Menifee County Extension Office 140 Main Street P.O. Box 85 Frenchburg KY 40322 Phone: 606-768-3866

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Mary McCarty Menifee County Extension

4-H/Ag Agent

PRESORTED STANDARD

US POSTAGE PAID FRENCHBURG KY

PERMIT 16

Kayla Walton

Menifee County Extension

I N S I D E T H I S

I S S U E :

A Cooking Social 1

Cooking Through the Calendar

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Sweet Potato

Recipes

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Parent Health

Bulletin

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Menifee Co. Exten-

sion Homemakers

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4-H Volunteer Forum

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Calendar of Events 9-10

4-H Camp Fundrais-er

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Grandparent Sup-port Meeting

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Winter Drying 13

Hay Samples 14

Potash 15

Menifee Co. Beef Producer Meeting

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Cow/Calf

Conference

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2020 Rootstock

Sale

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M E N I F E E C O U N T Y

C O O P E R A T V I E E X T E N S I O N

S E R V I C E

1 4 0 M A I N S T / P O B O X 8 5

F R E N C H B U R G , K Y 4 0 3 2 2

6 0 6 - 7 6 8 - 3 8 6 6

6 0 6 - 7 6 8 - 2 5 2 4 ( F A X )

W W W . C E S . U K Y . E D U /

Menifee County Extension

News J A N - F E B 2 0 2 0 V O L U M E 1 6

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. Our office really enjoyed our 12 days off! Our batteries are recharged and our minds are ready for the New Year. As much as I am enjoying our warm weather, I’m personally ready for some frozen temperatures to freeze the ground. The weather forecast indicates more rain. According to the National Weather Service, 2018 was the wettest year on record, and 2019 was the 16th wettest. It seems like a new pattern is here. 4-H Camp is scheduled for June 1-4 and fundraisers will start soon. The total cost for this year is the same as last year…$230. This is the first time in 5 years that it has remained the same. Our goal is to raise enough money to allow each student to receive a scholarship covering half of the cost of camp. Our first fundraiser is scheduled for January 23 from 11-1. The lunch fundraiser flyer is in this newsletter. We’d appreciate any and all support for this worthy cause. As always, let us know if there is anything that you need. We are here to serve.

Mary McCarty Menifee County Extension

4-H/Ag Agent

Happy New Year! The beginning of a new year is a great time to reflect on the suc-cesses and learning opportunities of the previous year, as well as to look ahead and consider our aspirations for the up-coming year. At the Extension Office, we are planning for the coming year events and programs. In 2020, we will begin our “Cook Together, Eat Together” program which will meet monthly and will focus on spending time in the kitchen as a family– kids included! We will also continue with “Cooking Through the Calendar "on a seasonal basis, and we will be continuing with 4-H Cooking, Sewing, Art and other clubs. Keep an eye out on our social media pages for other new programs! Kayla Walton Menifee County Extension 4-H/ FCS Agent

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Our winter meeting of Cooking Through the Calendar will

meet on February 25 at 12:00 pm at the Extension Office.

Come try this hearty comfort soup and learn some healthy

eating and cooking tips for the cold, winter months!

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Giving Potash some Respect By: Jimmy Henning

Potassium can make a case for the ‘Don’t get no respect’ award among the fertilizer nutrients. Nitrogen (N) gets most of the attention because of its showy results; nothing perks up a hay or pasture field faster. Calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) get lots of attention as ‘bone makers’ for our signature thoroughbreds. Even P gets the ‘no such thing as bad press’ award with its problematic relationship with water quality.

Lowly potassium just does not get any respect. Yet, after N, no nutrient is needed in greater amounts for hay or pasture. Essential for proper water relations, disease resistance and even winterhardiness, potassium is cru-cial for healthy plants. But when it comes to getting a little love in the fertilizer buggy, K is usually out of luck.

Don’t fall into the trap of underapplying K to your hay fields. With hay, almost 100% of the minerals present in a hay crop are removed from the field. Hay crops remove three to four times as much K as P

(K2O vs P2O5 forms). Kentucky soils cannot replace the K as fast as it is removed, and continuous haymak-ing without adequate nutrient replacement will severely reduce the available K in the soil. A soil test is the only way to know how much fertilizer is needed.

In the fall of 2017, I did a farm visit to a small farm whose owner was not pleased with the production from his hayfield. A quick look at the field revealed a whole lot of broomsedge and little of the cool season grass he was hoping to see. His UK County ANR agent had him pull a soil test, and the results were good for every measure except K, which was in the ‘Very Low’ category by UK’s standards.

The very low K numbers were due to fertilizing only with 200 pounds of triple 19, which delivers 38 lb each of N, P2O5 and K2O per acre, and even this was not done every year. The field was cut for hay every year for at least a decade. So this field was grossly underfertilized for K every year, understandably resulting in low potash fertility.

The farmer agreed to let us conduct a replicated trial on this field, starting in the spring of 2018. Fertilizer treatments included all combinations of 180 lb of N, 45 lb of P2O5, and either 180 or 360 lb of K2O. These were compared to a 38-38-38 (N-P2O5-K2O) and 0-0-0 treatment, randomized and replicated four times.

The results were frankly dramatic. By the end of the first year, the proportion of broomsedge in the plots went from 89% to 14% by adding N, P and K (Figure 1). Annual yields for the plots received N, P and K were over 2 tons per acre greater than the unfertilized plots. Potash addition alone was responsible for half of the yield increase. Broomsedge and total yield data from 2019 are not yet summarized, but show similar trends.

Fertilization had an unexpected benefit. Plots receiving P and K but no N had a marked increase in percentage red clover (visual basis) (Figure 2). This clover was all volunteer, since no red clover had been overseeded on this field in over a decade.

There are many takeaways from this trial. First, proliferation of broomsedge is not only a low pH issue, it can also be due to low K levels. Second, low K will prevent N fertilizer from having its full effect. Third, getting P and K fertility up on unimproved forage fields can greatly stimulate clover even when it has not been seed-ed recently.

Yes, the levels of fertilizer used were high, but not unreasonable. Yes these fertilizer rates would be expen-sive, but not more expensive than killing a field and starting over. And the effect was seen in the first year.

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Things a Hay Sample Can Tell You By. Jimmy Henning

Forage testing is the scorecard of a hay program and is necessary to meet feeding goals for livestock. However surveys show that most do not test hay. In the defense of farmers, good hay weather has been so infrequent that people really don’t want to see the results. You can almost hear them say, ‘I already know my hay is bad – why should I pay somebody to tell me something I already know!’ I sympathize.

Forage tests measure forage quality, but I will bet there are some things that you did not know it can tell you. So consider these even more reasons to test hay. What follows are some of the interesting things that you may not know a forage test will tell you.

First of all, the most important number is not the crude protein (CP) number. Protein requirements for most classes of cattle are pretty easily met by forages, especially mature cattle. Seldom do we need to supplement just for protein. Fiber values tell the story on forage quality. Yet we do not have an intuitive understanding of fiber as we do with CP. So let’s look a little closer at the fiber values on a hay test.

Acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) are the most important and least understood parts of the report. The names themselves do not help understanding because they refer to the lab processes not to animal performance. These values are the most important because they are used to predict energy (from ADF) and intake (from NDF). And energy and intake are where forages limit animal performance.

Fiber values help to indicate legume content. These two values on a hay test are named for the proportion of forage left after boiling in either neutral or acidified detergent solutions. NDF is the total fiber in the forage (NDF) and ADF the total fiber minus hemicellulose. Since legumes have less hemicellulose than grasses, the NDF-ADF difference will be less for legumes that grasses. An NDF-ADF difference of 10 would indicate al-most pure legume, while NDF-ADF differences for grasses will be 20 or higher.

High NDF values are a red flag. How much a cow will consume can predicted from NDF. An NDF of 40% (excellent legume hay) will have an estimated intake of 3% of body weight per day. An NDF of 60% (a typical grass hay) allows intake of 2% body weight. Ultimately, feeding a cow comes down to intake – how much she can eat per day. High NDF forages take a long time to pass out of the rumen.

Calcium-phosphorus ratio can also reveal legume content. Legumes grown in our region will have a Ca:P ratio of 2:1 or even higher, while our cool season grasses will be more like 1:1. So a wide Ca:P ratio means more legume. This little known fact really came in handy when a horse farm client wanted to know if a lot of hay they had purchased was in fact going to be a 50:50 mix of alfalfa and grass as they wanted. The forage test showed a very wide Ca:P ratio (>3:1). I predicted the hay was going to be mostly alfalfa. And it was.

Digestibility Terms. Total digestible nutrients (TDN) is the most frequently used energy term for beef cattle, and it is nearly always calculated solely from ADF. Labs differ in the equations used to predict TDN, some-times markedly, so it is more important to compare ADF values if you are comparing hay quality values be-tween labs. Getting your forage tested needs to be on your list of must-do’s this fall (after it warms up a little). This information will help you feed more efficiently, and it may even tell you some things you did not think possible.

If you are interested in getting a hay sample call Mary. In the fall hay samples are free. The rest of the year hay samples are $10 per sample for the basic sample and $30 for the Cadillac sample.

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Winter Drying

Broadleaf evergreens and needled evergreens, which retain their foliage during the winter, are subject to winter drying, a condition similar to leaf scorch. In Kentucky, rhododendron, magnolia, and pine are most commonly affected. Symptoms Symptoms may not become apparent until late winter or early spring. Affected leaves dry out and turn brown along margins and at tips (Figure 8). Often foliage droops and the plant has an overall wilted appearance. Winter drying may also lead to die-back of twigs. Cause Evergreens lose moisture from their leaves throughout the winter, with greater losses on windy, sunny days. When the ground is frozen, plants cannot take up the moisture they need to replace lost water and leaf scorch results. Winter drying is more likely to occur on sensitive plant species exposed to direct sun and drying winds. Management • Place cold-sensitive plant species in protected locations in the landscape. • Continue to water plants, as needed, during dry periods in late autumn and when soil is not frozen during winter. • Apply mulch around the base of the plants to help conserve soil moisture. A layer of mulch can also help prevent soil in the root zone from completely freezing. Mulch depth should not exceed 2 to 3 inches. Pull much back from the base of trees, so it is not piled around the trunk of the tree or shrub. • Wrap tree trunks with tender bark with burlap to protect them from drying winds.

Figure 8: Typical Winter Drying Symptoms on Magnolia

CAIP Information

All approved CAIP applicants must attend an CAIP education event before they can be paid for their project. If an applicant is planning on participating in the large animal project they also have an up to date BQCA card. The following classes have either occurred or will occur qualify for education.

Oct 5—Field Day Dec 5—BQCA Jan 30—Beef Producer

Nov 7—CAIP Informational +Ed Dec 12—Fruit and Vegetable Night

Feb 27—Vegetable webinar

Nov 12—Commodity Night Jan 22—Cow Calf Meeting Mar 12—High Tunnel Workshop

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Menifee County Extension Homemakers First Club Meetings: January 20 and February 17, 6:00 PM at the Menifee County Extension Office Home and Hearth Club Meetings: January 14 and February 10 at 12:00 PM at Korea Church of God Cabin Country Club Meetings: January 22 and February 19 at 11:00 AM at Menifee County Extension Office

Licking River Area Leadership Day

February 4, 2019 (snow date, February 25)

Mason County Cooperative Extension Office

10:00 AM

Lessons will include Meal Kits, “The Buzz About Honey” and Activities with Grandchildren followed by lunch.

All homemakers are welcome to join! We will car-pool

from the extension office at 8:30 AM

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Cost can be covered by the

District Board!!!!

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January 2020 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3 Life Skills 1pm

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6

7 8 9 Cook Together Eat Together

5:30

10 11

12 13 Sewing Club

14 Horse Club 5

15 16 Cloverbuds 5:30

17 18

19 20 HAMS 1:00

21 CEC 5:00

District BD 6:00

22 Cow Calf

9AM MSU

23 Chicken Salad

Fundraiser

Cooking Club 5:00

24 25

26 27 28 Cricut Club

5:00

29 30 Beef Producer's 6

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Fruit and Veggie Conference

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February 2020 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1

2 3 Homemaker Council 1:00

4 5 6 Cook To-

gether Eat Together

5:30

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9 10 11 Horse club 5

12 13 14 15

16 17 Life Skills

1:00

18 Cooking

Club 5:00

19 20 Cloverbuds

5:30

21 22

23 24 25 Cooking

Through Cal-endar 12:00 Cricut Club

5:00

26 27 Farmers

Market 6-8

28 29

KY Volunteer Forum