When it rains, it pours.....

....but it hasn't.  We are headed into the 3rd year of a drought here in NW Kansas (see map for U.S. Drought Monitor), and we're facing a dilemma with our wheat crop.  The wheat is only 18 inches tall, when it should be about 3 feet high by this point in time.

 

We have sprayed for army cut worms and stripe rust thus far.  Cutworms eat the roots, which means the wheat cannot take up the water and nutrients it needs.  The decision to spray for these is made if you see you have more than 1 cutworm per square foot, and we are finding 3 to 4. 

Stripe Rust

And now we are faced with another decision because stripe rust is coming in again.  Is this crop worth the money it will take to spray?  It has the yield potential right now of 35-45 bushels per acre, but it has to have perfect conditions from here until harvest to get to that point.  Perfect conditions would be another 4 inches of rain in the next 30 days with no extreme heat.  Our last 2 years have seen anything but perfect conditions, but another drought year means that the wheat will burn up.  The result of that is that we will be looking at 10 bushel wheat that was a waste of money to spray. 

I often joke that we don't need to go to the casinos, because we gamble every day right here on the farm.  So we are rolling the dice and spraying the wheat to protect our yield potential.  Then we will pray for rain, and we are hoping when it does rain, it pours!