James Bowen, Boyle
7/27/2023 – Rice—Most of the rice that I check is anywhere from just starting to head to getting ready to drain the first of next week. Most of the crop was treated with a fungicide, just as a preventative. Haven’t seen much disease this year. Blast or sheath blight have been very hard to find. Stink bugs have been easy to find this year especially on the first heading rice fields. I thought Warrior II was doing a good job until I looked behind the Endigo. Endigo may cost a little more but it may be worth it in the long run to get more residual out of it. The crop looks really good overall but you never know how the crop will turn out until the combine goes through it.
Soybeans—most of the beans that I check are anywhere from early R4 to mid-R6. Most of the beans got treated with a fungicide. With all the rain we have had this year it should’ve been worth it. Stink bugs have been almost non-existent so far. Finding a few around tree lines. Sprayed some of the later planted beans for pod feeders. Even had to spray a few early R5 bean fields for pod feeders. The crop looks really good overall. Hope all the farmers have some good harvest weather.
Andy Tonos, Greenville
7/27/2023 – Corn – Wrapping up corn for the most part. Oldest is a black layer and youngest irrigating for then last time. Crop seems to be pretty good overall.
Soybeans – Oldest is late R6 and youngest at R3.5l a lot of beans at the R5+ stage. Insects have been spotty; treating where needed. Overall, crop seems to be average to really good. Wide open irrigating on all my acres.
Rice – Stage of growth at boot split to almost fully headed. Treated all acres for sheath blight.
Lee Rogers, Cleveland, reporting from the Missouri Boot hill
7/27/2023 – We are starting another very dry trend in these parts. Cotton seems to be fruiting well. The previous showers have helped us along but a general rain is needed. Plant bugs are on the increase as usual and have to be closely watched. In some areas we have a good deal of corn and Lygus are in high numbers. Other areas are not as high but more and more fields each week need to be treated. We still have a good ways to go but I am optimistic that we can finish strong with good yields.
Bruce Pittman, Coila
7/27/2023 – Cotton in my area looks good having a big jump in plant bug numbers this week gonna treat with an application that contain Diamond.
Soybean insects are as low as I have seen the first of August in a long time, I struggle to find a RBSB in a day of sweeping. Bollworm showing up in beans that still have a bloom in them.
Corn for the most part is finished some fields have black layered others will in the next week or so.
Donny Adams, Greenville
7/27/2023 – Cotton: all over the board! Most cotton looks excellent, with some hail damage, flooded and having a rough go. Biggest issues have been dealing with plant bugs coming out of corn and beans. They have slowed down as corn drying up and beans in R5/R6 stage. Using acephate/Diamond and a Transform/Diamond treatment following to keep aphids down. Control has been very good. Note about Bt, so far seems to be holding up well. I have flagged a few hatch-out to day old larvae, with no survival.
Beans: Most beans with exception of hail damage beans, are R5/6. Beginning to pick up a few more stink bugs but nothing treatable. Had my first red band in the Hollandale/Arcola area. Pod worms were fairly lite for me. We had a good beneficial population that helped us out.
***Note on Hail damaged beans – they haven’t rebounded as well as I expected, it just depended on the amount of trauma they experienced.
Virgil King, III, Lexington
7/28/2023 – Cotton – Our oldest cotton at this time is at 5-6 nodes above white flower and looks good at this time. Our fruit retention in all our cotton looks very good. We have had good success up to now controlling plant bugs. We are starting to see another hatch of plant bug nymphs and getting out some treatments. Our aphids are under control and we have seen a little fungus in some fields. We have treated some spider mites but not in every field. We are seeing more colonies of mites coming and looks like more treatments will be coming out soon. Bollworm moths continue to fly in most fields. Eggs are still being layed but so far Bollgard 3 cotton looks good on controlling them. We are starting water in our cotton also. It will be interesting to see what August brings our way with temperatures and insect control.
Soybeans – Our beans are all mostly R5 with some of the oldest going R6. Insects vary from field to field but have been very quiet up to this point. We have treated some bollworms in the younger beans and those next to corn that have had a lot of moths coming out of them. This week we have seen more stink bugs showing up and have swept an occasional Red Banded Stink Bug. There are also more loopers and salt marsh caterpillars showing up this week. We will just have to see if all this goes to threshold and has to be cleaned up in August.
Corn – Milk lines are running in all of our corn at this time and are from 20 % to black layer. We have had very little significant disease up to this point. Curvularia leaf spot has been the primary one but we are starting to see some Southern Rust at this time in some fields. It has not flared up across any fields yet but it is present. Looks like we will out run it to the end. A lot of the hardest hit hail damage corn is deteriorating fast. Our growers that can dry corn are getting ready to harvest it. With exception of a little late corn, we are through scouting most of our corn and water has been terminated in it.
Phillip McKibben, Maben
7/27/2023 – We’ve dropped our dryland corn, soon will have our irrigated corn terminated, and split that time between our other crops. Our corn crop is good. Kernel counts are good, we had excellent pollination, so now only comes the kernel weight component of the equation – which is, of course, HUGE – close to 50% of final yield. We still need the weather to cooperate – I hereby request more moderate temperatures in the days to come.
Cotton is rather calm now that we have stuffed the plants with PGR. Plantbugs are light, aphids got thick right before they crashed about 10-14 days ago during the rainy spell.
Soybean insects have really picked up lately. Podworms are well above threshold in some fields, and totally absent from others. Primarily they are in R3 fields, and most of our beans are well past R4. Cloverworms are sky high in some isolated fields, yet very low numbers in most fields – so far anyway. Loopers are also showing up, and stinkbugs are beginning to build.
Sweetpotatoes are doing their thing, all in the darkness below ground where we get little satisfaction watching the development. We’re treating Lep pests in some fields; a mix of Bollworms, Beets, Southerns, Falls, Yellow-stripes and Granulate Cutworms. Tortoise beetles have become more and more tolerant of all pyrethroids over the last few years, and they are a real nuisance in some fields. Harvest will begin in 3-4 weeks in our earliest plantings, and will stretch well into late October, early November – fun.
Bert Falkner, West Point
7/27/2023 – Cotton: NAWF 5-8 and a few fields with late cotton that just started blooming this week. Fruit load on cotton is okay for what it has been through this season; our past rain events caused a lot of cotton to be delayed, stunted and water-logged. The last 7 days, cotton has responded well to sunshine and heat, A few areas are applying nitrogen through pivots and some ammonia sulfate is going out dry. All BG2 has been treated with a diamide insecticide. A moth flight going on now; haven’t seen this many eggs in a long time. Pulled 20 tags in a field this week and got 17 eggs. Starting to pick up plant bug nymphs in cotton and a lot of cotton being treated for adults and nymphs. Heavy rates of pix going out. We haven’t watered much cotton to date but will start early next week. I had a grower accidentally apply 3 oz/a of Callisto herbicide on a 100 block of cotton. We think it will be okay; the only thing I see, so far, on the top leaves is leaf bleaching. Time will tell.
Soybeans are R2-R5.75 growth stage. Fungicide + Dimilin out on a high percentage of beans. Insects have been very low until the last week; heavy moths of all kinds in fields now. Stink bug numbers are low as of today and disease pressure has been light. Pod set in a lot of these beans look very good; today soybeans have a lot of potential.
Corn: All corn at dent and a few fields are days away from black layer. A lot of irrigated just had its last watering. Starting to see Southern Rust; with the growth stage of corn, this is not a real concern. A lot of potential in our corn.
Peanuts are up to 85 days old. We’ve started our 2nd soil fungicide + 2 oz of Dimilin in some this week as we’re starting to see low levels of soil disease. Southern blight, limb rot in fields where 1st soil fungicide applied, starting to play out. In our area, we don’t get a lot of leaf spot until later in the season. Insects have been low; cleaning up a few weed spots.
Trey Bullock, Seminary
7/27/2023 – Cotton is from 8 – 22 nodes. Older cotton approaching cutout. Some naturally and some prematurely due to no rains. Huge egg lays last week and continuing this week. Everything seems to be holding up well with exception of a couple of fields with small boll damage exceeding my liking. Stink bugs beginning to show up in some of the oldest fields that are bolled up pretty good. Plant bugs are low overall with a few areas building up this week. Cotton crop is good overall with a few spots just not catching rains and time is running out on some of these fields. Not a lot of irrigation at all for my entire area and no rain in sight. Although this cotton crop went through a long dry period, it has its feet under it pretty good. Holding up better than I would have guessed.
Peanuts are from 60 to 95 days old and are holding up well. Picking up a little southern blight in some fields that were extremely dry but caught rain last Saturday. Insects low in peanuts. Picking up a few bollworms and VBC’s but nothing to get too excited about.
Soybeans are from pre bloom to R5.7. Several fields that are full bloom got treated for bollworms this week and some older beans have been treated for stink bugs. Primarily southern greens but some red banded in the mix. Hopefully we will get some rain in the near future. We can’t hold on too much longer without some soon.