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Managing tough to control weeds early

Planting season is just around the corner and an agronomist says it’s a good time to remind farmers to have a plan in place to protect crops from weed pressure. 

Lynn Justesen with UPL says just one weed escape can impact fields for multiple seasons.  “I’m going to use an extreme example – Palmer amaranth,” he says.  “Palmer amaranth came out of the South and it’s rearing its head everywhere in the Midwest.  If we miss that weed one year, we may fight it for ten.”

He tells Brownfield knocking back those tough to control weeds like Palmer amaranth early in the growing season is crucial.  “There are male and female plants,” he says.  “So, as they crossbreed, if you get one that is missed and one that is resistant to glyphosate or atrazine or any other chemistries, if it crossbreeds with the rest of them it doesn’t take but two or three years before the whole population is resistant.”

And Justesen says if farmers don’t get it killed in one year they have a plant that creates 100,000 seeds.  “If you run through it with a combine and your combine grinds it all over your farm, now you have hundreds of thousands of seeds all over your farm that you’ll battle for years to come.”

He says applications of both pre and post-emergent herbicides are important components to maximizing farmers return on investment.