- Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Oklahoma's Wheat Harvest is really inching along at this point with continued heavy rains and muggy conditions in the fields.

So how is that affecting harvest and how is it affecting the overall quality of the crop for a discussion this morning?

Here's Sunups Kurtis Hair with our OSU extension small grain specialist, Dr. Amanda Silva.

- Well, the sun is shining right now and it's quite muggy, but Amanda, I'm pretty sure a lot of fields are kind of looking a like this for a lot of producers, huh?

- Yes, we, we had a, we had some fields that were lost due to flooding.

We've, we've been getting a lot of rain since April, and even back in May, we could see already planes becoming white just because the soil was already getting too saturated.

And yes, we see many situations like we're seeing here today, some fields that got drowned out.

And it's, it's a situation this year for, for our crop.

If we are, remember in May, we are still during the grain filling period.

So as we drive, we drove through those fields, we would see plants becoming white, entire plant becoming white.

And so that is the point that we could see, okay, here we are having issues with plains already dry, already having issues with flooding.

So those soils were already getting too saturated.

Now we are at a physiological maturity, so the whole plant is already dry, you can see that.

And so the, the, the moisture conditions in the, in the grounds is just preventing us from cutting that wheat.

As far as total harvest progress in the state Oklahoma Wheat Commission report and the USDA, they've reported about 30% of the wheat has been harvested.

We are cutting wheat anywhere from southern Oklahoma to the panhandle.

So we just heard reports that the dry land panhandle is also, they've started, except for Northeast, just not yet.

The, the ground is wet, but as soon as the ground is dry, they are gonna start.

So in most cases, the wheat's ready.

So producers are just waiting for the ground conditions to, to improve so they can, they can cut wheat.

- With all this rain, is it affecting test weights at all?

- So overall test weight has been holding up well in the state.

We've seen some drops in some locations, maybe the southern part of the state, 58 and a half, 59 pounds per bushel.

But as you move to central Oklahoma, we are still on that range of 60, 60 plus pounds per bushel.

So I would say it's still holding up well.

So one of the issues right now, the humidity is really high in, we've cut some fields that are 14, 15%.

It's not the ideal, especially for test weight.

We could hurt test weight if moisture in the grain is really high.

And, and it could be, it could be some situations in some cases.

But the ideal thing is the ground is gonna dry out.

The, the moisture's gonna lower a little bit and we, we won't have issues with test weight.

- So with all this rain, you know, keeping producers out of the fields, is, is there any concerns about sprout?

I'm sure there are concerns, but are you seeing any sprouting yet?

- Yes, there are concerns.

So we, I really haven't heard of any issues with sprouting, at least not yet.

It is a concern every year when we have situations like this that the wheat's ready, but the ground's not ready.

And if we get days that are really, that are warm but cloudy, we could have issues with the seed germinating while it was still in the head.

So that is the sprouting and it could affect quality.

But again, I have not heard of any reports yet.

And I would love to know if any producers seeing that in their field, - You know, shifting away from harvest, it's an always an exciting time for you and for producers in the state because your data set for the wheat variety trials is available, right?

- Yes, it's a, it's an exciting time for the program because everything we've done during the growing season, it's now it's the time that we can really learn more about the varieties that we are testing in the program, about the management practices that we are comparing in the program.

And every time.

So we'll cut the plots we've been having to adjust test weight, but we post the results as soon as possible on the wheat website.

- Well, thanks, Amanda.

We hope things dry out and producers are able to get the wheat in the bin.

- Thank you.

- All righty.

Dr. Amanda Silva, OSU extension, small grain specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

And if you would like a link to Amanda's dataset, just go to our website, sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Hello, welcome to the Market Monitor.

I'm John Michael Riley, OSU Ag Economist.

A lot of stuff going on in the markets these days.

We'll start with our, our progress and condition of crops here in Oklahoma and across the US.

A lot of information to unpack from the past couple of weeks.

We'll start with crop, crop condition and crop progress here in Oklahoma and across the US, obviously in Oklahoma getting quite a bit of rain, that's been the norm of, of the last few months and that's really had some impacts on our crops in Oklahoma, we're, we're at 30% harvested with our wheat crop.

That's well behind schedule.

Typically, we're at 46% at this time of the, of the season.

So a, a big reduction in overall harvest progress in Oklahoma nationally, 10% harvested versus a 16% average.

A lot of that reduction is coming from here in Oklahoma and our neighboring states in Missouri and Kansas.

So our us and our neighbors are really in being impacted by all of the, all of the rain and the weather, just kind of asking around and getting some information on how that's impacting yields and, and and our, our ability to be in the field.

Obviously slowing down and everything was looking pretty good until recently.

But I think some of these more, more recent rains has started to have a little bit of an impact on our overall yield, looking at possibly a two or three bushel per acre reduction.

As of this past weekend, the condition of the crop still looks pretty good.

65% of the crop is good to excellent.

That's actually been increasing relative to the past few weeks.

So even in spite of all the rain we're, the crop is still looking, looking pretty good from a condition standpoint.

But again, these recent rains may be having a slight reduction in our overall yield.

Switching over to our summer crops, the corn crop is 96% planted in, in Oklahoma.

That's about on on par with where we typically are at this time of year.

Across the US though, almost all of the corn is, is, has been planted.

82% of our corn crop is emerged here in Oklahoma, 94% nationally.

So overall the corn, the corn is, is in the ground pretty well and, and coming up as it as, as, as it typically is switching to soybeans, we're starting to see some, some impacts of the weather there.

57% of the crop is planted behind schedule where we're typically at 37% of our, our, our soybean crop in Oklahoma has emerged again behind schedule and we're starting to see a lot of this weather have an impact on, on the soybean condition following the world Acts plan, demand estimates report, we got some updates on renewable fuel standards and within that report there was a bit of a shock to the marketplace.

The renewable vegetable oil mandate was much higher than, than than was anticipated.

And as a result, our soybean market saw about a 25 to 30 cent per bushel increase on that, that that Friday following the WASDE report.

And has since then pretty much stayed in that, in that same in that has steadied out from there and is trading around 10 50 to 10 60 per bushel.

Well that's gonna wrap it up.

Enjoyed visiting with you.

Look forward to seeing you on market monitor in a few weeks - As Amanda and John Michael mentioned about 30% of Oklahoma's wheat crop is now in the bin.

Some areas did dry out enough for combines to roll earlier in the week, but off and on storms once again brought things to a standstill in many areas.

Test weights have dropped in a few locations in Southwest and central Oklahoma, but even with all the rain test, weights have remained strong at about 60 pounds per bushel.

Yields range anywhere from 30 to 50 bushels per acre with protein levels ranging from 10.5 to 11.4%.

The Oklahoma Wheat Commission puts out harvest reports a couple of times a week for the latest, go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Good morning everyone, this is state climatologist, Gary McManus with your Mesonet weather report.

Were you ready for the heat this week?

Even?

I wasn't ready for the heat this week and I'm a famous Oklahoma summer fan.

It really got outta hand when we added that humidity and we had those heating values really start to skyrocket.

And it can be expected this time of year.

It is June after all, but we've been so mild recently and I'll talk about that here in a bit, that it was a little bit of a, an acclimation problem.

But let's start with the drought monitor.

I know we don't have any bad conditions here, but let's take a look at the country as a whole and see where we are.

If you wanna take a look and see how it's changed over the last three months or so.

These green areas show areas of improvement in the drought, monitor, the yellows and the, the oranges show areas of degradation.

So right here in Oklahoma and northwest Oklahoma, we had looks like about three class improvement in that part of the state, but across the western two thirds of the state we had improvement.

So that's certainly good news for us and that's a pretty big change over the last three months and the rain hasn't stopped, has it?

So take a look at just for the first 15 days of June, we can see on the Mesonet we have lots of areas that had 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 inches or more.

So really great totals.

Some areas less than a couple inches, but you know, those are few and far between.

So when we take a look at that map, at least the departure from normal, we can see most of the state getting three to five inches above normal.

We do have just a few areas down close to normal or even just a little bit below normal parts of southwest Oklahoma at the far western panhandle in Kenton, but for the most part, lots of surpluses for June thus far.

That looks even better when we take a look at the percent of normal rainfall again for June 1st through the 15th.

Lots of areas in those dark blues from 150 to as much as 400 plus percent of normal for this time of the year.

Again, just a few areas below that, a hundred percent of normal time mark, and again, just a couple of Mesonet sites, but a lot of rainfall for June thus far.

How wet has June been thus far, at least for those first couple of weeks?

Well, it's the fifth wettest in at least the last a hundred years with a statewide average of 5.1 inches, which is about 2.6 inches above normal.

So a very wet beginning of June, that first half.

And that just adds to the rainfall that we've had since that record rainfall in April and in a very wet May as well.

Taking a look at the satellite relative greenness map from the Oklahoma mesonet, we can see not many areas have any of that brown or dead vegetation like we saw just a couple of months ago, in fact that, you know, golden wheat from the Oklahoma wheat crop showing up very nicely from the southwestern part of the state up through north central Oklahoma and then again out in the panhandle.

Other than that, we have lots of green vegetation across the state, certainly welcome, no fire danger to speak of in the state of Oklahoma.

And remember, it's not just us that are dealing with the heat, it's also the livestock.

And this from the cattle comfort index for Monday, June 16th, we can see that those values were projected to get up into the, to the mid one hundreds.

So if we get up above 95, up above a hundred, it starts to get into that heat danger category.

And so we need to start taking those precautions for the, the cattle and, and this tool is, is very valuable as we go through the summer.

So take a look at that on the, the agricultural section of Oklahoma mesonet website and app.

So summer's here, whether you want it or not.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the mesonet weather report.

- I am Mark Turner, I'm the extension wildlife specialist at OSU and today we're gonna be talking about dove fields.

Now you may be wondering why that we're talking about dove fields so early in the year, but really if you're wanting to plan to have a successful dove hunt on into September and October when most of the dove hunting occurs in Oklahoma, you really need to start thinking now and start planning out on your property to make sure that you have attractive crops for the fall.

There are several species in Oklahoma that can be successfully planted for dove fields and these include things like sunflower, millets, grain sorghum, as well as corn.

Now there are different differences in advantages and disadvantaged to each of those, and I'd recommend that you think about the time that you're planning and how long that you have until you plan to hunt, because certainly you wanna make sure that you give those crops enough time to mature.

Things like sunflowers and corn typically take longer to mature than something like millet.

So typically if you're, if you're really late in the year and you're, you're getting a late start on your dove field, maybe consider planting something like millet.

Whereas if you're earlier in the year, you could consider something like corn or grain sorghum or sunflowers because those take a little bit longer to grow.

The main consideration for dove hunting, although there are a lot of different species that you can plant, one of the most important things that oftentimes gets overlooked is bare ground.

So certainly we want to have a relatively good amount of seed in the field to, to attract of, but really if that seed is not sitting on top of bare ground, doves are not gonna be nearly as attracted to it.

They have relatively weak legs and they're not gonna scratch at the ground like something like a quail or a Turkey would.

And so we need to consider having bare ground in the field.

The way that we do that is by managing weeds during the summertime for a lot of crops as well as by manipulating the crops appropriately.

So for something like sunflowers or corn, keeping it relatively weed free throughout the summer and then coming in and either mowing it or in the case of corn, you could potentially be able to burn it, that's gonna give you a really clean good results and, and have seed on relatively bare soil.

Millets are another great option, especially if you're in a spot where you can apply fire to that field because if you grow the millets and then allow them to die and then burn them, of course at that point you're just gonna have bare ground and and seed and that is extreme, extremely attractive to dove, especially if you time that just before you're planting on hunting.

Winter wheat is another excellent option for dove hunting.

Of course that would've been planted back in the, the previous fall before you're planning to hunt.

So about a year ahead of when you're planning to hunt over a wheat field, you would want to have that planted, but, but wheat is excellent because of course it's a very attractive food source for, for deer and turkeys in the fall and even onto into the, into the spring.

They will eat the seed heads of certain varieties, but if you have that wheat field planted in advance, you can then very easily go in and burn it in late summer and early fall to attract doves.

So again, really just having seed on bare soil is a really important consideration whenever you're gonna be trying to manage for doves.

Another major consideration with dove fields is making sure that you're staying within the, the regulations of the state that you're in.

So in Oklahoma, I would certainly recommend to check with ODWC to make sure that you're complying with their baiting regulations because there are very strict requirements for hunting doves over a field that's been manipulated compared to something like hunting deer that, that are not migratory birds.

So be sure to check with ODWC for your regulations.

And for more information on Dove Field Management, check out the sunup website.

- Did you know OSU extension supports Oklahoma farmers and ranchers with mental health resources and programming?

If you or anyone you know is experiencing mental health challenges, call the comprehensive crisis response lifeline at 9 8 8 or go online to the OSU extension website dealing with farm stress.

For more information about local resources, suicide prevention, finances, or disaster recovery, just go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

- Good morning Oklahoma and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

Our topic this week is the proper storage and handling of vaccines, bovine respiratory disease and beef cattle cost our industry in excess of $2 billion a year.

A good vaccination protocol followed by the time a calf leaves this ranch of origin is gonna ensure that that calf stays healthy all the way through the production chain.

Or at least it's a very critical component of that.

If we can store vaccines properly, particularly at the time we're administering them, which is something that's often easy to overlook.

It's one of the critical things of getting a good immune system in that calf before he leaves the farm or ranch.

And, and we know that vaccines need to be kept refrigerated almost without exception.

They need to be stored between 35 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

And that's the easy part because we can purchase vaccines, put 'em in a refrigerator, and they're there until we need them.

That component, especially this time of year in Oklahoma, as we think about vaccinating cabs in the summer months, whenever it gets a lot warmer, it's easy to get the cabs caught, be ready to work the cabs, and then as we go through that process, we are not protecting them from sunlight.

It's maybe getting a little too warm.

And one of the key things that helps with this is to make some sort of a cooler for to use chute side where we've actually got holsters in that cooler for pistol grip syringes or syringes.

We're gonna protect 'em from sunlight.

We're gonna be able to keep our vaccines in the cooler at proper temperature and we're gonna actually build this in a fashion that permits these syringes and needles to be secure inside the cooler in their own protective sheath so they're not touching anything that's actually inside the cooler itself.

So how do you construct one of these?

Typically you get the right materials, spend a little bit of time and planning in the construction process last time I checked we're probably $35 or less for what we need to actually construct one of these.

If you're interested in putting together a shoot side cooler to keep those vaccines and syringes and needles outta the sun and out of the heat when you're vaccinating calves in the summer, just reference the OSU Cooperative extension fact sheet that's available on the sunup website.

- Finally today, the staple that is found in kitchens around the world that is now becoming a more popular crop to grow here in Oklahoma.

Sunup's Elizabeth Hokit chats with our OSU extension vegetable specialist Tyler Mason about garlic production.

- We're here now at the Cimarron Valley research station with our OSU extension Vegetable Specialist Tyler Mason.

So Tyler, we're out here at your research plots for vegetables.

We're, and we're standing behind some garlic here.

Tell me a little bit about garlic and Oklahoma and what you guys are doing with this research.

- Yeah, so the goal of this project is a vegetable variety trial.

We're trying to identify top performers based on yield and quality for garlic production in Oklahoma.

So we're growing 10 varieties.

Some of them are soft neck and some of them are hard neck.

And usually the first question I get asked is, what's the difference?

Hard neck garlic will produce a scape and the scape is the flower stalk.

What's special about that is when you, when you harvest it, about three weeks before the bulbs are ready, it's a delicacy if you, if you smell it or taste it, it has this mild chive garlic flavor that's really exceptional.

So you gotta sell that as the crop at a farmer's market.

And then in addition, you get to sell the bulb three weeks later.

- Awesome.

So tell me a little bit about garlic production in Oklahoma.

- Yeah, good question.

It has increased dramatically in the past five years.

So we, you know, five years ago, 2017, there were about 22 producers and now there's about 44 producers across the state.

So it's, it's grown in a dramatic way, but still it's only produced on about 10 acres across the state.

So it's still, you know, a small specialty crop compared to, you know, tomatoes or peppers, for example.

- Yeah.

So it sounds like garlic production has grown in Oklahoma recently.

Why is that?

- Good question.

I, I'm not a economist, but what I understand is that consumption of garlic has increased dramatically in the past 10 years across the United States.

So much so that domestic production has not kept pace as much as 40% of our market is imported from, you know, from other countries.

And the, the largest contributor to international garlic is China.

They produce about 15% of of our market share.

And you know, if you're curious, you know why that is, it's for one, it's cost of production, you know, it's hard, it's hard to beat them on cost of production.

Yeah.

The other thing is that we're not just interested in yield, we also wanna identify which of these cultivars is high quality.

And our parameter for high quality is a theos sulfate called Allison.

And Allicin is the pungent smell associated with garlic, but it has huge nutraceutical benefits, lowers cholesterol, eases inflammation, lowers blood pressure, scavenge free radical, so it's an anti carcinogen.

So a lot of really great benefits to eating garlic in addition to the flavor.

- So what kind of goes into the production of this, you mentioned Yeah, production costs.

- Sure.

Your, your two big production costs.

Well three really is the seed garlic.

So when you plant seed garlic, you're not actually planting a seed, you're planting a, a clove Okay.

That you've purchased from a reputable garlic producer.

You plant, you plant the clove and then you get a harvest, a bulb as well as the scapes.

So your, your seed garlic is a big production cost, your labor, you know, the, the onion family, so, so onions and garlic and chives, they're not competitive against weeds.

So you gotta have a plan for weed control.

Well, in our study we wanted to identify cultivars that performed well, even if they got a little weedy.

You know, it's hard for people to keep up with all the demands of a crop.

And weed control is, is always a big issue in vegetable production and you know, your opportunities are to hand weed or to hand pull or to spray.

And some consumers, you know, are interested in garlic that hasn't been sprayed with, with herbicides prior to emergence.

So that was our goal was to identify low inputs, sustainable production, cultivars of high yield and high quality.

- Yeah.

So tell me a little bit about the production season and the, the management of the garlic.

- Yeah, it's a unique crop because it's planted in the fall and harvested the next summer.

So it grows over winter and it grows pretty slowly.

You know, you plant it mid-October, it only gets about three inches tall until January and then it'll grow another two inches in January and then it'll take off after that.

So you really want to be on it with fertilizer and watering.

- So garlic harvest kind of coincides with wheat harvest.

It's around the same time.

And I know wheat harvest has been a little bit delayed due to the rain.

Has that also been impacting your garlic harvest?

- Good question.

Garlic is unique in that you need it to dry out for about seven to 10 days before you're ready to harvest and that, and that does a couple things.

One, it allows the scales to build up around the bulb, which improves storability.

So, so what we'll do is we'll literally turn the irrigation off about seven to 10 days and that, and that's kind of where we're at right now.

And then the soil will dry up, the scales will establish themselves around the bulb.

We'll pull the bulbs, store them in, you know, cold storage with a fan and then two weeks later we will cut the foliage off and the bulbs will store for eight to nine months.

Okay.

But that water component is really important.

If they're, if they're wet when they're harvested, that's gonna negatively impact their storability.

- Yeah.

And you guys are about to harvest these and then you will have the results from from this trial.

- Yes.

- And those will be put out to the public.

- Yeah, yeah.

So this is, so we're coming to the end of a second year study.

Last year we saw top performers from Helium, red and German, extra hardy, both hard neck garlic species.

It looks similar this year, although I'm, I'm seeing some good performance from Romanian red as well.

But we'll have all that data in the next couple months analyzed.

- Great.

Tyler, thanks for telling us all about garlic and we will wish you the best of luck with your harvest.

- Thanks a lot.

- Yeah, thank you.

- That'll do it for our show this week.

Remember you can see sunup anytime on our website.

Follow us on social media and stream us anytime at youtube.com/sunup tv.

Let's hope for some sunshine so you can get out in the fields and finish up harvest.

I'm Lyndall Stout and we'll see you next time at Sunup.