Central North Dakota wheat hanging in there after slow start and hot June

NEW SALEM, N.D. — Given a slow — and then fast — start to the planting season, spring wheat around New Salem is looking pretty good.

April blizzards and cold delayed planting a bit in central North Dakota, said Andrew Kreidt, agronomy manager at Central Dakota Frontier Cooperative in New Salem.

“It was the first of May before anything got seeded and really started rolling,” he said. “And we did two months of work in a month here.”

Most small grains in the area were put in within the first two weeks of May, he said. But the crop got thrown for a loop in June.

“That dry heat that hit in June, that maybe affected us more than we know yet,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to say what exactly things are going to look like.”

Some thunderstorms in the first weeks of July provided a “decent amount of rain,” which Kreidt said likely saved the crop. But he doubts farmers will see many top-line yields.

“Any fields running 70, 80 (bushels per acre) this year, I just don’t know if that’s going to be in the cards,” he said. “But you know, if I had to take a guess, anywhere from 35 to 55 where we got the rains or where those thunderstorms hit — that’s going to dictate that.”

Kreidt was in a field west of New Salem on July 13, and the heads were generally full of plump kernels. The field remained predominately dark green. According to the Crop Progress report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the week ending July 16, spring wheat in North Dakota was 79% headed out, compared to 83% on average. The state’s crop was considered 3% excellent condition, 51% good, 34% fair, 11% poor and 4% very poor.

Disease pressure in central Morton County hasn’t been too bad, and — somewhat surprisingly — neither has weed pressure, Kreidt said. “Hardly any” spring burndowns were done because of the short planting window, and little had been done in the fall, either, he said. But the timely rains meant in-crop applications of herbicide did a better job than in recent years, he said.

Thinner stands of wheat could see a second flush of pigeon grass if rains come at just the right time, but overall, he’s not seeing a lot of weed control issues.

“At the moment, everything is looking pretty clean,” he said.

But there is one pest that some Morton County fields are seeing.

“One thing we have been battling — and it’s spotty — is grasshopper pressure,” he said. “Where they’re bad, they’re bad.”

While a few grasshoppers were hopping in the field just west of New Salem where Kreidt was standing, he said it was worse to the south by the Heart River, to the north and to the west near Glen Ullin. The hoppers tend to move out of cut hay fields and ditches where grass was cut into wheat. Then, as the wheat turns an amber color, Kreidt said the grasshoppers likely will move to crops that are still green, including corn, soybeans and sunflowers.

Spraying field borders with insecticides is still an option at this point to cut down on losses to the bugs, he said.

Jenny Schlecht is the director of ag content for Agweek and serves as editor of Agweek, Sugarbeet Grower and BeanGrower. She lives on a farm and ranch near Medina, North Dakota, with her husband and two daughters. You can reach her at jschlecht@agweek.com or 701-595-0425.