The second half of the 2022 growing season Dryness has been a sucker punch which we have yet to recover from.

Some pivots yielded less than 100 bu corn that year.. others took a ton of water to raise aph or less yields.  The HRW Wheat crop sown that fall.. mostly didn't emerge until spring of 2023.  About 40 to 50% of sown wheat acres were destroyed in Pratt County in 23.. A neighbor harvested about 400 of 6,000 sown acres that year.

This pattern of a super dry fall.. winter and early spring mostly continued for us on the 24 HRW Wheat crop with alot of 20 bu ish dryland fields. With an occasional better one..  if you don't have a stand.. cant establish a stand and you can't keep herbacides activated to hold off the weeds.. its been a bitter pill.

A year ago I held back on my normal fertility program which paid.  A neighbors normal rate literally killed part of his wheat.. I’ve posted about this before.. and will skip the pictures this time.  It's such a fine line guessing how much Nitrogen to pay for..  not enough and you leave yield on the table.. too much.. and not only do you waste it.. but it can also adversely impact yields.

Finally last October and November after sowing into dust we got a decent above normal event.. which allowed the first decent stand in three years.. Yesterday I was driving through drown out spots applying our last pass.

The color is mostly good.. the crop is rooted in.. but moisture is.. 6 to 8" down.  I'm doing a full fertility program this year putting down a herbacide.

Golly we need a rain!!

Ive buffered my nitrogen with water and humate to avoid burn.. this week I'm applying aggressor to coaxium wheat with a healthy dose of MSO.. in about 15 gallons of water and a couple gallons of 32% and thio.

The sandy knolls are starting to shrivel back.. our moisture chances normally improve.. but.. there's no certainty.. the last three years. Spring rains have been lacking.  I have historical data on wheat yields back to 1980.  In 1989 we averaged 6 bu wheat.. there was a rough patch in the mid 1990s.. a freeze event in 1995 which limited yields.. but this period rivals those events as input costs are much higher.

After three years.  There's very little in storage.. cash prices do not matter if you dont have anything to sell.

Up until now.. I've felt we got a shot.. and.. with timely rains we may yet still.. but our reserves from last fall appear to be running out.  High winds have depleted soil moisture back to bone dry conditions.

Were hanging on by a thread here.

pics below.. #1 no till into unworked ground to conserve moisture last fall.

#2 my farms historical wheat yields blue line in the dryland our largest crop.  We need yields to double this year to make it work.

#3 the very dry second half of 2022.. when this drought started.

#4 we got an above average 4 to 6” last fall.. some ponding and drown out.. but very little run off.. most of that moisture has now.. is it all gone?  Welp the top top 6 to 8” is powder dry.. there’s still some below.. but probably not enough.

#5 this year so far.. we need spring rains to bring us home.

#6 yesterday from the sprayer.. a good stand.. light color on the ridges.. and a patch of shriveling back off to the right.. other fields show drought worse.  But.. time for rains to yet save the day.

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