Georgia Cotton Drought Playbook

Georgia cotton is trying to get started with one hand tied behind its back: dry soil, low ponds, and more pivots running in late April than most of us like to see. We sit down with Dr. Bob Kemerait, Dr. Wes Porter, and Dr. Phillip Roberts to break down what this drought pattern means for cotton production decisions you’re making right now, from getting a stand to protecting roots and stretching limited water through the season.

We dig into why soil moisture matters beyond germination, especially for nematode management and the performance of nematicides like aldicarb. Wes shares what he’s hearing on pre-watering, irrigation inefficiencies, and why a water allocation plan matters when surface water sources are already low and the state is running a major rainfall deficit. We also talk planting depth, seed placement, and how cover and residue can buffer soil temperature swings that stress seedlings.

On the pest management side, Phillip gives a straight update on thrips pressure, what immatures on seedling cotton really indicate, and how seedling vigor can reduce injury. We also hit grasshoppers, the ongoing cotton jassid search (okra, sunflowers, even hibiscus checks), and early whitefly monitoring with sticky cards as hot, dry weather builds risk. We close with thoughts on cotton acres, input costs, and making ROI-based fertilizer and protection decisions even when cotton prices improve.

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Transcript

Planting Progress And The Weather

SPEAKER_04 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. Today is April the 29th. And uh just a little snapshot of the crop progress report. Uh we're 6% planted, which is good. Uh we're just a little bit behind average. Average is 7% planted, so really right on track, hoping for a little bit of rain towards the end of the week to keep going. So got us a good crowd today. Uh Dr. Phillip Roberts. Hello. Dr. West Porter. Dr. Kemright. Yes, sir. Y'all doing okay? Everybody doing okay. So uh Dr. Kemright's got a teach here in a second. So I'm I'm gonna hand it off to Dr. Kemright.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Well, I appreciate it. And uh a few minutes ago, Phillip said, not enough rain to talk about what we've had so far, but I'm gonna talk about it anyway because uh uh we do have as Camp, as you mentioned, Dr. Ann, as you mentioned, we got some in the in the forecast, and just a little bit about what it means in my wheelhouse as far as disease and nemathodes go. The first thing is is when you're using, you know, don't forget, you get that, I'm a broken record, you get that one chance uh to fight nematodes coming into 2026. Just remember that adequate soil moisture is necessary for products like aglogic, you know, or or aldocarb. You got to have moisture in the soil to kind of activate it. Also, moisture in the soil helps us if we're using vellum or avarline, whatever we're using, it also helps it in the movement. So good soil moisture is not just for emerging seed, not just for the seed coming up, but get the best, the most out of our uh nematocides as well. The other thing to say is when it's dry like this, it's gonna exacerbate. I wait all term, all year to use that term exacerbate, to make worse uh nemathode damage. And the reason for that is is uh nemathodes are gonna compromise the roots starting out very early. Anything that compromise the roots is gonna affect water uptake, it's gonna affect nutrient uptake, and so we don't know what the rest of the season is gonna be like, but this is a clear indication, this this dry weather we're having right now, that that trying to take, trying to minimize the impact of nemathodes either by the variety we plant or the nematocide we use or however we do it is going to make the root system better able to handle the stresses that come along. And so um just don't forget about them. And not that anybody would, but we got so many other problems. We got some of the the water, the price, everything we got, but don't forget the nemathodes and and moisture is absolutely essential for adequate and for effective performance of our nematocides. Also, the last thing to say on that is if your soil is powder dry or it's adobey brick hard, those are times when if you do decide you need to take a nemathode sample, those are times when you're not going to be able to catch them very well. So just make sure that uh moisture is important, it's important for a lot of reasons. Uh hopefully we'll get more, but it's also important if to get accurate uh nematode counts as far as trying to assess that. So rain's important, but managing nemathodes is and broken record, Bob, but you get that one chance. Yeah, if you miss it, then uh team nemathodes gonna beat up on you.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Hey, the price is up, man. Price is up. Price of cotton. Yeah, that's good. 80 cent this morning at eight o'clock. So we're for new crop cotton. So we're it's been on a on a run here in the last two weeks or so, and it's hit some resistance at different points, but right now it's hanging around 80 and 81 cents.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Well, the chance chance of rain this weekend and uh better cotton prices, hopefully alleviate a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Bring a little optimism, maybe. Well, so we're saying we didn't get enough rain to matter, but y'all you gotta look where we were where we sat yesterday and today, and I just checked since midnight.

Georgia Rain Patterns And Dry Line

SPEAKER_04 3:54

And we're also talking about Tifton.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Yeah, there we go. That's what I wanted to say. They had North Georgia, they had a great rain yesterday. Well, not even so since midnight, just in Perry, they got 0.55 out of this, and there's more coming. So we've been where we've been sitting, unfortunately, we've been sitting at a dry line in the southern region here, but you guys that are a little bit north of us got fortunately to your point yesterday, all most of the day, North Georgia got it. But then um over this system that we just caught a little bit, we got four hundreds at the Tifton weather station, and Cordille got a tenth. And so that tells you how as we step forward this this system and where the dry line was at. The nice thing about that, at least, is um recharge for what we need to see. We need it a little bit north, right? So when we look where we're at our aquifer recharge zones and then our streams and some of that stuff, rivers flowing down. I'm not gonna complain about North Georgia rain. We need that too to move down our way because we're in a pretty bad situation from that perspective. So don't back to Camp's point. We're talking Tifton, but this is a statewide podcast. So keep in mind we uh we caught some north. You know, we still have a long way to go to to get back to where we need to be, but at the same time, we're fortunate for all we got.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

Yeah, no kidding. And I mean, especially up there, I mean, those those guys that are farming up there are dry land. Yep, for sure. Right. And so it's like they they need it for sure. So certainly, certainly a welcome thing. Um, but you know, Wes, it is by and far still pretty dry around, right? And so what are some of the calls you've been getting with respect to pivots and stuff like that?

Irrigation Planning In A Deep Deficit

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Yeah, so the the first thing, which is not directly related to cotton, but it is, and we've kind of inadvertently talked about it a little bit, is it's cover crop or cover cash crop, I should say, um, finishing out. And that's tough because we don't normally get those calls. I'll get a wheat call every other year, every few years, but this year it's been rye, wheat, yeah, et cetera. We're having to irrigate those to finish them out. A lot more guys uh bringing those in for cash crops. I think on the same side of that, we're looking at um um cover crops in general, and I think Taylor's talked about that a little bit at different perspectives. She even put that, I know in the peanut pointer, may have put it in some of the cotton newsletter, I'm not sure. Talking about cover crops utilizing moisture later in the season, because they are, right? We've got what I would call is is growing, and I wouldn't call good growing conditions, but they're drawing that moisture profile down. I have gotten more, just more general calls about it. I think my biggest thing I would say right now, and we released a box a blog post on it on Monday, is and if you're not, if you're not, if you don't have corn under the system and it's going to be cotton or peanut and later planted crop, and we don't change conditions pretty soon, you're gonna you're gonna be in trouble for any inefficiencies that you've got on that system. And I see them still on corn right now. I've seen more pivots running. Last week, Philip and I were in North George, and I had to stop by Athens on the way back, and so I was coming down I-75 about, I don't know, eight or eight or eight thirty around uh somewhere in northern counties, I won't call them out, but every pivot down through there was running. Right. And so that's unusual to be April the 25th and have almost every pivot near the highway running at that time. So that tells you where we're at. So we're having to do a lot of pre-watering. Um I've had people tell me, and this is not one singular person, people tell me that they're having to pre-water to till, pre-water to plant, post-water after we get it in uh for either herbicide andor just post-water, and then a fourth application for an herbicide or flip those two, it doesn't matter, right? So we're taking four potential events to get those up. I've also um tried to be pretty positive through it, and this rain is making me feel a little bit better. But if you go deeper into some of our data and where we stand, we're actually worse off than we've been in the past two droughts, meaning 2012 and 2007. I've I've tried to ignore that fact, but it's the data's there, and where our water table levels and our deficient is below what it was in those two years. What worries me about that, and we are supposed to, and this is one of the first breaks in the high pressure we've had in a while, that's why the rain's moved down further south. And we're actually, if you look, we're pulling moisture up from the Gulf Trough right now. But um, we're at the beginning of the season and we're already at a worse spot than we were in those two droughts. And so if we don't have that change and that moisture that comes in where our uh our depth water table, our surface water sources, all that stuff, it's going to be a hard recovery the rest of the year. And so that's that's what worries me a little bit moving in. I am hopeful for some May rain. We're getting predictions of that and a change atmospherically where it should allow rains to form and to come over us in the southern region of Georgia. But we are um approximately 20 inches behind on the year. Yeah. So it's not like, hey, these couple of rain events are just gonna magically fix it. So going in, being a little more negative or a little more to the point, we need to um, this is my first cotton podcast this year. We've I've been been able to make the peanut ones and what I've said on it, and it's the same thing applies for cotton. We need to go into this season with a plan, right? And our plan needs to be if we're pumping surface water sources, we need to really evaluate what that surface water source looks like because when we talk to people and you'll ride around the state, if we if it's not a really nice deep pond, y'all have all seen this. A lot of them are dry or very low, right? And so we don't have a ton of water sitting in those like we normally would. I don't know what our refill potential looks like for the season. So I'm going in it with a plan on when I'm gonna allocate that water, right? Having not picking on that scenario, hopefully those guys got have good water, but having to do four applications to get a crop stand is not good. Yeah. Right. And if we're pumping out of that pond, and so we got to back up and say, all right, when do I allocate these? And on cotton, we all know, and we'll address it as we come, but late square and and through the periods of bloom is really when it's got to be allocated if it comes to that. Hopefully we'll have a different conversation in four to six weeks from right now, and and be saying, hey, you know, we're getting some refill, we're doing some of this. I think the one other thing would talk about camp, and you helped write up uh a portion on this on the blog a couple weeks ago, and this will help change it. But planting, I I was getting concerned because I was getting too many questions about people dusting in corn, like putting corn seed at like three-quarters of an inch deep. And we just can't, that's not where we need to be on any of our crops right now, right? And and we did catch a little moisture, we're gonna catch some more on Saturday, but putting that seed shallower in that condition we were in weeks ago, and if that condition comes back in the next few weeks, it's putting that seed in danger. Okay. A lot of my what I would call my uh astute um farming friends, what they were telling me, I was asking them, you know, what are you what are you doing? They were planting irrigated and getting irrigated land prep, but they said we're just on holdover on dry land, which is the best place you could be, to be honest, right, in this scenario. Like, don't don't go put that seed out and put it in a bad situation and wait for it, you know, um a rain, because you it can only take sitting out in that heat and that dry condition so long. I didn't um we hadn't talked on this podcast, but I thought it was pretty cool. I put it in the blog post, and it has changed because our temperatures have changed, but a couple weeks ago, when we were in the 90s, tilled soil conditions were ranging from at night the temperature's around 70 degrees, and they were swinging up into the lower 90s during the day, whereas a buffered soil can, and that's a four-inch soil temperature, not two, four-inch soil temperature, whereas a covered soil, so that that could be the you know, your actually your soil temperature at the weather station was going from about uh a 10 degree swing from about the mid-60s to the mid-70s. So does that make sense? We were really kicking that soil temperature up, and again, I want to reiterate that was at four-inch temperature. So if we move up to like two inch or an inch, we're probably pushing that temperature closer to 100 degrees when we were in that scenario because there was no moisture to buffer, it's sitting there with no cover, anything else. And so when we start looking at our soil temperatures from our weather stations, they're in a little bit different scenario than what we were in because we had no buffering capacity whatsoever out in that field after it had been tealed, after we removed the last bit of moisture, last bit of residue that was out there. So keep that in mind too when we place that seed in that condition.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, you talk about this year's worse than previous years, and you can't ignore the data, right? It is what it is, but hey, let's not ignore the data. The last time we broke a record, Dr. Roberts, you know what year that was?

SPEAKER_02 11:52

It was 2012.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

It was. There you go. Hey, well, what I said. Hey, let's be positive. Well, you know, on the peanut podcast last week, what we turned to, and and it was more probably geared towards cotton because it's out there. Where do they make some like five bell cotton at regularly, Camp? Arizona, California. There you go. And it's ideal growing conditions a lot of times where you're in that, but then you got to have some adequate water supply for that. And you guys with adequate water supply fields and good management plans moving in. If we stayed in these conditions we've been in, um, there's big potential there, right? Because we're not fighting, Bob. What are we not fighting when we don't have humidity?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

That would shall not be mentioned.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Okay. Bull rot. There you go. So we're helping with that. We've got some other issues we're not dealing with. We've got plenty of heat units when that comes in. And then the management strategy is on you, right? Yep. And it we got a long way to go. Right. We do. It's it's early in the year. But it's good to throw out some potential nice things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

But first step, we've got to get a stand. Yeah. There you go. And so let's get a stand and let's hope we catch some rains. And yeah. I need to go back and look at 2012 and look at our rainfall pattern, but I wouldn't. Once we got into May and June, that we caught rains and then it probably stopped and had a good harvest year. Yeah. Um, I know there was good cotton uh statewide that year. Yeah. We actually averaged 1091. And uh I'd like to break that record. That it'd be great to break that record. Yes.

Planter Setup And Seed Placement

SPEAKER_04 13:15

It would it's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming. Yeah, so certainly a lot of stuff to think about. What about planters and stuff like that, Wes? I mean, anybody calling about that kind of stuff? Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Those have slowed off some. I think the drought's been the forefront. Um I've had a few questions about minor population adjustments, minor settings on them. I I have not heard any major concerns, but the at the same time, you just reported that we're at about 6% planted. So that's some of it, right? We don't have a ton of guys that have we're in that lull, is what I would say. I'm in that lull between corn and cotton and peanut planting, right? Guys have finished up the corn. They've been, I think, uh, unfortunately, focused on irrigation and corn management right now, you know, right? Running the pivots, doing all that stuff. Um, we planted our trial in Midville on Monday, uh, cotton and peanut supposed, which is the earliest we probably planted up there, but logistically it worked, you know, it worked out. We had equipment up there, so we did it. That all went pretty smoothly. You know, of course, Anthony does a great job having everything ready up there. So we'll see how that goes with it. They've caught a little more rain than us. Um, and we, of course, I was under irrigated conditions there. But I think right now the biggest thing is um you're if we're 6% planted, we've got 94%, give or take 90% of your guys that are probably, you know, by now, by that report was released, that are getting ready to roll, just make sure you're ready to go for cotton. It's as simple as that. Um, planting cotton, obviously a lot shallower than we are, corn, not too shallow in these conditions. Don't be go putting it at a half inch because if you try to set that planter to half inch, we're gonna be laying seeds on top of the soil surface, which is not good for anywhere. Three-quarters to an inch is where we want to be, unless it dries back out and push it a little bit deeper, not too deep, a little bit deeper just to buffer it a little bit. Adjust populations accordingly. And um, if you're high-speed planting, just be astute of what your monitors are telling you. If you've got a high speed planter, the monitor's gonna be running. So make it make adjustments, whether that's vacuum, whether that's doubles eliminator, whether that's whatever's going on in there, and maintenance of the systems. We've talked about that a lot in a bunch of my different posts, and not on this podcast, but if you had issues corn planting, which I got some of those calls, rectify that right now before you go to cotton. Yeah, as simple as that, right? Go in and check the seals, check the um knockout wheels or scrapers. If you hopefully, if you're using scrapers, you need knockout wheels, change those. Anything with seed plates and the meters, um, all that. So now's the time to get ready to get that to Phillips Point. Get your cotton stand ready to go and get it up and going to stop mess up on it.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Yeah, it's time to get your planner ready. It is. Um it was ready. Ready to dump it in. It was ready when I parked it in June.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Well, I've used it already. Usually you have used it, yeah. But I hadn't used my ag logic tubes or your inferring.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

We're there. We're getting there. Uh-huh. That's right. Hey, it's gonna be ready here before nine o'clock.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

We did do a lot of um, most of us was probably uh counter on corn and some other stuff, but we wrote a blog post about a month ago now on insecticide calibration stuff because there's a lot of questions on that across the state. So if you calibrated that system for another crop and ready to switch over to cotton, make sure you're calibrated and ready. Or, you know, we know how agents have done a wonderful job of hosting those clinics. That's been a big service that seems to have kicked off in the past few years. Um a lot of them have done a very good job helping our guys out there getting the calibration of where they need to be. So just make sure, make sure to Phillips Point, you've checked that, make sure all that's ready to go in your ag logic when we get ready to go out there, your granular systems.

SPEAKER_04 16:46

Yeah. And you know, you you mentioned dusting stuff in and planting depth and stuff like that. I mean, you you sent an email out and it was like, hey, let me know what you think. And it's like, ah dang, it's April, you know. Like, we do not need to be having this conversation right now.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

I think the problem was it's 90 degrees, and a lot of people felt itchy.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

Well, and I mean that number tells me we're better than what I was afraid we were gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

People just get froggy, it gets warm outside and people want to do something. Yep. You know, and it's uh and I'm the same way we talked about it in the last podcast, but I mean, it's just it is awful early to be having that conversation, and so we I mean, we got a long way to go. We just we just got a long way to go. And if we got to get to the point where we're gonna start dusting stuff in, uh I mean, we can start having that conversation a month from now.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Yeah. Well, the nice thing to the point was that with the guy, the farmers I talked to were like they were on weight, they were on weight pattern for the dry land, right? Which is a again, it's a good strategy. We got warm weather, you got irrigation. If you want to start moving, you want to make some progress and take advantage of that, your irrigated fields, of course, and then let's work our way back around so we don't let ourselves fall behind. I think another thing that we've the back of our minds, I think, that had some people worried, maybe a little bit. I don't know about if y'all thought about this or not, or if it's kind of been sitting back there, but we were dry, dry, dry, and then we do have predictions for rain to start coming in May. And so it's like everybody's like, well, it's gonna be so dry, and then that's not what I'm hoping for. I'm just repeating, you know, what the conversations had. Then it's gonna be so wet we can't get back in the field till June the first, June 1st.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

That'd be great.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

I would love that. Well, we can't get 90% of the cotton planted between June 1st and June 15th. You get my point.

Thrips Risk And Grasshopper Calls

SPEAKER_04 18:19

Says who, man. Hey, these guys can get after it, man. It happened uh, wasn't it last year that it rained in May so much? Uh or two years, I can't remember. It was last year or two years ago. Yeah, it was two years ago. I mean, from like May 10th to May 25th, it rained every day. And then, hey, we still got it all planted. Got it all in. We got it all planted, and so it was a it was a good year. Well Dot Roberts. What's a word, man?

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Hadn't had many calls. That's good. Just uh you know, there's cotton up uh a little bit scattered around.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

Hey, they they didn't report uh the per the percent of cotton that was squaring. Oh man. Well that's 0.001. I was gonna say it's less than one percent.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yeah. No, we did jump out and plant some cotton early, and uh thrips have just hammered that cotton. So did some frost. So did some frost, but it's uh but that's pretty typical. Um you know, I've been getting a lot of pictures of people's trucks just loaded with thrips. There's been some pretty heavy thrips on uh some vegetable crops. Lord help folks have planted some soybeans. I've had calls about thrips on soybeans. Lord help them. But uh I need help in more ways than one. But anyway, we're so dry, and uh you know, thrips are on all these alternate hosts and ditches, edges of fields, and as these plants senesse, we're just getting a little more movement a little earlier. But uh we'll plug that thrips infestation predictor model. You know, it looks pretty normal to previous years. You know, right now. If I was gonna plant a thrips trial wanting to get heavy pressure, I would plant today. And uh we're at very high risk for thrips, but that's okay. Yeah, we know what to expect. Um, we deal with thrips. I've had uh probably the most calls I've had has been on grasshoppers.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

And grasshoppers is such a difficult thing um because they're so unpredictable. I mean, they're very, very unpredictable in terms of whether they'll damage cotton. But one thing that is predictable about grasshoppers is it's uh reduced tillage pest. Yeah. And it's uh it's pretty interesting, you know. People ask why, and we actually can tell you why, because grasshoppers actually deposit egg cases in the soil in the fall and they overwinter in the soil. And so they emerge now. They'll emerge in April, May, even into June up out of the soil. So as you're, you know, look in the fields, most of the calls I get from grasshoppers, you know, they're strip tilling or burning down, and there's just grasshoppers. I think you may have catched them. They're just flying around all over the place. But you know, there's there's that's one thing. But if you're in a cotton field and you see these little clusters of really small grasshoppers, they'll stay in a cluster of maybe 30 to 50 grasshoppers for several days. You see that, you know they're coming out of the soil in the field. And and and that's where you need to be concerned. But whether they damage cotton is so unpredictable. And we don't have a lot of data on this, but but it's it's of my opinion and a lot of my colleagues that when grasshoppers feed on cotton, they're looking for moisture. So when we're bone dry like we are now, uh you can see grasshoppers uh uh feed on the stem of a seedling. Uh we've seen Situations is that cotton is emerging before it pulls the cotyledes out of the ground, they'll just nip the top out of what I call that crook.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

When it's trying to pull the cotyledons out, but so unpredictable, not easy to kill. Yeah. And uh if a grasshopper's flying, that would be an adult. They have wings very difficult to kill with insecticide. Yeah. Um, probably our most consistent product has been three-quarters of a pound of acate. Now the little immature grasshoppers that we see clustered up, very easy to kill. We'll kill those with a thrips ray. We can kill those with a pyrethroid. But very unpredictable. A lot of folks, you know, get concerned when they see them and want to do something. And you know, it's just a tough call, Kim. Yeah. Just a tough call. Yeah. But we're, you know, right now that's kind of where we are with insects. I mean, it's about to get going. Yeah. I hope the thrips will back off a little bit. You know, and when we've had droughts like this in the past, Wes, we see this massive migration of thrips, and then they kind of fizzle. So let's be good. Fingers crossed on that one. Yeah. I'm not good at predicting things, but well, yeah, we won't go there. But you know, I had a colleague one time, every year he wrote a newsletter and he said uh only an idiot would try to predict insects. And his very next line in his article, here I here I go. Here's my prediction. But but we'll see. You know, I mean that's why we uh that's why you you you know you walk these fields, you scout. Yeah. So we can make good decisions based on good information. And uh I will go I have had some calls about scout school, so I will go ahead and uh so the scout school in Tifton, and we've pretty much fell into this. It's gonna be the first Monday in June. The first Monday in June, and what is that? June the first. Sure would. And we also do a scout school at Midville, and that'll be the second Tuesday in June. So that'd be June the Monday. June the ninth. So June 1st in Tifton, June 9th in Midville. Hey, we'll talk about cotton soybeans and peanuts. Uh Dr. Mark Abney come, we spend a half a day. Wade Parker will be with us over in East Georgia. Um Peyton Sap. So you know, we'll Peyton Sap will bring the snacks. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We don't have a meal. We got good information though. And snacks. And crackers.

SPEAKER_04 24:32

So nabs. I was curious. You talked about how bad the thrips were on your on your March plan of stuff. Is it less on your April plant of stuff? Just out of curiosity. I don't know if you've sprayed it yet.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

I have. Yeah. Um yes. It's better. Yes. It's better. Lighter. Lighter. It's still not good. Right. And and again, when we think about thrips, Bob used that big fancy word exacerbate. That was pretty good. There we go. Thank you very much. But you know, when thrips are feeding on cotton, they're feeding on the little unfurled leaves in the terminal. And one of the things we talk about is having a good vigorous stand. And if you have cool temperatures where the plant's growing slow, if we have injury from whatever input we make, whatever that could be. A big grain. A big rain. Anything that slows down growth of cotton makes thrips injury worse. Yeah. And the reason, you know, it's pretty simple, but people need to understand it. It's so important to have a rapidly growing seedling. But if they're feeding on an unfurled leaf, and let's just say, for example, we have three thrips per plant on average. If it takes that leaf five days to unfurl, those three thrips fed on that leaf for five days on a slow growing seedling. If that seedling is coming out of the ground rolling, and it unfurl that leaf unfurls every three days, they're feeding on it only three days versus five days. The injury's gonna be less. Yeah. It's a lot of little things. Yeah. And uh, you know, it's just so important to have a nice, good, vigorous stand. Yeah. You know, vigor is important. When it's important when it's important. That's right. But but this is just one when we have pretty heavy thrips pressure. But you know, for the cotton that is planted, um, you know, people need to be looking at that. We've talked about this in years past, but the sweet spot is to be a lot earlier than you think. When that first leaf is coming, that's when you have a lot of opportunity to protect cotton. And we could explain that biologically, but I mean they just dump a lot of eggs on cotyledons. And and if we're spraying about that first leaf, we're just killing a high percentage of the population as they hatch. So, but you know, be on alert for this early planted cotton. And yeah, you know, we can withstand a lot of feeding. It doesn't have to be perfect, but we do want to keep that that field nice and uniform and not slow that cotton down too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

You know, I sprayed some, I guess it was Monday, for a little bit of residual herbicide and some thrip spray, and it looked better than I thought. It was it was planted April 9th or 10th, and um it it had a a true leaf and it was pushing a second, and it looked a lot better than I anticipated it did, but I know how bad it's been, so I went on and sprayed it, you know. But well, it's just a good decision.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Yeah, and if you would have pulled up plants, I can assure you you would have exceeded our threshold, which is two to three per plant. Right. And immature is present. Hey, it's important to have immatures. Why is that? I don't know. I'm not an entomology. Oh my gosh. They're worse, I don't know. Oh, you can't move. Well, if you have immature thrips on seedling cotton, you know, number one, everyone needs to use something preventatively at planting. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, our lease uh, you know, seed treatments and midacloprid have activity there, but uh they're gonna need supplemented if thrips are high. We talk about ag logic, we talk about imidacloprid inferral. But if you're using an at-plant insecticide and immature thrips are on those plants, that tells me eggs were laid on the plant, the eggs hatched, and the little thrips are surviving. So your at-plant insecticide is played out or is not working. Yeah, yeah. Now on the Thrive On, you know, I don't, you know, that's totally different. Right. Really good technology on thrips. Um we've never really seen a case in Georgia where we would even think about spraying it for thrips. But you may find thrips on Thrive On Cotton, so you can't make a count and base a spray on that. Just look at the injury on the plant. But uh we can help you through that. Your agent can help you work through that if you have some concerns there.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

So in these dry conditions, you know, it was a couple weeks ago and I got a call about is ag logic worth the money? With as dry as it is, right? And so because it's gotta have moisture to get it activated and take it up and use it, right? So what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Well, if you got enough moisture to uh germinate a seed, you've had enough moisture to partially activate the ag logic. Same thing with the seed treatment. If you have enough moisture to germinate the seed, you've probably taken up a lot of that seed treatment. Yeah. Now, if we have if we're very limited on moisture, particularly with ag logic, if that uh moisture line drops below where our ag logic is, you know, it's not gonna be getting any more ag logic or aldocarb out of those granules. So we've seen that happen where you'll you know have that, you know, good thrips control up to maybe the first leaf, and then kind of stuff just kind of goes haywire, which we wouldn't normally see with Aldicarb. Actually, I've seen situations West where people have turned a pivot on to get the ag logic up going again. So but let's hope we're not gonna be in that situation.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yeah, but my thought when you asked that question was that it irrigated a dry land field? Because to me, that's what would help me make that.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

Well, yeah, yeah. Now I mean I'm operating under the assumption that we're in a dry land situation.

Cotton Jassid Search And Hosts

SPEAKER_02 30:31

So you know, is ag logic worth it? And uh, you know, we're not at a point where we're dusting in cotton. Yeah. But if we're dusting in cotton, is ag logic worth it? Well, when's it gonna rain? I mean, thrips are gonna get less and less and less as as our uh uh planning is delayed. You know, let's say it's three weeks from now. Yeah. You know, make people are gonna have a different attitude then. Yeah. You know, the 20th of May, people are gonna be rolling. Yeah. Um, you know, is it worth putting AG logic out for thrips control? Right. If it might not rain till June the first, you know, who knows? But a lot of the ag logic is is kind of a dual purpose where they're targeting nematodes. I I have had a few calls about ag logic rates, and they were specifically looking for thrips. And uh so kind of a minimum rate when nematodes are a target is five pounds. That's kind of the standard use rate. But we can actually bump that rate down if all you're looking for is thrips control. Three and a half is more than adequate for thrips. So more than we need to talk about there. But uh Yeah, for sure. But this is the time to talk about it, right? So we'll give a brief update on the cotton jazzed, and uh we'll be brief. Sure. We've devoted a lot of time. Shout out to Mason Paul. Yeah. He is trying to find a jazzed so bad. Do you want to tell them about his to-do list?

SPEAKER_04 31:58

His to-do list is really funny. Well, he added one and I can't remember the last well you got it. I got sent a picture of it by my crew. I had to find it.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Yeah, because he added a fifth objective. Yeah. I see. Objective. All right.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

Yeah, let me have it. Yeah, so the first objective on Mason's to-do list, find the jazzed. Gotcha. Second objective. Find the jazzed. Third objective. Find the jazzed. Fourth objective. Kill the jazzed.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Did he have a number five on this one?

SPEAKER_04 32:27

He did. Eat the jazzed with toast and coffee. Yeah. So so he he's been a man on a mission and he has.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

So so he has, and uh he's pretty confident he saw a single adult. It was one of those windy days, so he couldn't really. But irregardless, we haven't found them. We cannot find them.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

No.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

So he's done uh just a great job looking, and uh he's got sticky cards out. You know, we we count white flies on sticky cards. We have not caught a jazzet on a sticky card since the last week in uh January. Yeah, that's right. He's put them in different habitats. Uh we've got potted cotton plants sitting on pivot points. Yeah. And West, when it doesn't rain, it's hard to keep a cotton plant alive. Yeah. Especially in a pot. In a pot.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

If you get if you get water deficit and potting soil, it's really hard to get out of that. It just drained the sleeps right through.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

And then that pot gets hot and it's we're water deficit every other day. Yeah. Because every other day is what he waters Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It's also blooming. It's also blooming.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Oh man. And it's got a little tiny pot.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

But the point is, he's looking really hard. And uh so also interestingly, and Camp, you found a field and sent him a pen. Yeah. Uh he's found sunflower fields, old dove fields from last year with a lot of volunteers, and he found a couple fields that have been planted in sunflowers, but sunflowers is a host.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

And uh so he's looking at sunflowers and and hadn't found them there. Now, I really believe, and one thing we could encourage our listeners to do, I really believe where we're gonna find jasids is this on the same plant we found them last year, and that is okra. Yep. And uh, you know, Sarah, as we drove around last year, there is more okra patches in South Georgia than I ever imagined. You don't realize how to until you start looking. And uh, you know, so I would encourage folks to, you know, look at your okra if you got okra patch. Yep. Um look at your sunflowers if you got a bird flower. Look at your sunflowers. And and we'll talk about that later. If we have sunflowers with jazz in them, hey, we need to put the word out. Yeah, need to do something about that. But but let's make sure we're looking on okra and and just to backtrack to last year again, we didn't find jazz till July the 9th. When we found them on July 9th or Justin Odom did down in Seminole County, those jazz have been there for several generations. They probably were there in June. Yeah. So if we find jazzets today, I don't know what it means.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

But when we can start making some comparisons to a year ago, then maybe we can feel a little more comfortable with where we are. But uh, I can assure you, entomologists across the U.S. are looking very closely for this insect. So also check your wife's hibiscus.

SPEAKER_04 35:25

Yeah, we, you know, we did some crazy stuff this past winter. We went to Home Depots in Lowe's between meetings, flipping over hibiscus. Yes. And I had a plan for if I found some. Yes. But luckily that didn't take place. And so uh we bought hibiscus. I ain't I ain't bought hibiscus in years. And I bought one and planted it right next to my front door, and every day it gets looked at. I don't ever plant no okra in my garden. I plant an okra in my garden.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

I've got okra too.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

I don't ever plant an eggplant. I spent five dollars on an eggplant. On an eggplant. Oh my god, five dollars. Five dollars. But hey, it gets checked every day. Yes. So, you know, we're we're doing some some cra I got sunflowers in my garden too. I planted some sunflowers. So, you know, we're looking really hard. Um and Dr. Roberts, I told some guys back in probably March or so that in all likelihood we were probably gonna find them earlier this year. I would think so because we're looking. We're looking.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

We're we're looking not that we weren't looking a year ago. We were looking last year, but maybe didn't know where to look. We we know a little better of where to look. Yeah, so and and and maybe we're looking in the wrong places now. It's true. If they're here, yeah. You know, we had some really good cold events. We did. Now, you know, we we do know there are jazzes in central Florida.

Whitefly Monitoring And Drought Effects

SPEAKER_04 36:52

You know, we'll see. Yeah, so and just because Mason may have found one, I don't mean nothing. So it was a single adult. So real quick, white flies, you want to talk about that or no?

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Can't you know uh so we do run these sticky cards. We got several county agents. Uh Tanner down there in Culquet County runs a few, Gail Cloud, Keltsy over in Hurley County runs a few, but yeah, but we we monitor these whitefly cards every week. We actually post that on the website, stop whitefly.org. I can tell you one thing when it's hot and it's dry, white flies love it. Yep. And uh so we typically run uh what we call the white fly loop every Monday. And uh I had messaged Mason, I says, take a picture of the data, I want to see it when you get the counts done. Because I keep having this fear we're fixing to see a big change. Yeah. But right now, I would say our counts are still low. Yeah. Actually lower than I would anticipate. Yeah. But uh again, we had killing frost cold events. We had four really good killing frosts that were spread out, so I think we knocked them down pretty good. They're gonna come back, you know. Yeah, oh yeah. But but we need rain for a lot of reasons. And and when we talk about rainfall events on white flies, we don't need this little scattered rain here or there. We need sure enough rain to to come across the the region. Yeah. But uh yeah, stay tuned on that. Um, you know, we're gonna continue monitoring that. Uh I visit with uh Dr. Stormy Sparks a lot on vegetable crops, and uh so we keep a pretty good tab on that. So we kind of like to know what they're seeing in vegetables in the spring because that's kind of seed for us. Yep. And I can assure you, Dr. Sparks wants to know what's happening in cotton because we sure enough give them some white flies on fall vegetable crops. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. But you know, right now, fingers crossed, we're good, but uh, these dry, hot conditions, uh I mean they ain't helping nothing. They ain't helping at all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

I've been getting a few calls, but really the thing that I'm interested in, I was over in Plains yesterday planting a trial with Seth McAllister, and and with the with the price doing what it's doing, and and uh some of the other stuff going on, it it sounds like cotton acres are gonna go up, which is good, and maybe more than I originally thought. So, you know, he was telling I asked him yesterday if folks were gonna switch uh from whatever they intended to plant to cotton. He said yes. There were three people that he talked to and they were walking away from soybeans or sorghum or something else and in favor of um planting cotton, which is a really, really good thing. You know, that one thing that I think, and Dr. Roberts, you may have a different opinion, but last year was the first time since 1993 that we planted less than a million acres of cotton.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

We dip below a million acres, just barely harvested. Yeah, harvested acres. But yes, I'm with you. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 40:09

So what I think is that there's probably gonna be some folks that get back into cotton this year that may not have grown it last year. And that could be a good thing, right, from rotation perspectives and things like that. But you know, we just need to be vigilant in those type situations and and be checking. You know, Dr. Roberts mentioned the importance of scouting.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Hey, if if if they were out of cotton last year and they're getting back in this year, I hadn't had experience with this jasid, you you can't miss this insect. Yep. Yep. If it happens when it happens.

SPEAKER_04 40:47

If it happens when it happens. So um that's certainly some advice that I'd give. Uh, you know, but we were planting over there in plains yesterday and really good conditions, especially for over there. You know, that's some dirt that can change on you in a hurry. Um, but it rained for about for about 15 minutes, and uh I it scared me a little bit, but we got done. So we were on our second to last variety and we got done. So really, really good conditions over there, hoping that uh this rain that's coming hits the entire state for multiple reasons, right? For of course, for everything that we're talking about here, for planting cotton peanuts, you know, supplementing corn, all that kind of good stuff. But man, these fires that are going on are serious. Definitely need some help over in East Georgia with some of that stuff. But, you know, getting a few calls on fertilizer and and things like that, you know, the big thing I'd encourage folks to do is to price out some of these blends that they're talking about using and look at some of these differences. I I got a phone call yesterday about or a couple days ago about somebody reducing the amount of dart they're gonna spread on a field, and um, then they would have to blend in a little more nitrogen to make up the difference there. And, you know, it's just worth pricing some of that stuff before you make that decision. And so um be sure to look into some of that stuff before we get too far into this and you know, make a good decision. Of course, the price has gone up, so that changes things a little bit, but we still don't need to be just throwing money around just because the price has gone up a little bit. We got to be smart with our inputs and want to do things that uh we're confident give us a return. So certainly a lot of things going on, a lot of good stuff going on, hoping and praying. Me and my three-year-old and my wife, we pray for rain every day. So uh, you know, we're we're uh praying for you guys, praying for rain across the state and relief for those in East Georgia and all that good stuff. But uh anything else that we need to talk about? You know, it's it's off early, but I've got some of the dates for the field days. We're excited about all that good stuff. Dr. Roberts mentioned the scout schools, that's the first stuff coming up. So uh keep all that in mind as we go forward. And of course, if there's anything that you guys want us to talk about, uh reach out to us or your county agent. Thank you. 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.