Late bean leaf beetle, profitable wheat production guide

After all the dry sum­mer we’ve expe­ri­enced, the National Weather Ser­vice is pre­dict­ing that our rain­fall is going to be above nor­mal for the first few weeks of September.

They are call­ing for a few inches Fri­day night, and into Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Nor­mal rain­fall is a lit­tle over an inch for the first half of the month. Rain­fall will aver­age 1 to 2 inches dur­ing this period. Iso­lated totals will of course be higher and lower than these amounts as we saw with the var­ied rain amounts with last weekend’s rains here in Delaware County. Some reported more than two inches, while oth­ers got under an inch. Looks like things will dry out some next week.

I want to remind you that if you would like to pur­chase dis­count tick­ets for the “Farm Sci­ence Review,” our office will have them for sale until Sept. 14. Cost is $5 they are $8 at the gate. The review will run Sept. 18 through Sept. 20.

Late bean leaf bee­tle: Many soy­bean fields around the county are start­ing to yel­low and mature, but there is con­cern for the late matur­ing fields that are, and will remain, green for the next few weeks. Accord­ing to Ron Ham­mond, OSU Exten­sion Spe­cial­ist, as fields mature, bean leaf bee­tle adults will leave and look for soy­bean fields that are still green to con­tinue their feed­ing prior to over­win­ter­ing. Because of very high num­bers that can come into green fields, the soy­beans remain sus­cep­ti­ble to pod feed­ing. Grow­ers are urged to mon­i­tor any field that is still green for their pres­ence and feed­ing activ­ity. Ham­mond says that treat­ment is war­ranted if feed­ing injury is reach­ing 10 to 15 per­cent of the pods and bee­tles are still actively feed­ing. Remem­ber that if treat­ment becomes nec­es­sary, grow­ers should note the pre­har­vest inter­val on the insec­ti­cide label so that they can still har­vest on time. Late matur­ing fields could be those late planted, includ­ing those dou­bled or inter­cropped. Spe­cial con­cern should include soy­beans grown for seed or as food grade soybeans.

Prof­itable wheat pro­duc­tion in five steps: The 2012/2013 win­ter wheat sea­son is fast approach­ing and as grow­ers make prepa­ra­tions for plant­ing. Pierce Paul, OSU Exten­sion Spe­cial­ist, Plant Pathol­ogy, along with other experts, say there are a few man­age­ment deci­sions that are impor­tant for a suc­cess­ful crop. Nearly every farm in Ohio has a field or two that could ben­e­fit from plant­ing wheat, if for no other rea­son than to help reduce prob­lems asso­ci­ated with con­tin­u­ous plant­ing of soy­beans and corn. Accord­ing to Paul, con­sis­tent high yields can be achieved by fol­low­ing a few impor­tant man­age­ment guide­lines. The impor­tant man­age­ment deci­sions listed below are recom­menced by Paul to help with deci­sions Ohio wheat pro­duc­ers need to make at fall plant­ing time to pro­duce a crop with sat­is­fac­tory eco­nomic returns:

ONE: Select high-yielding vari­eties with high test weight, good straw strength and ade­quate dis­ease resis­tance. Do not jeop­ar­dize your invest­ment by plant­ing any­thing but the best yield­ing vari­eties that also have resis­tance to the impor­tant dis­eases in your area. Depend­ing on your area of the state, you may need good resis­tance to pow­dery mildew, Stagonospora leaf blotch, and/or leaf rust. Avoid vari­eties with sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to Fusar­ium head scab. Plant seed that has been prop­erly cleaned to remove shriv­eled ker­nels and treated with a fungi­cide seed treat­ment to con­trol seed-borne dis­eases. The 2012 Ohio Wheat Per­for­mance Test results can be found at oardc.osu.edu/wheattrials.

TWO: Plant after the Hes­s­ian Fly Safe date for your county. This date varies between Sept. 22 for north­ern coun­ties and Oct. 5 for the southern-most coun­ties. Plant­ing within the first 10 days after this date min­i­mizes the risk of seri­ous insect and dis­ease prob­lems includ­ing Hes­s­ian Fly, aphids car­ry­ing Bar­ley Yel­low Dwarf Virus, and sev­eral foliar dis­eases. Plant­ing before this date has low­ered yield by 7 to 20 per­cent in research tri­als due to dis­ease and insect prob­lems. On the other hand, plant­ing late (gen­er­ally after Oct 20 in north­ern Ohio) can reduce the num­ber of pri­mary tillers that develop in the fall and increases the risk of cold tem­per­a­ture injury. The Hes­s­ian Fly free dates can be found at ohioline.osu.edu/iwy/flydates.html.

THREE: Opti­mum seed­ing rates are between 1.2 and 1.6 mil­lion seeds per acre. For drills with 7.5 inch row spac­ing, this is about 18 to 24 seeds per foot of row with nor­mal sized seed. When wheat is planted on time, actual seed­ing rate has lit­tle effect on yield, but high seed­ing rates (above 30 seeds per foot of row) increase lodg­ing. There is no evi­dence that more seed is bet­ter, it only costs more money. If plant­ing is delayed to more than three weeks after the Fly-Free date, plant 24–26 seeds per foot of row which is 1.75 mil­lion seeds per acre.

FOUR: Plant­ing depth is crit­i­cal for tiller devel­op­ment and win­ter sur­vival. Plant seed 1.5 inches deep and make sure plant­ing depth is uni­form across the field. No-till wheat into soy­bean stub­ble is ideal, but make sure the soy­bean residue is uni­formly spread over the sur­face of the ground. Shal­low plant­ing is the main cause of low tiller num­bers and poor over-winter sur­vival due to heav­ing and freez­ing injury. Remem­ber, you can not com­pen­sate for a poor plant­ing job by plant­ing more seeds; it just costs more money.

FIVE: Apply 20 to 30 pounds of actual nitro­gen per acre at plant­ing to pro­mote fall tiller devel­op­ment. A soil test should be com­pleted to deter­mine phos­pho­rus and potas­sium needs. Wheat requires more phos­pho­rus than corn or soy­beans, and soil test lev­els should be main­tained between 25 to 40 ppm for opti­mum pro­duc­tion. If the soil test indi­cates less than 25 ppm, then apply 80 to 100 pounds of P2O5 at plant­ing. Do not add any phos­pho­rus if soil test lev­els are higher than 50 ppm. Soil potas­sium should be main­tained at lev­els of 100, 120 and 140 ppm for soils with cation exchange capac­i­ties of 10, 20, or 30, respec­tively. If potas­sium lev­els are low, apply 100 pounds of K2O at plant­ing. In Ohio, limed soils usu­ally have ade­quate cal­cium, mag­ne­sium and sul­fur for wheat. Soil pH should be between 6.3 and 7.0.

The key to a suc­cess­ful wheat crop is ade­quate and timely man­age­ment. The above rec­om­men­da­tions are guide­lines that may be fine-tuned by you to fit your farm­ing oper­a­tion and soils. They also assume that you are plant­ing wheat in fields that are ade­quately drained. You can review more details on these, and other, research-based wheat man­age­ment rec­om­men­da­tions at ohioline.osu.edu/iwy/index.html.

Rob Leeds is the Delaware County OSU Exten­sion Educator.

Posted by Rob Leeds on Sep 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.