SOIL TEMP THIS AM

The soil temp this am was 63F. For cotton ideally, the seedbed should be at least 68º F at the two inch depth,for 3-5 days with dry weather and at least 50 DD-60s. Planting into cold soils increases the likelihood of chilling injury to seedlings, weak and variable stands and replanting. Replanting is expensive, can complicate herbicide and insecticide programs and delay maturity. Generally this will be the last week of April or the first week of May. Some years differ and common sense must be applied. For pecan nut case bear heat unit model pecan trees started budding for me on 4 April 2015 which is about the same as last year. It occurred to me this year that bud break and soil temperature are most likely related so I am going to go back through the data and see if we can predict bud break using soil temperature.