IABRN — “Painful: An eloquent way to say how 2019 was perceived by farmers,” states Whitney Monin, technical agronomist with Channel Seed.
Monin reflects on last year’s difficult crop season, which she suspects will “lend itself to more challenges in 2020.”
“We have to consider those prevent plant acres we had in 2019,” Monin said. “We saw weed populations extremely high in prevent plant acres because we didn’t control them through mechanical means. Maybe we weren’t spraying them with a burndown like we should have given the stressors of the season.”
Growers must be aggressive in tackling weeds ahead of planting, according to Monin.
“We’re not going to be able to depend on tillage, especially upfront and early season. Farmers have to be laser-focused about having different modes of action and using strong, overlapping residuals to control flushes of weeds we’re going to see through the entirety of the season,” Monin said.
Monin reiterates the importance of controlling weeds early on.
“Be thinking about those pre-plant, burndown applications where we can get an early season shot of residual to hold down weed pressure in the soil,” Monin said. “The best weeds on our farms are the one we never have to see. We never have to see them if we have those residual sites of action working for us below ground.”
Monin also offers tips for in-season weed management. She recommends scouting your fields and identifying problematic weeds.
“This is something we haven’t been doing as good of a job as we had in the past,”We had some chemistries in the market that were broad spectrum and killed everything, so we didn’t have to worry about identifying weeds. That’s not going to be the case in the future. We need to be better stewards and truly identify what we’re going after, and work with trusted partners.”
This article originally appeared on the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
