- We have a great show lined up for you today on "SUNUP."

Rain meant delays for wheat harvest, but it's good news for summer crops.

We're in the pasture to learn about creep grazing and pond advice after prolonged drought.

This week's "SUNUP" starts right now.

(upbeat music) Hello everyone and welcome to "SUNUP."

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We begin today talking about when or if to consider nutrient applications for your corn crop.

Here's "SUNUP's" Kurtis Hair with Dr. Brian Arnall.

- Well, as you can see behind me, it just keeps on raining.

And Brian, this is a lot different than last summer shaked out to be.

- Absolutely, our June had some moisture last year, but at the end of June, we shut off, and it just stayed dry.

So we got a little bit of soil moisture.

So right now, we're living the high life in some areas.

I just was talking to Josh Lofton yesterday and looking at the Mesonet map, and to see that Kenton and the panhandle has significantly more rain than Miami in the Northeast kind of tells you the season we're in right now.

- Yeah, right.

- So, yeah, the summer crops are really rolling.

You're going to hear more about that from Dr. Lofton here in a little bit.

But corn, for me, we're kind of in a slow period as far as nutrient management goes.

Corn is, for the most part, done through the main part of the state as far as a lot of our nutrient management decisions.

As you get in the panhandle, there's still some opportunity out there.

So we're at a point out in the panhandle where we're anywhere from a V10 to a tassel stage.

And so at this point for those folks out there that are doing nitrogen management or thinking about doing things, I'd be looking at that last potential application of nitrogen either through the pivot or high clearance if you need some.

Those soils out there, though, especially after last year where we didn't have a lot of the greatest yields out there, I'd be looking at my lower leaves.

If I'm going into tassel or even post-tassel and my lowest leaf is still green and gorgeous, I might lay off of that last shot and not really get too excited.

But if I go in there and I'm finding some nitrogen deficiencies, any kinda stress whatsoever on that lower leaf, I would wanna make sure I put that nitrogen on to help finish 'cause man, the weather's perfect for the corn out there.

We've had the cool days, cool nights, plenty of rain and that corn's just rolling.

- So what about soybean?

- So we look at our soybean crop around here, and it's moving along.

I've seen some photos from folks around the state looking really good.

Were really spread across as far as planting dates, though.

I mean, the rains and everything that we had to get around wheat harvest, and early, it was dry, and then it was wet.

Our staging is just all over the board.

And so what I would be watching out now, so we're past anything you're really going to do planting.

So what you watch out for now is I'd be watching very closely to mid canopy as we go from a vegetative stage into a reproductive stage looking for yellowing at the leaf mid crop.

That's a sign that you have a potassium deficiency.

And what we could be seeing in that is that we, while your soils may have enough potassium, we might have some root-limiting features this season, whether it's a compaction layer or maybe it was planted a little bit wet and we have some planter compaction where we would see that mid-season show up with yellowing.

We've shown that you have capability to recover from that potassium stress if you just go out there with some potash, some 0-0-60 and spread across the top.

But you wanna know that you have that deficiency.

So, be scouting on the regular with the soybean crop looking for that yellowing mid canopy, mid crop and it's gonna be around the outer edge of the soybean leaf.

- So wheat harvest is pretty much wrapped up in the state.

And I know maybe that's the last thing producers wanna think about as next year's crop, but right now is probably a good time to kind of assess their fields and just kind of look ahead to some things that they can do for next year's crop, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

If we look at it, the last couple years for wheat's been fun.

Let's just say it that way, right?

We've had a mixed bag of results the last couple years when it comes to wheat and we've also had a mixed bag of producers managing inputs the last couple of years.

So it's really important to go about right now or not right now, but when the fields start drying and start pulling soil samples.

We wanna make sure we know where we're at on P and K, but specifically pH.

We've got soil moisture.

If we can start getting the lime on the fields while we're in this bit of a wet cycle, that's gonna help if we get that lime on, get the moisture on there, help it get incorporated.

So by the time we're planting again in September through October, we're really got that pH better off.

That's both for conventional till and no-till.

That soil test, I said over and over again, you're gonna make more money on that $10 soil test that you're gonna do about anything else on your operation.

- All righty, thanks Brian.

Brian Arnall, OSU extension precision nutrient management specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you'd like some more information about what Brian talked about, just go to our website, sign up at OKstate.edu.

(lively music) - Hello, Wes Lee here with the Mesonet Weather Report.

- It has been a while since we had to deal with significant flooding issues, but that was definitely the case for Central Oklahoma last week.

Heavy rain seemed to trail along the same track all week long.

The seven-day rainfall map from Wednesday shows some very impressive numbers in a diagonal stripe from the panhandle to the southeast.

A good drink of rain was seen in all locations except the tip of the panhandle and the far northeastern Mesonet towers.

Four to seven inches were common in many areas with Watonga coming in over eight and a half inches.

This was more than the drainage systems could handle, and several locations dealt with temporary flooding conditions.

Spring rainfall usually starts to taper off by July, but that has not been the case so far this year.

This map shows the average rainfall over the past 15 years.

It ranges somewhere between two and five inches for this long term average.

This year, you can see many locations where July rainfall was well ahead of this pace.

In fact, some of the areas in red are more than double the amount, and this was just in the first two weeks.

This has brought our calendar year rainfall up to 100% or more of the long-term average in most areas.

The only yellow being below normal rainfall that can be found is in the northeast and far southwestern counties.

The blue areas located mainly in the panhandle are at 170% or more of normal.

Looking at the last 30 day map really puts into perspective how wet most of the state has been lately.

The blue and green areas of the map are all well above average for the past month.

This of course, has most of our soil moisture conditions in very good shape going into the hottest parts of the year.

This percent plant available water map gives us a glimpse of the moisture level in a slice of soil from the surface down to four inches.

All the green indicates area with near 100% of the soil's moisture holding capacity, looking a little deeper in the soil from the surface down to 16 inches looks very similar.

Although the still dry areas located in the northeast and the very far southwest and panhandle corners show up prominently in yellow.

Utilizing our deepest sets of soil sensors from the surface down to 32 inches, it still shows a lot of green, well saturated areas of the state.

As a whole, we are in much better shape than we were a year ago, but remember how fast a flash drought can develop when dealing with Oklahoma summer heat.

The forecast for rain next week is a little bit undetermined for now, but one thing most forecasters agree on is the heat is going to stay around for a while.

Gary will return with us next week with the latest weather updates and drought maps.

- We're joined now by Dr. Josh Lofton, our cropping system specialist and Josh on the subject of weather, we're coming outta Mesonet, the rain really a pain for a lot of wheat harvest but good news for summer crops.

- Yeah, for most of the state, we look really nice.

Our summer crops have kind of been getting more rain than you can you could really ever expect in a summer in Oklahoma, especially in July.

The last couple weeks, usually if we get one good rain in July, we are very happy.

We will, you know, for the most part a lot of the state have gotten several.

Now, the unfortunate thing is our kind of one of our bigger epicenters of summer crops up in that northeast, it hasn't got a whole lot.

They're very dry and they're seeing the effects of that, but for the bulk majority of the state, good rains, good timely rains.

They've been really nice rains for the most part, have been pretty good.

- We're out here with your research plots, two different plots.

Tell us what we're seeing.

- Yeah, so we look at corn in basically every year.

Sometimes it's our later double crop corn.

Sometimes we're looking at things in normal or earlier planted corn.

We have two different planting dates here.

We have a kind of a little bit later than we'd like to, but an April planted corn and a late June planted corn.

And at various stages we see the one that was planted in April is fully cobbed up.

We got great pollination, really good pollination for Oklahoma.

We had a couple of misses here and there but that's to be expected, but it's kind of at that milk or soft dough.

So we're developing the starch and the grain.

It's kind of heading towards that finish line.

We got several weeks till we hit that finish line but it's marching right towards it.

So all this moisture your corn's at this, if it's got a lot of moisture underneath it, we probably made this crop with the moisture that's in the ground right now.

This other one is a little bit later.

Like I said, it was late June planted.

It's got a long ways to go.

We typically won't harvest this until around Thanksgiving.

- So, we've heard from producers, they're having those double crop challenges waiting to get their wheat out so they can plant the next round.

So are you hearing some of that as well?

- Yeah, we've had some folks just pull the plug on double crop, you know, just spent a lot of time trying to get weed out.

When they got weed out maybe they got rains and just, things have been going on.

We also talked about the northeast which is also a big double crop.

- Maybe they got their wheat out, but they just haven't had the moisture to get a new crop in.

So there have been some challenges having to deal with too much rain, which is what most of the states deal with, is a good challenge to have.

It's not good that we didn't get the crop in but it's good for the the crop that we already do have in.

- What are you seeing in terms of sorghum and soybeans?

- This weather is very, very conducive to very good soybean growth.

So we've had some cooler nights, we've had cooler days, but we've had some nice heat, nice cool nights with some moisture, a lot of summer crops really like that.

As long as we can kind of stay cooler during the evenings, especially when we're filling out flowers, filling out pods, filling out ears, grain heads, what have you, it's pretty good.

When we come back to the sorghum, while the growth is pretty good, a lot of growers have been having issues with chinch bugs especially if they've gone in late or they've gone in after maybe a failed wheat crop, maybe they hayed the wheat crop, or maybe the wheat crop just wasn't very good.

If you do have some issues, call your local county extension, we can get maybe something put out in the field but it's something we're trying to look at right now.

- You mentioned forage sorghum, last year we saw some pretty serious nitrate issues.

What's the situation this year?

- Sorghums inherently have an issue with accumulating nitrates, so it's something that if you have forage sorghum, you have anything in that sorghum family it needs to be tested every single year.

But I would cautionarily say that it potentially would be a bigger issue last year than it will this year, but we got a lot of the summer still yet to go.

Go to your county extension, there's some protocols to go about to sample it, sample it, send it into the lab, get it tested.

It's a lot cheaper than having to deal with some sick or maybe some dead animals.

So something that we always have to look out for here in Oklahoma.

- Okay, great, thanks a lot Josh.

If you're going to the county extension office, please take cash or a check to pay for those tests.

We have a link to your local extension office at sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) - Well, the USDA recently released the latest WASDE report as well as the wheat production report.

So Kim, what did those reports show?

- Well, let's concentrate on the WASDE right now.

I didn't have a pre-release estimate for world production, it came in at 29.3 billion bushels, last year it was 29.4, so slightly lower production.

Last month it had it slightly higher than that at a record, so less wheat worldwide than projected last year.

You look at US wheat production, 1,683 billion bushels, that was the estimate, came in at 1,739 billion bushels, so well above trade expectations and above last year's 1.65 billion bushels.

Hard red winter wheat came in at, the expectations prior to the release was 532 million, came in at 577, that got the market excited right there.

Last year it was 531 and average is 806.

So still relatively low production.

Hard red spring wheat, 441 million, last year was 446, the average is 454.

So spring right where you'd expect it to be.

Now look at ending stocks, world ending stocks, 9,000,000,770, or 780 million bushels right in there, right near last year's level.

And if you'll look at the average out there of world ending stock, so relatively level, still below that 10.3 billion bushel average.

US, slightly lower ending stocks for this next year, even with that increased production, 570 million around there, compared to like 590 last year, 588 and over 850 for that five year average.

Hard red winter wheat, ending stocks at 277,000,270 last year.

So really not much changed from last year, and well below that five year average of 481.

So we had above expectations for wheat production but still relatively low production and ending stocks.

- So what impact will all of this have on prices?

- Well, I think we had a knee jerk act reaction right after the report came out.

It went from slightly up to about 18/20 cents down the price.

Oklahoma, up in northern Oklahoma around 7.40, 10 cents higher out in the panhandle, 30 cents lower down in southern Oklahoma.

If you're looking at forward contracting for a 24 crop, right around $7 is what price is.

But the knee jerk reaction was 20 cents down, but if you look at those numbers, I think that we're probably in the area where we should be but we'll have to wait and see what happens.

- So a few months ago you were predicting, Oklahoma production was gonna be around 74 million bushels.

What did that number actually turn out to be?

- Well, if you look at what happened when I was at 74, the trade came out at 48, of course that 74 was back in March.

When the trade started making their estimates in early May, they were in 48 to 54 million, USDA last month for Oklahoma was at 54 million.

- It came in at 70.2 and I go, "Yes!"

(interviewer laughing) That's all luck.

I mean, you really don't know what you've got until you cross the scales with it.

But 70.2 million for Oklahoma for this year compared to 68.6 last year is still well below that 95 million bushel average.

- All righty, thanks Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, the grain marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(bluegrass music) - Good morning Oklahoma and welcome to, "Cow-Calf Corner."

I'm Mark Johnson and this week's topic is creep grazing, the 2023 version.

And this follows up a topic we covered about a month ago, and that was creep feeding.

We said that in commercial cow-calf production, very seldom is the practice of creep feeding a grain-based diet, somewhere in a ballpark of 14% crude protein.

Very seldom is that cost-effective.

It's cost-effective only at the times that feed is really inexpensive and the value of cattle is really high.

And we know we're to point in time right now, where about half that equation is true.

We anticipate the value of wean calves out of spring calving herds that we're selling this fall to be really high.

But we know we're dealing with relatively high, historically speaking, cost of feeds.

And so a potential and very viable alternative to that this summer could be creep grazing.

I know a lot of Oklahoma is still in some degree of drought.

The last few weeks have been promising.

We continue to get scattered thunderstorms across the state.

So what is this concept of creep grazing?

What do we mean by this?

Basically, we take a certain amount of pasture.

Maybe something we've over seeded, maybe it's our improved grasses, something like Bermuda that we have fertilized with a little extra, and we know we're gonna be producing a higher quality grass off of it.

Something with more protein, something that is more easily digestible, and something that's gonna fit the diet of a young growing calf very well.

We actually don't go to the expense of buying a creep feeder.

We may not even have to have that creep gate.

We can do some of this with hot wire fence that is built at a certain height that permits baby calves or growing calves to pass under, but is gonna keep our mature cow herd off those sections of pasture.

The point being to give access to those young growing calves a higher quality growing forage that's gonna potentially spike growth in them, lead to some added weaning weight without the cost, some of the headaches and labor that we typically associate with creep feeding a grain-based diet.

So creep grazing can lead to some of the same benefits as far as additional weaning weight, potentially takes out some of those disadvantages.

Our calves aren't as likely to get extra fleshy on eating a forage-based diet of a little better quality as they would be on a grain-based diet.

And so consider creep grazing if it fits your operation, your management plan.

It can be done on a more cost-effective basis.

Again, the key is some set aside pasture of a higher quality forage that's gonna be particularly palatable to young growing calves.

Hope this helps, and appreciate you joining us this week on, "Cow-Calf Corner."

- [Narrator] Wheat harvest is just about wrapped up.

According to the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, about 93% of fields are now cut.

There are still a few areas in the panhandle and in the north central part of the state left, but given the frequent and, at times, very heavy rains over the past few weeks, there are reports that more crop abandonment is likely.

When it's not raining, high humidity is also a major factor.

For more harvest report information, you can find a link to the Oklahoma Wheat Commission on our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

(gentle music) - Today I thought I'd share a few tips for proper cleaning and handling of produce.

There are many different places where fruits and vegetables can become contaminated.

Produce can come in contact with germs or harmful contaminants in the field, when harvested, when processed, at the grocery store, or even in our homes.

Therefore, proper handling and cleaning of fruits and vegetables is necessary to help prevent foodborne illness.

However, produce should not be washed until it's ready to be cooked or eaten because immediately washing it and then storing it away for several days makes it more likely that the food will get moldy.

Additionally, the longer produce sits after washing, the greater the potential for it to become recontaminated.

The following seven recommendations for cleaning fruits and vegetables come from the Food and Drug Administration.

One, wash your hands for 20 seconds with warm water and soap before and after preparing fresh produce.

Two, if damage or bruising occurs before eating or handling cut away the damaged or bruised areas before preparing or eating.

Three, rinse produce before you peel it so dirt and bacteria aren't transferred from the knife onto the fruit or vegetable.

Four.

- Gently rub produce while holding under plain running water.

There's no need to use soap or a produce wash. Five, use a clean vegetable brush to scrub firm produce such as melons and cucumbers.

Six, dry produce with a clean cloth or paper towel to further reduce bacteria that may be present.

Seven, remove the outermost leaves of a head of lettuce or cabbage.

In addition to these recommendations, here are a couple of additional tips to remember.

Keep fruits and vegetables separate from raw meat, poultry, and seafood when shopping and at home.

Also refrigerate fruits and vegetables at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or less, within two hours of cutting, peeling, or cooking.

Also, if you're soaking your fruits or vegetables, remember you still need to rinse.

So just a little bit of info about proper produce handling.

For more information, please visit sunup.okstate.edu, or food.OKstate.edu.

- [Narrator] And just a quick reminder about the upcoming 2023 Women in Ag Conference.

This event will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn and Conference Center in Edmond on August 2nd through the third.

The Women in Ag Conference is a great opportunity to learn about risk management education in the areas of production, marketing, and human risks inherent to women-owned operations.

Early registration is $65.

And if you'd like to learn more about this event, just head on over to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

(chill country music) - Over the past 12 months or so, many pond owners have experienced drought conditions in their ponds, and with those conditions come lots of worries.

Worries about running out of water or your water quality degrading.

And this is especially a concern for our livestock producers.

Well, thankfully, ponds have refilled for the most part, and people are kind of forgetting about all those worries.

But you need to understand that it's normal after a major drought and a refill for ponds to experience an excessive amount of algae growth and/or aquatic plant growth.

So don't be blindsided by that.

Typically, the best thing to do is just try to wait it out.

If you wait until the the next year, things are probably going to come back into balance.

But if they don't, then by all means, get together with your county extension agriculture educator to see what they might think about the feasibility of some control measures such as an herbicide, or a dye, or something along that line.

And while you're reflecting on how bad the drought was, it might be time to consider taking some steps to head off those worries during upcoming droughts.

You might consider the possibility and the feasibility of doing things like deepening your pond, and/or in a few cases, maybe building a new pond that add some extra storage volume.

But you need to be aware that it doesn't always work out for the best.

When you're deepening a pond, sometimes you end up breaking the pond seal when you encounter layers of rock, or sand, or gravel.

So you don't want that to happen.

And there are a few cases where people have deepened pond basins and got all this great new storage volume, but then discovered that their watershed was not really large enough to generate the runoff to keep that extra storage volume filled.

So by all means, please get together with your natural Resource Conservation Service folks and get their expert onsite opinion, their assessment, to see what may or may not be feasible in your situation.

Don't just plunge blindly ahead with such plans.

Droughts are a fact of life for pond owners.

But the more you know about them, the less likely you are to face unpleasant surprises.

(chill country music) - That'll do it for our show this week.

Remember, you can see "SUNUP" anytime at sunup.okstate.edu.

And also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lindel Stout.

Have a great week, everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at SUNUP.

(guitar strums brightly)