Row Crop Update 4-9-25: Farming After the Flood

With recent flooding affecting many growers across the state, extension agronomists Drs. Jarrod Hardke, Jason Kelley, Jeremy Ross and Zachary Treadway join weed scientist Dr. Tom Barber to discuss recommendations for keeping crop stands and next steps as flood waters recede.

Transcript

Row Crops Radio: Farming After the Flood

[00:00] Intro/Outro

Arkansas Row Crops Radio, providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas.

[00:11] Tom Barber

Hello and welcome to Arkansas Row Crops Radio. This podcast is being recorded on April 9th and I'm your host, Tom Barber. I'm an extension weed scientist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Today we're going to do things a little different. Normally, we have a Weeds AR Wild podcast on a weekly basis, but due to the flooding and all the concerns and all the questions that, we're getting from every angle, whether it's our, extension row crop specialists or, from a weed control standpoint, with herbicides that have been applied. We're getting a lot of questions right now. And so I thought it would be good to bring a lot of our specialists on the podcast. This morning, they agreed to take some of their time to, visit with us about a lot of the questions they're getting, a lot of questions you might have out there on what to do next after all these storms. And we clean up from the storm damage. And once the water recedes off some of these fields. So today, I'm happy to be joined with our excellent, slate of, extension crop specialists. We have Doctor Jeremy Ross, Doctor Jason Kelly, Doctor Jarrod Hardke, and Doctor Zachary Treadway, who's our new cotton and peanut specialist. And he informed me before we got started, this is his first time to do one of these. So welcome, Zachary. We're glad to have you on the team. You've been on board, how long now, is this the second full summer? 

[01:32] Zachary Treadway

Yeah. It was I don't know if it's necessarily a full summer. I started, started mid-May of 2024. So we had actually kind of begun the year. So this is a this is my first planting in the state of Arkansas. So excited to be here and grateful for the opportunity to join you guys this morning. Thank you. 

[01:47] Tom Barber

We're happy to have you. And and glad you're on board. And, we just got a great team. I enjoy working with these guys on a daily basis. So, so let's get into it. And I know, you know, the number one question on a lot of folks’ mind. And I know our specialists are getting a lot of questions on the stand. If there was, anything up or if it was seed in the ground when all this water hit and, what next and what might be expected once the water finally recedes and drains off of these fields and and I think I want to start with, with rice. So I'll go to you, Jarrod, and just talk about some of the questions you're getting, what you've seen and, and what do you think? Do we have a good chance of some of this rice surviving?

[02:30] Jarrod Hardke

Yeah, we really do. On the rice side I mean everybody know rice. You know, we flood rice it’ll tolerate it, but it'll only tolerate so much. The, the general rule is, you know, where are we? I guess I can talk this probably an across crops comment. The best thing we have going for us for a lot right now is, is from the time the rain stopped Saturday night, we've been pretty cool. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, the cooler temperatures, cooler water, kind of slowing things down while we drain off, where we can drain off things just, you know, get given us, given us a little bit more time. It's, it gets a lot worse, a lot faster if it were hot right now. And I think that's that's true across everything we're talking. And that includes rice. But on the rice side is kind of a general rule. Most of the rice that was planted, was not up, was not out of the ground. There was a small amount that was or was probably breaking the ground at least, and maybe up. So out of the gate, the rice that's not out of the ground. Rice will come up through soil, it’ll come up through water. It won't come up through both. Rice will hang out under the ground for a little while. Generally speaking, you you got pretty safely a week of it being submerged, trapped under the ground with water stacked on top, that that it should. Still, once water comes off, it should come up and be fine. It may not be quite as vigorous out of the gate as the ground dries out, but once you start getting over a week of submergence and trapped under the ground, we begin to lose too much vigor. It may try to start leaping out under the ground so you lose some of that pushing power of just the coleoptile getting out. And so it can start to get dicey after that. Once it does come out from that loss of vigor we need it to be warming up and sunny and all that. And again, that's the forecast right now. That's a good thing. Because by that point seed treatments are wearing out, not really giving us anything. We need to outrun the seedling disease that's going to be there from from the wet soil conditions, all that it needs to outrun it. Any rice that is actually was out of the ground when it came over actually has a pretty long window. If, again, the water's cool. And especially it's moving, you know, to provide you, it stays oxygenated. And that makes sure you, you typically get a little bit more light penetration. I mean, we've seen before where rice went under and three weeks later it came off. And that rice looked like it was just frozen in time. It was just right there, green and healthy and hanging out. And as soon as it got out of the water, it took off. And, you know, we still made a crop off of it. So, we do still have a lot of upside potential in some of these areas, but goes without saying. There's areas still flooded. Water won't be coming off for a while. And again, this is true across crops. There are areas that water is backing into now that may not have been there yet. And the the extended outlook for some of those areas is actually getting worse for how long they may stay under. So, well, this kind of conversation is far from over.

[05:48] Tom Barber

Well that's right. And I and I guess I saw on the weather this morning they had rain, you know, a lot of rain still falling up further north. And so it'll be coming down the rivers, tributaries, down our way. And so that's an excellent point. Some areas, it's not done rising yet. Probably. So, yeah, unfortunately. All right. Well, it sounds like maybe out of all of these and we haven't gone through the others yet, but I know rice has a pretty good chance this happened. I don't remember how many years ago it was, and there was so much water on our weed control plots. I think we could have backed a ski boat in there and and done some wakeboarding, but, the rice survived. My weeds did not. So we had to do everything over just to get a good weed population. So maybe that's one good thing out of this, if any, is, you know, we may, reduce some weed populations through all this, in some areas. 

[06:42] Jarrod Hardke

One important topic, though. And you, you know, you may, you know, you've got mentionof a known kind of what we might do where we get in the is big topic for rice is where we do lose some of this rice. I mean, our seed situation is pretty, pretty dire on the side of rice. So the idea of a replant, may not even exist, even if it's needed. So as a general rule now this would be on a normal situation, not on stuff that's been flooded and maybe lost a little vigor. So, you know, we don't have a lot of observations on that. But for replant, you know, if we got hybrid seed planted, you know, if we've got three plants per square foot average or better, as a general rule, every year we're saying keep that. I can't say that's that's quite the same response this year post, you know, this kind of flooding. But that's going to be the general rule if we're talking varieties, your pure line varieties, then when we're talking five plants per square foot, and that's just the economics related to yield potential versus the trade off cost to replant and starting over, doing all that shooting for those, seen a lot of areas with, with levees knocked out so bad that it's not a repair job, it's, it's go through there, knock them back down so you have enough dirt back loose again to completely repull and start over. And honestly, we're going to be stressed on seed amounts just trying to reseed levees, that need to be redone. But that's kind of a general idea on rough plant population is to shoot for for minimums. You start falling below three plants square foot on a hybrid five point square foot on varieties. You start seeing some pretty steep drop offs, generally in yield potential. And so we need to consider, whether that's replant, fail, alternate crop if we don't have the rice seed to replant, whatever. But that's, that's a rough ballpark on that.

[08:32] Tom Barber

And so one one other question I have for you as it comes to that, and I got this a lot, Zachary, as a cotton specialist back in the day. But let's just say the the bottom quarter of the field is where we lose the stand. I know what I always said as a cotton specialist, but given the given the lack of seed, to your point, I mean, what what do you think? Where we have spotty stands or, you know, poor stands on the low ends? I mean, what's your thoughts there?

[09:02] Jarrod Hardke

So this is more certainly going to be more specific to Levy Rice. The comment I'm about to make. Great, great question. And that is. Yeah. Jumping in there and and re reseeding between the levees at the bottom that may be wiped out because we've got some opportunity there to, even when it comes down to, to kind of go to flood on the rest of the field, you can, we can roll up some gates and drag our feet on the, on the bottom areas to let that stuff catch up. Remembering that you got to manage your field based on the oldest rice out there, or it's going to get too late. We're going to lose yield because we're too late getting nitrogen out and getting it going. So we don't want to do that trade off. But when it comes to the bottoms, we've got some opportunities in levee rice to to do some of that. You start talking about some row rice fields and stuff like that and it's like, well, you may want to fall in there and do it, but you're going to have problems or at a minimum, it's going to be okay. Do not. You're going to have to get started, but do not start backing water up at the bottom, which we normally like in row rice like now don't hold water initially, but let's fertilize and let it gets more size and whatever to slow play it. But it's, it's better to be talking about replanning bottoms than the old, which I normally try to pin people off of. Don't be just hopping and popping little holes and spots out through the field and this and that. You make more of a mess and damage anything than you're going to return. But we're talking whole bottom areas. There's there's certainly some opportunity to to get some more rice. If you got seed out there and and recover some of those areas. So a little bit different in this conversation. Yeah.

[10:42] Tom Barber

All right. Well good good info there. Jason, what about you in the corn situation. What are you hearing? I know we had some corn up before. All the water here and probably some still in the ground as well.

[10:53] Jason Kelley

Yeah, yeah. I think of all the crops we probably percentage wise, we've got the greatest amount of corn planted. I think the last ag statistics report came out on Monday this week said we were about a third of the way planted. So we were, you know, rocking right along there. You know, the five year average was only 13%. So we were pretty far along. And, you know, we're estimated to plant 750,000 acres this year roughly. So, you know, we can do the math on that. We get 250, 300,000 probably something like that planted. So yeah. And you know, unlike rice, you know, Jarrod was somewhat optimistic on a lot of, a lot of the rice of it's been under water for a little bit. But corn, it like we all know it doesn't like being underwater. And so I told guys that, you know, if it's been underwater, deep water, muddy water, even though it's been relatively cool, which is helping us, you know, if it's underwater more than 4 or 5 days. I don't have real good, thoughts about that corn surviving. You know, to me, somebody was asking the other day. Well, is corn. That was 1 or 2 leaf. Is it better off than corn that was just recently planted? And I would say, yes. You know, a lot of years, if, you know, we plant corn and get a rain that night or the next day, you know, even if it's not flooded, sometimes we have stand issues. So, you know, that corn that was just planted 2 or 3 days ahead of all this rain? You know, we're definitely going to have some stand issues there. So, you know, I got, you know, there's 4 or 5 checklists, I guess you could call going down here, you know, first, when's the corn going to survive? And, you know, some of it, I know some of the water is backing up, not going away yet. Some fields, water has gotten off. But, once the water does leave, you know what kind of stand we really have? And, you know, my plant population, if I, if I was going to keep one, I mean, 26 to 28,000 plants, thousand plants per acre, you know, our plant population trials, you know, 28 is not going to maximize yield. But, when you figure the replant expands and all that, you know, my, my tolerance to low populations probably goes up a little bit in situations like this. So 26 to 28,000. But I think, you know, we get out in these fields after all this rain. I think, you know, the first impression we're going to count, see what kind of plants we got. But I think we also got to look at the standin what kind of shape these plants are. And I know we've had a lot of a lot of erosion. So I know a lot of fields that, you know, driving by, they may look all right, but you get out there and look and you know, seed was planted two inches deep. But, know some instances we get seed, you can walk down the road, you can see the seed, you know, you get 1 or 2 leafed corn just dangling there in the wind. And so that's not a good situation. You know, we typically try to plant corn at least two inches deep, to get the, proper root development. And unfortunately, corn that, may have originally been planted two inches deep and now is a half inch deep. I think there's going to be some root development problems there that, we definitely got to take into consideration. So, you know, if we are going to replant or spot plant and, you know, I guess spot plantings already a little bit brought up and I don't I don't like that, Tom. I mean, you know, we have a lot of discussions every year about replanting corn. And one of the big discussions is how we're going to kill the first stand. And but, you know, I don't want to just drop in and plant here and there. I guess the, the, the if we had, areas of the field, you know, say the top half, the field looked okay and the bottom half didn't, you know, those are those are tough calls on really what to do? You know, people may may get pushed into something like that. I know it's not ideal for management, you know, just based on the, on the seed seed, how much seed is out there. But, you know, in our planting data studies in the past, like, say, if you planted, end of March and you, you got an opportunity to replant or replant part of a field, I mean, a three week difference in planting date, say, March 31st up till, say, the 21st of April, a three week difference there. You know, come harvest time, that's probably only about a week difference in harvest. So, you know, maybe it's not as, great a difference in harvest as what you might think, but management wise, it's definitely going to be, be a lot trickier to do.

[15:33] Tom Barber

But you have to manage it for the majority. Right? If you do something like that, you just going to have to sacrifice whatever on the lower end and manage for the majority. I'm assuming.

[15:43] Jason Kelley

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's that's the hard part. I mean, it's, if you had big areas and where you could do it, you know, I know people have done that, but it's, you know, it's water and herbicides and everything. It's a it's a lot harder to do. Yeah. And, but you know, Jarrod mentioned the seed situation and I don't know that corn may be in a little bit better shape than rice, but, you know, corn acres are up. A lot of these popular hybrids, I think are probably well beyond sold out even before all the floods. So, the seed supply is going to be pretty short. And that may dictate ultimately what some people do in the end, whether they plant corn, replant corn, or do something else there. So but, you know, if you look at the calendar, I mean, today, April 9th, and, you know, we've got a lot of corn planted anything. Well, we're late now. But, you know, our planning studies have shown that, you know, we're really just today entering that optimum planting day window for in a lot of areas. So, you know, the insurance cutoff for full crop insurance for most of the state is April 25th. You know, the far northeast corner, 6 or 8 counties. It's May 1st. So, you know, we've still got time provided the water leaves some of these fields. So, you know, you know, back, what, 18 years ago, Tom, I think we had the Easter freeze and we replanted a whole bunch of corn after April 15th, had great yields that year. So, you know, yield wise, I think we still got the potential. The downside is just we get a lot of added expense that we didn't need this year. And, you know, you know, it's going to be a little harder to make everything work.

[17:33] Tom Barber

Right. Well and you hit on something there on the stand removal, you know, removing the existing stand if you decide to take out what did survive. So that's the number one question I've been getting this week. And, and sometimes it's not easy because when you have flood situations like this, you will have corn that stuck on the on the top of the ground. You'll have it'll be covered in dirt, covered in debris, lots of different variables. And we didn't start out with a lot of surface area to cover anyway. And so a lot of this spiking corn or 1 or 2 leaf corn, there just is not a lot of surface area there, to here in the first place. And so coverage becomes is really to me the make or break on how we do removing the existing stand. 

[18:22] Jason Kelley

Yeah. I think a lot of these fields, Tom. I mean the beds are in such poor shape now that, you know, they may want to drop in and, spray something to take out the stand and just drop in and plant. But I think ultimately the, you know, as far as the shape of the beds, they'd be a lot better off, you know, doing some type of tillage and re bedding and, and starting over, to be honest.

[18:43] Tom Barber

Yeah. I like I like knocking a little bit of that bed off anyway to replant situation and building it back, those level banders or hipper choppers or whatever they're called seem to work pretty good and in those situations. But, you know, when I'm trying to make a recommendation on what products to use, generally everybody wants to replant quickly. Like you say, due to bed condition, we might not be able to do that this time. But everybody needs to keep in mind that if they use a clethodim or a select to take out the existing stand of corn, and we have this information in the MP44, gives you several different options in there. Select or clethodim is one of those options. But if you put it out, at a full rate, which I'll call a 16 ounce rate of the 1 pound select max formulation. So you just have to adjust based on your formulation. But, you have 30 days and we don't want to do that. What is recommended for a replant situation is reducing that rate to six ounces of the 1 pound material. Select max. And we can actually be back in in a week if you're wanting, to go that route. And if you may, if you have beds to rebuild, that might be, the best option. Liberty or glufosinate can work on hybrids that are not, tolerant to, or hybrids that aren't liberty Link. But, again, coverage is crucial there. What ends up happening a lot of times is, we go out with paraquat, if you do that as a single application of just paraquat by itself, that's going to be a failure. We have to have a PSII inhibitor, lot of times we recommend 2 to 3oz of dry equivalent metribuzin or atrazine, to go in, with that paraquat. And as long as we get good coverage, so we're talking about ground rig applications here with good coverage and high output water, high GPA, 15 to 20 GPA. We should be able to cover those plants and, take them out for the most part. But if you just go out with paraquat by itself, we're not going to get to the growing point of that young seedling corn, and it'll it'll grow back. So I think you're right, though, Jason. I think it's going to take a, combination of the herbicide application and then followed up with tillage, and I'll take as much time in between those two, applications, I guess, that I can get between the herbicide application and the running the tillage equipment, but, I want at least 24 hours, 48 is better, but I want at least 24 hours before we do that. Is that kind of what you're seeing? Or heard in the past that's worked?

[21:37] Jason Kelley

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, some of them, I mean, you know, I've seen some beds that are pretty bad shape that, they're probably just going to go in and do a full tillage, not just a rehip. But, you know, if they did a full tillage, I mean, I wouldn't think they need to any, any herbicides up front to kill what was there.

[22:00] Tom Barber

That's great point. Great points. All right. And you covered plant population and spot planting. So, anything else before we move on to Doctor Jeremy Ross in the soybean situation.

[22:14] Jason Kelley

I think that's it, Tom. I mean, it's, you know, it's really discouraging. We were off to a phenomenal start, and then all of a sudden, we're not, so.

[22:23] Tom Barber

Right? Yeah, I've talked to several this week that said, man, this is the first time I got in my low ends this early in the year and, or my lower fields. And it turns out that wasn't, it didn't work out real great.

[22:34] Jason Kelley

Right. Exactly.

[22:35] Tom Barber

And, same with our rice ground. And we have never gotten in our rice ground down in Rohwer before the end of May usually. But this year, we were able to get in there and do some tillage before all this happened. So anyway. All right, Jeremy, what about the soybean situation? I know we had a lot of beans planted, especially in southeast Arkansas. What are you hearing out there?

[22:56] Jeremy Ross

Yeah. I mean, if you look at the report that came out Monday, it says, you know, 11%. And I would say, you know, probably the majority of that is in southern Arkansas. But I've, I've got reports of, you know, Clay County having some fields planted and scattered around. There's several here around the Des Arc area that have been planted. I guess farmers finally kind of was able to get out and really kind of start doing some assessments. I started getting several phone calls yesterday. You know, anywhere from beans that are still underwater, to beans that had emerged prior to the rain, but they're yellow. Just kind of sitting there not looking really sporty, to, you know, fields that, you know, maybe some are coming up, still got some seed in the ground, but, those are going to probably be the, the harder calls because, you know, some of those beans probably started emerging probably, you know, right before the rain, right during the rain, some of those seed that are still sitting in the ground and been in saturated conditions for, you know, almost a week now. So probably not going to emerge. And so, you know, the good thing is we just don't have a tremendous, you know, large amount of acreage planted. And it's going to be a field by field basis. So I'm looking at, you know, those fields that are having problems. But, you know, the good thing is, you know, we're still at the very front the of the planting window. You know, if you look at our planting date studies, down in south Arkansas, kind of the, the first two weeks of April is where we can maximize yield and it starts to drop off a little bit. You know, once we get to the end of April, first of May, but only, you know, 2 or 3 percentages, northern Arkansas at the end of April, first of May, is kind of the, the window where we really start maximizing yields. So we still, you know, still got a, you know, a few weeks in that really good sweet spot on trying to get planted. You know, some of my main concerns are I'd been mentioned, you know, if you look at the, the forecast for the White River here at Des Arc they still got another two foot to go, before it reaches the peak. And that's going to be, you know, Monday the. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sunday, April 13th. But, you know, if you look at the long term forecast, it's not going to drop below 30ft, which, you know, 30ft is major flooding conditions, you know, for another ten days. And so there's going to be a lot of fields are going to, you know, stay under water and not have anything done to them for, you know, almost probably till the end of April, 1st of May, until we can really get those fields dried out. And so we're probably not going to have the, the, the percentage of early planting that we've seen the last two years, we've had, you know, really, really early plantings last two years. If you look at the planting progress, the last two years were anywhere from 7 to 14 days ahead of the five year average. I think we're going to probably be more toward that five year average on planting this year, just because of the of the the wet weather we had last week. And but, you know, the good thing is it looks like long term forecast is, warmer conditions and sunny, sunny weather. So we should be able to, you know, get a lot of these fields dried out that, that aren't going to be close to the to the rivers and bios that are going to be backing up. So, you know, farmers should should be able to get back in the fields, hopefully, you know, maybe into of the week this weekend on some of these higher grounds. You know, there was talk about RMA and planting dates. If you look at for Arkansas, April 15th is the the early planting for that. So, you know, everything that was planted up until, you know, in the next, you know, again, next week is really not covered under insurance. So you're just going to have to work with your seed dealers and maybe get, you know, you know, discount on the seed or things like that. But, you know, there's not going to be any of this plant, this acres has been planted, you know, up until now is not going to be covered. You know, if you look at, you know, if you're assessing stands, you know, like I said to the farmers yesterday, we just need some sunny weather, warmer conditions to kind of see exactly what is going to come up. And so if you look at soybeans, you know, the minimum stand is, 75,000 plants per acre. We know we've got tons of data showing if we can get a uniform 75,000 plants per acre across the field, we can maximize yield. But some of these fields that’s going to be erratic. You know, you may have some that's going to be, you know, starting to put on first true leaf and some that are just going to be popping out of the ground. So, you know, sometimes that's, you know, difficult later in the season when they start going through reproduction. But, again, just a small percentage of the acreage in the state, is, has been planted. So we're, we're still probably not as bad as, you know, maybe the rice and and corn for getting planted. But, you know, seed availability. We still got a lot of soybean seed available. You know, if you may not find some of the hotter varieties, you know, they may be in short supply, but there is seed available depending on which technology you're looking at. So, I'm just glad this didn't hit, you know, a month from now, you know, I think the it's not good, you know, having flood conditions and tornadoes and people losing their houses and farm shops and everything like that, but, hope everybody's, you know, kind of digging out of everything. And then hopefully the water go down here a little bit faster than their predicted. But, so far, you know, we've still got a little ways to go on soybeans and hopefully the rest of the season will will cooperate and we'll have a good year.

[29:16] Tom Barber

So on on your replant, recommendations and, and, maybe I missed that. You may have already said this, but, how do you feel about just spotting in here and there and, you know, plant in the bottom quarter or bottom third? I mean, is there a point to where you just say we need to remove all of it and start over? Where do you like that point to be? I guess, considering there is like, to your point, plenty of seed available.

[29:45] Jeremy Ross

Yeah. So, several years ago, I did some replant studies, you know, looking at planting suboptimal rates and then coming back in, you know, like a two week time frame, kind of similar to what farmers would look at if they planted and then had a suboptimal planting rate or seed or plant stand and then came back in the field in and and as long as you can, you know, as long as it's within 2 to 3 weeks, soybeans will compensate and they'll mature out, you know, pretty, pretty evenly. Now, if you start to stretch it out, four weeks, you know, five weeks, then you're really going to have a mess on your hands because you're going to have to totally different, you know, growth stages in that field. So if you can, you know, get in there and plant, you know, fairly rapidly with a, additional stand or seed to fill in. You should be alright, but it's, it starts to stretch out, you know, the four weeks I would go in there, you know, and, and destroy that first planting and come back in because it's, you know, just just kind of mentioned with Jason and the corn, it's really hard to manage two totally different maturity groups or two different, growth stages in a field, on, you know, fertilization and weed control and, and then especially at harvest because you don't want to have, you know, two thirds of your field, you know, ready to harvest. The other third is still butter beans, and you're getting, you know, dark edge because you've got immature soybeans, you know, intermingled with some of the beans that are, that are at full maturity. So it's kind of a case by case basis. But but, you know, a lot of our data, you know, we could still manage, you know, coming back in and spot planting and maybe filling in a little bit and still being alrght.

[31:45] Tom Barber

Well, thanks for those points. Zach, we're going to move to you now. And, I know that, at all these guys, you're probably sitting in the best situation because cotton or peanut planting probably hadn't started yet to any large extent. 

[32:01] Zachary Treadway

Yeah. So, so as you mentioned, kind of in my intro, I cover both cotton and peanuts. And really, after listening to to Jarrod, Jason and Jeremy, I think my two crops are probably in the best shape of any. And that's basically just because our our planting window hasn't opened yet. You know, I, I'm not going to say that there weren't some mavericks who got out there and got some acres planted early. I mean, I think you probably you probably have that every year, but definitely wouldn't recommend, getting out and planting, you know, in the super early windows. I think really what this does for us in terms of both peanut and cotton, because peanut and cotton, we both kind of fall in the same, planting window somewhere in the mid April, through the end of May. I think what this really does for us is, is our guys who were trying to get in and get some stuff planted really early, maybe as soon as that window opens. I think that pushes those guys to to maybe that early stuff may end up being a little later. Really for two reasons. One, just waiting for the ground to dry. I mean, just on my drive into the office this morning. Well, we've still got some land up here around points that are Jackson County, where I think you’d probably get a bicycle stuck, you know, much less put a tractor and a planter in it. Just, even ground where the water has receded is still just extremely wet. The the sun's peeking out, and, you know, some these days, but it's still I mean, it's 40 something degrees this morning is still pretty cool. I think it's still going to take us a little longer to dry. So if, I think that's one of the reasons we may, early stuff be pushed a little later. I think the other reason, too, is all three of these guys have talked about replant. I think replant are probably going to take precedence over cotton and peanut, just because cotton and peanut have a window that extends a little longer than the optimal window for for corn, rice, and even beans so I think the acres the the decision is made to replant, those acres I think, would take precedence over our cotton and our peanut. I think all in all, we're still in a pretty good place with with my two crops. If the water, can start to recede pretty soon. You know, I think, I think Jeremy mentioned we've got places that are receding, but we still got places that are rising. But you just this morning, I saw places that were not under water yesterday that were underwater this morning, I saw places that were under water yesterday that seem to have had some water come off of them this morning. So, you know, I think we're still kind of, in a static situation in terms of water receding, or water still rising. I think, Tom, you mentioned before we got on that, you know, there's still places up north who who are catching the rains. It's going to feel those tributaries. And that water has got to go somewhere. And eventually those tributaries are going to funnel down into into our area. And what's that going to do? You know, I think that's going to going to push some water up. And I, you know, I think it's already been said and it's kind of apparent that I think we saw some stuff that's dry right now that the here in a few days may end up underwater. So I just don't even know if we're at a point yet to be thinking about going, because we don't even know what the water is going to do when it's all said and done. And that's not even to mention, you know, I watched the weather this morning here in Northeast Arkansas. We've got places tomorrow that are looking at up to a quarter inch of rain and a quarter inch of rain doesn’t sound like a lot, but you know what? I pulled out eight inches out of my gauge over the weekend and a quarter inch of rain on top of anything that much, it definitely doesn't help. So I think we still got some. We still got some some some time to weather, no pun intended, just to see what the weather does and what the water does in terms of planting cotton and peanut. I think that's kind of where we're at. But I will kind of I'll kind of bounce pass back to you. Tom, being being the weed scientist, I guess, I guess what I what took an agronomist job I don't get to be a weed scientist anymore, so I kind of best pass it back to you. But I think something to kind of be aware of is, you know, when these fields flooded, the bar ditches flooded as well. And so if we had fields that we felt were in good shape in terms of weed control and we thought we had a handle on them, I think it's pretty safe to say we're going to see some new flushes of weeds just because when those bar ditches, overflowed, they, they carried weeds back into those fields. And we're going to see new flushes of weeds that, that maybe we weren't expecting as those waters deposited those seeds, those weed seeds across the field. So I think it's just it's probably in our best interest just to keep an eye on those fields, you know, and and not let a small problem really get out ahead of us and not put us, behind the eight ball, so to speak. And just be prepared to make an application, make a herbicide application. If we see some issues in those fields, just so we can kind of stay ahead of the game and be in a good place. And I learned coming up though grad school two weeks in a weed science program, the the best and really only way to stay clean is to start clean. So I think it's really important to keep an eye on those fields and just make sure we don't get backed into a corner. With all this rain and water that we've seen. 

[37:02] Tom Barber

Well, that's those are excellent points, Zachary. And I'd like to remind everyone out there when all these weird looking weeds come up. We'll provide his phone number at the end. You can send all of those pictures to him. Being fresh out of school, I know he's well aware of what all these weird weeds will probably look like, hahaha.

[37:22] Jarrod Hardke

But. But he added a good point on just general of not only moving soil around, but just throw like an agronomic across crops. There's more more soil piled in certain areas of the field. So stuff's deeper now that was planted than what we thought in other areas. And Jason hit on this, that's more shallow. Where beds of eroded and more exposure. There's a lot of stuff that's now been moved around. Yeah. And I guess it adds it goes without saying. We hadn't touched on , there’s going to be fields that may have somewhat of a capable stand, but have piling and erosion that are now just no longer manageable. I can go out there and go, oh yeah, this is a decent stand. I don't know how in the world you're going to farm it, though.

[38:07] Tom Barber

Yeah, how are we going to water it? 

[38:10] Jarrod Hardke

Yeah, it's certainly more complicated. Yeah. So good point Zachary.

[38:14] Jeremy Ross

Yeah I've seen a lot of fields too, that, you know, either were rice or corn last year and all the residue that kind of didn't get incorporated is all piled up at the bottom of the field. So, you know, number one, you know, it's going to be hard to manage all that debris. Number two, culverts are probably going to be plugged up with all this. So, you know, that might be the reason some of these fields are not getting drained as quick as possible, because some of the culverts and outlets or jammed up. And so there's going to be some work to to work on those and, and try to get those cleaned out. So if, if we have another big rain later in the season, then back up further in the field.

[38:57] Jarrod Hardke

We don't all own scuba gear to go get down to some of those drains right now to get them out. I mean, they're they're deeper than we are tall. I mean, to try to try to get to them. Yeah. Yeah.

[39:09] Tom Barber

Well that's right. There’ll be a lot of work to do. And all of you all have made this point, we really don't know what we're even dealing with to some extent right now. And it'll take weeks, I'm assuming, to to finally figure that out.

[39:25] Jeremy Ross

So and and going back to Jason, you know, talking about, you know, having some bed erosion. You know, there was a lot of fresh beds that were pulled prior to all this rain. So, you know, hopefully, you know, these kind of get packed in. But there's going to be some situations where those beds are going to have to be re pulled, you know, because they, they degraded so and so that's just going to, you know add to the delay in trying to get some of these fields planted if you have, you know several fields, you know several hundred acres you need to get across, that's just going to, you know, delay planting, you know, a little bit more, maybe not tremendously, but, you know, I would I would rather start with a fresh bed and take an extra day or two before I planted versus trying to deal with, a very shallow trench and furrow and bed, you know, throughout the entire season. And so I think it could cause more problems if we get out there and rush it and try to plant and just take another day or two to to try to refresh those beds, to get them back up to where they should be.

[40:30] Jason Kelley

Yeah. My my concern is those little, short beds have whethered, you know, had eight or ten inches of rain on them, they melted down and how are they going to water in June and July?

[40:43] Tom Barber

Yeah. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. Well great conversation. We're getting to where we need to probably wrap this up. I don't like doing these much more than 30 minutes. And I think we've been going for about 40. But any any final thoughts or comments? By the way, I'm going to start an office pool, whoever wants to get in. And I'm thinking cocklebur is going to be the number one weird way that we get a picture of because, it's been so long since, some of our field guys have seen that that, it looks really weird when it comes up. And you had seen it a while. 

[41:21] Zachary Treadway

Yeah. Tom, I just kind of wanted to add before we cut off for for today. And Jarrod and I talked about it. You know, we talk about a lot of the weather in the water from a from agriculture standpoint as we should. It's our job. But there's there's a human element to this. There's you know, be it, you know, whether it be flooding in people's houses or, you know, several catastrophic tornadoes that that have ripped through northeast Arkansas here in the last few weeks. And I think we'd be remiss not to mention that we're thinking about our people out there. It's a lot more,  there’s a human element to it and and just want to just want to add that we're definitely thinking about all our people out there. 

[41:53] Tom Barber

Absolutely, absolutely.

[41:56] Jeremy Ross

And, you know, and to to add to that, you know, you know, extension is kind of known as, you know, kind of agriculture. But, you know, we also have, you know, individuals for, disaster relief and, you know, helping out with food preservation and things like that. And so, you know, don't hesitate to reach out to your county offices, you know, for just about anything dealing with the disaster. We've got, you know, publications and some experts and, you know, mental health as well, you know, that that, you know, if you need anything, reach out to the county offices or your local, you know, people to try to try to get as much help as you can, really, no matter what it is. So.

[42:44] Tom Barber

Good info. Any other final comments from anybody for we wrap this up? Okay. Well I want to thank everyone that that, subscribes and listens to these podcasts. And I want to thank, all of our specialists today that joined, our extension crop specialists. And all our information is, is on the websites or as Jeremy said, that, definitely reach out to your county office for any questions, whether it's storm relief, weather relief, mental health, ag related questions. That's what the county offices are there for, to support their local communities. And we have a very strong extension service in Arkansas, and I think we're blessed, blessed to have that, here in the state. And so thanks for joining us, on this podcast on Row Crops Radio.

[43:43] Intro/Outro

Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information, please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.