Ag Fax: Midsouth Cotton

By Laykyn Rainbolt and Owen Taylor

AgFax

Cotton is blooming in scattered parts of the lower Delta, and squares have started forming as far north as Missouri.

Scattered pest applications are going out. None of our contacts reported widescale issues this week.

A stretch of dry and sunny weather settled over the Midsouth this week, and that is helping move along the crops. A little irrigation is cranking up in older cotton.

CROP REPORTS

Harold Lambert, Independent Consultant, Ventress, Louisiana

“My oldest cotton is about 12 nodes and squaring nicely. Plant bugs have been very light so far. We’ve only treated a few, just small, isolated areas. The counts in other fields are nearly zero. Even next to corn, they are much lower than expected, so the square set still looks really good.

“We haven’t had rain in a while, and the forecast shows continued dry weather. In several fields, we’re treating aphids. They haven’t backed off like we had hoped, and with the lack of rain in the forecast, we have to give those plants some relief.

“I can see a little effect from the beneficial fungus, but there’s not nearly enough of it where I aim to control aphids right now.

“My oldest soybeans are probably at R5, and we’ve already put out fungicides on those fields. A lot of our other soybeans are just at R3 and R4, and those younger fields will receive a fungicide this week.

“We almost had a couple of trap crop situations where we’ve found stinkbugs, but redbanded stink bugs have been pretty scarce. That’s going to change, but we’re thankful for Mother Nature’s reprieve.

“We do have some dryland beans with shallow root systems because they were so wet for so long. Now, we’ve been dry for the last week or two. With their shallow root systems, those soybeans will start showing stress soon.

“My oldest corn is dented with a 20% starch line.

“Most of my corn is nowhere near any threat from disease, but I have had to treat a very few acres of my oldest corn for southern rust. It’s like a race to see if this fungus will develop and take leaf area away from the crop before the plant completes kernel development.

“The conventional wisdom for southern rust is that the threat is mostly over after the corn is dented or after it has started developing a starch layer. The fungus will keep developing, but it won’t have time to shut down the plant before the black layer develops. But those assumptions are based on research done years ago when 150 bushels was a good corn average. I like to watch it closely for quite a while to assure it won’t cause late substantial damage.

“We can’t complain about how the year has gone for us so far. The weather has been good for south Louisiana. We didn’t receive a lot of the excessive spring rains that developed in northeast Louisiana and up through the Delta. It was warm in March, which allowed the corn to make a good start. The sugarcane guys were able to do field work and applications when needed.

“I am a little worried about the dry forecast, and I would like to see a shower on some of the crops pretty soon. We don’t have as much irrigation as the Delta does. Even with the tropical storm last week (Cristobal), we only received around 0.7 of inch of rain. We’re grateful for that, but we could use a little more.”

 Hank Jones, RHJ Ag Services, Winnsboro, Louisiana

“We’ve planted all of our cotton, and it looks good. For probably the first year in my entire career, we have no replants. Cotton this year seemed to come out of the ground kicking and screaming. My oldest is at the eleventh node and the youngest is at fifth node, so we don’t have a massive gap in ages.

“We only had to spray 75% of our acres for thrips this year, which rarely happens. We usually spray 100% of the crop.

“This week, we started spraying plant bugs in our oldest cotton. Our corn is beginning to mature, so plant bugs are moving out of it and into the cotton. I’ve already had to treat a couple of fields for aphids, but we haven’t done a widespread spray yet.

“As for the dicamba ruling, it hasn’t affected too many of my acres yet. We made one dicamba shot on all the cotton before the ruling. Right now, it doesn’t look like we’ll need to make another dicamba application.

“I would grade our cotton crop at an A right now. In fact, this might be the best collection of crops I’ve ever checked. I won’t say it will be the highest yielding because we have a long way to go, but it’s a good set of crops across the board. The corn crop is quite respectable, and we’ve cleaned up the beans.

“Redbanded stink bugs (RBSB) have started appearing in soybeans. The older the beans get, the more RBSB I find. I’m not doing any widespread sprays yet because they’re not at threshold, but RBSB are certainty around. It’s early in the year for me to be seeing so many, but I expect to have a large influx here in about 10 days. I don’t want to scare anybody, but it’s probably going to be a bad situation for late-planted beans in July through September.”

Sebe Brown, Louisiana Extension Field Crops Entomologist

“It’s still hot and dry. Aphid numbers are increasing, and more applications are going out. A lot of guys are making their clean-up weed shots and are including something in the tank for aphids. More plant bug applications are going out. We’re into the third week of squaring, with some cotton starting to bloom.

“This is ideal cotton-growing weather. It’s hot and it’s dry. Growers are irrigating corn, but if it doesn’t rain soon, they’ll also start irrigating cotton. The vast majority of our cotton was planted in the first to second week of May and is mostly at matchhead square, maybe a little beyond that.

“But our earliest cotton has squares, and blooms are cranking up, too. That cotton is moving into setting those first bolls, and growers are running pipe so they can begin watering those fields when it’s needed.

“I haven’t heard much about spider mites yet. We are seeing high numbers of worms in corn, and I hope our guys are ready for bollworms. It hasn’t been uncommon to find three or four worms in one ear in corn that carries the same technology as Bollgard II cotton. Today, we collected about 200 worms in 30 minutes.

“That corn isn’t slowing down the worms at all. If they’re making it through corn at this rate, Bollgard II doesn’t stand a chance. They’ll walk right through it, too.

“Based on the growth stages of the worms we’re finding, we can expect a pretty big moth flight around the Fourth of July.”