Charlie Craig, Friars Point
6/1/2024 – I am not looking at a lot now and only doing cotton and bugs so I will be limited to that. The cotton that I am looking at ranges from three leaves to squaring.
Thrips have been light and only needed treatment in a few areas. I am starting to sweep for plant bugs on the older cotton today. We have had one good rain lately and a lot of light showers that were enough to activate pre herbicides but didn’t keep us out of the field too long. How much you got depended on where you were. Several times a line would come as far as the river then split and go around Friars Point. I think a lot of it found Tim. Not bad for us now but will be frustrating if it continues into July and August.
Tanner Whatley, Clarksdale
6/6/2024 – Cotton: The cotton crop in our area is coming along nicely with the high temps and rainfall. Most is out of thrips stage, with the earlier planted cotton being able to avoid the worst pressure, while the latter is noticeably worse. The cotton is now starting to square but the plant bug pressure has been very light so far. I expect the plant bug populations to increase in the near future.
Soybeans: We were lucky this year getting a large portion of the soybean crop planted early and avoided any major replanting. The fight with the ever-resistant Johnsongrass continues as we layby most fields. Pod worms are on the horizon, but we are hoping to be able to miss them in the older, non-blooming beans. Stinkbug numbers are expected to increase as the year goes on.
Corn: This has been a great year for the crop so far. Timely rains have carried us to tassel without having to irrigate and hitting fertilizer applications just right. The damp weather might cause a greater concern for disease although, as the season goes on. We will monitor closely with the higher risk of wet weather.
Overall, this area has been blessed with reasonable rains and good planting dates. This season’s crops look to be in great shape approaching the midpoint of the season
Don Collins, Yazoo City
6/1/2024 – Our late February planted corn should be finishing up pollinating this week. Started seeing some disease show up last week and I expect that to ramp up with this wet weather. The good news is we haven’t had to irrigate anything to this point. We’ve got some bad greensnap in our first of April planted corn. Strong winds from storms last week hit us at the worst possible growth stage.
Soybeans are anywhere from just planted to R3. Insects have been very light so far. Our biggest battle has been weed control. We’ve really gotten into some tough situations where we couldn’t get sprayed behind the planter. Dicamba is just stacking nodes on pigweed over 4”-5”. There are going to be pigweeds poking out of the canopy on a lot of beans this year.
Cotton is from cotyledon to pinhead square. The bright side of it raining every 3-4 days is that thrips haven’t been an issue. We’ve made it past them without having to treat on all but one 30-acre field. Our first round of pix went out on our earliest planted cotton this week. Plant bugs were starting to show up in our very first planted cotton towards the end of the week. To this point we’ve been busy cleaning weeds up. We’ll switch our focus to plant bug sprays and getting pix out on the bulk of our crop this week.
Jeff North, Madison
6/6/2024 – HERBICIDES CAN PUT YOU OUT OF BUSINESS !! Photos below.
Cotton stage ranges from the 3rd node to 9th node. Thrips have been the lightest I have ever seen. First plant bug applications are going out now. Using Acephate + Imidicloprid or Transform +
Diamond. Aphids are very light at this time. Many acres will be squaring this week.
Soybeans stage from emerging to R2. No pest pressure at this time. Trying to apply herbicides and it’s extremely difficult with abundant rain.
Corn beginning to tassel. Growing fast with abundant rainfall. No Southwestern Corn Borer moths in traps yet.
Mitch LeFlore, Winona
6/3/2024 – Peanuts – Spraying peanuts the first half of the week and then concentrating on broadleaves, Overall, the crop looks good.
Soybeans – Still in the bag up to R2. Spraying or have just sprayed older beans for grass and broadleaves. The weather has been perfect and all’s good.
Cotton – growth stage from 2 nodes up to 8 nodes. We have thrips, cutworms and grasses/weeds cleaned up. We’re off to the best and earliest start in a long time.
Sweet potatoes – The weather has also been good for transplanting potatoes. No issues so far throughout the first half of setting and hope to have good weather to the finish.
Miles Jackson, Grenada
6/6/2024 – Cotton- unfortunately we’ve had a few inches of rain most everywhere over the last week or so. My cotton is anywhere from 3-10 nodes, and most is getting past the point of worrying about thrips. Not all, but the majority had 1 thrips spray, luckily some fields didn’t need one. I’ve treated one field for plant bugs so far, but overall, it’s still really low pressure. I’ve had a little PGR go out, but most has not, that will change next week. We are trying our best to get weeds cleaned up, it’s just been difficult with all the rain, but most is pretty clean. Overall crop is looking good, just need some dry weather.
Soybeans- still in the sack-R1. I’ve got about 500 acres left to get planted, rain has held that up. No insects to speak of at the moment. Thankfully overall weed control has been good. We were able to get fields cleaned up in between rains, where we needed to, last week and the majority looks great. Older beans have been loving this rain
Peanuts- 40-45 days old. Getting ready to spray fungicide within the next week. Still very low weed pressure and no insects to speak of. Gypsum is going out on low calcium fields where we were not able to get lime out this fall.
Bert Falkner, West Point
6/6/2024 – All cotton up to a stand this week. Growth stages are from cotyledon up to 9th node. Thrips have not been an issue in older cotton but heavy thrips pressure in younger cotton. In areas, we’ve made 2 applications for control. We’re applying plant bug +Pix as a pinhead square application in older cotton now. Plant bugs are moving into squaring cotton; heavy in areas of the fields. We’re treating some ThryvOn cotton for plant bugs. Cleaning up cotton and getting side dressed nitrogen out. Preemergence herbicides at planting have worked well but herbicide burn has been more of an issue this year. Heavy cover crop areas have also been an issue.
Soybeans are from just emerging to R1-R2 growth stage. We’re cleaning up all beans between showers; herbicides have been working well. Insects have not been an issue so far.
All corn has had good rain in the last 7 days. Heavy rains 10 days ago with hail and wind caused green snap in a low percentage of corn acres in areas. Corn is V10 to early tassel stage. Trying to finish up nitrogen applications by air and through pivots. A few areas are not happy with weed control – don’t understand what happened. Rains came at a good time and overall, corn should be happy.
Peanuts are 12-40 days old. Rains put us behind in planting on 30-40% of my acres. The oldest peanut twins are lapping and seeing blooms. Thrips have been a problem this year. Valor at planting “dinged up” peanuts but have grown out of the damage. We’re starting weed control in all older peanuts; will start the first fungicides next week in oldest peanuts.
Trey Bullock, Seminary
6/6/2024 – Rains have not allowed growers to finish planting. Growers on the west side of my area have been getting rain for two weeks. Several hundred acres have been under water 3 times from creeks jumping out. Been a challenge to apply herbicides all year but hopefully they will have the next 7 days to try and clean everything up.
Cotton is from in the sack to 12 nodes. Plant bugs are very low. Picking up some cotton flea hoppers with a few clouded plant bugs in isolated fields. Thrips have still been bad in later planted fields especially fields planted into heavy cover crop.
Peanuts are basically 100% planted. A little replant and some spot planting still needed. Oldest peanuts will get fungicides first of next week. No insects to speak of.
Soybeans are from in the sack to R4. Beans that are planted behind rye grass calves are full of granulated cutworms. We are now putting product behind planters to hopefully avoid them hurting stand.
Fall armyworms are showing up in grass on the south end of area. We are adding insecticide to herbicides apps where fields are grass heavy. Have seen a few tobacco budworm moths showing up this week as well. Strange year so far. Pray it gets a little better soon.
