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My office is at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Stephenville which provides me lots of opportunities for research and demonstrations in crop and horticulture production. We also have a super staff of AgriLife Researchers that are constantly working on new projects. A big thanks to them for allowing me to participate in their projects and helping me conduct my own organic research.

That said 2022 was a very difficult year in the state of Texas and certainly in Central Texas at the Center. There were all kinds of experiments installed and unfortunately the drought and high temperatures prevented much of an evaluation or harvest. We use hand move pipe for irrigation and keeping up with irrigated plots was almost just enough to keep plants growing and yields did suffer.

In the picture above you see a field that was not irrigated in 2022. The section of soybeans was planted very early in the spring in hopes of testing a few different treatments on the same variety. The section of peanuts was planted dryland to evaluate the variety as a dryland peanut. No crop was planted on a large section in the middle but it did grow up in weeds – sort of!

Dr. Johnny Cason is one of our Research Scientists with a specialty in peanut breeding. He and his staff put in these two test areas of legumes in 2022 and to say the least they were a disaster. The soybeans came up and did try to grow but the deer kept them eaten down till the drought took over. The peanuts were also eaten by deer, but the drought basically kept them from ever growing more than teacup size. We considered both areas a disaster and just plowed them under later in 2022.

Now, in 2023, this whole field was planted to Haygrazer as a cover crop as you can see in the picture. Now that I have explained what was done in 2022 maybe you can see (thanks to Johnny for the drone picture) and understand what is going on in 2023. The field has had no fertilizer of any kind this year or last year. What you see is strictly the residual soil fertility left by the attempt at growing two kinds of legume crops in 2022. What’s the takeaway here? Pretty obvious that even when you don’t think your legume crop is making a difference it is probably making a huge difference. If you want to know how much, just leave a planter width of legumes out when you plant the field. I bet you see that strip all of next year!

Answer: First, congratulations on going organic.  We enjoy good prices on organic, have fun growing organic, and it does get easier year after year.  

Varieties

We do not have “organic” corn seed growers in Texas and so we typically plant conventional corn with no traits or seed treatments.  Our certifiers understand this and work with us.  Here are some that organic varieties that grower’s plant.

Pioneer – P0075, P0157, P1197, 6381, 5353, P1197, P1639, P33Y74, P1197, P1870, P1751, P1422, P1639W, P32B10W, (63T1GH, 6589ZZ Not sure if these are Pioneer or another company? They were reported by growers with no more information) 

Partners Brand – PB 11802, CL 860, PB 8580

DeKalb – DKC62-06, DKC63-58, DKC64-32, DKC65-92

Albert Lea – Some growers have reported success with this company, but I don’t know varieties planted.

Weeds

Weeds will be a pain but if you have a good rotary hoe (also called a sand fighter in the west) or a tine weeder you can keep out the white thread weeds that come early just after planting.  Once your corn is up and too big for rotary hoe or tine weeder then a good setup with sweeps will get you to layby and help you stay relatively clean.  

Cover crops for weed control

In the summer we plant Sudan’s for weed control and maybe a mix of Sunn Hemp thrown in.  Cowpea is not too competitive with other crops but makes a great crop by itself and can give you up to 100 lbs. of Nitrogen per acre if you get a good stand.

Winter cover is more difficult because we typically start to get land ready about the time our cover crops start to grow in February/March.  Winter cover is almost always a small grain and most of the time we use a “combine run” wheat or oat since they are cheaper with a planting of turnips or daikon radish or both.  

Fertility

For extra fertility besides our cover crops we use cow manures, compost, or chicken/turkey manure.  Lots of growers use companies that are making pelleted organic fertilizers which is a chicken manure pellet and very good at about $200 a delivered ton.  

Next email: Organic control for spider mites in organic peanuts?

Answer: There are several ways to go about this.  One, there are lots of botanicals and I include a spreadsheet with them listed.

Two, growers do use beneficial insects on a limited basis.  Farmers generally know where the problem spots are and then buy and distribute a beneficial in that area first.  I have a page attached for beneficial or predator mites that are used successfully.  Pricey but fun to use…..

Third, we do have some organic products that have success.  Sil Matrix from Certis Biologicals is a potassium silicate that provides a protective coating on the plant and has been successful.  Cost is $32/gallon and use rate is 1-4 quarts.  Des X or M-Pede is a soap and there are other companies selling them too. Soaps can work well but watch use in heat.  They are strictly a knockdown.  PFR-97 at 1-2 lbs. per acre at $50/lb. is a fungus that has had success on mites.  It is slow so it needs to go out close to infestation, but it stays around to infect some later problems. There are other products for spider mites but some get pricey in a hurry and for field crops can be out of the price range. Hope this helps!

There are certainly many more answers that can be given to these email questions but these help start the dialogue and usually get us well on the way to a final solution. If you have more suggestions give me a comment back.

I know I have mentioned product names here in this blog post and I am not endorsing these companies necessarily but simply saying they have products for organic producers. I welcome companies to share their information with me so that I have more information at my fingertips for helping new growers…. Please, don’t shoot the messenger or in this case, the organic specialist!

Recently I spoke with Josh Brooks the new Chairman and CEO of Guar Resources in Brownfield.  Josh is pretty excited to announce the reopening of the facility after a long 15 months of work.  They are now looking for growers to contract guar production in 2023. 

Guar is an indeterminate legume that is perfect for rotation programs around cotton, sorghum, corn, etc.  It is predominantly a dryland crop and is very drought tolerant.  I have had the opportunity to be a part of growing guar in the 2012-2014 years and found it to be easy to grow.  Seeding rates are generally around 8 lbs./ac. but can range from 6-12 lbs./ac. 

I asked Josh about the need for organic guar, and he said YES!  He is offering contracts for organic that are about 50% more than conventional price.  For more information on guar go to https://guarresources.com