Irwin County Extension 107 West Fourth Street Ocilla, Georgia 31774-1401

Office Phone: (229) 468-7409 E-mail: pedwards@uga.edu

Webpage: http://www.ugaextension.com/irwin

IRWIN COUNTY EXTENSION AGRICULTURE NEWS - Vol. 24 Fri. Sep 27, 2019

Phillip Edwards Irwin County Extension Coordinator In this issue: Recent, Meetings and Events, Hay and Forage Meeting, Nematode Sampling Opportunity, UGA/USDA Producer Meetings, Peanut Tips, Peanut Maturity, Cotton Defoliation and Harvest, Cotton Outlook, Pecan Leaf Scorch/Drop and Water, New Pecan Fungicide, Controlling Bermudagrass in Young Pecans Recent

This picture sums up the vast difference between rainfed peanuts and irrigated peanuts Get the Sunbelt Ag Expo 2019 App Meetings and Events Meeting/Events Date Location _________ UGA-USDA Farm Bill Education Meetings Oct 8, 2019 3-4:30 pm UGA Tifton Campus Conf. Center Tifton, GA UGA-USDA Farm Bill Education Meetings Oct 9, 2019 9-10:30 am Weir Center Douglas, GA Hay and Forage Meeting Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:00 pm Morehead Store Irwinville, GA Sunbelt Ag Expo Oct. 15-17, 2019 Spence Field Moultrie, GA GMGA Conference – Pest Cat. 24 credits (3) Oct. 19, 2019 Museum of Aviation Warner Robbins, GA 2019 GA Sod Producers Field Day Nov 6, 2019 Super Sod Perry, GA Register at:https://urbanagcouncil.com/uac-dinner-meetings/#!event/register/2019/11/5/nov-5-6-georgia-sod-producers-field-day-participant-sign-up

Hay & Forage Meeting The University of Georgia Ben Hill County Extension will be hosting a hay and forage update on October 10th at 6:00 pm at Morehead Country Store in Irwinville. UGA Forage Extension Specialist Dr. Lisa Baxter will be discussing hay quality going into the winter months and winter grazing. If you would like to attend this meeting, please call the Ben Hill County Extension office at (229)-426-5175 so the meal can be planned accordingly.

Nematode Sampling Opportunity – Free If you have fields with a known (peanut, cotton, soybean) nematode problem please keep in mind and allow us to sample it. We should be ready to sample fields that are irrigated, but the dryland will have to wait until rain – when it comes. We have to get our

soil probe down to 6 inches. We also would like to collect symptomatic roots too – we will sample all we can. The researcher is looking for the nematode Meloidogyne enterlobii in Georgia, but will also be screening the samples for root knot nematodes as well. Let me know – and thank you. Producer Meetings on WHIP, MFP, ARC/PLC

Peanut/ CottonTips Peanut: What a year it has been. Just a reminder that a peanut hull scrape maturity check will be as accurate as the sample that you take. Pull or dig up at least 5 to 6 adjacent plants from at least three representative parts of a field which can be dug in one day. Keep these samples from each area of the field separate. Pick ALL the peanuts off the plants until you get around 200 peanuts (a sample should contain between 180 and 220 peanut pods). Pick the vine clean. If it will be a while before you can bring the sample then pick off the sample and keep the peanuts in a bucket of water to keep them fresh.

* We prefer to check in the morning and that leaves the afternoon to get out in the county. * A notepad is available for you to leave a note in or under your sample for you to write your name and contact information if we are not here. We are shorthanded at the office so just leave them if we are not here and they will be checked as soon as possible – thank you. Please harvest dry corners separately. With the hot and dry conditions over the past week, inverted peanuts have been drying faster. Some have reached 8-10% moisture quicker than normal. Cotton: In fields check recently for defoliation we are seeing whiteflies. Later cotton and cotton with lots of regrowth need a closer look. Peanut Maturity - Things to Consider Monfort Maturity has been impacted by the extremely hot and dry conditions this year. Remember, two of the main factors that affect maturity are temperature and moisture. In irrigated fields where water has not been limited, the extremely warm temperatures have pushed many of our fields to be ahead of schedule. This does not mean every irrigated field is ahead. You can have the same or two different cultivars in the same maturity group planted on the same day in different fields mature at different rates due to soil type differences, rainfall variation, or pest problem differences. Thus far, I have observed Georgia-06G to be ready for digging anywhere from 130 to 145 days old. The earliness may be due to some fields having started blooming earlier than normal due to the heat units. The good thing to note in the early maturing samples is there has not been many coal black peanuts. For this reason, I have encouraged some growers to push them a little more to gain more weight and higher grade. This is only a good idea if the vines look healthy and there is minimal disease present. The non-irrigated crop has not been as straight forward. The extremely hot and dry conditions have caused havoc all over the state. A large part of the non-irrigated crop has gone through stress, at some point, whether it’s drought, insects, disease, or a combination of all. The only way to handle this type of situation is one field at a time as each field will likely be different.

Cotton Defoliation and Harvest Whitaker It’s seems like just yesterday we were planting the 2019 Georgia cotton crop, yet here at the end of September producers have already gotten started with defoliation and harvest. We typically get started at the end of September, but things are moving faster this year. Much of this is due to the challenges we’ve faced with tropical systems over the past three years. Producers have made efforts to limit our exposure to the risks associated with these storms by spreading out planting, particularly by planting more of the crop earlier in the window such that their crop isn’t entirely exposed to wind and rain damage regardless of when it occurs. Earlier plantings, along with limited rainfall and relentless heat have pushed many acres to be harvestable much earlier than usual. Overall, the entire Georgia crop is maturing earlier than I’ve seen in quite a few years. Harvest progress is ahead of schedule compared to most years, but there is a long way to go before we get the entire crop to the gin. In addition to spreading risk by widening our planting window, producers are also working to limit unnecessary risks from tropical systems by being timelier with defoliation timing and harvest. Several factors have caused cotton harvest in Georgia to typically lag behind the rest of the country. Much of it has to do with our extremely long growing season and due to the fact that Georgia has such a large peanut crop. Timely harvest is important for cotton, but critical for peanut and with only so much time in the day, producers have been forced to put peanut harvest ahead of cotton harvest. However, with the introduction of round bale cotton harvesters (which require only one person to harvest the crop compared to a crew with basket pickers) and the much earlier maturity of currently planted cotton varieties (compared to full season varieties we’ve grown in the past) we now have both the ability and need to be more timely with cotton harvest than ever before. When making decisions on defoliation and harvest timing, we ultimately are making a decision on which bolls to harvest. If you ask a producer which bolls on the plant they want to harvest the answer you will get every time is “all of them”. The issue with that answer is that all of the bolls on a plant are not ready to harvest at the same time. Cotton bolls develop over a wide window of time and it can ultimately be several weeks between the time the earliest and latest boll on the plant reach maturity. Weather during the harvest season impacts how long those earliest maturing bolls can still be harvested while waiting on later set bolls to mature. If little to no rainfall or wind occurs, we have the opportunity to wait (since cotton can remain on the boll for extended periods of time under the right circumstances), yet in most years weathering impacts the ability to successfully harvest those earlier set bolls if we wait too long for those later developing bolls to mature, thus leading to a situation where we don’t have the opportunity to harvest “all of them”. Therefore, appropriate defoliation and harvest timing decisions have to be made to ensure we harvest the most and the best bolls on the plant. Research has shown that the value of a boll varies greatly based on where it is located in the canopy and typically bolls set earlier in the year (and lower in the plant canopy) are worth two to three times more than a boll set later in the year (and in the top of the canopy). So, when making the “right” and most profitable defoliation timing decision we may often end up with unopen and subsequently unharvestable bolls in the top of the canopy. Leaving bolls in the field unharvested never makes a

producer happy, but is often the right decision when considering profitability. Although we have a long way to go, the 2019 Georgia cotton crop seems to be a decent to good one. We certainly don’t have the crop that we had before Hurricane Michael tore through the state last year or what we had in 2012, but I do expect us to produce average yields that will be among the top five or so years on record, which is quite an accomplishment given the growing season. We dodged a bullet with Hurricane Dorian and hopefully we’ll be able to harvest this year’s crop without interruption. For help with making defoliation timing decisions along with choosing the right product combination and rates contact your local UGA County Extension Agent. For more information this and other cotton topics be sure to visit the UGA Cotton Webpage and sign up to receive updates at www.ugacotton.com.

2019 Cotton Outlook Liu In 2019, Georgia’s farmers planted 1.4 million acres of cotton, which is the third-highest planted acreage for the past decade, down 30 thousand acres from 2018. The average cotton yield is forecast at 932 pounds per acre. Production is forecast at 2.7 million bales, which would be the second-highest on record. There are three major contributing factors to the increase in cotton acres in Georgia in recent years. First, the high cotton price in 2018 encourages more cotton production for 2019. Second, the declining in commodity prices due to trade tension with China makes cotton more competitive with other row crops. Third, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 authorized seed cotton as a covered commodity and eliminated generic base and thus the eligibility for payments when planting other covered commodities on farms, such as peanut, with generic base. U.S. upland cotton planted acreage is 13.5 million, down 319 thousand acres from 2018, but it is still the third-highest for the past decade. The 2019 U.S. upland cotton is forecast at 21.1 million bales, which is the highest on record since 2005, up 3.6 million bales from 2018. During the years with large production, U.S. cotton exports are expected to increase. However, exports to China as expected are down, and additional Chinese tariffs on U.S. cotton make U.S. cotton less competitive in the Chinese market. Exports are currently forecasted to be 16.5 million bales for the 2019 – 2020 crop year, which would be the second-highest on record after 2005 at 17.7 million bales. The U.S. ending stocks for the 2019 – 2020 crop year are expected to increase to 7.2 million bales, which is the highest ending stocks for the past decade. The increase in supply due to increasing production and ending stocks in the U.S. creates downward pressure on U.S. cotton prices. The world cotton production is currently forecast at 124.9 million bales, which is the highest in history. World cotton use or demand has improved in recent years but the upward trend slows down for the past two years due to the uncertainty of the global economy and trade. The current world cotton consumption is forecast at 121.7 million bales. Expanding world supplies over demand has increased the global stock-to-use ratio, which is often accompanied by a fall in global cotton prices. Several other issues make cotton profitability challenging. In Georgia, the cotton basis since the implementation of Chinese tariffs has been lower than in previous years due to the smaller shipments to China. Before the tariff on cotton was implemented, China made purchases in large quantities, and often large shipments were sent to the same destination. However, after the tariffs on cotton were implemented, the large shipments to China were replaced by smaller shipments to other importers. The change in the size of the shipments has increased transaction costs for merchants and reduced the local basis for cotton. The other issue here is that China accounts for about 40% of apparel imported by the United States, of which 30% is made of cotton. The 25% U.S. tariff on Chinese apparel makes it more expensive for U.S. consumers to buy cotton apparel, which reduces the demand for apparel. Moreover, the appreciation of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies makes our agricultural products more expensive in the export market and result in a reduction of prices. Futures prices (Dec 19) for the 2019 crop are currently at or around 61 cents per pound. The cash prices for the current calendar year of 2019 ranges from low of 54.41 to high of 74.46 cents per pound. USDA forecasts the marketing year average price for the 2019 – 2020 crop year at 58 cents per pound, compared to the 2018 – 2019 crop year average of 70.5 cents per pound.

Leaf Drop/Scorch and Water Wells We have reached the time of year when we begin to see a lot of odd things happening to the foliage of pecan trees. The long season is coming to a close and the trees are beginning to shift gears a little as some nutrients have moved from the leaves to the nuts and others will soon be going from the leaves to the roots. I have had a number of calls beginning around the middle of last week regarding some leaf scorching/dropping. There are a number of things at play here and deciphering which one you are dealing with can be tricky. In some cases the foliage is scorching at random locations on the leaflet and there is no set pattern to the scorching. In most cases this will turn out to be anthracnose. Anthracnose is a complex of minor foliar pathogens that cause leaf scorch but they infect several weeks before you see symptoms. Once you begin to see the symptoms there is nothing you can do about it. This usually

occurs when we spray a lot of Elast or Tin during the nut sizing period. While these materials are great on nut scab, they don’t do much for anthracnose. Rotating in Absolute, Amistar Top, or any Group 3 +Group 11 fungicide between Elast sprays or including a group 3 fungicide or a phosphite with Elast can help minimize your chances for infection. Sometimes, the timing just catches you if you happen to be spraying Elast when the conditions for anthracnose occur even if you are rotating.

Anthracnose Terminal Die-back

Another type of scorching that may occur is terminal die-back, caused by a fungus called Neofusicoccum. With this problem, the compound leaf will begin to scorch from the tip backward, often killing the whole compound leaf, including the midrib or leaf stem. This looks bad but rarely causes enough damage to be harmful. It infects under similar conditions as anthracnose and the same chemistry should control it but once you see it, it’s too late. Bacterial leaf scorch may appear usually on Cape Fear or Pawnee trees when they become stressed. This problem results from a bacteria that plugs up the xylem (water conducting tissue) of the plant so that the symptoms mimic that of trees suffering from drought. We are learning that the bacterium causing this disease is likely out there in almost every tree of any variety and in many species of trees out there aside from pecan. For some reason symptoms are most easily expressed in Cape Fear and Pawnee trees (and a few others). Symptom expression is usually triggered by a stress event whether that event be crop load or an emitter stopping up or some other form of stress. There is nothing you can spray for this disease. Symptoms usually go away the following year if the scorching did not get too severe and the stress problem is corrected. Pruning often helps in severe cases.

Bacterial Leaf Scorch Shading/Early leaf senescence

You may also observe leaves turning yellow and falling off, which is the most common problem I see right now. This is the result of shading and/or dry weather and may result in the loss of compound leaves or leaflets. If shading is the culprit, you will see most of the leaf yellowing and shedding occurring within the inside of the tree canopy in the shade. Nothing you can do for it if you are seeing it currently but this may be a sign you need to open up the orchard to more sunlight either through tree thinning or hedging. The dry weather we have had over the last few weeks has led to some early leaf senescence that will also look like the symptoms of shading. This will normally occur where trees are not receiving enough water. Up until about now, you should have been running

your irrigation systems at full capacity to fill the kernels if you have a crop. Most nuts I have cut since the end of last week are full of kernel at this point. This means you can cut back on the water but by no means should you cut it off. Your irrigation should still be at 50-60% of full capacity, cutting back to 40% in October and continuing to water until you are about a week away from shaking. Many Pawnee orchards are already to this point and if you plan on shaking Pawnee within the next week you should turn the water off now but don’t be surprised if you start to see some leaves drop after several days. Turning off irrigation about 5 days ahead of shaking Pawnee helps to minimize shaker damage to the bark.

New Fungicide Labeled For Pecans Wells Please bookmark/checkout the UGA Pecan Bog https://site.extension.uga.edu/pecan/ It’s too late to help us for this year, but there is a new fungicide labeled for pecans that provides a totally new chemistry for us to use in our arsenal of weapons to fight pecan scab and its performance on nut scab in UGA Plant Pathologist Dr. Tim Brenneman’s trials has been excellent. Syngenta’s Miravis Top recently received its label and will likely be a significant component of next year’s spray programs. This fungicide combines difenoconazole (a group 3) and pydiflumetofen (group 7), the latter of which is a new chemistry for pecans, which should strengthen our resistance management programs. Dr. Brenneman’s work has demonstrated very good results on nut scab with as much as 98%-100% reduction under heavy pressure situations. The best fit for the material will be in the June-August nut sizing period, used in rotation with other strong nut scab materials like Elast or Elast/Tin combinations. It is recommended to use no more than 2 sequential applications. The rate will be 13.6 oz/acre. Word is that pricing will be very competitive at somewhere around $17/acre. As with any fungicide we strongly urge growers to rotate these materials. The key to helping all our fungicides work better and longer is to continuously rotate them and not rely too heavily on any one material. Photographs below show one example of the results of Miravis Top on Wichita, one of the most highly susceptible scab varieties.

Non-sprayed Wichita pecans Wichita pecans sprayed with Miravis Top

Controlling Bermudagrass on Young Trees Sawyer Weed control is especially important during the tree’s first few years of growth. Orchards planted behind hay fields or in areas where bermudagrass is prominent may struggle with control. Bermudagrass is a very difficult perennial grass to control, and its aggressive growth can be in direct competition with young tree feeder roots getting established. Because bermudagrass spreads significantly by rhizomes, post-emergent herbicide applications are our only viable option. With bermudagrass, it’s going to take multiple applications. Keep in mind the most effective timing on perennial weeds like bermudagrass is toward the end of the season (September – October). During this time, bermudagrass is moving photosynthate to its roots to prepare for dormancy. This allows translocating herbicides to better move to the roots. Herbicides

• Fusilade (fluazifop) can be used for both bearing and non-bearing trees. We have to use crop oil with Fusilade (1 qt/A). For pecan, we can use up to three times per year. Use no more than 24 oz at a time. DO NOT use when harvestable nuts are on the ground, or if livestock graze under the trees.

• Poast (sethoxydim) can also be used for both bearing and non-bearing trees. We needs crop oil also (1 qt/A). Use no more than 2.5 pint / A for each application. Don’t harvest within 15 days of application.

• Select (clethodim) can only be used in non-bearing trees. We need a non-ionic surfactant (1 qt/100 gal of spray). • Glyphosate can be used on non-bearing and bearing trees. As long as herbicide guards are on trees and care is taken toward

wind and drift, there is no problem with glyphosate on young trees.

Young Tree Program A good bermudagrass control program will be multiple applications of these herbicides.

1. After spring green up – Use a grass herbicide alone at a high rate (such as Select). 2. Mid summer – Follow up with a strong rate of glyphosate. 3. After August 15th – Use a grass herbicide mixed with a high rate of glyphosate. End of the year applications (late

September/October) are the best on Bermuda as it is storing carbohydrates for the winter. This will do a good job to protect young trees.

Other points for bermudagrass control: • How much water per acre should we use with glypohosate? Do not use more than 20 GPA with glyphosate. We recommend

10-20 – if you go higher you dilute the effects of glyphosate. • Is surfactant needed with glyphosate? No surfactants are needed. Add an AMS (liquid or spray grade) if you have hard

water to acidify. • How high of a rate of glyphosate on young trees? There would be no issues using a high rate (2 quarts per acre) on young

trees that have irrigation. Probably more risky without irrigation to go this high.

As always for more information, contact your Irwin County Extension Office at (229) 468-7409. Thank You, Phillip Edwards Irwin County Agent

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