Wheat crop results still questionable
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
Wheat fields around Marion County show a variety of degrees of recovery after the Easter weekend freeze. Some fields look excellent, many look thin, and others show quite a bit of yellowing, but almost all are producing grain heads.
Ronnie Carlson farms three miles east of Lincolnville and has more than 300 acres of wheat. He said at first the crop looked like a total failure.
One field which had been fertilized a year earlier with manure from his cattle feedyard was luxuriant and tall when the freeze hit. It took a big hit, and its future is still in doubt.
The field is thin and uneven but, on close inspection, the plants have numerous shorter tillers with heads embedded in them just waiting to burst out.
Carlson figures he has at least another two weeks to observe the stand and decide whether or not to harvest it for feed and replace it with a fall crop.
Another field has good green color with a decent stand of plants with big heads. With just a touch of rust on some leaves, the plants have lots of tillers that are in the process of heading out.
It's enough to give Carlson an optimistic outlook.
"We're not going to have a zero crop, anyway," he said.
Carlson wasn't sure which varieties the two contrasting fields were planted to, but he said he's heard that Overly has been hardest hit and Dominator the least hit.
According to Carlson, the biggest problem with having to change a field from one crop to another is its effect on a rotation program.
For instance, alfalfa usually is seeded in August. If a wheat field that was intended to be harvested in June and planted to alfalfa in August has to be planted to a fall crop, the alfalfa can't be sown.
Another problem is that a fall crop can't be sown in a worked-up wheat field until the herbicide used on the wheat wears off. The herbicide generally is applied in February and it usually takes four months before another crop can be planted, making it the middle or end of June.
Across the county diagonally from Carlson lives Lloyd Voth, a farmer who has 1,300 to 1,400 acres of wheat near Goessel. He said his fields seem to be in the heart of an area hardest hit by the early April snowstorm and freeze.
"Two weeks ago, the wheat looked really bad, but now it has shot out some heads," he said, with a touch of hope in his voice.
He said conditions vary from field to field. If a field looks like it could yield 10 or more bushels per acre, he may let it mature and run the combine over it, Otherwise, he plans to green chop it for feed and replant the field to milo.
"We'll have to make do the best we can," he said.
Phil Timken, manager of Mid — America Co-op elevator in Peabody, sees a lot of variance in wheat fields.
Timken said he heard that one insurance adjuster had estimated the yield in one field in his area at three and one-half bushels per acre. At that point, the crop is zeroed out.
He noted a lot of late tillers are heading out, but if hot, windy weather hits, they will not produce grain.
Timken expects yields in the Peabody area to vary from the teens to 30 bushels per acre.
According to Mike Thomas, manager of the Marion branch of Cooperative Grain and Supply, this year's crop has been hit with everything that could be thrown at it.
Rust and powdery mildew are evident on many plants from all the wet, cool weather, Thomas said. He noted warm, windy weather could stop the progression and allow more heads to emerge.
He said harvest could be long and drawn out, with grain heads maturing at various times.
"We'll have a crop but I don't think it is going to be very pretty."
