This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist with Nebraska Extension for Dodge and Washington counties. We don’t consider eastern Nebraska winter wheat country, however roughly 50,000 acres of winter wheat are grown in the three eastern Nebraska crop reporting districts, which is east of Highway 14 from Knox down to Nuckolls County. Wheat is the fourth most grown crop falling behind corn, soybeans, and alfalfa in eastern Nebraska.
I have be actively working with local producers to add and expand winter wheat into their crop rotation since 2016. I worked with 10 farmers in 2019 that were part of my Winter Wheat Works Initiative in which I provided tissue sampling, scouting, and other services for free. There are many different reasons these farmers are growing wheat.
Winter wheat varieties planted in eastern Nebraska today can yield as much as 140 bu/ac under good management and weather. While the potential for top yields is important, it’s not yield alone that will make winter wheat profitable in this area. Adding value comes from various sources such as utilizing or selling the straw, profiting from growing a late summer and early fall forage crop, capitalizing on well above average basis for wheat in Fremont, reducing herbicide cost for troublesome weeds like marestail, waterhemp, and Palmer amaranth by disrupting weed cycles, achieving higher soybean yields in 3-year and 5-year crop rotations, contracting with feedlots for manure application in summer when compaction is less of a concern, reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss during high risk months of April, May and June, improving soil health, soil structure, and infiltration, reducing labor cost through better distribution of workload on the farm, and cost-share and payments through the Lower Elkhorn NRD and USDA-NRCS conservation programs.
Harvest is wrapped up for the 5 University of Nebraska-Lincoln winter wheat variety trials results in eastern Nebraska and the results will soon be posted online at cropwatch.unl.edu/varietytest. In 2019, trials were conducted in Washington, Saunders, Lancaster, Jefferson, and Clay counties.
Ready to plant wheat yet! We have dedicated webpage on croptechcafe.org with resources for current and future wheat growers including a short guide for growing winter wheat in Colfax, Dodge, and Washington counties. To get more information on winter wheat management for eastern Nebraska, visit our website at croptechcafe.org/winterwheat or give me a call at 727-2775. Know your crop, know your tech, know your bottom line. This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist for Nebraska Extension on KTIC radio.
