Mid-South Cotton

Laykyn Rainbolt, Contributing Editor

Katie Humphreys, Editor

Ernst Undesser, Editor

Ag Fax

Hank Jones, RHJ Ag Services, Winnsboro, Louisiana:

“Our cotton ranges from pinhead square to just coming out of the ground. We had a decent run of thrips the last week of May. Cool weather slowed down the cotton, and the cotton planted the first week of May really struggled early on to make a stand. Rain plus the cool nights did not serve the cotton well. With all the rain we had, I think it leached out some of the seed treatments, and we didn’t get as much benefit out of them as we could have. With all that said, we had to make quite a few sprays for thrips. Thankfully, we are starting to see a lot more progress in the cotton now.

“Cotton aphids are starting to pop up in a few spots, but I see these as native populations. As we kill weeds, they jump into the cotton.

“Most of our corn is starting to tassel or will be within the next week. Overall, the corn is in good shape. We’re not seeing any disease pressure yet, which is great. We just started irrigating a little corn moving into tassel late last week into this week, but hopefully irrigation will stop with these rains this week. This is probably the latest I’ve ever seen irrigation start. A lot of growers did not have to water prior to tassel, which is great for us.

“The earliest planted corn on sand struggled, but it is coming around now. It has been one of the longest planting periods I’ve seen. Thankfully, we got the corn in, and prices are high.

“Soybeans range from almost R3 to just coming up. I think I still have beans being planted today (June 1), so that’s almost an eight-week planting period. A lot of the beans didn’t look good until they started blooming, but we’re in good shape now.

“The biggest issue in soybeans is weed pressure. We didn’t have the spring to do a lot of burndowns, so we have had to apply several thousand acres of dicamba products to control these weeds. And we’re still not out of the woods yet.

“All of my rice this year is row rice. We are starting to pump water on some of it, and I anticipate it will be at green ring next week. Some rice is coming up to the two-leaf stage. Weed pressure is also an issue in the rice – especially pigweed.

“Cotton acres are down, but rice, corn, soybeans and grain sorghum acres are higher than past years. Corn and soybean acres are certainty higher this year.

“The last 10 days have been very productive. We have gotten sprays out, fertilizer to the rice and corn, sidedressing cotton and just general cleaning up fields at various stages. Without the last dry 10 days, this was going to be an incredibly late crop.

“Although we are making up for some lost time earlier in the season, we are still behind in DD50s and DD60s compared to this time in previous years. This has been a stressful crop until now, but we are in a pretty good place at this point.

“It appears the crops planted behind corn last year (corn or soybeans) had a rougher start early on. We saw a lot of pale color in the corn and beans and lacked vigor. A lot of those fields did not break down the corn stubble. We had a dry, cooler than average winter. We have a lot of corn debris left on the ground, and I think that tied up a lot of nutrients, which kept the corn and beans this year sluggish in the early part of the year.

“We are really starting to turn the corner now. Everything is starting to shore up and look better, thankfully. Hopefully we can get a couple inches out of this rain, and we will be in a great place moving into June.”