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18 May

The fields are planted and your pre-emergence herbicide programs are on the field. While all the hard work has been finished, we aren’t done just yet. It’s time to fuel up the four-wheeler and take a look at your fields to evaluate several items, including: planter performance, early season plant performance, and weed pressure. I’ll go into detail more on each of these items as well as list some useful resources you can reference when out in the field.

Planter Performance:
What do you mean by checking my planter’s performance? While the corn crop is knee high or less, it’s an excellent time to verify how your corn planter did placing the seed within the seed furrow. We will want to evaluate seed spacing (how many inches between seed drop) and seed depth consistency.

To begin this exercise, choose random spots in the field where the planter was operating at it’s normal speed for the field. (Away from end rows, tile inlets, and waterways) Using two marker flags, place one flag in a row, count off 100 plants, and then insert your second flag. Using a tape measure, begin checking the distance between the emerged plants. For a population of 36,500, you should have a plant every 5.73 inches. (Dickey-john has a free tool to calculate this spacing for your row width and population: https://bit.ly/3dDHjfF) This will allow you to verify how your planter is dropping seed.

You’ll also want to look for delayed emergence. These could be factors related to vibration or seed units bouncing as a result of down pressure issues or too great of planting speed for the planter model and/or field conditions. If you find a delayed emerging plants, dig them up to see if they were planted at a different depth than what you planned or were they in contact with some type of trash within the seed furrow. All these factors can impact your corn plant’s ability to produce an ear or the size of the ear it will produce. These factors can all be corrected at the planter with little to no cost and will return dividends to your operation.

Early Season Plant Performance:
While we’re out in the field, now is also the time to be doing stand counts to see how your crop has emerged and the number of plants per acre compared to your planting population. For example 1/1000th of an acre in 30 inch rows is 17ft 4in. (Charts for various row widths can be found on the internet) Measure your desired distance and count the number of plants. This gives you an estimated stand population. Repeat this process in several areas across the field to give you an accurate look at your stand count. By doing this, you will get a good feel for the hybrid’s emergence while giving you the ability to look at the overall plant health, developing weeds, as well as other field issues that may be present.

Weed Pressure:
Having Mentioned weeds, the next thing you’ll want to evaluate is the performance of our herbicide program and escaping weeds. Doing this early and correctly identifying the weeds that are present is critical to reducing plant competition to your growing crop. Weeds that are not identified or are misidentified usually go uncontrolled and become an economic thorn in a grower’s side. We have seen several examples of this in the last 20 years that has created what seems a never-ending battle. You can acquire excellent weed identifying weeds. Resources are also available for insects and plant diseases.

In essence, I’m asking you to spend some time in your fields doing some self-evaluation. Time spent there now will allow you to discover issues you may not see from the road and come up with solutions to prevent yield loss for this growing season and years to come. Take advantage of the online resources I mentioned and as always, never hesitate to contact your local agronomist for questions!

15 May

What an excellent spring we’ve had this year. Perfect soil conditions with almost 2 weeks of no precipitation to get the corn and soybean crop in the ground. With all the craziness going on right now in the world, it sure was nice to have a near perfect spring.

Now that the crop is in, it’s time to gear up for your post emerge herbicide application. You may want to consider spraying early. Best way to find out is to get out and look at your fields. If you are finding weeds now that are 1-2″ tall, we recommend pulling the trigger and getting it sprayed. Even if there is still a long ways until crop canopy. Water hemp grows very rapidly; around 1″ per day. Holding off on spraying 2 days could make these weeds very costly and near impossible to control.

Corn: A lot of people I talk to are using a Group 27 (Callisto®, Explorer®, Impact®, Armezon®, etc.) tank mixed with a Group 5 (also known as Atrazine) and then spiking in a little glyphosate. This is a great program that we’ve recommended on quite a few acres. One thing to throw caution to is considering a Group 15 (Dual II Magnum®, EverPreX®, or some over the top residual product). I know commodity markets are looking grim now, but a few dollars invested in a residual product now will save you years of trouble.

Soybeans: I’m sure most of you started out with a solid pre-emerge program. Sonic®, Prefix®, Zidua Pro®, or something along those lines. All of those are fantastic products. Even with these great pre-emerge herbicides, a second pass is critical in weed control. No soybean herbicide on the market is a guaranteed one pass sytem. There are many great post emerge soybean herbicides on the market as well (Enlist®, Xtend®, Liberty®, Cobra®, Ultra Blazer®, etc. ). You should have pretty good success with these post emergence herbicides if you follow the label and use full rates. I can’t stress that part enough. It’s probably the single most important thing you can do in both corn and soybean herbicide applications.

I hope this will help all of you to succeed in the battle against these weeds that are getting tougher and tougher to control. If anyone has any questions, needs help scouting, or need sound agronomic advice, never ever hesitate to call your local Farm Nutrients representative. We are here to help you build healthy soils and higher yields.

26 Mar

I wanted to talk a little about the importance of knowing your chemicals. For years, glyphosate was the answer. While still a valuable tool, we as an industry must understand chemistry’s role in growing crops. Recently the chemical industry has changed for the better, labeling packaging with Modes of Action (MOA) groups. MOA’s are simply the way each chemical disrupts the growth ability of the targeted weed species. To maximize weed control and prevent early resistance to MOA groups, it’s important to layer multiple groups per year. This applies to both pre-emergence and post emergence programs.

Pre-plant herbicides are a very effective method of preventing the germination and development of small seeded broadleafs and grasses. Taking a closer look, several post chemical options can be used for pre-plant as well. With that in mind, utilizing the same chemical group pre-plant and post emergence is quite easily done. Understanding the MOA groups and making sure we don’t double up each growing season is an important stewardship practice we all need to follow.

Our Farm Nutrients staff is equipped with the knowledge and understanding of these practices to get you the best weed control possible, all while preserving the MOA’s currently used. Unfortunately, there are no silver bullets to combat the wide array of pests we deal with in agriculture. Even more unfortunate is the fact there are no new MOA’s currently being researched, so preserving what tools we have now is paramount. Utilizing the best strategies and chemical options available, weed control can be achieved when the proper program is prescribed and followed. Look for these MOA’s as you plan for the upcoming growing season and ask you local Farm Nutrients representative any questions that may arise.

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