(calm guitar chord plays) (upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup, I'm Lyndall Stout.

It really is a tale of two Oklahomas right now, with I-44 as the dividing line.

To the east, plenty of rain, even flooding in some areas, and to the west.

the extended drought.

With drought in mind, the question arises, how can producers best manage their pastures as that drought lingers and the growing season really kicks in?

For some answers, here's Sunup's Kurtis Hair with Dr. Brian Arnall.

- Well, it's hard to believe it's already that time to start thinking about summer forage and pasture, but before we get into that, Brian, you know, what's the soil fertility like, you know, in regards to the wheat crop?

- Yeah, so we're kind of at two stages in the state, we have the eastern half that's had a lot of really good rain, and really pushing well, and all of our western half is really starting to show drought stress.

The thing that's crossed both of 'em is nitrogen stress, a lot of people back east have had a hard time getting over their fields, getting the nitrogen on, they've able to run last week or so, out west, people just pulled back and said, you know what, I don't have the soil moisture, I don't really want to invest in this crop.

You know, and waiting, really can't blame those for waiting and not wanting to put the investment in, as we're seeing, basically, the crop zeroing out from the the north going south.

I would say this though, I don't blame it at all for not investing in nitrogen right now, in the western half, where it's just rain and dry.

However, depending on what they wanna do in the long run, it is an option, if we get rain in the next week or two, and we see a flush and get a good rain, is to put some nitrogen on that crop, and we can still get some.

So I've always said, get your nitrogen on around Holliston, well, we're past Holliston, we're past that point, but nitrogen after that point isn't a no-go, right?

We can get a yield response to both biomass and grain up to flag leaf when we are deficient.

And so, it's one of those things, if you get moisture, and you wanna try to put a little on and get a little biomass for hay, or get a little bit more grain, we have some time, we're just hoping, we just need that rainfall.

- And for producers who aren't gonna be able to, you know, make a grain crop, that nitrogen's really important if they do want to, you know, cut it and sell it for hay.

- Yeah, so right now a lot of that crop is yellow, it's yellow stress, yellow for nitrogen, so if we start getting soil moisture, I would not be afraid of putting a little bit of nitrogen on, 30 to 50 pounds, to boost some of the protein in that hay crop to get a little bit of green growing, and you'll reflush some green, you'll put on secondary and tertiary, or third-part tillers, you'll get a late tillering flush, and you can get some more stuff going.

- Yeah, hope for rain that's, you know, been the thing for Sunup, you know, these past few months.

You know, shifting forward, you've been getting some calls and questions from producers about pasture management, as we are heading into the summer, you know, last year it was kind of the same situation with drought, what are you hearing' - Right now, my push for, especially for the western part of the state, soil sample, get your P and K down now, because even if it doesn't rain much, we can get that P and K in there, and we can help manage the stands that we have, bermudagrass, native or whatever.

And on the nitrogen, just get 30 to 50 pounds down, unless your soil test shows that it's really high, and then you just get your phosphorus and your potassium into the soil.

Shift that to eastern Oklahoma, we've got flooding down in southeast, we've got a lot of rains up in the northeast, it's still not too late for P and K, but this, when we have soil moisture, we have a full profile now, we need to be thinking about how can we push this system and make good hay to help rebuild our stocks.

That means we need our nitrogen out for spring green-up, we're going to have growth, we need to be thinking about two or three passes, so let's fertilize, let's get a good early cutting of high quality and fertilize again.

If we stay rainy in the eastern part of the state, that means we're gonna leach a lot, so if we put all of our nitrogen down now, it won't be here for the later cuttings.

- You know, you mentioned soil tests and our OSU extension ag educators in those counties can assist with that.

- Absolutely, so they have the soil probes, they have everything you need to go take that soil sample.

And I've been saying this, if we think about it, I've looked at soil testing before, fertilizing pasture and fields without soil testing versus a soil sample, you know, I can save a common producer somewhere, or make 'em somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 with a good soil test, and that soil test costs $10, and if you do it really, really well, it might take you an hour for that field, most people don't take that long, but it'd take you an hour.

So I ask a lot of folks, how many things on your ranch and your farm can you make five to $10,000 an hour of investment?

And so, that soil test is so critical, and right now our crops are stressed, last year, they're gonna stress this year, we really need to focus on foster some potassium management in those forage systems to make sure we can maintain those stands.

OSU Extension also has this really nice pasture fertility handbook, each of the species that we grow in Oklahoma have its own two pages, so you can either get the entire book or two pages at a time, print it off for just bermudagrass, or just fescue.

- All righty, thanks Brian.

(upbeat music) Brian Arnall, OSU Extension Soil Nutrient Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And for a link to that handbook, go to our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

- Welcome to the "Mesonet Weather Report".

I'm Wes Lee.

Oklahoma, where the winds come sweeping down the plains is not just a song, but a reality this month.

Winds have been excessive lately, including Tuesday of last week where wind gust reached into the forties and fifties in the west.

As bad as this was, it was nowhere near the winds experienced on the last day of March, which saw wind gusts mostly in the fifties and sixties.

Garfield County clocked the highest winds at 77 miles per hour.

Remember that winds get rated as severe whenever they exceed 58 miles per hour.

Wildfires have been common lately due to winds along with exceptionally low humidity levels.

One year ago, Mesonet recorded the windiest month in its nearly 30 year history with many sites averaging three, four, or more miles per hour above the long-term average.

Well, April, 2023 has started off even windier.

The red line on this graph was the smooth maximum winds from last year.

This year is shown by the black line, and the blue line is the long term average.

I'm showing smooth data that shows trends instead of individual days.

One huge negative to all this wind, especially in the West, is the increase in evapotranspiration, shown here to be near a half an inch on Tuesday.

Now here's Gary with more on the western drought.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, I wish I had better news on the drought situation across the Northwestern half of the state.

I don't.

So let's just get right to the new map and see where we're at.

Well, where we're at is just in bad shape across that Northwestern half of the state.

Again, to the North and West of just about I44, Southwest Oklahoma up through North Central Oklahoma.

Just bad drought everywhere.

We do have a new area of exceptional drought, that's the worst drought one on the category, in far Southwestern Oklahoma in Harmon County.

So that's an area to keep watching if they don't get rainfall soon.

And then we have an expansion of that exceptional drought up into parts of Northwestern and North Central Oklahoma.

Really running outta ways to say just how dry it is, so here's another attempt.

The consecutive days with less than a quarter inch rainfall map from Oklahoma Mesonet.

Well, I mean, we're up to just about 40 days across the state generally, but up there in the panhandle we go from 113 days to as many as 218 days.

So that date's all the way back to August 30th, 2022.

And that's a long time ago, believe it or not.

So, just desperately need rain in that part of the state.

Well, some of the impacts from this lack of rainfall, we look at the Relative Greenness map from the OK Fire Program at the Oklahoma Mesonet, we see generally a good greenness down across the southeastern quarter of the state, the eastern third of the state.

Then we see the Oklahoma wheat crop is greening up quite nicely from Southwest Oklahoma up through North Central Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Wheat Belt shows up pretty good on this map.

But then we see that Northwestern quarter of the state, and also parts of Central up through Northeast Oklahoma up into Osage County, those are areas where it's just desperately non-green.

We do need rainfall in these areas to green up to prevent some of those wildfire problems.

Finally, the USDA's Topsoil Moisture Percent Short to Very Short map.

We see Oklahoma at 63% short to very short.

That's up 4% from last week.

And we are right in line with the rest of the Southern Plains in New Mexico from 65% to 75% or so.

So, not good news impacts from our drought situation.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the "Mesonet Weather Report".

(twangy upbeat music) (twangy upbeat music) - We're joined now by Dr. Amanda Silva, our Extension Small Grain Specialist, with a wheat update.

Amanda, give us an idea of what you're seeing around the state, and what producers are telling you.

- Sure.

As we start this new plotter season, I met with some of our county extension educators and area agronomists around the state.

And the overall report of the wheat status is the lack of water.

So it's been critical for our wheat, no question about it.

Wheats behind in growth, shorter than stature in some places.

And in some places where the wheat was actually looking good, it may start already going backwards due to the lack of moisture.

And as the wheat grows, more water it's gonna need.

So it's really critical.

- We've talked so much about drought, and really the differences of how it's impacting the crop depend on where you are in basically the western half of the state, right?

- Yes.

It's so unfortunate how the western part of our state have missed all the rain.

I talked to Dr. Britt Hicks, our County Extension Educator at Texas County, and our co-operator there, Harold, we may not have a crop there at Hooker this year.

So, fortunate in Balko area, that Beaver County, it seems like our wheat's still kind of hanging up there.

- Southwest Oklahoma, we have areas also like Harmon County, that we are hearing that some fields were already abandoned.

But also we have some parts of the area that wheat looks good, but it needs rain.

So talking with Gary Strickland, our southwest area agronomist, he's seeing some fields already starting to turn blue.

So it's really getting to that point that it's being critical.

- In looking at all these areas, did planting dates, or the different varieties, make any difference at all in what we're seeing now?

- Yes, actually.

In some of the areas, like southwest, western Oklahoma, our county extension educators reported that the late-planted wheat looks better than the optimal-planted wheat.

We also have to remember that a lot of our wheat went in later, without adequate moisture.

And so we had a lot of wheat in the state that was planted later than the desired time.

Or it was planted in time, but the effective planting date maybe was a month, or even more, after the the actual planting date, just due to the lack of moisture.

- Are you seeing any other freeze damage?

- Actually, we are not seeing much of a freeze damage, other than leaf burn, so more of that cosmetic damage.

So Josh Bushong has been scouting fields in the north central Oklahoma, northwest, splitting up stems, and we are not really seeing much of a head damage.

So most of the damage that we are seeing, it's cosmetic, so not a big of a concern now, but we'll keep scouting, and keep looking for it.

- This time of year it's always neat to see the signs going up around the state for your variety trials.

Let's talk about plot tours and field days coming up.

- Yeah, so our senior agriculturalist Tyler Lynch has been around the state putting up the signs, so I'm sure many of the producers have seen him around.

And we are very excited about this new plot tour season.

So our signs are being installed in our experiments.

And a schedule is already finalized, and is posted on our website.

And I encourage everyone to go take a look, and I look forward to seeing everyone out there.

- Great.

It's gonna be a busy time from now till harvest, for sure.

Well Amanda, thanks a lot for the update, and we'll see you again in a few weeks.

And for a link to the field day and plot tour schedule, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

(light upbeat music) Dr. Kim Anderson, our crop marketing specialist, joins us now.

Kim, let's kick things off looking at what the harvest delivered prices are looking like.

- Well, if you look at wheat, somewhere around $8, 7.19 to 8.10.

If you go to southern Oklahoma, it's around $7.70, 30 cents less.

Panhandle, about the same as north central Oklahoma.

If you go to corn, $5.40, and get you pretty close to what the forward contract is.

If you go to the panhandle area, it's another 70 cents.

Soybeans around 12.30.

Cotton, if you look at the cash, what it's tellin' you about cash to harvest for cotton, around 79 cents.

The board's around 81, 82, and for canola, probably around $6.90.

- What are some of the driving forces in the market, then?

- Well, you gotta look at what's goin' on in the Black Sea, especially Russia.

If you look at the exports for wheat, 21% of all wheat exported around the world, is Russia.

Ukraine's around 6% now, Kazakhstan around 5%.

That means almost a third of all exported wheat's comin' through the Black Sea area.

And right now, Russia is just simply unpredictable.

You know, two national grain farms pulled outta Russia.

They're no longer gonna export Russian wheat.

But the market says that gives Putin more power about controlling the wheat market, because he's got controllin' more wheat.

Other factor is weather.

You always gotta look to the weather.

We got to look at the 90-day forecast.

You're lookin' for above average temperature, and about average to below average precipitation.

Not good for wheat yields, especially in the hard red winter wheat area.

- For sure.

And we just talked with Dr. Amanda Silva, getting an update on what's going on around Oklahoma.

What are you also seeing and hearing in terms of crop condition?

- Well, the USDA released the first crop condition report for 2023.

You look at winter wheat, it's the worst it's been since 1996.

The good to excellent's 28%.

Last year it was 30%.

November is 34%.

You remember, it was relatively bad last year.

If you look at poor to very poor, 36%, same as last year.

26% in November, so it's gotten worse.

But Kansas and Oklahoma, in your hard red winter wheat area, crop conditions are worse than your, say, soft red winter wheat.

- And on the market about 67% of your winter wheat's hard red and about 20-25 is soft reds and in Kansas, 16% good to excellent, 57% poor to very poor.

Oklahoma, 26 and 40, so we... Our crop conditions are worse than last year.

And you remember last year Oklahoma only harvested 73 million bushels.

- With that in mind, what kind of advice do you have for growers?

- Right now growers can't do anything.

Now they can watch for army worms, they can watch for diseases.

They gotta manage and protect what yield they can get outta this market.

From a price standpoint, given what's going on in the Black Sea area, I think it's just a wait and see situation.

Prices, I think there's more upside potential than downside risk.

I think Putin's gonna do what he can to maintain relatively high prices so that he can get more money coming into his economy, which he needs.

I think it's just time to sit on the sidelines and watch what's going on.

- All right Kim, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week.

(bright music) - Good morning, Oklahoma.

I'm Mark Johnson, and thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner.

This week's topic is fertilizer at half price.

Now in a time of drought and inflation and higher input cost in production agriculture than we maybe ever seen before, it was a pleasant surprise last week when I checked the cost of urea fertilizer and found out that it was about 43% of what it was a year ago right now.

Now we're still talking about prices at $450 to $500 a ton, but as compared to where we were last spring, this looks a lot more feasible.

Why are we talking about this?

Well, following up on last week's topic we know that if we've got improved grass pastures something like Bermuda grass, plains blue-stem, in order to maximize the productivity of those long term to keep everything healthy, soil, plants, tonnage of beef that comes off that pastureland per acre, those type of improved grasses require nitrogen fertilizer for the sake of maximum productivity.

So we've got a linear relationship between the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that gets applied to the production of Bermuda grass.

We've got the same kind of relationship to a lesser degree as we think about plains blue-stem.

And so while times have been tough, I encourage producers to evaluate how much forage you're gonna need this year.

Take inventory of your cows, whatever calves or different ages of cattle you're gonna be grazing.

Think about the amount of forage that you need to produce, study those tables that relate nitrogen fertilizer application to the amount of tonnage or forage dry matter we're gonna produce from improved grasses and take that into account now.

Again as we discussed last week, my belief is this spring it's gonna be important to get that nitrogen fertilizer down early or at the right time.

If we're thinking about Bermuda grass stands, it may have a little cool season grass mixed in with them.

It's gonna take an extra level of management on those to make sure we get our nitrogen down at the right time to optimize the growth of that Bermuda grass.

But we're gonna have to apply that fertilizer in order to produce the tonnage of forage that we need.

We've gotta do this for the sake of desirable plant species.

If we under fertilize or cut back on fertilizer this year, the repercussions are less desirable plants growing, probably more undesirables, things like weeds creeping into our stand, brown bare soil without any grass cover.

So the importance of fertilizer is critical.

Also take into account we're addressing nitrogen fertilizer, but take a look at your phosphorus and potassium levels through a soil test.

We're gonna need to mix those into fertilizer applications as well, if our soil test needs it...

If our soil test indicates that we need to do so, that's also gonna be critical to maximizing the productivity of those improved grass pastures.

I hope this helps, and as always, thanks for being with us.

(bright music) - [Announcer] With the recent wildfires and the Oklahoma storm season officially here, we wanna remind you of our emergency and disaster preparedness page on our OSU Extension website.

Here you can find tips and tricks to help better prepare your land, crops, and livestock, and your family in case an emergency ever comes to your door.

Whether it's tornadoes, drought, flooding, or wildfires, being prepared can make all the difference.

We also have materials for natural disaster recovery for those affected by these events.

To get you and your family prepared and ready just visit our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

- Finally, today we meet another champion of OSU agriculture, Dr. Carl Whitcomb.

Video Production Manager, Craig Woods put together this story.

(bright music) When Carl Whitcomb started experimenting at the OSU Ag Research Station just West of campus, he didn't have much to work with.

- When I arrived here in August of '72, there was a...

The old barn that still exists with a leaky roof.

There was no water, there was no bathroom, there was...

It was just... Had no electrical power even.

- And so, we had to build upon that.

- [Narrator] Growing up on a farm in Southeast Kansas, he learned two skills, how to grow plants and build things.

- As a kid growing up on a farm, you know, we'd get a Sears catalog in the mail.

I didn't have those toys.

I built toys that looked just like that.

- [Narrator] Carl received his bachelor's degree at Kansas State and graduate degrees from Iowa State.

Together with the station superintendent, Charlie Gray, Dr. Whitcomb began experimenting with propagating plants.

- In teaching classes, I would have the students meet out at that old research lab and we would conduct experiments.

So they learned about scientific methods and all these techniques and so forth as part of the lab, but it also helped me with the research side of things.

- [Narrator] Randy Davis, president and CEO of Greenleaf Nurseries, was one of his students.

- When I first graduated from college, you know, I didn't really realize all the things that I learned when I was at Oklahoma State University or even absorbed all the things that I absorbed while I was there, like some of these things that he taught us.

But as I got a little bit older and a little bit wiser, then I started to realize, "Oh, man.

You know, that was really good stuff that he was showing us and teaching us."

And that's really, what I go back to is him pushing that envelope is really what has helped me be successful, and helped other people be successful, and it's helped this company be successful.

- Dr. Whitcomb, when he was on the faculty, really was an innovator.

And that aspect of his nature really has carried through out his career.

- [Narrator] Dr. Whitcomb left the department in 1985 to start his own company, Lacebark Incorporated.

In the 40 years since, his research has led to several new species of plants, 44 US patents, and more than 30 trademarks.

He's also published papers in several hundred journal and technical publications and received numerous industry awards.

- Carl was kind of a pioneer in that he started developing new plants kind of before it was the thing to do in our industry.

And so we grew a lot of his plants and helped get them out into the marketplace.

- [Narrator] Among his proudest accomplishments are a micronutrient fertilizer and a pot that keeps plants from being root bound.

But homeowners and landscape professionals will recognize his name from his plant collection.

- This is part of 65 acres that I call my fun location.

- [Narrator] His crape myrtles, in particular, can be found worldwide.

Patented nearly 20 years ago, Double Dynamite was the first true red crape myrtle.

Something many said was impossible.

- I saw that challenge of that there'll never be a red flowered crape myrtle as being, "I think I can beat that."

It took me nine years.

But Dynamite crape myrtle is known worldwide.

- [Narrator] The old barn where it all began still stands, now with power and water, and is a few steps away from the Botanic Garden.

Dr. Whitcomb's creations have come full circle.

- He's been very supportive of what's going on at OSU even today with his support for scholarships, student scholarships, he's made some significant investments at the Botanic Garden to help make sure that we have the facilities that we need to keep it strong.

And he's also just been a great resource for ideas.

- Celebrating Carl Whitcomb, 2022 Champion for OSU Agriculture.

(cheerful music) - To learn more about Dr. Whitcomb and the other honorees, just go to sunup.okstate.edu.

And that'll do it for our show this week.

We'll see you next week at SUNUP.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music ends) (calm guitar thrumming)