Andy Graves, Clarksdale
8/29/2023 – We’re just about done in my neck of the woods. Corn harvest has started and seems to be pretty good so far. Most cotton fields are topped out and starting to open at this point and look very promising. We do have some green spots and wheat cotton we’re still scouting. Soybeans are mostly R 6-6.5 with some desiccation applications being made. Stink bug numbers are very spotty.
Mark Rogers, Hernando
8/29/2023 – The majority of my cotton fields are done with bugs for the year. On a couple, I’m still dealing with mostly spider mites. I will look to start cotton defoliation next week.
Corn harvest is going well and yields are good.
Rice harvest is just starting not ramp up and the first few fields cut the yields are excellent. We are dealing with a good bit of rice stink bugs in the late rice.
Soybean harvest also started here as well and yields are good. Bug pressure is very light in what we have left to sweep.
Luke Richards, Yazoo City
8/28/2023 – Cotton – Most of the crop has finished meaningful fruiting with some fields having open fruit halfway up the plants. We have very little cotton that is still filling out fruit that we should pick and in these fields, we have made a late application of acephate + pyrethroid when needed. NO diamond in our area anymore. Shouldn’t be long and we will be defoliating the first fields. Haven’t calculated it with Daddy yet but with the extreme heat we figure we will reach defoliation a little faster than our usual schedule. The heat progressed this crop very rapidly and in lots of dry land fields we have no fruit in the top but a great bottom crop; has been very dry here since mid-July. We got away with not spraying mites in most of our acreage this year but recently we have had to spray isolated spots for them. I know our early route of Transform for plantbug control played a huge role in this and we have tried to avoid using a pyrethroid until very recently (except in our BG2).
Soybeans – Most of our beans are ready to desiccate (95%) except for about 300 acres that we had to spray for podworms already and now they need rain badly. Sprayed a majority of our acres for stinkbugs this year with the combined pressure of Red banded SBs and Browns/Greens being too much to chance. I think that the number of forests we have in the south delta probably played a large role in our numbers by providing plenty of overwintering sites for RBSBs.
Rice – None of my rice acreage is close to ready to harvest but the majority of my acreage is heading out finally. Haven’t sprayed for insects yet in any of it but I expect to need to spray at least one field here soon for Rice stinkbugs as it has several spots of thick Johnson grass throughout it.
Charles Downs, Indianola
8/29/2023 – Soybeans range from R4.5 (wheat beans) – R8 cutout. We have killed a lot of beans the past 10 days-2 weeks. The end of March planted soybeans have been harvested and yield reports are very good. Loopers and stinkbugs have exploded in the younger beans. Treating where we have threshold levels. Overall, I think this will be a good soybean crop.
Corn – all of our corn has been harvested. Growers reported it was one of the best corn crops they have had in a number of years.
Rice- all of our rice has been drained with the exception of 3 later planted “fresh land formed” fields. Harvest has begun on the first planted rice and results so far have been very good. Hopefully it continues to hold up as we start harvesting the next planting date. Prayers for a dry fall.
Ready for this hot one to be over with.
Mitch Leflore, Eupora
8/23/2023 – Cotton – winding up fast with heat. Hitting some hot spots for plant bugs on later cotton, also bollworms in some later 1646. Most spraying should end by next week with most of the crop finishing up.
Soybeans – Started Gramoxone on early beans and cutting by weekend. Other beans bout done to later group 5s that we are treating loopers in this week.
Corn – started cutting this week and yields look promising.
Sweet potatoes – armyworms and loopers wide open with treatments started last week. Starting to harvest seed potatoes for next year and full out harvest should be wide open around Labor Day.
Bert Falkner, West Point
8/28/2023 – Corn harvest is wide open. Yields where we didn’t have heavy winds, green snap, hail damage and/or saturated soils mid-season are good; where we had any kind of damage, yields are off 10%-20%. Overall, yields are good whether dryland or irrigated.
Soybean growth stage is anywhere from R5.75 to R7. We are lining up acres today to start desiccation; growers will get started this week depending on where they stand with corn harvest. Insects have been light so far, other than a looper flare up last week that so far, has not amounted to much. Usually, this time of the year they are heavy and we’re treating a lot of acres.
Cotton is in the ugly stage and is anywhere from NAWF 0-2-4; a lot of cotton bloomed out and just needs time to ripen. Cleaned up a few acres today with insecticide + pix. A lot of acres last insecticide application been out 7-10 days. Watered a lot of cotton last week with heat and dry weather. A LOT of cotton will be watered again since we missed the rain Sunday but that should wind it up.
Peanuts are 90 to 115 days old this week. Ran into heavy Southern blight limb rot last week, probably the heaviest I’ve ever seen; heavy in one area but in all fields. Fungicides were out 7 days but hasn’t been washed in. Dry weather and heat were big factors in this problem. I came back with another application with a product I think will get into the plant easier; will look again mid-week and hopefully we have cleaned this up. Leaf spot has not been bad so far. Insects overall have not been a big problem.
