Coming Events
- August 13, 9:00 a.m., Soybean Management Field Day, Stengel Farm near Shickley http://ardc.unl.edu/soydays
- August 28, 5:30 p.m., York County Corn Grower Plot tour located on the Ray & Ron Makovicka farm located East of York ¼ mile East of the intersection of Road 14 & O.
Another Great Fair!
The weatherman hit the fair weather right on the nail head! We had fantastic temperatures. The only way it could have been better would have been to receive a 1 or 2 inch rain the beginning of the week!
From my perspective, things went very well thanks to the help of many, many, many volunteers and sponsors. As many of you may know, Gerald Peterson had a detached retina on Tuesday, so he ended up having eye surgery on Thursday. The many superintendents and volunteers stepped up to help make check-in and the shows all run smoothly.
We had some great livestock shows as well as some great exhibits in Ag Hall, the Home Economics building along with many great FFA and open class exhibits in Ag Hall. The little I saw of the concert, it went well as did the Figure 8 race and the many events under the Big Ten! We had a great turnout for the Extension Centennial ice cream social. We ordered 48 gallons and served 15 of the 16 3-gallon containers or 45 gallons. The ice cream is vanilla based with strawberry swirl (scarlet and cream ice cream) with the addition of large chocolate chunks that was produced by the Dairy Store at UNL.
I want to thank many people for assisting with this effort. The many hours of planning and the long days the Ag Society members and spouses spend during the fair! The ground crew of Del and Steve had the facilities and the grounds looking great!
I also want to thank our staff of Eileen, Gerald, Sue, and Steph for the countless hours planning, preparing and conducting the various events and shows. I also want to thank the York News Times staff for taking the many pictures of all the winners and preparing timely stories for over a week promoting the fair and all the activities!
THANK YOU to all the superintendents and volunteers that assist the various shows and help with judging and displaying of all the 4-H, FFA, and open class projects. Without your assistances, the York Ag Society could not have the fair we have!
Also, thanks to the many, many, many individuals and business that sponsor activities and events along with those businesses and individuals that supported the special premiums for our 4-H and FFA youth! Thanks to each and every one of you.
I enjoy watching many of the shows and events, but my favorite are the trap and BB gun shoots, the bicycle rodeo and casting contest as well as the large and small animal round robin contest! It’s great to see all the contestants visiting and encouraging each other so that others would compete well. It looks easy to show a market hog, sheep, goat, beef animal, dairy, or horse, but just give it a try…..it’s not!
So congratulations to all the winners as well as all the participants!
Let’s start planning for the 2015 Fair!
Cropping Update
This past week the ETgages that I monitor dropped about between 1.25 – 1.35†so for most of our crop we multiply by the factor of 1.1, so corn and soybeans averaged between .20 and .21 inches/day for the week! They’re talking chances for rain on Wednesday and that would be great!
We’ve sure had our share of bad storms this season. We again had several isolated reports of hail on in the Benedict and Waco area this past week. Some fields have been hit for the third time. Hopefully we’ll have no more this season.
The latest information on the Southern Rust of corn situation is posted on the UNL CropWatch website. It was been confirmed in Clay County Thursday, July 31, and to date has been also confirmed in Otoe, Nemaha, Pawnee, and Richardson Counties.
Jenny Ress indicated that this year it’s appearing as very small, tan-brown lesions on upper surface of the leaf, usually in clusters. Spores inside the pustules are typically orange. She reported that in Clay County it was found on one leaf in a field near Trumbull, but emphasized that just because southern rust has been found in the area, we don’t recommend automatically spraying. Scout your fields and consider disease pressure, growth stage, and economics. Long season corn and late-planted/replant fields have the potential for most damage. Secondary common rust sporulation has also been confused as southern rust as the secondary pustules tend to look like this. She stressed that it’s important to obtain microscopic confirmation to know for sure if you have southern rust in your fields.
UNL Specialists and Educators will be monitoring the disease to see how much it is spreading within fields it has been confirmed in.
Jenny also reported another common problem is old common rust lesions being confused as gray leaf spot. The color of this lesion is a tan-gray, typical of gray leaf spot. Using backlighting or a hand lens, you can see the pustules within this lesion confirming it is common rust and not gray leaf spot. In many cases, it was reported that gray leaf spot was up the entire plant in their fields and after being looked at it was found to be common rust in many situations.
So we can’t stress it too much that it’s important to know what disease you truly have to make the best decision on fungicide applications.
For the latest Southern Rust disease update and more, go to CropWatch at: http://cropwatch.unl.edu.
York County Corn Grower Plot Tour
I’d like to invite all area producers and other interested in the corn production to the annual York County Corn Grower Plot Tour planned for Thursday, August 28, at 5:30 p.m. The 2014 plot is located East of York on the Ray and Ron Makovicka farm located ¼ mile East of the Intersection of Road 14 and O.
I hope you’ll mark your calendar and plan to attend.
Lawn and Garden
Well, 08†of rain for the week won’t do much to help keep the turf growing. Last year at about this time I shared some information that our Turf Specialist Zac Reicher shared about deep infrequent irrigation of turf. “Deep and infrequent irrigation is summarized as irrigation only after the first signs of drought stress become visible, water thoroughly wet the soil to the depth of rooting, and then do not water again until symptoms of drought stress appear. What is “deep and infrequent†in May is far different than what it is in August, therefore irrigation controllers need to be changed throughout the year.
High soil temperatures decrease root growth while increasing root death, the end result is a shallower and likely less dense root system. August rooting depth may decrease by 50% or more compared to May rooting depth. Therefore, less water is needed to wet the soil to the depth of rooting. Additionally, water use increases with temperature as the plant uses it to cool itself.
The end effect of these two process is irrigation frequency increases during the heat of summer, but the amount of water applied during each irrigation cycle is less. Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast numbers recommended for amount and frequency of irrigation. Turfgrass species, soil type, slope, exposure, compaction, mowing height and frequency, overall plant culture (or plant health), and daily wind, temperature, and precipitation will determine the amount of irrigation required on each individual lawn. It is further complicated by irrigation method and if an underground system is used, volume, pressure, nozzles, head spacing, and condition of the system will also complicate the irrigation.
The bottom line is that turfgrasses require water for optimum performance, but they much prefer slightly drier conditions over slightly wetter conditions. Irrigation information can be found in our “Irrigating Home Lawns†publication found at: http://turf.unl.edu/pdfcaextpub/homelawnirrigation2011a.pdf.
Hopefully we’ll get a nice slow inch or two rain soon? Looks like we have some chances for Wednesday. We’ll have to wait and see.
