Annual crops tour makes changes due to dry conditions

By Anna Noel

Yorktown News-View

The annual DeWitt County Crops Tour was held on Tuesday, June 21, at 3 p.m. at Gruenau Hall. Anthony Netardus, DeWitt County extension agent, began the program with a welcome, then handed it off to Dr. Dalton Ludwick, AgriLife extension entomologist, who gave a presentation on Mexican corn rootworms and their treatment. There were then three tour stops, one at a huisache plot to see the effect of Invora herbicide on woody plants, the next to see the effect of Rezilon herbicide for the control of sandburs, and the final at a cotton variety test plot. Two tour stops were cut from the program due to the lack of rain.

Anthony Netardus stated, “It’s different every year, and this year, because of the drought, we sort of went away from the crops part of it. We had two other stops that we were going to go to, a corn plot and then a corn insecticide plot, and they just looked terrible because of the weather. We’ve sort of changed into making it into more of a weed and brush tour.

“You can look out the window and see this corn is pretty much just nubbins, just little bitty ears that, I don’t even know if they’ll harvest some of it, it’s that bad. Some of it they’ll have to harvest, and it won’t bring 30, 40 bushels, and in years like last year, you know they were bringing in 130, 140 bushels. So corn is really bad. The cotton is just hanging on, if something would happen in the next couple of weeks and we’d get a good soaking rain, then we may make some cotton. We’re not ready to call it quits yet on the cotton.”

DeWitt County has averaged around 7.26 inches of rain so far in the year, compared to an average total of 17.37 inches at the same time last year.

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