The River continues to run close to the top of the banks this week. It has been consistently at 268 for awhile now. Looking at the river forecast it is predicted to start dropping Monday.

We still have room in the two March 30 Pesticide Applicator Trainings at the Faulkner County Extension Office located at 844 Faulkner Street in Conway. Times are at 2:30 and 5:30. Cost for the training is $20.

I can only have 9 participants per class so please call or email and register. Participants must wear a mask at all times during the meeting and they will be spaced out safely.

To register call the office at 501-329-8344 or email Mindy Beard at rbeard@uada.edu.

Below is the link to the second Arkansas Rice Update from Dr. Jarrod Hardke.

In this issue:

It is time to get our second fertilization out on wheat. Wheat is really jumping and is ready for some more nitrogen. If you are on really sandy soil and applied sulfur the first round, it wouldn't hurt to add some more, especially if you are still seeing some yellow out in the field. We have had several inches of rain since the first application and sulfur is leachable in sandier soils. If the wheat has a good dark green color, then you are probably okay to just use urea. We need to finish up with another 60 units of nitrogen. That would be 130 lbs of urea or 100 lbs of urea plus 75 lbs of ammonium sulfate.

There is a lot of ryegrass out there in our fields. Burndown of ryegrass is important because if we cultivate it, the stuff just rolls around and then after a rain greens right back up. Although ryegrass will die once we get on into the summer, it hampers growth of small grasses like rice and corn as we try to get them established in the spring. A quart of glyphosate used to do the trick on ryegrass, but we are getting more and more resistance to glyphosate. Gramoxone is a good product also, but it will take two applications to get it all. SelectMax (clethodim) is a great herbicide for ryegrass. Depending on what clethodim product you get will determine the rate you use. SelectMax is a 1 lb material and the rate is 16 ounces per acre. You can get a generic clethodim that is a 2 lb material, so that rate is 8 ounces. With these rates of clethodim there is no plantback restriction for soybeans but if you are going to plant rice, corn, grain sorghum or wheat there is a 30 day plantback.

I established a burndown demonstration this week in Lollie on the Jerry Pearson farm. Not only do I want to see which treatment works best but I would like to get an idea of our resistance to glyphosate.

Treatments include:

If you are thinking about planting grain sorghum this year, below is a chart with some recommended hybrids. The ones that are highlighted in yellow are sugarcane aphid tolerant. Tolerant does not mean resistant. Even with the tolerance in these hybrids you may have to treat for sugarcane aphid.

Below are the links to the Enlist and Paraquat Trainings. Enlist training is required every year.

It was great to get out and go to a live face to face meeting again. The Area 7 Cattleman's Conference was a big success and the ACA did a great job with the agenda. I heard that there were over 400 people that attended. I appreciate everyone that stopped by the Extension booth and said hello. Hopefully we will be able to have more of these soon.

Rezilon is the new pre-emergent herbicide that controls annual grasses in bermudagrass. It is a little pricey, but I thought it would be a good idea to at least see how well it controls these weeds. I established two demonstrations in the southern part of the county on the Jill Edwards farm the last couple of weeks. Both fields are bermudagrass hay fields, one with a barnyardgrass issue and the other one with a crabgrass problem. I will be sharing the results after we rate the plots in a few weeks.

This week the team looks at Cattle on Feed March 1.

The weekly livestock market report is available on the Arkansas Department of Agriculture website.

I would like to thank everyone that supported the Faulkner County Extension Office by contributing to us through the voluntary tax last year. I was excited and moved by how much the clients in our county supported us. Thank you so much!

As we move into 2021 I would like to again ask and encourage everyone to contribute to the voluntary tax. This tax helps us continue to provide quality educational programs to Faulkner County citizens.

PAT Training - March 30, 2021 at 2:30 and 5:30 pm at the Faulkner County Extension Office. Call 501-329-8344 to register or email Mindy Beard at rbeard@uada.edu.

Please make sure to change my email in your address book.

My new email is klawson@uada.edu.

The Extension webpage address is uaex.uada.edu.

For more updates on upcoming events and to keep up with what's going on in agriculture in Faulkner County follow me on Facebook and Twitter

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