Crop Tours

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Crop tours will be held this week and next week in Refugio, Victoria and Calhoun Counties. The schedule will be as follows: June 12 Austwell Crop Tour, Austwell Community Center starts at 7:30 am with Breakfast and Registration. Bonnieview Crop Tour, Bonnieview Community Center Registration at 3 pm with speakers and tour to follow June 18 Victoria Crop Tour: Dacosta Hall Registration at 7:30 am with tour first followed by inside program. Port Lavaca Crop Tour: Bauer Exhibit Building Registration at 2:30 pm with Speakers first followed by… Read More →

Headworms in Grain Sorghum

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Grain sorghum maturity ranges from milk to hard dough.  Sorghum fields that have not reached hard dough should be scouted for headworms and stink bugs.  And all sorghum should be scouted for sugarcane/sorghum aphids. We have not found aphids in colonies greater than 20-40 feet in size.  Most of these are being consumed by beneficial insects such as lady beetle, lacewing, and syrphid fly larvae. What was most noticeable this week was worms in younger sorghum fields.  The older sorghum in soft dough or beyond did not seem… Read More →

Cotton in Bloom and IPM

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Many of the cotton fields in South Texas are in bloom. Once cotton is blooming, we need to change our scouting methods. Plant water use is increasing rapidly and the insects that cause yield loss are changing. Now is the time to start counting Nodes Above White Flower (NAWF). This will help you know how the crop is progressing and when insects stop being an economic pest. Count NAWF by finding the first position white flower and counting the number of nodes (branches) above the branch with the… Read More →

Leafhoppers in Corn: Update

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Short story: Spraying to control leafhoppers in dent stage corn is not likely to benefit the crop. Corn Maturity: As of May 29, 2024, most of the corn in the mid-coast of Texas is at dent. The time required from early dent to maturity is 20-35 days. Insect populations: Every corn field I have visited has leafhoppers at some level. Leafhopper numbers range from less than 1 per plant to 15-20 per leaf. Plant symptoms: A minority of the corn fields show symptoms of leaf yellowing to reddening or death and <2%… Read More →

Corn Leafhoppers

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As a continuation of this year’s strange insect problems, we now have Corn Leafhoppers in some corn fields of the Mid-Coast. This insect is not uncommon but showed up in corn fields in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) a few weeks ago and is now appearing in some local corn fields in numbers great enough to cause concern. Today, May 24, I visited a Victoria County corn field and found corn leafhoppers in numbers ranging from 1 to 30 leafhoppers per leaf. Most of these insects are below… Read More →