Spraying Early Before Weeds Even Sprout Can Be One of the Most Difficult Changes for Farmers
U.S. Farm Report 4/1/23- Prepare for Planting Part 2
After a dry fall and early winter, Crawford County, Ill. farmer Cory Utterback says he's now dealing with the other extreme.
“The month of March was wet. We're extremely saturated. Now I’d say that we've probably replenished subsoil, so we're ready for it to quit anytime,” he says.
The end to March brought even more rain, and it also brought severe weather. Utterback says a tornado hit less than a mile from his house. He says it caused a lot of damage from where he lives on farms near Robinson, Ill., to about 30 miles northeast of him in Sullivan, Ind. As he waits to get into the field, he – along with other area farmers and residents – are busy cleaning up the damage left behind.
A Waiting Game to Plant
As Utterback and others focus on helping their community clean up from the storm, it's a waiting game to plant. With another 1 inch of rain Thursday night, he thinks it’ll be another two to three weeks before farmers in his area are able to start planting.
“We're closer to 60% corn this year,” Utterback says, regarding his acreage mix this year. “Part of that is we like growing corn better than we do beans. We think it presents a better ROI for us.”
Once the weather does start to cooperate, he will start by planting soybeans.
Early Start on Controlling Weeds
“That's probably the biggest thing that we've changed in the last five years; the emphasis is on trying to get the beans planted first,” he adds. “And we really want to get them planted in April, if we can.”
The other changes Utterback has made is switching to liquid fertilizer and getting an even earlier start on spraying weeds.
“When you make the choice to go to some organic-based fertilizers, that also brings in some other weeds with it, and the weeds that you do have, it turns them into Jurassic Park around here if you don't get them sprayed on time,” says Utterback.
He says ideally, his team likes to start its weed-control program in the fall.
“If we can't get it on in the fall, we still want to start clean,” he says. “Right now, we're clean, but the temperature is going to be changing. We're going to get more sunlight, so it's going to produce germination.”
Smaller Weeds Are More Sensitive to Herbicides
For University of Tennessee Extension weed specialist Larry Steckel, Utterback’s plan is on target. Attacking the weeds from the start is what leads to more effective weed control.
“Weeds are a lot more sensitive to a lot of herbicides, when they're smaller. Once they get some height, they are a struggle to control," he says.
According to Steckel, the effectiveness of many postemergence herbicides have faded over the past few years, which means an emphasis on spraying earlier is one that can be more effective than the other options.
“And we're finding here in Tennessee over the last three or four years, we're just not getting real good weed control. So we're going back to trying to keep the weeds from ever coming up,” says Steckel.
How Early is Too Early to Spray?
So how early is too early? Steckel says for best weed control, farmers should try to spray 30 days out.
“There's some good work by my colleague Jason Bond down at Mississippi State with rye grass, and we're really struggling trying to control rye grass here in the mid-South in corn,” says Steckel. “He found for every day inside of 30 days that you can’t control rye grass, you lost about a bushel a day. So, you can lose up to 30 bushels if you're killing it right at planting.”
Utterback admits it's been a mental shift to adopt the strategy of spraying before you even see the weeds.
“It's a weird feeling,” says Utterback. “It's a mindset that you're out here spraying and there's really nothing here visually that appears you're killing. But typically, if the weather's right, then that's going to buy us enough time to get to canopy.”
Steckel says it may be uncomfortable for farmers to spray when fields look clean, but he says it’s a strategy that works.
“I've never really had a phone call where somebody complained about a weed failure because they sprayed too early. It was always because they were delayed a week or two,” says Steckel.
Utterback knows change can be uncomfortable, but in farming, change is inevitable.
“I think as a grower, if you think you know everything about farming, you just wait for Mother Nature to come around, and she'll show you that you don't,” says Utterback.
And sometimes creating change on your own farm, can produce the biggest rewards.
“You're always looking for that one thing that's going to gain you 5 or 10 bushels [per acre] on corn, or 3 bushels on beans. So, we've got a few things in the mix that we're going to try this year.”
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