Walking and Talking Fields: August 5, 2024
LACA
Rusty Elston
Elston Crop Management, Inc.
Cheneyville, LA
Rapides Parish
The corn crop, as a whole, should yield very well. Some of it will be off due to rainfalls and saturated soils.
Grain sorghum yields are going to be all over the place, some as good as I’ve ever seen, and some not so good, just for the same reasons…we’ve had some serious water issues on some of our grain sorghum, and that’s really going to take a hit on some yields. All the early grain sorghum has been treated for aphids and headworms, but in some of the grain sorghum, it was hard to find any. The midge battle is on in the later grain sorghum. It’s going to be a tough insect battle all the way through, but it actually looks pretty promising.
The soybean crop, as a whole, looks really good! The early beans didn’t hardly have any insects at all…Once we got to R5, we did start picking up some stink bugs, and they’ve been a little bit challenging, but we’ve handled them alright. They look really good. In our later planted beans, earworms have been bad, one of the toughest years I’ve ever seen. A very high percentage of the later beans have been treated for earworms. It looks like the looper fight is about to begin…haven’t treated any for loopers, but looks like we may have to before too long. So far, moisture hasn’t been an issue, compared to last year…We’ve watered some beans, but overall, not too many. Right now our fields are in pretty good shape moisture-wise, but the dry forecast for the next ten days with highs 100+ degrees will be pretty tough. Thankfully, our soil moisture is in excellent shape, and I’m hoping we’ll make it through these extreme temperatures, but we are going to need a rain as soon as possible, anyway. But, we’re doing good! Two Thumbs Up!
Rogers Leonard
Integrated Crop Consulting
St. Joseph, LA
Tensas Parish
Well, it’s hot and dry in Northeast Louisiana. We’re continuing to irrigate crops that can benefit from additional moisture.
We’re finding increasing numbers of stink bugs in the later maturing soybeans, and having to initiate a few treatments for those. The early maturing soybeans, for the most part, are safe from insect damage and we’re beginning to apply several harvest aid treatments with anticipated harvest over the next two weeks.
Our corn crop is pretty much finished up, and harvest is just been initiated or will be initiated this week in those fields.
In our cotton patches, we’re finding a fair number of tarnished plantbugs, and having to treat that individual pest. We’ve seen higher than normal number of stink bugs, brown stink bugs, in soybeans, and those are moving to cotton, so we need to be aware that some of the treatments that we’re putting out for tarnished plant bugs, should also have some activity against brown stink bug. I’ll say that I think NE Louisiana has a good to excellent corn and soybean crop, and a good to average cotton crop at this point. Those are potentials, we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there pretty quick. We’re across the 50-yard line on all of these crops at this point.