As harvest is wrapping up and fall tillage is on going, now is the time to evaluate your herbicide program one last time. Now is the time if you didn’t make notes from the combine seat to make them, recording density, and species of weeds and their location. Often times there are “HOT SPOTS” in the field that can make things look bad from the road but end up to be very localized problem areas that can be recorded to be addressed in the following year. If your problem areas at this time are weeds like quack grass, dandelion, thistle or any other perennial weed, now would be a great time to spot spray some glyphosate herbicides as this is when these herbicides can move easiest into the root system of these hard to control species. The cold weather does not effect most perennials until temperatures drop below –5 C, so if the weeds are green and the temperature is above –5 C then spray away. Going through this type of scouting can also give you an advantage in discussions with your Crop Specialist on next year’s herbicide programs and help fine-tune your program for the next year. This information you have taken time to collect can also be beneficial in conversations with chemical representatives through the winter when they inevitably come knocking on your door.

When out making notes on your herbicide program another useful tid-bit of information to gather from your corn stalk field are things like eardrop, and population discrepancies. A good way to help keep your herbicide costs low are to be picking fields now for next years IP soybeans. Choosing those fields with a low amount of eardrop and the lowest weed escapes will certainly help relieve headaches and heartbreaks in your IP production. Eardrop information will also give you good ammunition to use on your seed company representative to help pick more suitable hybrids in the future. If your eardrop is centralized to a certain area of the field and is not necessarily related to hybrid then you might want to take a soil sample from the area to see if there are any nutrients that need addressing.

In closing while we all are always making mental notes as we cross our fields it always good practice to put these thoughts on paper and share them with the people in your decision making team as the most successful teams don’t just have one coach but there are several to assist the head coach.

Bryan Brodie

Crops Manager Muirkirk

(519) 678 – 3381