Prepare For Planting: This is One of the Biggest Misconceptions About Effectively Combatting Problematic Weeds
Prepare for Planting, Part 1 3/25/23
Lush winter wheat fields in the southeast corner of Kansas can be a little deceiving this year. After relentless drought that severely ate into the crop, area farmers are still battling dry conditions. It’s creating concern about this year’s crop, but it’s also creating a window of opportunity to get an early start on weed control in other fields.
“In this part of the country, we've got a lot of work done,” says Dan Vitt, a farmer in St. Paul, Kan. “All or most of our anhydrous is on in this part of the world. We've done a lot of field work prepping for corn and getting ready to plant corn.”
It’s a solid start to a crop year that Vitt can only hope is better than 2022. Last year’s drought was so bad Vitt says some of his soybean fields couldn’t even be harvested. The moisture shut off after an extremely wet spring. The rains hit right in the middle of planting, which delayed planting the rest of his crop after getting an early start.
The wet spring was the first curveball Mother Nature threw Vitt’s way last year, especially issues in getting an early start on controlling potential problems with weeds.
“Back in 1984, when I was a senior in high school, we rode a 180-hp tractor and a six-row cultivator back and forth, and the sprayer wasn't as big of a part of the farm operation,” Vitt says. “Now the sprayer is probably the most valuable piece of equipment on the farm.”
Viewing his fields as a classroom, Vitt says each challenge comes with valuable lessons. That’s also the case when it comes to combatting weeds.
“On pretty much all our corn and bean ground we went to putting on a pre [emerge] to try to keep the weeds from growing in the first place,” Vitt says. “We try to start clean and stay clean.”
Read More: 9 Steps to a Perfect Corn Stand
The Change in Strategy for Weed Control
Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie of Crop-Tech Consulting says a decade ago, a farmer had one herbicide program for corn and one for beans. Today, that’s vastly changed, and it’s not just due to the herbicides a farmer chooses to use.
“We've got so many different facets to the herbicide program today,” Ferrie says. “We're talking about variety selection or hybrids, we're talking about row spacing, planting date and application times.”
As controlling weeds has become more complex, Ferrie says farmers’ weed management plans should be just as robust, as each of those different variables deserves to be included in that plan.
“But we just can't have a plan in our head,” Ferrie says. “As a farm operation, we have to put our plan together and it needs to be on paper. It needs to be detailed, and then it needs to be shared with everybody in that farm operation.”
Read more agronomic tips and lessons from Ken Ferrie.
What to Do With Your Weed Control Plan
It’s not just the sprayer operators who need to know that plan. Ferrie says those running the planter or even delivering the seed also need to be clued in, as Ferrie says it’s vital every person on your operation is fully aware of your weed management plan.
“We need a written plan. It needs to be accessible. It needs to be reviewed by everybody in the operation, and by everybody, I mean even the retailer,” Ferrie says.
Ferrie has seen a lot of different situations throughout his career as an agronomist, some that can be a bit of an anomaly. However, he says when one person is left out of the conversation throughout the year, that’s often when the mishaps happen.
“Just trying to do it on the fly is what gets us in trouble,” Ferrie says. “There could be 10 different herbicide combinations put together for one farm operation based on what their weed pressures are in different farms, what the resistance issues are and what kind of hybrids they're growing.”
The Value in "Start Clean and Stay Clean"
Ferrie says there’s a lot of value in the concept of “start clean and stay clean” when it comes to creating a full season plan for weed control.
“A situation where the full plan would have some residual in the pre-emergence to try to stop weeds before they even show up, then you might come back and add a residual to your post application, trying to lengthen that process out,” he says.
By focusing your plan around the weeds you have the toughest time controlling, as well as mixing up your modes and sites of action, a farmer’s fight against weeds can be even more effective.
No matter how solid the plan may be, he reminds farmers Mother Nature is ultimately in control.
“Have a plan, but also have a contingency plan - or a plan B,” Ferrie says.
Combatting Misconceptions About Controlling Weeds
One of the biggest misconceptions by growers when it comes to managing weeds is to wait until you see a weed problem pop up to respond.
“Sometimes the scouting isn't as thorough as it should be, and maybe they’re scouting from the pickup seat. And when they finally can see weeds from the pickup seat, and they decided that was the time to spray, then if we get rain or something, all of a sudden we're a week later than what they wanted to be,” says Ferrie. “And some of these weeds can grow a lot in a week's time.
The other factor farmers sometimes forget, according to Ferrie, is the correlation between row spacing and weed control.
“One of the challenges that we run into is as farmers are putting the plan together, and you may be thinking weeds on this spectrum, and then somebody over here is thinking about planting and row spacing population. And those two have to go together,” he says.
“We know from studies that we've done clear back in 1992, already, that we can pull those bean populations below 120,000 and not affect yield. But we do affect weed control.”
Ferrie points out that gauging your possible weed pressure hinges on your row width.
“A wide row at a low population is going to take me longer to canopy,” Ferrie says.
Other (Often Overlooked) Weed Management Tools
From reading the labels, to tapping into the knowledge of your retailer, Ferrie says those are some of the biggest tools a grower can use throughout the season.
As for Vitt, he’s learned that in order to thrive in his part of Kansas, he has to keep an open mind and be willing to change.
“You listen and learn no matter how old you get,” Vitt says. “And you lean on a lot of guys in the business, no matter what company they work for. There's a lot of good programs out there and you just have to listen and sort through the information, while also working with Mother Nature. When she gives you a chance to do something, sometimes you need to do it then.”
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