Week seven looks very similar to week six except that it is a little drier and everyone has taken out a lot more weeds this week. Fleahoppers continue to be our number one concern throughout the entire area, and I again have suggested treating several fields this past week. I strongly encourage everyone to scout all of their fields for fleahoppers and make sure they are not taking out the tiny squares in the top of the terminals. Many times they will get them before they become pinhead size. Even though the dryland looks very good, they are generally much worse in the irrigated. I would still check dryland acres as well, we can just manage them differently on those acres. I would consider using one of the softer insecticides such as Centric, Intruder, or Carbine. It will cost a little more, but it will save your beneficials and give you a much better residual than Orthene. Save the Orthene for your dryland acres, especially if you have a poor square set and very low beneficial numbers. A few stinkbugs have been spotted, so if you have some of those few blooms/bolls out there start keeping an eye out for those guys.

Otherwise, everything else is starting to settle into a more normal progression. Most folks are starting pumps and getting fertilizer going, stilling battling weeds, praying for a rain. Bollworms have picked up a bit and we sprayed our non-Bt trial this week, so if anyone has any non-Bt keep an eye on it. Bollworm and fall armyworm are getting high and much larger in grain sorghum so watch them and don’t let them get too large and start costing you yield. Stinkbugs are also starting to show up in sorghum. We don’t really have any hard and fast thresholds, but I will generally spray we I start to find “quite a few” of them out there and especially if they start to congregate and mate. You will want to spray before they reproduce and start laying eggs. I also like to spray if sorghum is right next to cotton. It’s a lot easier to spray small acreages of sorghum instead of large acres of cotton.