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have been actively scouting wheat this month mainly looking for growth and development progress. Last year, near the end of February wheat in our area was already jointing. This year, the wheat is a full three weeks behind that. However, to be perfectly clear, this year is much more “normal” than last. I put normal in quotations as I am quite confident there is no normal for southeast Kansas, but there is an average. The week of 3/19-3/23, I found fields at jointing in all four counties in the district. The crop looks much better now and would look even better if we had some more sunlight and mild temperatures.
On February 27 and March 1, we held our last two dicamba trainings at our annual Spring Crops Coffee meetings in Independence and Girard, respectively. Independence is traditionally a very well attended meeting and there were 45 in attendance. We were pleased to see a much higher turnout than in previous years in Girard. This year, we had over 30 in attendance with many new faces I didn’t recognize and some out of county attendees. Doug Shoup, Southeast Area Agronomist presented the meetings and did an excellent job. He has mentioned multiple times that there has never been a more trained technology than the dicamba program. While not necessarily the goal of the meetings, multiple attendees said afterwards that due to the training, they would probably not spray dicamba this year due to their concerns.
On March 23, I wrapped up my involvement with the North Central Region Cropping Systems Academy with a region-wide webinar on my groups project. I acted as the coordinator of the event in charge of hosting the webinar through our Zoom access and running the slide show. While all four group members worked together on all the parts, we each had an area to focus on. My area was “Setting Up an On-Farm Trial” which, as you know, is a true passion of mine. The other three areas were “Randomization and Replication,” “Understanding the Least Significant Difference,” and “Recognizing Poor Data in Marketing Claims.” This was made so that extension professionals across the North Central Region could use in any way to enhance their programs. I would like to thank all involved for allowing me to participate as it was an extremely valuable experience.
I am working with the Girard High School FFA Chapter again this year on the Agronomy Career Development Event. The contest is later this year as it will be held at the Allen County Aggie Days coming up on April 5. I truly this event as I believe it is doing exactly what it says, preparing youth for a career in Agronomy. The topics covered include pressed plant and seed identification, grain grading, seed analysis, crop pests (insects, diseases, etc.), and agronomic knowledge and math.