How you manage your field after harvest has a significant impact on next year’s crop. Learn how making smart decisions about retaining or removing crop residue, applying fall burndowns or performing field and equipment cleanup can help combat disease, pests and weeds that would otherwise lurk in your fields overwinter, waiting to wreak havoc on your next crop.
1. Soybean crop residue
Crop residue is a double-edged sword. Often left undisturbed in reduced- or no-tillage systems, crop residue can help suppress weeds but can also harbor overwintering diseases like sudden death syndrome or insect pests.
Below are some factors to consider regarding crop residue:
Advantages of retaining crop residue
- Help maintain soil fertility
- Natural barrier to weeds
- Reduced impact of wind and rain erosion
- Water conservation with reduced runoff loss and evaporation of moisture from soil surface
Disadvantages of retaining crop residue
- Crop residue can harbor pests and disease, affecting subsequent crops
- Heavy crop residue can create cool and wet seedbed temperatures unfavorable to germination.
- If not properly distributed, crop residue can also hinder uniform planting and germination and block input applications through the season. If you’re working in a no-till operation and consider residue beneficial, chopping it for faster decomposition can help.
- Retaining crop residue can result in the reduction of available nitrogen. Soil microbes in plant residue engage available nitrogen as residue decomposes, leaving less for plants.
2. SCN and winter annual weeds
Soybean cyst nematode can overwinter in certain winter annual weeds, especially purple deadnettle and henbit. While it is challenging enough that SCN overwinters in the soil in the form of eggs, if left unattended, winter annual weeds can not only host SCN overwinter but also allow it to reproduce.
According to Purdue research, SCN reproduction on purple deadnettle proved to be as efficient as (or more efficient than) reproduction on SCN-susceptible soybeans in greenhouse experiments. Henbit similarly can host SCN reproduction.¹
In addition to purple deadnettle and henbit, four other winter annual weeds have been identified as alternate hosts to SCN.
- Field pennycress
- Shepherd’s-purse
- Small-flowered bittercress
- Common chickweed
SCN population density increases more rapidly in fields where these weeds are present than in fields where they are not.
To slow the spread of SCN, use fall herbicide applications to control winter annual weed populations and, by extension, SCN.
3. Field cleanup prior to overwintering
Going the extra mile to perform field and equipment cleanup after harvest will go a long way toward lowering overwintering insects, diseases and weeds.
Experts are available to help you make your decisions. As you wrap up harvest, reach out to a nearby extension office agent or a professional like your regional BASF representative to get a game plan set for overwintering your fields.
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Endnotes
- Mock, Valerie A., et al. “Winter Annual Weeds and Soybean Cyst Nematode Management.” Purdue Extension, Purdue University, www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ws/ws-36.pdf. Accessed 11 July 2026.
