Plant now for a successful fall garden

Roger Meissen/MU Cooperative Media Group

I know it's not spring, but now is the time to prepare your garden. Fall gardens offer a healthy outlet for the body and mind without the grueling heat that gardeners endure during the summer months. The right type of plants need to be selected to endure the colder fall temperatures and possible early frost.

MU Extension Horticulturalist David Trinklein explains how to prepare a fall garden that will put produce on your table well into fall.

Story by Roger Meissen.

Soybean podworms threaten yields

Wayne Bailey/University of Missouri Plant Sciences

With insects, you are what you eat.

That's no more apparent than with soybean podworm, a.k.a. corn earworm. Farmers battle the pest in July and August when it chews away at the tips of corn ears, but in late August and early September it moves to a more green, lush meal of soybeans.

This crawling menace can eat away all the profit in a soybean field. It loves to chew holes in soybean pods, eating the bean then clipping the pod off the plant. In the worst cases, a field can lose 100 percent of its yield.

MU Extension Entomologist Wayne Bailey encourages farmers to scout their fields now to stop soybean podworms from devastating your field.

Print story by Roger Meissen. Listen to a related audio story by Debbie Johnson.

Dry weather can lead to a lethal lunch

Victor Iglesias

When it comes to pastures and hay, most farmers know that fescue can give cattle problems due to endophyte buildup. What many don't realize is that very hot, dry weather like Missouri had in July and the beginning of August can lead other harmful substances to build to toxic levels in warm-season annuals like johnsongrass and sorghum-sudan hybrids.

Find out more about the way prussic acid and nitrates in forages can poison your cattle.

Story by Roger Meissen.

USDA crop reports brings a few surprises

Eran Chesnutt

A week ago the USDA downgraded expected crop yields as expected. Much of this has been due to exceptional summer heat and drought, which puts a damper on pollination and development in corn ears and soybeans.

What took some by surprise was a change in where corn goes after harvest. MU Extension Economist Ron Plain explains how next year more corn will go to ethanol than to feed cattle.

Story by Roger Meissen.

New herbicide suspect as evergreen deaths pile up

Roger Meissen/MU Cooperative Media Group

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A new herbicide may be taking the green out of many evergreens.
Thousands of eastern white pines and Norway spruces across the country began dying and showing damage this year, and a key suspect in the mystery is Imprelis, a weed killer many lawn companies and landscapers started using this spring.

Chris Starbuck, a University of Missouri Extension state woody ornamentals specialist, said this problem will leave holes in many landscapes.

“Every tip on this tree is affected, and to produce new growth it would have to produce new shoots from the two-year growth, so it’s not likely this tree will recover,” Starbuck said as he surveyed damage to white pines in a Columbia lawn. “It’s been a surprise to everyone involved how extensive the damage appears to be. I think there will be lots of trees that have to be replaced in landscapes and it’s going to cost somebody some money.”

Read more in a recent article by Roger Meissen.

Make a Splash but Don't Get Sick

By Debbie Johnson

OSCEOLA, Mo. –The chance of a swimmer in the U.S. being attacked by a shark is close to zero. But dangerous creatures do lurk in our waters, including lakes, ponds and even concrete swimming pools.

Microbes such as cryptosporidium, shigella, giardia and E. coli frequently live in public swimming areas. All three cause diarrhea if ingested.

“Accidentally swallowing contaminated water, or even getting it in your mouth, can make you ill,” said Saralee Bury Jamieson, human development specialist for University of Missouri Extension. “You can also get infections in eyes, ears and nose, as well as in cuts and scrapes.” Public health professionals call swimming-related sicknesses “recreational water illness.”

N to the rescue - Missouri farmers still have time for rescue nitrogen to bolster fall corn yields.

Podcast produced by Debbie Johnson

By Roger Meissen

COLUMBIA, Mo.– No farmer wants to turn down 30 extra bushels of corn per acre at harvest, yet in many fields farmers will be doing just that if they don't apply more nitrogen.