecast can be believed, gaining ten degrees in soil temperature might not take but a few days.

 

Please call or come by with any questions,

Blayne Reed

 

Hale/Swisher Ag Conference

Greetings everyone, 

Don’t forget the date, Monday February 10.  That’s the Hale / Swisher Ag Conference to be held at the Ollie Liner Center in Plainview.  Great lineup of guest speakers offering reliable, independent information for your production acres, 5 CEUs and lunch provided.  The cost is only $15.  Registration starts at 8 a.m.  Hope to see you there!

 

Blayne Reed,

EA – IPM, Hale & Swisher

Ground Application vs. Aerial Application at Harvest Time

The following is an excerpt from the West Plains IPM Update and was written by Kerry Siders, Texas A&M AgriLife, EA-IPM, Hockley & Cochran County.

 

Ground Application vs. Aerial Application at Harvest Time:

Received a call from Larry Smith yesterday about something we have contemplated before, but never really put a pencil to. That is if the damage caused by a ground rig to good irrigated cotton, which is lapping the middles when applying a harvest aid, exceeds the cost of putting a plane in the field. So this can be a perennial question for many.  Let us try to break it down and put a pencil to it.

 

In this example we will use a ground rig which covers twenty-four rows per through. The wheels will make contact with four rows, which is 1/6 or 0.167 of the area. For sake of a conservative calculation we will say that the ground rig will damage (remove from plant or render non-harvestable) 0.5 bolls per plant the rig comes into contact with. For calculation purpose we will use a plant population of 42,000 plants per acre.  So if we damage 0.5 bolls per 42,000 plants that is 21,000 bolls per acre, and we only effect 16.7% of the area (21,000 X 0.167) which is 3507 bolls damaged per acre. Does not seem that bad so far. This is pretty good irrigated cotton so it will take 300 or less bolls to make a pound of lint. So 3507 bolls divided by 300 = 11.69 pounds of cotton lint.  At $0.70 per pound lint, 11.69 lbs cotton has a value of $8.18 per acre. So the ground rig could possibly cost $8.18 in lost/damaged cotton, not to mention the cost of the operating the rig.

 

Last I checked the cost per acre on a plane was less than that.  So thank you Larry for prompting me to put a pencil to this.  Each of you may need to consider the damage you may be causing with a ground rig to cotton ready for harvest aid.  Each field situation is different, but this may give you a method of considering if it would be advantageous to put a plane on the field vs. a ground rig. Call if questions.

Thanks Kerry,

Please call or come by if you have any questions,

Blayne

 

Cotton Harvest Aid Season Starts

          Both by the calendar and what I am seeing in the field, cotton harvest aid considerations are coming to the forefront in another year.  Harvest aid decisions truly do seem more art than science with so many variables affecting product performance and application timing.  This time of year everyone in the industry pays extra attention to the weather forecasts and keeps an eye toward the cotton stage as we strive to take as much of the guess work out of harvest aids as we possibly can.  Producers certainly do not want to miscarry a crop this late in the game.  Consultants and advisors must be on their toes. Applying harvest aids too early can cause yield reduction, be harmful to fiber quality, and will damage seed weight and quality while applying too late exposes the precious fiber to the elements which can cause fiber degradation, and lint string and outright drop. 

With that in mind, the 2013 High Plains and Northern Rolling Plains Cotton Harvest-Aid Guide is now available through http://lubbock.tamu.edu/.  The Harvest-Aid Guide is stuffed with useful information updated annually for the purpose of helping producers and specialists make educated harvest aid decisions.  Of particular interest to me are the latest Cotton Harvest-Aid Decision Tables.  These tables contain the current list of locally tested and labeled harvest aid products complete with recommended rate ranges and surfactants.  For a full overview of all cotton harvest- aid considerations, please reference the 2013 guide.  There can seem to be endless factors effecting harvest aid decisions.  Here, I would like to review the three main FIELD MEASURABLE factors influencing the basic ‘field ready’, or ‘field not yet’ question in cotton harvest-aid decisions. 

If there is one factor that can be (or for some odd reason must be) used alone I would suggest evaluating the uppermost harvestable boll’s maturity.  I prefer to utilize the old standard boll maturity rating system of 1 through 3.  To evaluate the maturity of a cotton boll, use a sharp knife to cut into the boll somewhere between the upper half and upper third.  If the boll is watery or jelly-like on the inside, then it is immature and needs more heat units.  This boll can be rated as a maturity 1.  If limited or no additional heat units are available from the environment, that boll can likely be considered as not harvestable, and another boll farther down the plant needs to be evaluated.  If boll development is such that the knife cannot slice through the lint easily, then the boll is nearly mature.  Close inspection of the seed will give further indication of boll maturity.  If the seed coat is turning tan and the seed leaves (or cotyledons) are fully developed, the boll is nearing maturity.  This boll could be rated as a maturity 3.  In between these two ratings is a maturity 2.  Fields that have an average boll maturity rating of 2.4 can be considered ready for harvest aids.  We need only evaluate enough bolls to be confident in the average rating for that field that day.

A second factor is the NACB (nodes above cracked boll) stage of the field.  For those who are accustomed to making in season NAWF (nodes above white flower) evaluations, this evaluation is very similar with one difference.  In place of counting nodes from white flower to uppermost unfurled leaf, we count from uppermost cracked open boll to uppermost harvestable boll.  When the cotton field averages 4 NACB, the field is likely ready for harvest aids. 

The third factor is percent open boll.  This is likely the easiest factor to understand, but requires the most effort to obtain.  I prefer to measure 10 row feet from several locations within the field, counting the number of open bolls over the total number of bolls within all 10 foot areas to obtain an accurate percent open boll count for the field (percent open  boll = # open bolls / # total bolls).  Once a field reaches 60% open boll, then it can be considered ready for all harvest aids, except for pure desiccants which requires a 90% open boll count and is only really utilized in dry-land situations.  Taking the percent open boll counts does take more effort but once we have taken the 10 row feet counts, other useful knowledge can be gleamed from the information such as yield estimates and field variability.  

  Ideally we should utilize and combine all three of these field measurable factors to help put as much science into our harvest aid art as possible.  This data, gathered correctly, should then be considered along with many, many other factors, such as expected two week temperature, available sunshine, night time temperature, leaf drop, plant moisture content, expected freeze date,… just to name a few .

Please call or come by with any questions,

Blayne

 

Moth and Worm Invasion

               Local insect populations have built, or possibly rebounded, over the summer months.  The season’s rains, while not drought busting, have provided lush habitats for several species.  As a result, we are feeling inundated with multiple, sometimes overlooked, species of insects.  The most notable belong to the Lepidoptera order.  In Hale and Swisher Counties we are already dealing with economic populations of FAW (fall army worms) and bollworms in sorghum and some cotton, but these are far from our only species of interest, or the only ones that could pose problems. 

                Over the past few weeks, other area and regional entomologist and I have noted and fielded several questions about high numbers of ‘odd’ caterpillar larva and moths of various species causing a stir.  The White-lined sphinx moth was the focus of Dr. Ed Bynum’s (Texas A & M AgriLife Extension Entomologist - district 1) August 30^th edition of the Panhandle Pest Update.  In July, Manda Anderson (EA – IPM, Gaines County) mentioned garden webworms in her weekly newsletter.  This week Dr. Pat Porter (Texas A & M AgriLife Extension Entomologist – District 2) sent out alerts regarding the yellow stripped armyworm (true armyworm).  All district IPM agents responded to Dr. Porter’s alert stating that they too were finding the yellow stripped armyworms at varying levels alongside several other foliage feeding larvae. 

                After noting intense feeding upon pigweed by an unknown Lepidopteron species in the area, I enlisted the aid of Dr. Bynum and subsequently Dr. Porter in identification.  This species turned out to likely be the garden webworms that Manda had mentioned back in July spreading, in very high numbers, across the region.  These garden webworms can currently be found locally by the thousands feasting upon Palmer, kochia, and even some Johnson grass, doing what our best efforts in weed control could not (unfortunately they are doing it after the weeds have seeded out).  However, the garden webworms are not working alone.  There is a healthy mix of yellow stripped armyworms, beet armyworms, various cutworms, multiple looper species alongside the webworms, and likely several others such as the smartweed borer. 

                So far, this conglomeration of foliage feeding caterpillars has focused on weed species and just a few field margins.  Several of these species are known crop pests.  It is possible, maybe even likely, that once the weeds have been laid to waste, these hungry caterpillars could move to our area crops, gardens, and yards.  As veracious as these caterpillars are, they could devour and ruin a small garden, hedge, or certain trees in a matter of hours and a crop field in days.  On the crop side; any BGII cotton should be safe as should any Bt corn.  All sorghum and other non-Bt crops are at risk. 

I suggest keeping an eye on these caterpillars.  In the meantime, we are getting to see much of our weeds turn brown.  Hopefully, that is all they will attack.

 

Please call or come by if I can help,

Blayne

               

Fall Army Worm Concerns in Sorghum (& corn)

           We have been expecting some pest troubles to develop in our later crops in Hale & Swisher counties for some time.  Last week we found several sorghum fields (most just entering soft dough stage) with economic bollworms, one of the species that commonly make up the sorghum headworm complex.  Unfortunately, we are finding that the bollworms are not alone. 

            This week we are finding several FAW (fall army worms) following the bollworms into the sorghum fields, just a touch behind.  The ET (economic threshold) for any sorghum headworm is roughly the same without much regard to larva species.  Literature regarding headworm control, etc. can be found in Managing Insect and Mite Pests of Texas Sorghum.  However, species identification is crucial if your field does have an economic headworm problem.  Most of the labeled products for bollworm (i.e. corn earworm) will not control FAW larva.  In this case, we must change our recommended treatment to a product that has a chance to control both.  Changing products does come with a higher sticker price, so we really need to make certain of your species present before applying any labeled product for headworms.  Good photos to aid with larva identification between bollworm and FAW can be found in the July 5 edition of FOCUS.

            Of course sorghum is not the only area crop the FAW will attack.  Corn, cotton, early planted wheat, and even several hay crops are at risk.  I am finding several FAW in late planted corn, and a small number in cotton, but at this time they seem to prefer the later planted sorghum that is just moving toward soft dough stage. 

 

Please call with any questions,

Blayne