Coming Events
- June 10-11 Tractor Training, Polk Co. Fairgrounds, Osceola
- June 24-27 Nebraska No-till Bus Tour, Kearney
I hope you’ve had a great Memorial Day Weekend. I had a chance to visit our son, daughter-in-law, and new grandson in California, so it was a great weekend!
Nebraska No-till Bus Tour Planned for June 24-27, 2013
Just a reminder of the No-till bus tour being planned by Paul Jasa and Scott Gonnerman; registration is limited to the first 50 people. The bus will leave the Buffalo County Fairgrounds in Kearney promptly at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, June 24, and return to Kearney on Thursday evening, June 27.
It will be a nice tour of established no-till, diverse crop rotations, cover crops, and livestock grazing systems. Ray Ward, some seasoned no-tillers, and Paul Jasa will be on the bus to discuss whatever no-till topics come up, adding to the educational experience during the driving time.
For complete details and registration information, go to CropWatch: http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/cropwatch/archive?articleID=5173245.
Cropping Update
As I mentioned last week, I set out several ETgages and began reading them last week. It’s been great that we’ve received considerable rain this past week. The site east of York had 1.5†of rain this past week, and if I check out NERain, it looks like that’s typical for the York area. The ETgage dropped about 1†for the week, so we’re on the plus side relative to irrigation needs. The corn and soybeans are small, so the crop coefficient is only .1 or .18 depending on the stage of the crops so water use was .1†or .18†and we’ve received 1.50†of rainfall. Last year at this time our crop was considerably farther along.
I’ll plan to share my weekly readings in my column as well as on our NAWMN website. These reading along with your crops stage of growth can do a great job of estimating the weekly crop ET. I’ve used them for several years and feel that they’re very reliable. That website is: http://water.unl.edu/NAWMN. You can check it for the ET for fields nearby my ETgages or for the daily weather station ET estimates.
If you are using Watermark sensors, now’s a good time to get them installed before for the crops get too large and you damage roots as you install them. I know that we have several new cooperators this year. I along with staff at the NRD are here to help you have success with both ETgages as well as Watermark Sensors. The ETgage gives you a good idea as to how much your crop is using the while the Watermark Sensors give you an idea as to how much soil water you have left. No reason to start irrigating if you have adequate soil moisture and you for sure don’t want to end the season with a full profile.
Following last season’s long irrigation season, it’s really more important than ever to limit the amount of water applied so we can maintain our aquifer. A few years ago we made some videos on how to use ETgages, stage your crop as well as install Watermark Sensors. Those videos can be found at: http://water.unl.edu/web/cropswater/awmdnvideos. You can also check out the CropWatch articles that some co-workers and I prepared this past week. They’re located at: http://cropwatch.unl.edu.
Yard & Garden
This year, many of our gardens are later than normal, but now as a result of our recent rains and more humid weather, it’s time that we should be working to prevent some of the most common disease problems I see on tomatoes which is early blight. It is a common fungal disease of tomatoes that causes plants to die from the bottom up. Symptoms begin as tan leaf spots on lower leaves; then the disease works its way up the plant with leaves turning yellow, then brown and dropping off. To reduce early blight, select tomato varieties resistant to blight, however I think most are susceptible to it. Try and keep the foliage dry by not sprinkler irrigating them. Also when possible, increase air circulation around plants with proper plant spacing and use caging to keep vines off the soil. I know I often plant mine too close together! Mulch the soil around tomatoes to reduce fungus splashing onto lower leaves. Use crop rotation and practice fall sanitation to reduce overwintering fungus, but in small backyards it is difficult to rotate as much as we would like.
I try and limit the severity of this disease by making applications with fungicides labeled for tomatoes. I start applications when I set the plants out, but if you don’t do that, you need to begin as soon as symptoms first appear on lower leaves and repeated every 7 to 10 days well into the growing season.   I typically stop when I begin harvesting those ripe tomatoes. If you have severely infected plants, I would destroy them.
Often, I include a labeled insecticide to control hoppers and other insects. I then use the combination on my cole crops to control those green worms that come because of those yellow and white butterflies I’ve started seeing this week. I also spray my cucumbers and other vine crops to prevent the cucumber beetles (corn root worm beetles) from feeding on the plants and spreading bacterial blight which causes the plants wilt and die.
For the latest horticulture updates, check out our Environmental Homepage: http://environment.unl.edu/. It includes links to Backyard Farmer, Turf iNfo, Acreage Insights and as well as horticulture updates with many timely tips! These site contain lots of timely information and tips to make your yard and garden easier to maintain by working smarter and not harder. I hope you’ll check them out!
