The UT Center of Farm Management will be hosting an upcoming program titled “Farm Management During Uncertain Times.” The program will include a series of “town-hall meetings” via Zoom as well as a library of recorded videos (available August 9th) that producers can access any time. The goal of this series is to provide resources and information to help producers make informed decisions as they navigate the uncertainty of production during drought, rising interest rates, and other current events. Please register at the link below to receive the webinar information for the town-hall meetings. The series is free and accessible to any producer interested.
Climate-smart agriculture and hemp production are headlining the 2022 Milan No-Till Field Day, in addition to traditional no-till crop production topics. The Field Day is set for July 28 in Milan, Tenn. Featured presentations will include Understanding Climate Smart Agriculture, How Rainfall Is Changing and Affecting Water Management in Tennessee, Hemp Economics Outlook 2022, Does No-Till Mean Never-Till?, and more. Continue reading →
The long hot and mostly dry June and July have driven a good bit of our corn crop to premature maturity. Similar to the drought of 2012 when the corn crop burned up, I would expect a good bit of the prematurely matured corn will be harvested in August and early September. In 2012 a good bit of that early harvested corn was planted to wheat well before the fly free date. I expect many will manage this disappointing corn crop similarly this fall. Continue reading →
This year’s County Standardized Trials (CST) Wheat data are in. In fall of 2021, we had 7 successful wheat variety test plots planted, with 13 varieties coming from 5 industry leading seed providers. Summer 2022 harvest resulted in: locations averaged from 38 bu/ac to 120 bu/ac with an overall average across locations and varieties of 88.4 bu/ac. A full report including OVT data is available at search.utcrops.com.
click on table to enlarge
The CST program utilizes County Agents and local producers to evaluate variety performance in on-farm, large strip trials. Each trial is a minimum length of 300 feet and trials are managed using the producers’ chosen practices in accordance with UT recommendations. A special thanks to all Agents and producers involved, along with our seed industry partners!!
For more information on UT’s variety testing programs, please contact your County Extension Office.
I’ve gotten a few phone calls inquiring about our bollworm moth trap catches and what the populations are doing. To date, we’ve only had one trap catch that was in the double digits and that was on the WTREC research station. Our trapping runs began in May and will continue through August across West TN. We are still on the early side for bollworms to appear in cotton and once we begin to see consistent numbers across our catches, I’ll update our numbers on the blog. Keep a look out for eggs and kicking up moths as you scout cotton and soybeans. The drought situation and overall poor condition of corn may have an impact on the bollworm generation migrating out of corn, we’ll see the results of that in the coming weeks.
I’ve received a few calls about twospotted spider mite infestations in soybeans in West Tennessee. Spider mites usually are a minor issue in soybeans and I’ve only seen two instances in 10 years that warranted treatments for mites in beans, both were in severe droughts. Spider mite infestations in soybeans, like cotton, often start from the edge of fields. Unlike cotton, infestations don’t result in reddening leaves but a gradual transition from green to light green to yellow to brown. In a normal year, soybeans have the ability to compensate for spider mite injury and most infestations often go unnoticed or mites never gain a foothold due to ample rainfall, predators or entomopathogens that control them before they become a problem. In drought years, when alternative weed hosts have been killed with herbicides or desiccated by lack of water, soybeans become an attractive host for spider mites.
Spider Mite Hotspots in Soybeans (Photo by T. Baute OMAFRA)
Mite populations, in soybeans, often reach very large numbers before they are discovered. This is, in part, due to people not looking and assuming that desiccated brown leaves are a bad spot in the field, charcoal rot or generally poor area that beans are struggling in. Under West Tennessee’s current conditions, brown/yellow patches of soybeans should be investigated for presence of mites and not just assumed its from drought. Thresholds for spider mites are not well established in soybean. Consider treatment when spider mites are present on the majority of plants and premature defoliation is occurring. The decision to treat mites in beans is often difficult but mites can absolutely defoliate infested plants and move on to others. Ignoring spider mites in beans, especially during a drought, can be a costly mistake.
Fortunately we have a few dedicated miticides that are now labelled for control of mites in beans, several years ago this what not the case. Abamectin (Agri-Mek SC 0.7) at 1.75 fl oz/a and etoxazole (Zeal SC, Stifle SC) at 2.0 fl oz/a are both excellent products for spider mite control in beans. Etoxazole is mite growth regulator that will have significantly longer residual control than abamectin; however, a well timed application of abamectin is often enough to get mite populations under control in soybeans. If recurring or severe populations become apparent, etoxazole may be the better choice.
Severe Spider Mite Infestation (Photo by MSU)
Insects/arachnids do weird things during severe drought. Major pests we always assume will be there don’t always appear and secondary pests we never see can sneak in and cause crop injury. The take home is check your soybeans. Don’t just assume that the brown patch by the tree line or yellowing is caused by a sand blow or the beans are just burning up.
Climate-smart agriculture and hemp production are headlining the 2022 Milan No-Till Field Day, in addition to traditional no-till crop production topics. The Field Day is set for July 28 in Milan, Tenn. Featured presentations will include Understanding Climate Smart Agriculture, How Rainfall Is Changing and Affecting Water Management in Tennessee, Hemp Economics Outlook 2022, Does No-Till Mean Never-Till?, and more. 
