Maximizing Cotton Yield: The Drought, Defoliation, and Cover Crop Connection

The cotton crop is moving fast in Georgia this year. With 76% of the crop having open bolls—13% ahead of the five-year average—growers are making critical end-of-season decisions while planning for what comes next.

Drought conditions since Labor Day weekend have created unique irrigation management challenges. The UGA cotton team discusses the surprising discovery that many fields have adequate moisture in shallow soil layers but are bone dry below 12 inches. This deep moisture depletion could impact yields as plants can't access their usual "bank" of water reserves. The team addresses whether irrigating cotton that's already 20-30% open is worthwhile, and when it's simply wasting money. Their practical advice: if you're seeing 60% open bolls, it's time to shut off the water regardless of leaf appearance.

Interestingly, early-planted cotton (April-May) has performed exceptionally well this season. The dry conditions arrived just as these crops were finishing, preventing the boll rot that typically plagues early plantings. Some dryland cotton planted in mid-April is yielding 1500-1600 pounds—a testament to perfect timing between crop development and weather patterns.

The conversation shifts to cover crop planning as harvest approaches. Dr. Singleton explains how cover crops do more than just prevent erosion—they improve water infiltration, suppress weeds, and build organic matter over time. The team discusses how even tiny amounts of soil loss add up dramatically (a 1/32 inch loss across an acre equals five tons of soil), making cover crops a crucial investment despite their upfront cost. They explore options for fitting various cover crop species into tight rotation windows, particularly when following cotton with corn.

The episode concludes with practical advice on defoliating drought-stressed cotton and managing cotton damaged by jassids, emphasizing the importance of timing to avoid stuck leaves and other harvest complications.

Ready to protect your soil, maximize your irrigation efficiency, and set up next season for success? Listen now for research-backed strategies that balance immediate needs with long-term sustainability.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Bringing you all things cotton production and pest management. This is the Talking Cotton Podcast with the University of Georgia cotton team. Let's get into the whys of putting on, throwing off, and cutting out. All right. Welcome to this episode of Talking Cotton. Today we're recording this on September the 24th. And uh it's been a couple weeks since we were here. Deer deer season opened up. It did. Cotton teams at three up. Okay, me, Philip, and Trey. All right. So that's good. Thank Wes. I'm working.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

What do you have to say for yourself? I drew on one, couldn't make a shot. First the first week I saw some at 500 yards away. Hey, you can't kill them if you don't shoot at them, you know. I couldn't pull a bow shot that far. I thought about it, but I I, you know.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

We uh but no, it's been a good week. We me and Wes went up to Watkinsville yesterday, spent some time with some with some growers with Eric Elsner up there and Nick Basinger and Leo Bastos. Cotton looks good up there, I'd say.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

It was that was a good field day. Um I feel like we had more growers at that, a little bit more attendance than we've had in the past. Yeah. Um there were more students there, which that's good too. You know, it's good for some of the students to get out of here. Hey, Dr. B gave extra credit for showing up.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

What do we get extra credit for? We get uh paid at the end of the month. That's that's our extra credit. So um, real quick on the crop progress, uh, let's see. Um percent open or percent of the crop that's opening, we've got 76% as of the end of last week. And that is uh 13% ahead of the five-year average, again, showing that this crop is moving really, really fast. And then uh since the last podcast, they added uh the percent of acres that have been harvested, the percent of cotton that's been harvested, and in Georgia, we are at three percent as of last week, and the five year average is one percent. So I think that'll uh I'm I think that's gonna jump in two weeks. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's gonna jump in two weeks for sure. And the right I think the reason it's not higher is because people are trying to figure out what to do with these peanuts.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Well, let's be honest for a minute. We got so many peanut acres out there. You know, we basically flopped our peanut and cotton acres this year. Um, and so I I have gotten so many peanut calls more than I ever have since I've been here, especially this early in the season, and especially because of the conditions that we're under right now. And we um I made the comment to two different two different times of different people, um, and not just on my peanuts, but it comes back into cotton too. This is the earliest I've harvested my peanuts since I've been in Georgia uh for this 12th season of harvested peanuts here, and uh we harvested them last week and we planted on the same date we always do. How'd they do? Man, I suck. I hadn't even looked at uh guilds. I'm gonna be honest, I tried to look. I looked when they were when my students were supposed to be harvesting them and they didn't do what I told them. I got them set up where they're supposed to put in the remote um the data remotely. If you'll give me about, you know, we'll stall in a few minutes, I can look it up. Yeah. It's there. I got it, a spreadsheet set up where it's got it all calculated. I've just you just told them we went to Watkinsville yesterday, man. We can't look in our phones and drive. We spent, you know, what six months.

Early Cotton Harvest and Crop Progress

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Hey, it's like I told Sarah before we got started. You had people with you that would drive. Yeah, I'm not gonna do that together. Come on, come on, man. You don't invite an agent along and then make them drive you. Hey, speaking of Sarah, how you doing, Sarah? I'm doing really good. Good, good. And then Dr. Singleton is with us. Good morning. Dr. Singleton, you doing good? I'm doing good. Good, good. But uh, we it feels like we've picked a little more on the station than we normally do this early, Sarah. I don't know if that's if you think it's that way.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

It does feel a little early, but definitely have always had some in September. But big picking day today. I mean tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow, yeah. We got we picked, I think it was 200 samples last week, and then we've got 200 to pick tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah, you had a bunch last week. We just had a few.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Yeah, yeah. I did 150, but y'all had another 40. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

About 40.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

And then and then we got 200.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I haven't even counted them all several trials.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Yeah, so we're uh we're getting after it here on the station. It's it's that time, and I've uh let's see, I defoliated some this week that was planted May 15th. So we're we're moving along here on the station and and uh trying to get things done and stage out harvest how we need to, but we're uh I mean it's been so dry.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I feel like it's helped. It's been so dry.

SPEAKER_04 4:45

Look, you are good. Y'all stalled so long. I'm averaging in the lower 6,000 pounds. I got a 6,800 pound dry lamb 5,100. Go expect that. That's not bad, though. That's still not bad. Well, the for as dry as it's been. What saved it? So let's talk about that because it's gonna be the same with our cotton. I'll tell you what saved some. Hey, welcome to the peanut podcast. No, no, we decided to harvest it. I'm harvested my first cotton trial today in Cockwick County, by the way. We harvested there we go. This is what's crazy to me, though. So we see we harvested the peanut trial there Monday, two days ago, and now we're right on cotton, which that's good. Yeah, go do it, right? Guys are wrong. They need to do it. But um, what saved it, and the same thing that's gonna save some of our cotton, is let's go back and talk about it. Y'all talking about some of the early harvest and where uh where it's at. Some of the stuff that's coming out now. We um we planted, you planted way earlier, but we planted probably in late April to early May, and we this dry weather came after we we were done with our water requirements, right? The stuff that's going on.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Oh, dude, yeah. I was talking to John Ruark yesterday, and I mean they got they were like everybody else, they kind of got pushed out of their optimum planting window, so they planted late end of May, first part of June, and uh they it quit raining up there in July, and then it started back in August. And so there's some o there's some open bowls in the bottom, but it's green in the top and still going, and they're trying to make a top on it, you know. Here's the problem. And uh, but I told him we planted uh 41 on April 15th, 16th, something like that. And uh, and I mean by the time it cut off dry, like that crop was made. Yeah. So it I mean, it worked out, and that's what I told John is normally we would plant that early and expect to rot about half of it. Um, but this year it didn't happen, and it worked out with the rain.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

No, it was perfect because when you got to that point where you expect to start rotting, it went dry. Yeah. And when it went dry, that means our per our chance of bowl rot and some of those disease issues just continued to decline, decline, decline. And we were at the point in the season that that crop had senested, right? It was done. And we that's the hardest thing, and I've talked about on every podcast. We we get itchy that time of year um to want to keep putting water on it, but camp back to your point, and what we're seeing is those earlier, you can't see me air quotes, earlier planted crop in general. We our we were well timed on most of our irrigation. There was some of I had a few trials, and you and I talked about this a month or more ago, that we actually didn't even need any irrigation on because every time we would get close to triggering, yeah, it would rain. You know, we would get right at that point and we're like, do we turn it on? And literally within a day or two of that, it rained again. We would hold off and then boom, we got rain. And so I would expect, I don't know what your yields are looking like. Maybe I need to turn it to the room. What are you talking about? What are they looking like?

SPEAKER_03 7:30

What you talking about?

SPEAKER_04 7:31

You got what your yields are? Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

So that 41 field. Is it good? Yeah, it's really good. 15, 1600 pounds. Dry land. Dry land, 100% dry land. Yeah. Like, didn't even water it up. And so then look, you just verified my point. But then we had some irrigating cross-road, different variety. Yeah, you know, but I mean it's probably 1200 1300 pounds. Still good, still good cotton. Overwater. And then uh hey, it's possible. One of my students is was real aggressive on picks. I think that might be one of the one of the things. But um, the stuff we're gonna pick tomorrow is good. I think it looks really good. It's probably 1,300 pounds, but it was planted April 22nd.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Again, I go back to it. This generally, all right. So let's talk about that too. Generally, if we look in the past, the that April planted stuff, we struggle. We are gonna have bull rot. Yeah, oh, yeah. Yes, and so that's our problem is we're gonna have bull rot because we hit this time of year and it's usually wet. So and so this year we're able to progress that crop, move it fast, get to where we're at, and once we got there, then it's like, all right, we're good. We walk away from it. Don't put don't waste money on water this time of year, right? You got well up at JPC yesterday, we we didn't go out to a farm. We were on um on the research stations, and every field I saw, I think, had at least one or two open bowls down there. Yeah. They're done. You know, they may have needed to have irrigated, you know, a day or two prior, a week or two prior, or whatever, because they've been dry also. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

But if the owners they did a good job, but the last rain they got talking to them was like a half inch two weeks ago or something. I probably would have put well, I'd have to see one like one more.

SPEAKER_04 9:06

Yeah, maybe if they needed it. And it may have been timely that they didn't need it. They they have caught, I don't know if they listened to our um to our podcast or not up there. They've caught a little bit more rain than us in the northern portion of the state. Now, sporadically have they gotten it all? I I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

That's and it's a heavier soil type, so they it holds it a little better.

SPEAKER_04 9:23

It's clay, red clay, it does hold better. Um, the to I want to talk about that. I'm getting us back off subject. The um John's comment. That's tough, uh, John Ruark about you know, they got dry, then they got wet there in late July, early August, and put on another top crop. If we were in South Georgia, I think I would continue to manage that. I'd be honest. I'd probably, if I did not have a very good bottom crop now, I'd try to manage for that top. Them, the problem is, and he even said it to me, yeah, they're uh they don't have the heat units to finish. I mean, when we were driving up yesterday, I looked at the tomato. I left early. I left at 5 a.m. So, you know, I got to uh Iron Horse Farm up there at a few minutes about 7.50, and it was like 60 degrees, yeah, 65 degrees, and about five or six degrees cooler than us. You gotta remember as we move into the fall, it's we're gonna hold heat a little bit longer generally. They're gonna the further north we go, they're gonna run out of time.

Drought Conditions and Irrigation Management

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Well, and I told him that in a situation like that, and it applies for late planted cotton down here too, is it about three days before a frost, like a hard frost, is whenever you're gonna wanna get out there and spray that. Yeah. So well, speaking of, I don't know if it's wasting money on irrigation or not, but I mean, we talk about how dry it's been, and two weeks ago, um, I was down in southwest Georgia, we were doing meetings down there, defoliation and peanut maturity and whatever else. And and I mean, even in other parts of the state, I've gotten some phone calls about watering cotton that's that's 20, 30 percent open, you know, and trying to finish out that top or trying to get the the turger pressure back in the leaves, prepping for defoliation and stuff like that. So what what have you gotten any calls like that?

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Yeah, so I still think we've got we've got data to show that we need we need we still need to walk away. If we look at true crop water use, what the bowl load is on that crop, what that crop is utilizing to finish off those bowls, those upper bowls and where the crop is at, it is not drawing, not extracting the moisture that it would when we have unopened cotton bowls on it. All right. So as independent on where we're at, on where those bottom bowls are at, as we start to move in and we see that we're opening more and more and more, that water requirement is going down, down, down, down, down. Very rarely we might consider putting an application on there. I got a I had a video actually to your point, I had a video sent to me after one of our trainings a week or two ago with an agent in a cotton field that they were walking out in the field and there the irrigation system's running with 60% open bowl. I I hate it, but that's money going out the window. Oh yeah. Yeah. We're not we're not gonna um I can I can make this statement with confidence. This year it's very likely that we are not going to reduce our yields or our fiber quality from irrigating with 60% open because our humidities are low enough it will dry out. But but we're gonna reduce our profitability because we just spent, you do the math, we spent anywhere from a half inch that's four dollars per acre inch. If you're putting an inch on, that's eight dollars an acre inch just to put water out in that field for no reason. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

So well now what about so you know we we've talked a lot about irrigation recommendations and and terminating when the profile is full, right? So right now the recommendation's still doing some work on the cutout thing, but right now it's 10%. So what if you're at 20% and your profile's not wasn't full at 10? You know, is that is that where you at and you do something at 20% or 30% or whatever? I mean, I I'm just I'm asking for myself, too.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Oh, that's a good question. I and I I'm gonna I'm gonna give the harsh answer and then I know why it happens because when it from 10 to 20 percent to 30 percent can in in our weather right now can happen in two to three days.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:19

You know, right? It can be we can go from 10% to 20 in a day or or something.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Generally you can go 20% in a week. There you go. So I mean three three days is about ten percent.

SPEAKER_04 13:29

So we can get, I'm not saying we get behind, but when we're spread, we're not checking every field every day, right? Yeah. So we can we can be on kind of a rotation. We started here and we worked in here, and we're we're back to your point earlier. We're trying to get peanuts harvest, we're trying to do this. We're like, let's go check our cotton fields. All of a sudden they're here. We recognize it's been a week and a half since we've irrigated. We don't have hard data on this, but I think if I were in that scenario, knowing where I'm at, wanting that crop to finish off, I would put out a an an irrigation event at that point to let it finish off because I missed I missed the opportunity the week before. Yeah, what makes this year hardest? Our last significant rain event in Tifton was Labor Day weekend around September the third. Yeah. I can't keep up with the dates. It was number 24th. It was 20 days ago. Four weeks ago. Yeah. So we are significantly behind even in low water use. So if you miss those opportunities, yes, your plant is that deficient. It will need some moisture so that it can finish out those upper bowls. Um, I'm working on an article right now. If hopefully I can get it done before the end of this week um and get it posted. What we're seeing that is aggravating, stressful, upsetting, and we're seeing it in both peanut and cotton, especially later planted cotton. The earlier planted cotton again is starting to send it.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

It's not, yeah. Yeah, but um well, and even our stuff planted on May 15th, it didn't, you know, I've gotten these phone calls about folks that had cotton wilting that was 60% open or whatever. Yeah, but uh our stuff that was planted May 15th, which I mean it could have to do with we had us a good cover out there, Dr. Singleton. And so I mean it, you know, it may have held a little moisture for us, but we it didn't lack water from the time that we stopped. And I'd I wanted to do I stopped at cutout, so I wanted to do what the new recommendation is gonna be. Yep. And so I'd stopped then and it had been four weeks since it got any water, and it wasn't it wasn't wielding or nothing.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

It shouldn't be theoretically, because we're drying or naturally drying it down anyway. I don't think but if you keep up with your water, right, then that's the that's the ticket. That's the ticket. It had what it needed when you get to that point. So what I've seen this year um in a lot of locations, that's really hard. So to your point about keeping up with your water, we got so dry so fast, let's just say that, because it went from we were wet, it was raining, to basically no low to no humidity winds and all that. It dried out really rapidly. Those plants were mature when that happened. And by mature, I don't mean they were finished, but they were had deep rooting systems, they were extracting moisture. We were most likely across the state on average, somewhere in bloom, right? I think you'd agree with that. If we look back, we were somewhere in the period of bloomy to early on late planted stuff, late bloom on uh earlier planted stuff. So it was extracting deep moisture. I saw in so many, again, so many cases, I can't reiterate this enough. We depleted our deep moisture, we were irrigating, we were not replenishing our deep our deep moisture. So when you look at the way I manage irrigation, I do it, and and hopefully most methods you use account for this in some form or fashion. We do it on a weighted average based on rooting depth, right? Because we want to keep the entire profile at what we would hope is optimal soil moisture for that plant to extract moisture across this rooting depth. I saw my eight-inch sensors or my shallow, it wasn't always eight inch, but my shallower sensors replenish and reaching what I would is my adequate threshold. Whereas uh if we irrigated a second day, we finally got my 16 or my middle sensor to reach an adequate threshold, but we never reached the adequate threshold again on my 24-inch sensor. So, my question, and and we did talk about this on the peanut podcast, but I've seen it in cotton and peanut. So hopefully y'all are if you listen to it once, good, listen to it again. If you hadn't listened to it, listen to it on cotton. Um my question, and we do not have an answer for this because it is very hard to simulate this in a production environment. And I will argue with any researcher out there who says they can simulate it in a greenhouse, it's not the same. It's not the same when we're as being in the field and we're doing moisture management. What does that do to my yields when I've put the bottom third of my rooting system under stress, but I'm maintaining the top the top one or two thirds? I don't have an answer to you for that. I would like to think overall that we're maybe okay, but I I don't I don't know. Well the way we've managed ours, I'll tell you this, and and I cannot ask a producer to do this. The way we've recovered and got ours there is in most of those cases, and it's been more than one, it's probably been five or six different cases that we've had to address this. We've had to irrigate three days in a row to let that moisture start to move down and get back into that deep profile. And it's took it, you can watch the delay, it's crazy on the sensors. Like day one, you see a response on shallow sensor. Day two, after the irrigation, you see a slow response on the next one. You wait another day or so and you can start to see it move to the other one, and you get that third event, it finally starts to move back down. But the other thing I would say is the fact that it's moving that deep with irrigation alone, generally we don't see it, tells me that the plant's not extracting as fast as what it would have been in peak water use, but again, we're not in peak water use anymore. So we're able to replenish it. Um, but it it did extract all that moisture. So I I hate to talk about something that I don't have a solution for, but I think in a year like this, it's a critical problem. I don't know if anybody out there's got solutions to it. You know, even in our um, like if you go out in West Texas where they probably deal with this, the problem is they don't have the water to infiltrate that deep anyway. They have the capacities. And so they couldn't address it in most of those cases either. This is a rarity that we have. And so I want to go back to your point. What I what worries me when we start talking about adequate moisture at the end of the season is that we've we we may think we have adequate moisture because we, you know, do our little dirt kick test or look on the top, or we put out our our three-quarters of an inch event. We're like, yeah, look, we're good. But if we actually stuck a soil probe down into that profile and went down to the two foot mark, what I've seen this year is once we reach about the 10, 12, 14-inch mark, it goes from what we think is adequate moisture to dry. And I mean very dry. Not not just, hey, uh, there's a little moisture there. No, it's like, hey, we're out of threshold. We're at like what we would call, you know, stress or bone dry, whatever you want to say. It doesn't matter, but it was it's bad. So that would that does worry me. I don't how do you address that? We cannot in 90% of our maybe not 90, maybe 80% of our irrigation systems on farm, run them back to back like that because of capacity is right. We're looking at two or three days in between. So I'm not telling you to do that. I don't that may be wasted money. Um, I don't want you to waste money. I think as long as you have some moisture down there, we're gonna be okay. But if we the fact that we usually we rely on that bank deep moisture when we get in times of stress, right now we don't have that bank sitting there, I guess is my point.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Yeah. Um, I think the example Well, and that's what I told I got a call from a grower last week and we were talking about it, and and he was telling me that, you know, he was thinking about watering and stuff like that, and whatever. And I was like, dude, I I said, as dry as you are, and as close as you are to defoliation, anyways, I said, it you water with a half inch or three quarters inch. I was like, it's gonna be gone in a few days. That's like you're not gonna get the benefit of it by the time because he was talking about getting it ready for defoliation, like getting the leaves perked up and all. And I said, Well, how far off are you from defoliation? Oh, two weeks. And I was like, What I was like, why are you turning the water on now? Because you're gonna lose it in three days. Yep. And I was like, let's wait two weeks, we might catch a rain, you know, hopefully.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

Well, um, yeah, I agree with you. We shouldn't um two things there. Uh right now, he he listens to it, so he'll he'll know who I'm talking about. But I got a call from a frustrated agent last week after we finished the peanut podcast about irrigation efficiencies and applications and stuff like that. He's like, I think we're not we're not making any headway. And what's happening right now, like a half inch means nothing. You know, where when we're yeah, we're at you look in the afternoons and it says like 46 or 36 or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 21:23

It's the same way if you're at peak bloom and you're in the end of July or whatever, it's like, why even turn it on?

SPEAKER_04 21:29

It's not doing anything, you know. That that half inch, by the time we look at efficiency and trying to infiltrate it, we're maybe, maybe getting like two to three tenths, and I'm being optimistic, to the soil surface.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

Yeah, and then and then it's gone after a day. Yeah, with the wind and as hot as it's been the last few days. I mean, it is when we got back to Tifton like yesterday. Dude, my truck said a hundred degrees. Did it? Yeah, while I was driving.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, the heat index for this afternoon is 98 at 3 p.m.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

And you're wearing uh a sweatshirt. Is what it looks like.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

This is a sunshirt, thank you. I'm going to pull with it.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

We've got a hood and long sleeves, so it looks like a sweatshirt.

Soil Moisture Depletion Issues

SPEAKER_04 22:07

But to that point, with our high temperatures right now, we're losing that rapidly. And it's been windy about every afternoon, right? So it's gone. It's it's evaporating before it does anything. The the example I used last week, let's just make it simple for everybody. You make$100 a week in your bank account, and generally, if you're smart, you're withdrawing, you know,$99 or less, right? So you're carrying money over. Well, right now, right now, we're withdrawing$110. And then the next week we're putting$100 back in. So it's that negative$10 going into the week. And that's what's happening with our deep bank moisture, where normally it's down there and helps us in our reserves, it no longer exists. So I guess if I could summarize this, I feel like I've wandered all over the place because I don't have a good answer. And I know when I try to write this article, um, it's going to be tough because how do you capture all this? We're talking about critical issue, but if I had to sum it up, I think go into it knowing that we've depleted our deep moisture, that when we go to make that termination, irrigation, termination decision, it's not the same as what it normally is. So just be smart about it. I'm not saying carry it into 20, 30, 40% open bowl. Just know that we're in a different scenario now. These three quarter, I mean, um third inch, half inch, even three-quarter inch events aren't doing a whole lot for us. So keep it. And it sounds like to get the benefit of it, you got to go back to back. You got to go back to back. That's all right now. If you can do that, do it, get your profile to that point and then walk away. Yeah. I also don't want to see you wasting money at 60% open bowl when you were not going to get any return out of that money. Yeah, when you could like if you're ready to defoliate it. I mean, what's the yeah? Um, your the other point I was gonna say with that, I checked while we were sitting here. Um, everybody's like it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain. I don't think so anymore. Yeah, they done pulled it. I don't I don't remember what term he used. I told him I'd call him out because he called me right before the podcast. Uh, Jeremy, I said, you keep calling before, we're gonna keep putting you on. But um it's something to do with uh I'm not even gonna try the term, but those those two hurricanes are out there. Gabrielle's gotten huge. Y'all remember Aaron did the same thing? What did it do? It dried us out, it got huge and pulled all the moisture out, and it looks like there's another one right behind it that's doing the same thing. So there is a meteorological term. Uh Jeremy Kushler knows the term. He's the weather expert today. He took that away, he took that trophy away from Bob for the day.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Mike's weather page is who he follows.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Yeah, I see. If anybody's curious. There you go. So you'll know where to get that term. But uh the point is that we're our chances of rain are dwindling because the way the two hurricane paths in the Atlantic are moving is pulling moisture away from us yet again. And so it's gonna keep us in a dry scenario. What I see on the app I'm looking at, you know, the weather channel predicts 15 days out, 10 beyond 10 days or even seven days.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Man, what are you talking about? Beyond three days, don't even pay attention.

SPEAKER_04 24:49

You didn't let me finish. So beyond like, well, okay, we'll use three days. I'm fine with that. Beyond three days, it's a historical average, it don't mean much, right? Those 15-day predictions are historical averages, but even when you look at the historical average, it says 24% is the highest chance historically in this time of year we can get it. So if you're a gambling person knowing that there's two hurricanes sitting out there pulling moisture away because they're moving back out into Atlantic, I'm putting my money on I don't know what the where these little pop-up showers are coming from that are helping sporadic farmers. Maybe they're praying harder than the rest of us or something. I don't know, but we're not we're not getting anything significant over the next two weeks. How about that? We can say that with confidence.

SPEAKER_03 25:27

Yeah, that's right. We were talking about that that dry land cotton earlier and how it made so good. And Dr. Roberts, I think it was it may have been last November, last December, he planted him some rye out there, Dr. Singleton. So um it's about that time. Start thinking about that. We're getting into October, and uh most folks are uh some peanuts have been harvested for sure, and some cotton, a lot of corn, most of the corn, but you know, kind of the next thing after all that's done is start thinking about cover crops. So what what do you think about all that?

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, it's definitely time to start thinking about it, start making plans if you're gonna go that way this year. I know it's for some folks it's likely to be a tough decision if that fits into the budget.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Um, but I'm hoping that most people that are interested can make it work. I'd love to see cover crop on every acre, but I know it's not suitable for everybody. But it's definitely start, it's time to start thinking about what you want to plant, when you're gonna plant, what is your planting window looks like, uh, get your seed order in, that sort of thing, because we get a lot of benefits from cover crops. I think it was really interesting last year, last planting season was so, so wet. And I know that was extremely problematic from the crop perspective, but there was so much soil movement during that time of year. I mean, huge, absolutely huge washes that everybody's finding now in their field as they're going through with the picker were showing up. And cover crops are absolutely something that we can use to help mitigate that erosion, help keep that soil in place, which is one of our most valuable resources. Uh, lots of benefits for cover crops on the weed suppression side of things, um, pesticide stewardship side of things, uh, building up that soil organic matter, preserving our soil health. So lots of um tangible benefits that can be added to your system from cover crops if we can just figure out how to make it work for your budget. Yep. Um, but I think it's important to think about now, you know, realistically, what is your window gonna look like for your cover crop? When are you gonna be able to get that crop out? And when do you intend to go back into that field next year with your net with your next cover crop or your next cash crop? And what amount of days do you have to work with? And then fit the species into that window that is appropriate, um, that fits your goals, but also it is suitable from a from a numbers perspective. You know, if you've got 150 days to work with, picking a species and a cultivar or variety that works well within that window is really important to maximize your dollar when we really need to do all we can to make it work on a on a tight budget.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and I mean, let's just be real. I mean, most folks are gonna go to the store and buy wheat.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

That's what I would do. I mean it's easy, yeah. It's easy or ride.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

He must be listening live. He just texted me and said, Fujiwara. Is that the term? I have no idea. He sent me it said 24, 25. That might be bad. That sounds like typhoon or something.

SPEAKER_03 28:29

Fujiwara. I don't know. I've never heard that term in my life.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

He might have just jinxed us.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Yeah, well, either way, there you go. We don't need no crazy, we don't need no crazy juju. But I mean, most people are gonna go out there and sling wheat. Yeah. You know, it's a it's seven dollars or whatever it is a bushel, I guess. And so go out there and do that, hold it in, you know. I mean, the goal is to hold it in place, right? And I mean, I we and I mean it is good on weed suppression. I have a different goal than other people in terms of building organic matter. Absolutely. And so it's like, you know, and uh and there's other species that might be better for that, but at the end of the day, you gotta make it work.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

That's exactly right. And so if that's your plan, I think that's great because you're holding that soil in place. I read somewhere, this is the most interesting fact to me is that a one I'm gonna say this wrong, 132 inch, however you say that, of soil lost 30 seconds. 130 second seconds, okay. That's a very small amount of soil. Yeah, yeah, fraction of the soil lost across an acre is five tons worth of soil. I mean, so if you just have something out there to hold that soil in place, think about all the things.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

And if you can, if you drive by a field and you can see a wash like that, it was more than 130 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say, but I I drive by a field um going home and I could drive my car into a washing across. And and you know, if we just have something. something to hold that soil in place. You know, even if you're, you know, just for a small window as you get ready, if you're not comfortable with a lot of biomass, it's, you know, it's great to just get that out there over the winter and then, you know, terminate that cover going into the into the spring to the level that you're comfortable with and go into planting. But, you know, the longer you can leave that cover out there, the more biomass you can accumulate that you're comfortable with, your equipment set up and all, um, the greater benefits that we're gonna see. And so, you know, if if weed is your thing, just sling it out there and and and go.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Get rained.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

But if you if you wanna, you know, if you want to get crazy and experiment with some other covers, we're we're working on some data to help, you know, make you comfortable with that decision.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

So I would I want to go back to your conversation about soil loss and all. And so I not what I cover here don't we're not adding that to my plate. I'm going throwing that out there. You're not so soil fertility that's not soil fertility nor soil health camp. That's engineering. Soil what soil loss yes yeah we I took two or three classes I took two or three classes in engineering on calculation. The Russell equation who does that that's uh NRCS and your NRCS engineers do your soil loss estimation do your terrace building do all that stuff. Look Camp learned something this morning guys the so um the what equation Russell yeah I had to look at the universal soil loss equation that's your runoff equation for slope soil type velocity and all the all I know is whenever I'm driving at 6700 and I hit one of those pivot tracks it don't feel real good.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

That's right. So that's what I know.

Cover Crops Benefits and Planning

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Well after we did our podcast in Columbus our joint department podcast I got feedback some from farm some from different farmers multiple ones that uh Taylor I'm it's not this probably doesn't fall into you either uh maybe Gary Hawkins a little bit but they actually said we need more of that. I y'all were noticing it as you drive around we have issues with erosion across lots of parts of the states and a week or two ago we got on a topic on the peanut podcast and then Bob got feedback from a farmer who said he spends a lot of time every year having to go and fix fields, move dirt, fill in washes and it's it's costly both from running heavy equipment and time wise and I I'm just throwing this out there and I there's I just not do about it. One of the things that we're probably missing at UGA overall from we may have some engineers working on it but from I know from the extension perspective right now nobody's working in it daily is um is doing like helping guys with how we understand soil laws how we understand terracing you know that's really important yeah stuff some of that because that's what the one farmer he told me he said I know how to go pull my equipment and rebuild my terraces he said people get where they don't know how to do that. He said but how to properly space them how to run them across the field and there is science that goes behind that. I've backed the point earlier in when we when I came through engineering we had a whole course it was soul and water um something like it's called soul and water in one of the lectures in that course and I've still got the book in my office camp you can borrow it so you can create on Russell. Read it in your free time yeah with all my free time that's right you do it hey read it to Hutton when he's going to bed maybe we'll create another engineer.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

He really likes playing with dirt in the driveway so maybe maybe he will like that.

SPEAKER_04 33:15

Either way it tells about slope of the field your tear space and doing all this stuff and um where we need to be and and we do need NRCS offers some of that I don't I honestly don't know where we stand. We have state engineers and stuff to help with some of that and it comes I know there's not one in every office I know that again I'm I'm not as in tune as probably what I should be with some of those guys but they do offer some of that it seems like that's some areas that we can improve upon you know cover crops one way and then we look at soil movement again and how we uh redesign some of our fields how we lay them out maybe even planting patterns in the fields to help prevent some of that erosion but yeah we think about that.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Because it all plays in together and it and it all you know and getting just you know just getting started cover crop is a great place to start and then you can start building upon these other factors to really understand your land how the water moves you know one of my neighbors has beautiful cover crop every year. His fields look incredible the cover crop is is beautiful and this year when we had all those early season rains you know I was watching at my house with my little weather station at home my husband and I are big weather nerds um we had a rainfall rate of up to five inches an hour one day during that early season you know may end of May when we had what 11 inches come in over a couple weeks and his fields didn't blow out like many of the others around did. So you know just adding that in you know over time that's going to build up your soul structure improve your soil infiltration and then we can start adding in some of these other elements to really do what we can to keep that soul in the field. Because once you start dragging it back out of the out of the woods every year, you got to think you've lost so much topsoil, you've lost your structure you you're building compaction probably and there's just a lot of that natural structure and infiltration that's lost and can you really rebuild it back the way it was you know it's gonna be hard.

SPEAKER_04 35:02

So the data aren't really ready to be released I don't think yet I think we're getting closer and Taylor you had a conversation with them we've got some agents working over in Southeast Georgia Jason Mallard probably leading that where we're looking at those different cover crop mixes long term scenario and he's been running last week I think it was last week yeah beginning of last week they put 30 something I can't remember 32 maybe infiltrometers out in that field across different soil types within the field and checked infiltration rates of the different cover crop mixes what I would point out is he did that early season and keep in mind we're uh that's a peanut field this year we rotate through corn cotton peanut in that field so it's on the peanut rotation keep in mind that that's now we're getting close to harvest my crew's actually going up today and tomorrow to pull our sensors so that Anthony can dig and invert that field soon. So he did it the week prior. So we were I again we don't have the data ready but something we need to revisit sometime and let you talk about is throughout the season my point too is is because even though you've got a crop in the field sometimes we can still erode within season we see that's exactly so we're gonna find out which cover crop mixes are helping with our soil structure.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah that's gonna be an awesome data set that that he's work leading and y'all are working on together I'm really excited to see how that turns out it's a really cool idea because it is hard to put a dollar value on what the cover crop brings to your system. Yeah. And so when you're when you're figuring up your budget and you're putting in that cover crop line if we're not seeing a direct return on that yield and that and that economic impact of the crop itself is really hard to justify. But if we're potentially um preserving our soil quality we're we're holding our moisture better in the season that has economic value and we need to be able to put a dollar on that so that is an awesome project that that he's leading y'all are working on. I'm really excited to see how that turns out because I think that could be hugely valuable.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

I have a question. Yeah are there any cover crops that you can get an economic value out of at the be like harvest before you put your cash crop in and wheat she mentioned so th they're theoretically that's not a cover crop anymore.

SPEAKER_03 37:07

It's a cash do you harvest it.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

But it could double that's exactly right dual purpose yeah so if you have a grain such as a wheat or you know if you don't burn it. Yeah yeah I mean I know everybody loves to see a good fire but yeah I live with a forester and his fire is is his favorite thing in the whole world. So um no yeah so you could do a grain of some sort and then harvest that grain and and sell it or use it for your seed for next year and then plant into that stubble and that absolutely has huge benefit.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

But even if you burn the stuff on the top which we did this year that's the reason that I said that is that we had rye we harvested it and then burn the straw on the top but you still have all the root biomass. Yeah that's right.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

So you're getting some of that soil benefit you you're not going to get as much weed suppression if that's one of your goals but you still have all of those roots that were left over from the the cover crop essentially as water infiltration yeah as those decay it leaves channels for the water to go through worms can get in there if you really want to get into the ecology of it I mean it's super valuable.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

My knowledge I should know better. I know why in Oklahoma my time out there but uh Sarah to your question uh most of the Oklahoma farmers because again wind erosion is such a terrible problem out there they plant winter cover root wheat you manage it that's the difference you need to put 30 if you catch a rain though you take it yeah that's right and so they would they've managed it let their cattle graze pull cattle off in like January February put some nitrogen on it let it tiller let it go to harvest and run the combines then come back out behind it and plant corn or something like that beans behind it where you could do it.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Camp my question like from that is it because we don't see as much of that here is it harder because that's shortened you're generally not going to be able to harvest that wheat probably until like best case scenario later first week of June June yeah again that's why I said best wheat later May and so we're we're we're cutting our windows really short on planting uh cotton and peanut that's what that's probably what it's us you know if we were doing it behind corners can you speak in the microphone please Sarah sorry a shorter seasoned variety guess who has some data like that yeah so there are multiple varieties out there now um for each different cover crop species there's a lot of work being done in that area um and and we're looking at them from a cover crop perspective but um different cultivars of rye different cultivars of oats that have an earlier maturing uh window essentially so you can get in get in there and get them out sooner you know potentially I'm interested in them from a you know can we get this in and out before corn? But if you're gonna harvest a grain and especially you know if you want to hit that that cotton peanut plant window it could be something that works well for that.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

But even still like your data shows that those shorter varieties may do better when planted later.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

That's right. So um which could work for for us too that's right we had a study specifically where we looked at you know normal popular cultivars and varieties for this region planted November 1st and then December 1st and looked at the difference in biomass accumulation over those two plant windows for numerous different varieties all the way through I think we went through beginning of May. And those earlier maturing shorter season varieties like an earlier maturing rye and earlier maturing oat accumulated more biomass, you know, in a shorter amount of time even around these colder temperatures that we had in December. So working in a shorter window, if we can tailor the cultivar the or the variety to fit that window that we're working with, you know, if we're going to be late getting our cotton out, late getting our whatever out and we want to have a cover crop and we want to get in there early next year, we can we can manipulate that window that we're working with by choosing a a shorter variety a shorter season variety may cost us a little bit more, but we're going to no it's not that much more but we have the potential to generate much more biomass and get more bang for our buck essentially and and and really optimize that window. Yeah. Just like you would with a cash crop variety if you fit it into what you're working with.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

Yeah you get tough is when you're following whatever corn after cotton right now.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

You know when you're trying to go into corn how do you say that when you're coming out of cotton again if you plant one of these shorter season varieties I mean it's like it was headed out before like I mean maybe a what was it a month before?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Yeah it was a month. So um one of the shorter season varieties that we looked at was around 120 days to maturity when our general Ren's a bruise is around I think we have it here 150. Yeah so you know if we let's say I got some dates here if we planted our cover crop November 15th and we terminated it March 15th that's 120 days.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

That's best that's best if you're following cotton to corn right and I it's it's tough to get all your cotton out I never seen corn your it's but but if you got pivots and you're like all right next year I'm going to corn and you I mean you know that right now then it's like hey I can go get some 401 or whatever water it raw that's right.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Even if you even if you you took it December 1st to March 15th that's 105 days but I think there's something interesting to look at and we've talked about this a little bit you know can we manipulate some of that early season growth by potentially adding a shot of nitrogen or something you know just to get some a little extra boost a little extra biomass. I think that there's some manipulation that we could play around with and we need more data to support that but I think it'd be interesting to look at and see just to get more cover in these shortcuts.

Soil Erosion and Conservation Strategies

SPEAKER_03 42:48

The recommendation right now the only reason I know is because I grew that rye last year. But I mean you you try to get out there with your nitrogen about Valentine's Day. For rye for seed for rye yeah for seed. And so if you go out there Christmas time or whatever or January 1st let's say with your 25 or 30 units and a little bit of sulfur or whatever and you encourage tiller production right then it's like hey that I mean that could lead to more biomass.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

I would assume with our depending on what type of winter we have half the time we have warmer winters right here.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

Yeah and it's but you could now it could come back and bite you if we got a warmer winter and you put nitrogen out too early it starts to grow off and then we get a killing killing freeze or whatever. It's tough here we're it's a weird environment here it's not it's not as consistent as you whichever it's very sporadic.

SPEAKER_04 43:36

Yeah very sporadic.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

We have a lot to learn but you know if we can figure out how to help folks really manipulate that window, find something that fits in there and love to see more cover across the landscape prevent some of this uh soil washing soil erosion and and um you know it's gonna really help us in our pesticide stewardship yeah battle as well.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

I hadn't seen in the past two years I don't think but I know when Mary Logan was working on that study over the like first four to five years of the study up at Midville we gained about a half a percent on average up to three quarters of a percent of organic matter. Oh yeah that's all every year? No no across five years. No after I think say good grief what are you doing? No it took no over it took four to five years to get that. So as as after but if you say in five years up there I think it was first five or six years I can't I'd have to look at our data but that's two full crop rotations of it right so that was corn cotton peanut corn cotton peanut coming through so that's huge. That's a huge amount I mean that's super value as it is you know and and now you gotta remember we're doing like four different treatments of types of cover. I think some of our our mixes were doing better. Some of our heavier veges that were mixed in with rye were doing better because both they have different benefits right I know you're looking at all that but you know it's like depending on what your goal is you got to think about do I just want a you know just a heavy cover of like rye if that's if you just want a heavy cover that's good. But if you're wanting to increase infiltration maybe build some organic matter do some of that other stuff you need what we found up there and you've probably seen it too is that we start to need something lower mixed in with that rye like some sort of vetch on the ground or something that's got more ground coverage low and that yeah good to know.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yeah you got to think about what your goal is you know it you you gotta tailor you got to tailor the species to your goal.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Well I'm look I just said I said earlier my goal is building organic matter and so what I started doing out on the sorriest dirt in the state of Georgia in my opinion at the Bowen farm was planting cover. All right first year we planted it sorry cover ever Taylor can attest it was bad it was bad spanly looking rye I mean if it was a thousand pounds of biomass if it was a thousand pounds of biomass I think that might be pushing it. Yeah so I mean it was terrible last year whenever we grew the seed all right I also told Trey whenever he was still with us before you stole him he's doing phenomenal with me so uh I asked him to get 50 unit spread on some rye over there and sun I mean it was wild you can see it on Google Earth like I mean that's Google Earth is the coolest thing ever. If you want to go see if your pivot is uniform go look at Google Earth if you want to go see if nitrogen turns plants green go look on Google Earth okay because it does. And so you go side by side and 70 pounds of rye planted on the same day put 50 units of nitrogen on eight acres and left eight acres off oh it's why it's unreal it's absolutely unreal now but the goal on that farm is to build organic matter. Now mix you something low in there some some lower ground Taylor's gonna know that what this area is I'm gonna do vetch because that vet that that was in that study this time was I mean yeah high.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

We've got a study here in Tifton looking at different cover crop mixtures and how it impacts cotton and uh we had some vetch out there that I mean it oh it was gorgeous it was huge it was absolutely huge but you know when you terminate it it melts away so something to think about yep yep and that study's getting harvested this Friday it is going down on Friday.

Defoliation and Pest Management Recommendations

SPEAKER_03 47:11

So hey maybe we can get some data out there pretty quick. We'll have some numbers next go around yeah yeah so that'll be good and we're we're doing a lot Amy Jones yep she's leading that study she's she's leading it we're doing some really fun stuff I think okay uh last couple things man we have we yeah we really have gotten after it today. So uh Dr. Kim Wright called this morning wanted me to make a couple of points I'm not a plant pathologist so uh he gave me a script but he told me that um now's the time between now and harvest to be looking at uh nematodes and things like that. So if you suspect a nematode issue now's the time to pull a sample but the biggest problem is how dry it is and so um pulling a nematode sample right now with as dry as it is is not going to read accurate results. We really need some water before we do that and so waiting on a rain would be best before pulling one of those samples and uh making the decision to do that. So you know now's the time to be thinking about that. But the other thing that he wanted me to stress to everybody is if is if there was an issue on your farm whether it was nematodes or you think it was soil borne diseases or something like that and you're you're not a hundred percent sure and you want somebody to come look at it he told me don't call me camp or him Bob in March and say hey I had this problem a year ago like what what do I need to do? And so call us now we're happy to come out and look at it and troubleshoot and pull samples and do whatever and talk through a game plan for next year but we need to see it while it's still in the field and not next year after everything's broken down and stuff like that. So those are a couple things to consider with Dr. Kim right in terms of things that I've been getting questions about uh the big one right now is uh defoliating cotton especially dry land that uh we already talked about some of the water relations in some of these fields that are just bad you know in terms of defoliating dry land cotton that's wilted and drought stressed and so on I it's business as usual. I'd go out with the same rates that you go out with on in an on a normal day in a normal year. Don't be throwing a bunch of extra stuff in the tank trying to get extra uptake or whatever because it it you run the risk of sticking leaves already just because it's drought stressed but you know it sometimes it it won't work as good as it should and sometimes it'll stick leaves and so um we just need to go out with what we normally do. Of course the the best thing would be to catch a rain which we may not do. So um I was pretty optimistic about a rain this week and uh Wes got me down in the dumps with his Fujiwara. So you know we we really need a rain to do some of that but you know if you're if you're out there defoliating dryland cotton business as usual in terms of some of the stuff we talked about on the last podcast with defoliating the the jazzed cotton and stuff like that that cotton that I posted pictures of on the X Sarah it defoliated really well so we're good but the thing that I want to stress there is that that cotton was not past the point of no return. It was yellow and red but it had not yet turned brown. And so that and whenever the leaves start to desiccate from that jazz feeding is really where I think we've got issue or can have issues uh with the foliation and so and and I've seen some pictures of it and and I mean walk in fields where y'all had small plot trials I mean those those leaves that are desiccated I just don't think they're coming off and so you know I even was texting with uh Ashley Smith yesterday and she was she was asking about treatment when to treat or when to defoliate and stuff like that and you know really nothing's really changed but kind of thinking about when when we're actually going to defoliate and and I had a conversation with one of her growers and if you get to the point where you stop treating for jazz it and the plant is still green i you got a couple weeks until it starts turning that yellow and red and stuff like that but then you know we need to be looking at it pretty hard at 60% open in terms of defoliating but if it's still good and hadn't reached that point of no return you can push it another week but let's not just don't let it turn that brown color because that's that's where we're gonna have problems. And I mean if you got cotton is 60% open ready to defoliate and you're trying to decide whether or not you need spray chids again easiest way out of that fight is defoliate the cotton. So you know and then some of this stuff I I I've gotten some texts over the last week or so about hot spots in a field most of the field's not ready hot spots are stuff like that. I mean you got to wait on the majority of the field where most of your yields going to be and so um just keeping a close eye on stuff and and making the best decision that we can with some of that and and with respect to some of the cover crop conversation I mean we even talked about it some yesterday about wintertime host for this insect pest and we still don't know a lot about some of that right Sarah correct that's correct. So we're learning but we're gonna be looking at a lot of these cover crops we're gonna be looking right so yes we are yes we are so we're gonna be looking at a lot of these cover crops we're probably gonna be getting an Amy study looking at if there's preferred cover crops or not or whatever because I mean I've gotten questions about weed or stuff like that. Yeah we're looking at uh wild weeds as well I mean you know just yeah because we can yeah and we talked the other day and I he's told Dr. Roberts told me ragweed and goldenrod is there. Yeah we saw some reproduction on some goldenrod but that's just simple obviously that's why that's why Sarah sounds so stopped up is because she's been playing in goldenrod looking for jazz. So yeah but the good news is that those are summer weeds and they're gonna die in the wintertime. So that's a good thing, right? Um we're still we're gonna be looking at a lot of our common winter weeds and and cover crop species and and stuff like that trying to figure out what we need to do but but I mean in terms of if you're in South Georgia especially trying to figure out what we're doing in the wintertime with respect to chassis you've got to get that cotton does not need to regrow because that's going to give it a place to reproduce. So shred the stalks pull them hair it in sling your wheat yep hair it in okay if we start seeing reproduction on wheat we'll tell you to kill it.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Yep okay we'll have a huge uh cover prop variety screening study that uh we'll keep an be keeping an eye on yeah yeah so um certainly a lot of things still to learn Dr.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

Roberts is in Dallas by the way and he's uh he's fighting for us he's sticking up for us because they're uh discussing new bull weevil trapping uh regulations and and or proposed methods for trapping for bull weevil and so he's out there representing us and uh he just texted me he was talking to Dr. Ray Frisbee uh he was getting educated so um Dr. Frisbe was on the Bull Weaver eradication podcast on the cotton specialist corner and that one was really good it was one of my favorites it was great so all right well uh I think I covered everything there's a lot of good stuff in this episode Sarah covered a lot of ground a lot of ground so uh hey if you got any other questions or concerns or comments call your county agent see ya thank you for listening to this episode of Talkin'Cotton with the UGA cotton team if you have any questions about anything we talked about today or if there's anything you'd like for us to talk about in the future please contact your local UGA County extension agent. And as always you can find us on all major podcast platforms. Be sure to like share with your friends and subscribe so you can stay up to date