May 29, 2012 – 8:00 p.m. – Extension Board Meeting, Extension Office, York
June 19, 2012 – 7:00 p.m. – PQA Plus Webinar, Extension Office, York
Cropping Update/Nebraska Weather/Horticulture News
I checked my rain gauge as I prepare this column Monday morning and it had just at three inches! Â This moisture was long overdue and welcome! Â I check NE Rain and it appears we received good rains in many part of the York area. Â Hopefully you did not have any major hail, but I know that some areas did.We here about million dollar rains and this has to be one for our area. Â We were going to have to do some irrigating of crops, but now the sensors I have installed in several fields are reading at field capacity or more!
We had a little hail, but the rain did much more good than the little hail we received. I’m sure that it was a million dollar plus rain!
The ETgage that I’ve been monitoring dropped 2.3†for the week.  That’s kind of typical for this time of the year when we get lots of wind and we’re wondering if it will ever stop blowing.  The good news is that the crop is still relatively small, but is beginning to take off.  The early planted corn field I’m monitoring is in the 6-7 leaf stage, so the crop coefficient is .35 for 6 leaf corn and .51 for 8 leaf corn, so for the week we used between .8†to 1.15â€.  To get the crop water use, we multiply the crop coefficient times the ETgage drop.
I did not estimate the crop use for soybeans, since for our area, we typically don’t recommend irrigating them until they reach R3 stage and which this rain, were on a good pace to be able to do that!
The ETgage in front of our office that has a #30 or grass cover on it dropped 1.50†this past week!  It can be used to estimate the water use for watered grass or turf!  So for the week, it averaged .21†per day!  For the second week in a row, the turf has used more water than our field crops, but as the field crops get larger, that’s going to soon change!
As I mentioned last week, since the grass has a root zone that’s about a foot deep, we’ve seen may areas of grass really showing drought stress as if it was July or August but it’s only late May!  This rain should help this situation for a while!
For more info about ETgages and Watermark sensors contact Dan at the NRD or me!  Also check out the NAWMN website: http://water.unl.edu/web/cropswater/nawmdn.  Check out the Extension Circular “Watermark Granular Matrix Sensor for Measuring Soil Matric Potential for Irrigation Management†and NebGuide  “Using Modified Atmometer (ET) for Irrigation Managementâ€.  We also have videos on how to install and use these tools along with growth charts for estimating the various crops stage of growth and water use as well as charts that estimated the soil water depletions for various Watermark Sensor readings for various soil types.
For the latest crop updates, check out CropWatch at: http://cropwatch.unl.edu.
PQA Plus Webinar Planned
It’s more important today than ever that livestock producers care for their animals and get certified every three years.  We will be hosting this training at our office on June 19th at 7:00 p.m.  I’d like to remind all area pork producers that need this training to get the date down on their calendar and plan to attend!
