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Show TES UINTAH BASIN FABUE Weevil in Your Alfalfa Have you examined your alfalfa for weevil lately? Did you find very many? If you haven't looked--' it over you would better do so right away. If you find alfalfa shoots with the leaves at the tips partly h eaten away, look more closely for green worms about to one-ha- lf inch long with black heads and white stripes down their backs. Look also for smaller worms with the black heads and white stripes, but not yet turned green. You will usually find them bored right into the bud at the tip of the stem. These WORMS ARF, ALFALFA WEEVIL. They have hatched from tiny eggs and grown to the size you see. They make their growth by eating lots of nice tender alfalfa. After they have grown to full size, these worms drop off the alfalfa and spin a little gauzy coccoon about themselves. After that the weevil proceeds to grow wings and change over from a worm into a beetle. This beetle is about inch long, brown in color with a darker stripe down its back and a long beak on its head. one-tourt- one-four- th These beetles are not so hungry as the worms. They fly about during the late summer and find shelter in which to spend the winter. It does not have to be a very good shelter either. We have heard stories of them being seen walking over the snow on sunshiny winter days, but we dont quite believe those stories. Even so, it is a fact that the weevil in the beetle stage is hard to kill because it keeps itself 'under covex in cracks in the ground and such places, uucept when ii. has seme eggs to lay in the spring. Then it drills a hole into an alfalfa stem and lays a bunch of eggs at a time. We have counted as many as eighteen in a single hole nicely hidden away inside the stem. We broke the stem open to find them. When these eggs hatch, the little weevils are so small you can hardly see them. They move up into the tender growing tips of the alfalfa shoots and eat and w until thiev are ready to drop off and spin the coccoons. USUALLY THE EGGS HATCH FROM about the. MIDDLE OF MAY TO THE MIDDLE OF JUNE, so that if you have some weevil now you will probably have at least twice as many by the middle of this month. In the meantime, those you have now will go on eating. It is not at all impossible that if you have some weevil now your hay crop may be pretty well eaten up by the middle of June. --o- There are as many weevil in some of our fields now (May 31st), as there were at the same time of yeaX in fields that were ruined' by June 20th in Millard county. Wkt SbaU we do About These Weevil? It is quite possible that some Uintah Basin seed growers will not have enough weevil to be very serious this year. It is also possible that most of the damage has already been done and that the weevil will quit in a week or so. ON THE OTHER HAND it is just possible, that THE WEE-VI- L will right along and eat up a lot of our fields this season unless we go about protecting ourselves. p-- Duchesne THE FIEST THING to do is to ER for weevil. GO LOOK GOT HAVE YOU SEE WHAT YOUE FIELDS HOW. OV- if you have many weevil now, better get all set to clip your hay. Get your hay machinery in shape and fix some kind of wire drag to make a dust mulch on the fields after the bay THEM, s off. If you plan to clip anyway you have probably irrigated. Wait as long as you feel safe to before you start cutting. Plan to have your hay off and cultivation done by June 20. YOU CAM MAKE HAY FASTER AMD KTT.L MORE WEEVIL IF THE GROUND IS DRY. IF YOU DID NOT PLAN TO CLIP and have not irrigated your fields, you may uot have much of a crop of hay. Some of, your land may be needing water now. If the alfalfa is burning-you may need to irrigate the burnt places BUT IF IT IS STILL GROWING, WE THINK IT IS BETTER TO KEEP THE WATER OFF. In about ten days from now you shcfuld be able to guess haw much damage you are going to have. You can begin to tell whether you have a reasonable chance for first crop seed or not. If you have not, and you can clear and cultivate your fields bv June 20 and make your seed crop start WITHOUT IRRIGATION and START SLOW, it will grow sturdy and woody from tbe beginning and it should mature in plenty of time. On the other hand if you irrigate just before 'or just after clipping, your new growth will come on rank and soft and probably be slow to set on seed and mature late. Remember that when you cut your hay the weevil get into the crowns partly for the shadfe and partly to get on tire new shoots that are going to come. If you drag this all to dust, you will kill some of the weevil by the cultivation and tile dust and sun will kill most of the rest of them. It is usually desirable to wait as long as you safely can before cutting in order to give all the weevil a chance to hatch out first. It is easier to kill worms than it is to kill eggs that are bidden inside tbe stems. Dont hesitate to call on us. Rank, Soft Hay Many fields that have not been irrigated show a pretty heavy growth of rank, soft hay now, due probably to the rains. It looks to us as if the best thing to do with this is to cut it off and harrow the ground thoroughly and let the second crop make the seed. It will usually grow more sturdy and stand more hot, dry weather than this big, soft, rank first growth. Weeds Dragging or harrowing to make a dust mulch between crops will kill a lot of weeds. If you will part your hay and look on the ground you will most likely see a lot of them starting to grow now. They are just right to kill by harrowing Roosevelt Vemst . |