Ramsey County

Howdy!!!!!!!
Well I don’t know about you but asking for rain and then forgetting to shut off can start to wear on a person.  Our yard had been spared wind damage until the storm on Monday morning.  Our neighbors have lost quite a few tree branches.  Something I found a little humorous this past weekend happened to be an auction listing.  One of them listed some manure handling equipment and for what ever reason I happened to think of our good neighbors to the south west of our farm, (Paul and Mary Steffan Sr.).  I remember going over to visit Saturday morning on the horse and our first project of the day was to clean out the cattle barn.  One thing we need to remember was there was no tractor involved with this process.  We are talking about a fork and a stone boat.  Tom and I would fill the stone boat full, hook up the team of horses and haul the manure out to the field with the team and then either fork off the manure or use the team and tip the stone boat over.  What a difference from yester year to today where equipment is large enough to handle one month worth of manure and still have room to spare.  The best part of the day came at the conclusion of barn cleaning and that being fresh toffee or fresh bread and also a good hearty breakfast.  Those olden days were hard but very “full” filling.

Rain amounts?
Terry Gregorie and myself took a tour of the county on Monday morning and found, guess what?, water.  The northern tier of the county took the brunt of the storms again and the sloughs are filling up.  The coulees are running wide open, the crops are saturated and still plenty of cleaning up to do.  However this past Monday’s storm also left many more branches down in my neighborhood than any other previous storm.  I do not have any official rain amounts to report other than farmers with reports ranging from over 3 inches in the western and northern part of the county to 1.5-2 inches over the rest of the county over the weekend.  Crops do need to get dried out and our risk of white mold is very high in Canola along with Fusarium Head blight in spring wheat and durum.

Sclerotinia Stem Rot (White Mold)????????
Sclerotinia stem rot or white mold is caused by the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. It can be very destructive during periods of wet weather. The sclerotinia fungus survives up to five or six years in the soil in the form of hard black fungus bodies called sclerotia. Whenever there is wet weather for a week or two, with moist soil, the sclerotia germinate to produce tiny mushroom-like bodies called apothecia. These apothecia are only to 3/16 inch across yet they produce millions of airborne spores. The spores infect the cast dead canola blossoms during periods of wet weather. Variation in the percentage of infected plants is due to differences in the quantity of infectious spores, plant population, crop height and vigor, rainfall, soil moisture, temperature and humidity. Even after plants are infected, the severity of stem rot symptoms and the resulting effect on yield will vary according to temperature, rainfall, crop density and especially the stage of crop growth at the time of infection.

Infections that start on the dead blossoms spread to adjacent tissues, resulting in dead branches or dead plants, causing the plants to lodge. The rotted stems usually have a bleached appearance. Sclerotinia infections can be serious on canola if cool wet weather occurs in the last two weeks of June and continues into early July when blossoming occurs.

In rare cases half the potential yield of a crop may be lost to Sclerotinia. Yield losses reflect the yield reduction per infected plant and the percentage of infected plants in a crop. In general, when conditions for the disease are favorable and infections occur throughout the flowering period, yield reduction per infected plant can equal 50% (0.5). In this situation, if 25% (0.25) of the plants in a crop are infected and the yield potential is 40 bushels per acre, the bushel loss would be 0.5 X 0.25 X 40 = 5 bushels per acre. However, if infections are delayed until late bloom or if dry weather set in after early bloom, yield reduction per infected plant may be as little as 10% (0.1). Again using the example of a crop with 25% (0.25) infected plants, the bushel loss would be 0.1 X 0.25 X 40 = only 1 bushel per acre. These types of calculations may be very important when deciding whether to spray to control the disease.

524 4th Ave NE #5, 2nd Floor Ramsey County Courthouse
Devils Lake  ND  58301
701-662-7027
email - ramsey@ndsuext.nodak.edu

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