June 20, 2014

Keith Jarvi, Extension Educator Dakota/Dixon/Thurston Counties:  Well, the rain solved a lot of our water shortages. We got around 5-6 inches in a band from Wayne County to Sioux City on Saturday-Sunday, and the tornado storm the hit Cedar-Dixon Co. On Tuesday dropped from 2 to 7 inches locally. Lots of lowland flooding in Dixon county but it is receding a bit as of today.  Corn and beans around the tornado area was wind whipped but unless it was directly beneath the tornado, most of the corn was small enough that it got bent but not broken. It should recover.  Some alfalfa was windrowed and still down and it is still soaking wet, probably ruined.   All of the stock ponds that were very short of water are now full and pastures looking good since it started raining. What a difference a couple of weeks makes!  

Charles Shapiro, UNL Extension Soil Fertility Specialist:  With the wet weather and greater than normal rain, there have been reports of more iron chlorosis on soybeans (Please see Flickr photos courtesy of Troy Ingram). Most likely some of this is just water logging and plants may grow out of the off color with warm weather. However, where iron chloroisis exists in moderate severity, very severe damage would be with few leaves on the plant, some might want to try foliar treatments. The following NebGuide on Fertilizer Recommendations for Soybean section on Iron (p. 3) contains relevant information. There are a lot of products in the market that are focused on micronutrient/foliar applications. Our research database is not very big on the value of their use, but if there are symptoms, it might be worth experimenting with some of them if producers would like to partner in on-farm research studies. 

Suat Irmak, UNL Soil and Water Resources Engineer:  These are some pictures from my research sites 4 miles south-east of Holdrege after the hail storm last Saturday night/Sunday morning. My cooperators/friends say that they have been farming in that area for a very long time and have never seen that large hail, that much high wind, and especially both lasting that long. In one of my fields, the soybean was completely wiped out. In other fields, significant damage to pivots, damage to my flux instrumentation, etc. I lost two of my large scale field research sites out of 28 that I have throughout the state and they can all be replaced, but what our cooperators have gone through is impacting them significantly and we feel for them and share their pain. Clay Center received significant wind speeds (i.e., >60 mph) on Saturday late night, resulting in 10-15% green snap, but fortunately no hail this time. One interesting observation I had in the last several years, is about 60% of the tipped/flipped over center pivots were parked in directions other than southwest-northeast direction during or before the storm. 

Tyler Williams, Extension Educator Phelps/Gosper Counties:  Here are a few pictures from the hail in SW Phelps County that my family sent me.  The pictures show hail stones found 12 hours after the event, and they are still the size of baseballs.  There are also pictures of bloody cows, pastures and an oat field that looked like tilled fields, a destroyed solar panels, and grain bin damage around Atlanta.  I do know that some cattle and wild animals were killed and some even left blind.  My dad even said that the hail broke his barbed wire fence and knocked a lot of the staples out. 

Stephen Wegulo, UNL Extension Wheat Pathologist: On Tuesday to Thursday this week (June 17-19) I looked at wheat fields in southwest Nebraska and the southern and northern Panhandle.  I did not find any rust diseases.  Most fields were largely free of disease.  Stress from lack of adequate moisture was evident in the majority of fields, with wheat about a foot tall in sections of some fields.  The diseases I observed were mostly Septoria/tan spot on lower leaves at trace to low levels.  I also saw trace to low levels of bacterial streak and Fusarium head blight in a few fields.  Wheat was in the advanced stages of grain fill in the southwest, soft to hard dough in the southern Panhandle, and milk to soft dough in the northern Panhandle.

Ron Seymour, Extension Educator Adams County:  I checked crop condition in a few areas this week.  For the most part all crops are in good condition.  The pics (in Flickr) are from a band of hail damage that runs from Ayr to Hastings.  About 2 miles wide for about 15 miles.

Gary Zoubek, Extension Educator in York County: Roger Elmore and I were out to a couple of fields that were hailed June 3rd.  One had about a 50% stand lost in corn while the one at Bradshaw lost about only 6-10%.  Producers are busy spraying crops getting the crops cultivated. Crops are in many stages from just emerging to near the 10 leaf stage for corn.  Flickr images:  The first is a plant that has grown since the hail storm with the cutoff plant next to it.  The second is one of Roger and Jordan out evaluating a corn stand two weeks after the storm.

Jenny Rees, Extension Educator Clay County:  High winds in Clay County June 14 and June 16 caused corn in V8 stage to lean or completely snap off in various fields.  Worst fields with greensap in similar area affected by tornadoes on mother's day.  A few producers had corner systems or partial pivots overturned from wind….some of same pivots 2 or 3 times in past 10 months. Wheat is in soft dough.  Found systemic Goss' wilt last week in a couple continuous corn fields affected by frost early this year.