What’s Your Post Emerge Herbicide Program?

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.