Monthly Archives: May 2025

Grain Sorghum IPM Update 5/25/25

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Sorghum field maturity ranges from pre-boot to post bloom milk stage. Much of the area has blooming sorghum fields. While the field blooms scout for midge every morning between 8:30 and noon.  After noon, the adult midge have completed their life cycle and die.  Use the table below to determine your economic threshold for managing midge. We began to find rice stink bugs in sorghum fields this week from Refugio to Victoria. Rice stink bugs can be very damaging to sorghum at bloom and their damage lessens at… Read More →

Cotton IPM Update 5/25/25

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Cotton maturity ranges from early bloom to pinhead square. Squaring cotton should still be monitored for cotton fleahoppers.  Once cotton begins to bloom, we tend to consider the field safe from cotton fleahopper.  The field can be considered safe if fruit retention is sufficiently high to meet its expected yield potential.  The reason I think the field is safe is cotton fleahoppers cause fruit shed to small squares, pinhead sized or smaller and the plants should have enough fruit matchhead square or older. When the crop begins to… Read More →

Field Meetings and Crop Tours

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Cotton Scouting Clinic – June 19 Time: 9 am. Location: Cotton field east of Port Lavaca on FM 1979, just SW of Sanders Rd. (Look for the Texas A&M AgriLife Truck) At this clinic we will discuss the current cotton growing conditions and the insect pests we expect to find and how to scout for them.   Crop Tours will be held in June.  The schedule will be as follows: June 11 Austwell Crop Tour, Morning tour beginning at the Austwell Community Center Bonnieview Crop Tour, Afternoon tour… Read More →

Cotton IPM – Cotton Fleahopper and Aphids

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Most of the cotton fields in the Mid-Coast are squaring and the Cotton Fleahopper is the primary insect pest of squaring cotton. Early this week, we started finding more adult fleahoppers in cotton fields.  Some of these fields had 6 to 8 adult fleahoppers in 20 plants (30-40 per 100 plants).  This is well above my treatment threshold of 10 per 100 plants. Interestingly enough, adjacent fields had much fewer cotton fleahoppers.  This difference between fields demonstrates the importance of scouting each field and making treatment decisions on… Read More →

Cotton IPM – Thrips, Aphids and Fleahoppers

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Cotton Maturity ranges from seedlings to 12-14 node squaring cotton. In some cases, these are in the same field. My cotton on the research farm in Port Lavaca has two emergence dates with older plants having 2 leaves and newly emerging plants coming up daily. I have noticed seedling disease being fairly common in some fields. Notice two of the plants in the above picture are dying. This demonstrated the importance of seed applied fungicides and variety choice. Cotton should be scouted for thrips through the 4-5 leaf… Read More →