The weather this year has been wild. During the month of May, over 9.5 inches of rain fell on my pecan grove. When June arrived, Nature's spigot seems to turn off completely. We've recorded only 0.37 inches of rain during the entire month. Things have gotten very dry, very quickly.
This morning, I noticed a ring of wilted grass around each of my young Kanza trees. It almost looks like I sprayed herbicide around the tree but that's not the case. I haven't been able to do any chemical weed control so far this year because of spring floods and muddy soil conditions during the months of March through May. When the ground started to dry up in early June, I was finally able to mow the grove for the first time this season.
The circle of wilted vegetation that rings each tree represents that area of soil where pecan roots are out-competing grass and weeds for soil moisture. Fortunately, pecan trees are pretty good at handling dry soil conditions. However, the trees are now entering the nut enlargement phase of pecan development. During the month of July and into early August, pecans grow rapidly in size. If dry conditions persist, nut enlargement will be stunted and we'll be harvesting a lot of small pecans this fall.
