Not a lot has changed over the past week with everyone still needing a good rain. Even folks with good water need rain due to higher plant populations and higher yield potential. Overall we are seeing very little insect pressure around the area at this time. A lite level of thrips can still be found throughout the entire area but in general they are not an issue for most folks. Most all of the earlier planted cotton, anything with 4-5 true-leaves or more is out of the woods as far as economic danger is concerned. A few of the latest planted fields that are still at cotyledon to around 2 true-leaves have some moderate damage and should be monitored. Also keep in mind that many of these fields also have some fairly severe wind damage that can easily be confused with thrips damage. However, if you have wind and thrips damage a treatment could help the plants recover quicker and get back on track to growing out of the damage and putting new, healthy leaves on.

Cotton fleahoppers are popping up in some isolated areas, primarily in the northern part of Reagan County. They seem to be only in pre-squaring cotton at the time, but most of these fields will be squaring in the next 7-10 days so they should be monitored to make sure fleahopper populations do not get too high. Remember, the threshold for CFH is 20-35 CFH per 100 plants. If you have high yield potential cotton use the lower end of this threshold, if it is closer to 1-1/2 bale cotton you can go with the higher end.

A handful of aphids can still be found in a couple of fields, I’m still not worried about these guys. They will basically help us increase beneficial numbers. Do be careful however if you see any out there and you are considering making an application for thrips or CFH. Killing off any beneficials will more than likely flare the aphids.