For Zach Bailey of Bailey Family Farms in Xenia, Ill., weed management success has chemical, mechanical and out-of-the-box tools.
“For the past three years, we’ve been growing non-GMO crops,” he says. “We’ve had to get creative with our herbicide program, just simply due to cost. So, we’ve implemented different practices, such as rotary hoeing, flaming and the electrical removal of weeds, also known as weed zapping.”
All those methods combine with timely herbicide applications to combat weeds across his non-GMO, organic and row-crop acres.
This season-long approach is key in managing the many iterations of weeds that creep into your fields. As you prepare for 2022, close out this year with a clean slate. Fall herbicide applications can help cap how big winter annuals get because they won’t have extra months of growth.
“If they’re not doing them, farmers need to put fall applications back into the equation,” says Mark Loux, weed scientist with Ohio State University.
FALL MANAGEMENT
Early-season corn and soybean plants can suffer greatly when winter annuals are left unchecked.
“Typically, in March you’ll see the weeds that emerged in fall and overwintered, such as chickweed, purple deadnettle, dandelion, cressleaf groundsel (butterweed) and, of course, marestail,” Loux says.
Ensure the herbicides or tillage passes you’re using are effectively killing the weeds in your fields.
