Extension Update by Gary Zoubeck [June 5, 2014]

Coming Events

• June 11, 2014 – Soil Health Meeting, 9:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m., Scott Gonnerman farm, Northeast of Waco. Register at: https://greencoverseed.com/

• June 23, 2014 – York Extension Board Exec. Meeting, 8:00 p.m., York Extension Office

Cropping Update

We’ve had a week where most producers have been able to the last of the planting and patching in completed. Both the corn and soybeans are now beginning to take off. It’s been great to see more fields in which producers have been utilizing reduced tillage and leaving more residue standing. It appears that those fields withstood the heavy rains we’ve had better than the tilled field. For a long time some of the fields were really difficult to know if they’ve been planted or not.

In visiting with a couple producers they indicated the worst erosion occurred where the work the ends of the fields. It appears that most of the frosted fields have recovered for the most part.

Much of the York area received from .50” to near 1.00” of rain Sunday evening and there are predicting additional rain Tuesday evening. Not sure if you received any rain or not, but nice 1.00” rains are always welcome. To check out the area rainfall amounts go to the Nebraska Rainfall Assessment and Information Network (NERAIN): http://nerain.dnr.ne.gov/nerain/.  It’s updated daily by volunteers across Nebraska gives you a pretty good idea of the amount of rain various areas have received. It can vary tremendously from location to location.

Monday morning I checked the three ETgages that I have out and on average they dropped 1.90” for the week. The fields nears these ETgages some early corn at V6 and some at V4 along with some soybeans at V1. The crop coefficients for these three crops would be .35, .18 and .20 respectively.  So to estimate the crop water use or ET for the week we would multiply the coefficients times the ETgage drop, so for the week these three crops used .68’, .34” and .38”.

As our crops continue to grow, our water use will also continue to increase. It will depend upon the temperatures, wind speed, humidity, and other factors. I’ll be posting weekly crop water use info as the season goes along. I’ll also be announcing this information twice weekly on our irrigation hotline.

I also have one of the ETgages with a #30 or grass cover on it. This past week it dropped 1.50”, so turf probably used a little more water than our crops, but that will change as the season goes along. You can also check out the Weekly ETgage readings or the Daily Automatic Weather Station Readings at: http://water.unl.edu/nawmn. Then click on the Online ETgage Tool link and the county or area you want the latest information for.  The pink balloons are being posted weekly and the blue balloons are automatic weather stations.

It’s great, for the most part, to be entering June with a full profile of soil water. That should be about 3.3” of water that our crops will be able to utilize before we’ll need to irrigate. Hopefully we’ll continue to get some timely rains. An inch or inch and half each week would be great!

Soil Health Field Day Planned 

When I’m working or talking about gardening with young people and some not-so-young people, they often say something about their dirt. My quick response is “It’s dirt when it’s on your pants or shoes and you bring it into the house, but in the garden or in the field it’s SOIL.” The better the soil you have, the more productive it is with less inputs! So good soil and soil health is important!

Last week I mentioned that Scott Gonnerman is sponsoring and hosting a great Field Day on his farm on June 11^ at his farm near Waco, NE (6 miles North, 1 mile East of Waco, NE) from 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Topics will include:

Soil Health Comparisons between Conventional Till and No-Till Soils (in field demonstrations)

Utilize Soil Indicators to Determine Soil Health and Function (in field demonstration)

Soil Health and Sustainability: Changing our Paradigms (in field)

No-till Equipment: Setup, Adjustments, and Maintenance (hands on)

Soil Ecology and Nutrient Cycling

Soil Testing – A Biological Approach

Economics of Cover Crops

The Plant and the Soil Are One

Designing Cover Crop Mixtures

Speaker includes nationally acclaimed soil health experts Ray Archuleta, Jim Hoorman, Ray Ward, Paul Jasa, and Keith Berns. You can register to attend for $45 per person (noon meal included). To register go to: https://greencoverseed.com/.  It should be a great workshop; I’m planning to attend!

On-Farm Research

Now with most of the planting and replanting hopefully completed, I’d like to encourage producers that are making applications of various products to consider making replicated comparisons to evaluate these potential products. I’d be happy to help you develop your plan so that you’ll collect reliable statistically sound data. Are you planning to sidedress your corn this spring? If you are we’ll like to team up with you and conduct some on-farm research on the effects of this practice. It would be filed length strips and would not require a lot of work. If you’d possibly be interested, call me at 402-326-8185 or email me at gary.zoubek@unl.edu.

I’m sure every producer has one practice change or product that you’d be interested in comparing. I’d like to hear from several of you!

Yard & Garden

As I mentioned last week, the rains have been great for the turf other than we’ve probably needed to mow more often than we’d like, but it’s better to do that rather than having to irrigate our turf. We get questions like how often do we need to mow the grass? The answer is it depends, is it buffalo grass, turf type fescue, or blue grass?  Our turf specialists suggest never removing more than 1/3 of the grass on any one mowing. So if your grass is growing rapidly, you’ll need to mow more often. Also the higher you have your mowing height the less often you’ll need to mow. Higher mowing heights are also better for the turf because it says cooler and you have more leaf area to feed the plants.

It’s also important to keep you lawn mower blade sharp so that you cut the grass blades rather than tear them. Have you noticed a whitish cast your turf following mowing? It can be the result of a dull mower blade or the grass is heading out and the seed stalks are tougher than grass blades. Zach Reicher, UNL Turf Specialist indicated that the most effective way to control seedheads is through mowing frequently with a sharp mower blade. Do not set the mower lower during seedhead production as some have recommend. Seed production only lasts about a month, so the problem should soon be gone!

How are things doing in your garden? It’s been nice not having to worry about watering our gardens and finally they are really starting to takeoff.  My tomatoes are just starting to bloom, so hopefully tomatoes will be just around the corner. Now is the time to be thinking about tomato diseases. Early blight & Septoria leaf spot are the two most common fungal diseases of tomatoes that I see. Symptoms begin as leaf spots on lower leaves, with infections moving up the plant causing foliage to die; often leading to fruit sunscald. These diseases can be reduced with fungicides labeled for use on tomatoes. For best results, applications need to begin prior to or as soon as symptoms first appear on lower leaves, and applications made every 7 to 10 days. I made my first application last week. Other things that can help are to avoid overhead irrigation and increase air circulation around plants with proper spacing and caging. Using black plastic or grass clipping to mulch the soil around tomatoes will reduce soil splash of fungus onto lower leaves. Also, avoid planting tomatoes in the same area year after year, but in small home gardens, that is difficult to do.  I typically make applications of fungicides early and then stop when I begin harvesting the fruit.

Now is also the time to be on the watch for pests like cabbage worms, bean leaf beetles and it won’t be long those pesky cucumber beetles will be out and chewing on your cole crops, beans, and vine crops. I use an insecticide labeled for these crops especially the cucumber beetles. Once the beetles chew on your cucumber, they’re probably infected them with wilt disease that will cause the plants to die, so prevention is the key.