Does deep tillage, with a moldboard plow, significantly reduce weed pressure? Austin Scott, Beck’s Hybrids Area Team Leader and Herbicide Specialist, reviews the influence of various tillage practices on waterhemp emergence in this 2021 Herbicide Insight plot.

In this video, Austin Scott takes us on a virtual tour of our Dicamaba in the PRE plot at Beck's PFR. The goal of this study is to evaluate different pre-emerge herbicides that look at utilizing dicamaba as a PRE vs. other residuals. 

Utilizing a broad-spectrum fall (post-harvest) burndown can help reduce the soil weed seed bank by controlling winter annual and perennial weeds. It can also offer several auxiliary benefits to row crop fields. Beyond the goal of reliable weed control, a fall herbicide application has many benefits. It can reduce host plants for pathogens such as soybean cyst nematode (SCN), over-wintering insects, and even diseases in warmer climates, and it can help maintain soil moisture in drought-stressed/arid climates. Fall herbicide applications also enable fields to be planted as soon as weather conditions allow; and help soil warming and drying in the spring, especially no-till fields. The net result is a more uniform crop emergence with fewer abiotic and biotic stressors.

Take a walk with Field Agronomist and Herbicide Specialist, Austin Scott, through a Tennessee corn field and learn more about increased black cutworm pressure.
 

Can you pick a palmer from a redroot? 

Weeds are off to the races this season and the first, and most important step to controlling broadleaf weeds is correct identification.

 

Most farmers are aware of the "Time of Day Effect" when it comes to applying Liberty^® herbicide on LibertyLink^® soybeans.

When scouting fields over the last few weeks I have seen a number of weeds popping up in corn and soybean fields across Beck's southern marketing area. 
 

I feel like this year has been a big set up. We had excellent planting conditions in late March and early April, and we were able to get a lot of crops planted. Then Mother Nature took a turn for the worst, and the following three weeks were cold, wet, and cloudy. Much of our corn struggled to emerge and lacked the early season vigor I would typically like to see. However, we were only accumulating five to ten growing degree units (GDUs) per day, so it was somewhat expected. Seed treated with Beck’s Escalate^™ yield enhancement system really had an advantage this year! Now that the weather has warmed up and we’ve started seeing the sun again, the corn that wasn’t underwater for too long is starting to look much better. Most of my service calls recently have been in regards to soybeans, or really the lack thereof. Even though each field has the potential to be completely different, I have started to notice a pattern. There have been two major culprits of soybean loss this year: PPO or Group 14 herbicides (especially in soybeans that were treated with ILeVo^®) and slugs.

Back in March, a majority of my territory experienced a freeze event. And while our wheat grew out of it and was looking very healthy, we are now seeing some damage.   

 

Much of the wheat throughout my territory is now between Feekes 10 (head in boot) and Feekes 10.1 (grain head visible). This means that within the next two weeks, it will be time to start making fungicide applications to protect our wheat against Fusarium head blight (head scab).