Effective Weed Management Strategies from Kelly Garrett's Field Day
12 Jul 247m 48s

At Kelly Garrett's Field Day, Gail Stratman from FMC talks with Damian Mason about comprehensive essential weed management strategies. They talk about the importance of pre-emergent herbicides, challenges in no-till farming, and the impact of weed competition on yields.

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00:00 Lessons in weed management from Kelly Garrett's Field Day. I've got Gail Trapman here with FMC. All right. 00:06 Let's face it, we've been to field days and it's always about, let's make this look really pretty. Let's pretend that it's, we never have weeds 00:12 and we get a hundred bushels, soybeans and all that. Gail, this looks like crap. And you said perfect. That's a learning experience. This 00:18 Is a learning experience. This is a perfect example in weed management and, and, and how we, how we manage weeds, how we prevent disasters, 00:25 how we use herbicides as part of our weed management system to prevent big problems. 00:31 So we've got a pre-emergence herbicide on these soybeans. These soybeans have been out about three weeks 00:35 with the pre herbicide on it. And, and you can see we've got a number of big weeds out here. 00:39 So there, so there's, there's lesson number one. Yep. Is we went across this, we didn't really have anything. And, and, and as far as the tillage pass goes, 00:47 these weeds were up. Yep. And so we didn't have a burn down in that. We just put Roundup with it, 00:52 which isn't control the water hemp. Um, but we got the pre-emergence on for residual. We didn't do tillage to tear these out. Okay. 00:58 So yeah, we This is a minimal till or actually no till kind of a field. Yeah. They use something that's almost like a modern 01:02 equivalent of a rotary hose. Exactly. It's an aerator. Exactly. Which is not gonna have any 01:06 of the traditional tillage component of weed eradication. Exactly. So, so the lesson there is, 01:11 is if you're gonna go across to something like that, make sure your burned down program you've got with a pre is, is effective on that. 01:17 Or the tillage needs to be effective enough to tear these out. And that's what we're doing here. We're trying 01:21 to learn some, did, did we miss or is this no big deal? It looks like crap, but are we losing yield? No, we're not losing yield yet 01:27 because we've got really small soybeans yet they're not really gonna be impacted from a yield potential standpoint, 01:32 but we're setting ourselves up for, for a post program. The other part we're trying to show here is we got a pre-emergence herbicide on here, 01:38 and we got a lot of weeds out here, but if you scan over to our left over here, let's take a little walk and, 01:44 and look at what no herbicide looks like right now. You've really got something that looks like a weed control release program. 01:51 Now, if you're telling me that this isn't costing us yield, I'm gonna probably Quibble this. This is gonna cost 01:55 you yield, because there's two issues here. One, you've got really big weeds that you're gonna struggle to get dead. 02:00 I think you're gonna take, it's gonna take three passes. So You don't think that, you don't think if I run through it 02:04 with a good, I mean Roundup made us lazy. Yes. And in the old days you'd say, oh, it'll still work. You go in there and hit that with 02:10 Roundup. But you're, but you're losing yield. And so the part of this, you're gonna, it's gonna be a real struggle to get these dead, even 02:16 with some of our enlisted dicamba programs, because these pigweeds when they get, you know, more than about this tall then, and you, 02:24 and you take a herbicide and you take the top out of it, what happens to a pigweed? All these axillary buds become active down here 02:29 and they bush out what we try to do with soybeans and try to get them to break apical dominance and get 'em to branch. 02:36 We do really good with herbicides sometimes on big weeds. That's why we want all 02:41 of our weeds out here when we're spraying to be like this, because that weed hasn't broke apical dominance yet. 02:47 These buds down here aren't active. We take out the top of this plant, he's Dead for the non botanists like me, apical dominance means 02:54 Basically, basically it's, it's, it's a hormone balance that's inside of a plant that basically is this growing point that's at the top 03:02 of the plant, is dominating what's happening in the rest of the plant. And so it's putting on leaves. 03:07 But these, but the, it's not really producing chutes out the side of the plant because it's, it's all, most 03:11 of it's energy is in that top growing point. Yeah. Yo, I'm, I'm looking around here and obviously this is an experiment. 03:16 That's why we're here is to show this, um, you're telling me that there was really not a residual, 03:22 There was no herbicide put on this No residual. All we did is just came in and planted soybeans. Okay. And, and a lot, and a lot of growers want to do that. 03:29 They just wanna plant. And then I'll come in with a herbicide program later. This has only been on three weeks. Yeah. 03:35 I'm already telling you, you're gonna struggle to get these dead and you're gonna be chasing these big weeds all season. Okay. 03:39 So one lesson is, if I'm gonna do only a post application, no, no residual, no nothing laid down. 03:46 Yep. I need to get on sooner. We need to get on this a lot sooner. And The problem there is if the weather precludes that weather 03:52 Acres. Yeah. A lot of guys are planting corn, yet they're planting beans. A lot of guys don't have all their beans planted 03:57 and they're still, and they're already time to get on over top her. Yeah. You just don't have enough day, day. 04:01 I laid hours and manpower to get it all done. A wet spring harmed us a little bit. The soybeans didn't lack for moisture, 04:06 but the problem is wet spring pushed everything back, and now we're behind the eight ball. Yep. Because We're in the middle of May. 04:12 The soils are warmed up. This water hemp is wanting to grow like gangbusters. Yeah. And you and I and we can't get ahead of it. And 04:18 Here we're you and I are recording this on June 13th. Yeah. This has been, this, this weed has been thriving for, for a month. 04:24 For a month. He's a month old. We planted beans three weeks ago. He was already six inches high when we planted the soybeans. 04:30 We should have tried to do a better job of taking him out with the burn down. Can I still make, okay. We did no burn down. 04:35 Can I still make this make sense? Can I hit this and Absolutely. You, you can still grow a res, 04:40 a very good soybean crop here, but you are taking, you know, you're taking some yield potential off the top of these. 04:47 All right. So right off this wheat competition from the day they come out of the ground, Our field day concludes tonight, tomorrow, 04:53 hypothetically you say, come in and, And hit this, hit this with a heck of a post program. These are enlist beans. I'm gonna come in with enlist one, 05:01 uh, probably glyphosate with it or liberty, most likely liberty. You do an enlist plus liberty plus. 05:07 I'm gonna put a residual on this because if you don't, these pigweeds are just gonna keep coming. 05:12 He had cattle here last year. There's a lot of weed pressure in this field. Livestock is an acid life. Livestock 05:16 Always get blamed for worse. This is An, this is an acid test, but you've already lost some le potential, 05:22 but you don't want to compound it by, not by delaying your post program. Okay. Answer me this. And again, we're talking about, 05:26 this is a kneehigh pig weed almost. Yep. Um, if I hit this, if I hit this, just hold on. Okay. If I hit this 05:34 with a post application like you've recommended and I got a residual, that's not enough to take care of that. 05:40 What you're gonna do, you're gonna struggle to get this big weed down because you can't get enough coverage. 05:44 The other part you have here is population. It is so thick. Right. You're always gonna have these weeds. 05:49 You're gonna hit this, you're gonna take this top out, and then these guys down here ain't gonna be hit hard enough and they're gonna keep continue to grow. 05:55 Okay. So now you're gonna be hitting it a second time. You're gonna be hitting it a third time. So You're the herbicide expert. 05:59 I, what I guess I'm hearing is a post app, a 100% post program works, but I gotta get on it sooner. And that's where I, I'm a little bit more risk of weather. 06:09 Exactly. You're at risk of weather and timeliness and all those issues. Manpower, manpower, they keep you 06:13 because you're basically trying to get over that field every two weeks. One Thing you also pointed out, I know the camera showed this, 06:19 these beans are not 100% healthy from another, another thing. So just show Me that the, the other, In case the discerning viewer 06:25 is watching this and they say, tell me what's going on there. Yep. So the other part that we got going on out 06:30 of here a little bit is we had corn in here last year. We've got a little bit of HPPD or the bleaching herbicides. Okay. Carryover showing up and they're being picked up. 06:40 Now as this plant is getting into the first and second trifoliate, it's now pulling from the roots. Okay. So it's pulling it up from the soil. All right. 06:47 That's carryover from the, from the crop last year. Is That, is there anything about the carryover other than the beans a little bit hurt? 06:51 Will it hurt? Yield? Depends upon how long it lasts. Okay. If it, if it maintains itself 06:56 for weeks upon in here we're gonna shorten these beans up, we're gonna probably limit the number of nodes on it 07:01 and to the, we'll, we'll see how. But if it's short term and, and the other part of it is, it's, 07:05 it's mainly up here on the hillside where the soil is lighter and rockier and the pH is higher. As you get down the hill, you don't see as much of it. 07:12 Understood. So that's another thing where you can kind of pinpoint carryover because it's, it's kind of spotty. Dale Stratman talking to me about weed 07:18 management for your farm. You know what, we have field days that are authentic. They're real. We've all been to the field days 07:23 where they go out there and they show you, you know, everything's magic. It's not Disney World at our field days. Here, it's real. 07:30 And that's what we want, is that you can take lessons home to your farming operation 07:33 and apply them for greater yields, bigger results. More ROI. That's what we're talking about. I'm Damien Mason. Thanks for being here. Live via tape from the Garrett Land 07:41 and Cattle Extreme Ag Field Day.