Let's Talk Weed Management

Practicing sound weed management is a tool the team at Central Region Cooperative implements to help their growers step towards higher yield goals. Although it is nearly impossible to terminate all weed growth, we certainly need to be taking steps to mitigate the growth process through proper application of preemergent herbicides. “It’s a number’s game.” As Bruce Sevcik talks about preemergence. “If we have a field and it has 1,000 weeds per square foot and we take down, at best, 90% of them with a preemergent we are left with 100 weeds per square foot, we can then look at going back and doing some post spraying to bring down the remaining.” If we do nothing, our soil has no residual built up and now we are combating weed growth on the backside. Layering herbicides and including different modes of actions is our best bet to tackle those yield-robbing weeds.

Recently, with little to no moisture, customers have raised concerns about the effectiveness of their preemergent application. As you can imagine, that questions has been on the minds of many. The article below provides insight to preemergent concerns.
 
Often times when discussing preemergence with customers we get asked; Is it even working? While it’s sometimes hard to say with 100% certainty we can at least have the conversation of, what if we didn’t do anything? The picture below speaks to the importance of proper weed management; the right side had preemergent applied while the fiel to the left had none applied.