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Vol. 22, No. 13, August 11, 2004 |
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Vol. 22, No. 13, August 11, 2004 |
| Cotton Situation: Hurricane
Alex kicked off some heavy rains in some areas of the state, but for the
most part we didn't get a lot of rainfall. Some fall-like weather
conditions moved in behind Alex with at least one night's temperature that
dropped down into the 50’s. The SC Weekly Crop and Weather report
for the week ending August 8 indicated that the overall soil moisture ratings
were 4% very short, 18% short, 75% adequate and 3% surplus. Today
two more tropical storms appear to be headed our way-- Bonnie by way of
the Gulf and Charley through the Florida Keys.
A substantial percentage of the crop that has done about all the worthwhile boll production that it's going to do, and we are starting to see open bolls in the earliest cotton. Insect Situation: Very few bollworm or budworm moths can be found in and around cotton field this week. By the end of the week I would expect to start seeing more eggs in the young cotton, which is still blooming abundantly. Plants that have small bolls in their terminals should be just about out of the danger zone. In the mid-south, entomologists say that bolls need to accumulate 350 DD60’s to be safe from attack by bollworms. With 20 DD60’s per day, there would be 350 DD60’s accumulated in 18 days. I don't know how many of you keep up with DD60’s in your cotton fields. In more practical terms, a boll that is somewhat difficult to slice with a sharp knife would be a little tough for a bollworm to chew. A large bollworm might still bite a hole in an older boll, but when the lint is tough and stringy, the bollworm will search for a younger, tenderer fruiting form. Fall armyworms are still showing up in fields around the state. It's not a full-blown outbreak, but there have been enough to spray for in a few fields. I haven't heard any feedback on success or lack of success with insecticides, so I am assuming there haven't been any big problems with controlling falls. When it comes to boll feeding, a fall armyworm is more willing to attack an older boll than would a bollworm. I saw my first beet armyworms on pigweeds at the end of a cotton field in Darlington County on Tuesday. It's time for beets to show up, so keep an eye out for them during the next couple of weeks. These particular beets were happy with the pigweed, and I saw none feeding on cotton. Keep on the lookout for stink bugs. I don't think there has been any great influx of stink bugs into cotton fields. As I pointed out last week, soybeans are siphoning off a large part of the stink bug populations. Boll Weevil Program: I talked with Randal Lynch this morning to see if there were any problems with getting pheromone traps out. He told me they were still receiving an occasional call about a field that had not been trapped. If anyone sees such a field, please call Randal at 1-800-268-9928. There aren't any wild weevils anywhere close to us according to trapping results (western Alabama, eastern Mississippi or Tennessee may be the closest), but there is always the chance of an egg-carrying female weevil hitchhiking to South Carolina on a truck or a piece of farm equipment. If that weevil jumps off near a cotton field, we have a chance of catching her in a trap. If she goes straight to a cotton plant and starts depositing eggs, then we would hope to have traps around to catch some of the offspring, to at least alert us to an infestation. If there are no traps around that cotton field, it may be next year before the outbreak is discovered. The expense to stamp out such a boll weevil population would be great. If you can remember, the last one in South Carolina ended up costing over a million dollars. This week I noticed a few fields of Round-Up
Ready soybeans that had cotton plants growing in them. These were
fields that were planted to RR cotton the previous year. A couple
of the fields had pretty good stands of cotton in them, and the plants
were blooming and setting bolls. We have to put traps up in these
situations to avoid a potential outbreak. All you have to do is call
the 1-800 number and tell them where the fields are located.
Mitchell Roof
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