Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep10. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Dr. Bill Robertson discuss key points to ensure your cotton crop gets off to a good start.
Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep10. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Dr. Bill Robertson discuss key points to ensure your cotton crop gets off to a good start.
Weeds AR Wild Series, Season 2 Episode 10.
Title: Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep10. Key principles to kickstart the Arkansas cotton crop in 2022
Date: April 20, 2022
[Music]: Arkansas Row Crops Radio providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas.
Tom: Welcome to the Weeds AR Wild podcast series as a part of Arkansas Row Crops Radio. This is Tom Barber, Extension Weed Scientist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Today, I'm very fortunate to have our Cotton Specialist with us, Dr. Bill Robertson, to talk a little bit about early season cotton issues and what we want to be thinking about moving into our 2022 cotton growing season. Bill, welcome to the podcast this morning.
Bill: Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the invite. I always enjoy coming on here and just talking about what's going on with things. You know, when we look at the cotton world right now, so many things have changed. And it just seems like every year gets a little harder and harder. I remember back in 2020, we think, “well, 2020 was so tough, we'll be glad for the next year,” but it just seems like it just gets a little tougher and a little tougher. And Mother Nature, kind of the good and the bad. You know, last fall was so, so dry and we had a late crop that just got a little bit later and we had such a good fall. We were able to have a picker rolling in the field a long time and didn't have a lot of losses from weather and a lot of quality loss and things like that. So it made harvest really good. But for those folks that were trying to put cover crops in the ground, it was so dry that we just didn't get the start like we wanted with our cover crops, and it just didn't grow off very good. And I don't know kind of exactly what you're seeing, but most all of the cover crops I'm looking at in my plots and in farmer fields, too, most everybody is very disappointed in the amount of covers they have. So it just didn't grow off right. And so kind of where we are right now, if we have just a straight cereal rye cover crop, then we really need to have that terminated right now. Research has shown somewhere between the time that the head pops the boot until you get full head exertion is kind of the sweet spot to terminate. If we leave that in the field and try to plant green into standing rye, we've seen as much as a 15% yield loss. Some of that's allelopathy. Some of that’s competition for nitrogen with the soil microbes trying to work on the straw, but for straight cereal rye we need terminate that early and then that helps us get our termination timing in front of the planter, and all that. But, look at what it's doing right now, Tom. It’s raining.
Tom: Oh yeah.
Bill: And I understand why some people really want to plant green, because I know people that are trying to get dryland soybeans in the ground. They put a cover crop, they had a great cover crop and they've got it terminated, and it's just a big sponge out there. It's not drying. If you have living material out there well, it'll transpire some of the water, it'll help it dry out. And so there's challenges here and there. But we have some people that really want to plant green. If they want to plant green, they better have some diversity in there. But still, there's challenges to the Green Bridge. There's a lot of things. There's no easy button as well. [laughter]
Tom: Well, and there's not a broad brush, you can just make a recommendation, it doesn't seem like with covers. It's situational dependent. It's field by field. And, you know, I was talking to a farmer in southeast Arkansas yesterday, and he was under the same situation you were just talking about. I mean, he's scratching his head trying to figure out what to do. And they've had, I think he told me, he had like 300 acres that they burned down with an airplane or terminated. But then they streaked it. And so now they're coming back and trying to – it's been a spotty, not necessarily spotty stand, but it's an uneven stand. Uneven biomass that's out there due to all the rain and just poor drainage, whatever issue may be in the field. But then we’ve also got some variability in control as well, just because of environment and application issues. And so, it's easy to get into a I guess, a “quote unquote” mess if we're not careful this year, with our cover crops. And, one question I have for you, Bill and I got this yesterday. Because of this weather, if we do miss our termination date and the cereal rye gets large or any of the blends – that they get really large on us, do we need to roll that down before we plant? Because I know I've had people tell me that if they don't, they had issues picking it actually, at the end of the year because the stuff just might not lay down.
Bill: Yeah, when the cereal rye gets big, you know, I've seen it both ways. Now cereal rye can get really big, and from the road it looks like a real challenge monster out there. But you get out there and if it's pretty thin I've had pretty good luck just planting into standing cereal rye. But if it's pretty thick, yes, you need to lay it down. And the big thing on that is roll it the direction that the planter goes, and then that'll help with that. But year in - year out, some of the farmers, and I know you've talked about “how do we do our PREs?” And, a lot of times, I've heard you tell people and I like to do this – spray it with a standing cereal rye before you lay it down. But what I've seen in the past is, the people that go out with Gramoxone behind the planter before the crop comes up, it seems like that kind of helps that cereal rye straw lay down and become a little flatter, because it doesn't break down when it's standing up in air. I've seen cereal rye, I saw one of the fields with one of the farmers I worked with last year. It got really big. We wanted to spray. And it’s like we’re talking this year, whether you have cover crop or not, we just hadn't been able to get any of our burndowns out hardly with a ground rig. It's all had to go out by air. We know the issues that we run into sometimes there.
Tom: Oh yeah.
Bill: But that cereal rye stood up all the way through the year and it caused problems even with the height sensors on the picker. The row units kept wanting to bounce up because the straw from the cereal rye was still there. But I think running Gramoxone, have you seen that Tom – running Gramoxone behind the planter helps with that straw to lay down some? Have you seen that?
Tom: I agree, yes, and I think it can. The question just gets to, do we need to focus– and I don't really know the best answer to this, I guess. Because, I have people tell me, “Well, I can get the sprayer across it. Can I go ahead and spray it and then bring the planter later?” And it's just a logistical issue and just based on field conditions on what we can get in the field at that time. But I do agree with you know, ideally I'd like that planter to go and then come back if we're going to use the Gramoxone to finish it off, if we're planting it in green or whatever at that time. I mean, I've got some feedback from that as well. And I think that is a pretty good practice.
Bill: But yeah, getting that straw to lay down, that saves a lot of headaches down the road. It sure does. But just like we said, there's so many things that had to go out by air. And you know, we got streaking issues, we got different things. So whether we have cover crop or not, I'm seeing that in a lot of places. So, I'm sure you're getting a lot of questions about cleaning out. [laughter] You know we've already got potential messes is out there and we don't even have seed in the ground. This year's really, really challenging. We’ve got that, and then too, you mentioned soybeans. If I’ve got full-season beans, the key to getting a good yield is getting that planted early. I know I'm a cotton guy and all that. But real-world man, as soon as the planters get going, we’ve got a lot of people, because they're using losing yield potential every day now.
Tom: Every day.
Bill: They are going to be so concentrated on getting to beans, and that's exactly where I would be. You know the last couple of years half of our cotton crop has gone in in the last half of May. Traditionally, I always kind of circled my calendar. You know, if we have good planting conditions from April 20th, April 25th we get the planters in the field from south to north. I've seen years where we had planters running at that time and we were almost through planting by May 1. But it's just like our planting, I think our planting window will shift back almost two weeks, don't you, Tom?
Tom: It seems like it. And you know, last year I think we had a little spell where we could get out in April and plant, and then in May it turned off 40 degrees or something crazy.
Bill: Yeah, the weather last year was just so crazy because we had a winter and then we had a spring and then that last week of May we had winter again. And the cotton that was up, it got so cold. It just messed with the hormones on the plant, Tom. [laughter] And we had plants that went back vegetative. The fruiting moved up on the plant, the plants just grew different just because it got so cold at the end of May. I'm hoping that we get all of our cold weather out of the way, and when it turns off spring, it turns off spring. But I was looking at the long-term forecast and when you get more than about seven to ten days out, it’s just, “who knows?”
Tom: Well that’s right.
Bill: But looking at long-term, it looks like we're going to be into May before we can consistently have low temperatures above 60 degrees.
Tom: Well, Bill, I think back when, and I think you may have been working with the Cotton Council. When we put that white paper together the first 40 days or whatever – at how important it is in that first 40 day window to get a good start with cotton, and to make sure that we wait on those heat units and where we can get that seed germinated and get the plant up out of the ground within seven to ten days. I mean just being able to get it up out of the ground and enable that. You know we really talked and focused on that root system in that first 40 days and talked about how, if it's too cool – if that soil temperature is too cool and we have a lot of moisture, we can get chilling injury. We can really get root tip death, can’t we?
Bill: Yeah. You know, when you first plant that seed and it imbibes water, it takes that thing, and most everything inside that cottonseed is oil soluble. And, when we pour some oil in our old engines that leak oil and burn oil, you know oil doesn’t poor very good when it's cold. So, the components in the seed kind of have to shift back together, and things don't move very fast. Things leak out. But when you first plant that seed, it takes up water and that little radical, or that root, pokes out. That's when it's closest to the soil surface and you get temperatures below 50 degrees. That root tip will die and then that's when you get that crow foot. They call it a crow foot on the cut plant. And then as it grows and develops it can take the cooler temperatures better because the most sensitive parts of the of that plant are deeper in the soil. But you know, putting cotton seed in the ground and you're going to have some 50 degree/40 degree weather, that’s very hard on it on that developing root system. It sure is. If you look at the data and you block the season up into two-week increments, the first two weeks are the ones that correlate the best to how the yield turns out.
Tom: Really? Well, that’s interesting. Okay.
Bill: Yes. And so, I think it looks like between now May 1, it’s going to be too wet to get in the field. And so I'm hoping that by the time it finally warms up and it dries up enough, that we can get the planters in the field. When I first came to Arkansas ’95, we had, well almost a million acres of cotton. But cotton was, you know – it was cotton behind cotton, probably about 90%. There was probably less than 10% rotation. So we could get on a program like this and just talk about cotton.
Tom: Right.
Bill: But now life’s not that way anymore, is it Tom? So we got other things. So I'm sure the planters, we're way behind on corn – what corn is going to be planted, and we may be working our way out of corn. But we got a ton of beans that are going to go in the ground and people are going to be focused on that. So I feel a little bit better about not being so worried about planting our cotton crop a little bit later. Because, the last couple of years again, half of our crops gone in the last half of May. We've had record setting – you know, last year we busted the record on own yield. A lot of that was from the northern part of the state, because it just seemed like the northern part of the state, Tom, they got rains at exactly the right time. And I think the biggest part was, they didn't get rains at exactly the wrong time. In central and southeast Arkansas, the yields are so variable. I talked to a lot of farmers. It felt like their yields are off 200 pounds or maybe more. The problem was they just got big rains at exactly the wrong time. They just finished watering and things like that. And overwatering cotton, you know what that does to yield potential. It just knocks it in the head, doesn’t it?
Tom: Yeah, it does. And you know, we got one rain that we received at our Tillar location last year of about 20 inches in 24 hours. So that's not good on any crop, much less a cotton crop.
Bill: Oh, exactly.
Tom: It likes dry feet. But it seems to me, Bill, you talked how we talked about last year. Last October was excellent for really finishing out a cotton crop. I mean that's really what we needed for those good yields that you're talking about. And you know I don't know that I'm, and it's just probably just me putting too much thought into this – but it almost seems like our springs have shifted to a little later and then our falls are shifting a little later too, maybe. I don't know. Lately anyway, the last four or five years, that seems to be the case.
Bill: The last few years, we've had good falls. And I don't know if it's just the blind hog finding acorns, or what's going on. But I keep thinking, “OK, this can't keep happening,” but it just seems like we have a little bit better fall, and a little bit better fall, and a little bit better fall. And so I don't know. When we rolled in to August on a crop last year, I was a little bit down on the crop, because I was thinking we were going to have an average crop at best. And then we ended up with a record crop. So, shows you what the cotton specialist knows, but anyway. [laughter]
Tom: [laughter] That’s the way it always works out, Bill. Cotton specialists and economists. [laughter] They’re never right.
Bill: But at least, when you start comparing me to the weatherman, that's when I'm really going to start worrying. But anyway, it just seems like things are shifting. And so, if we can continue to see that, well that was the salvation for our crop last year. Having such a great fall. And then, that dry weather continued. So, we had combines running, and we had pickers running, and we had everything going. And we had the field conditions to get it done. But I tell you what, the livestock and forage people had a tough row. I know a lot of people. I'm over here in the edge of Jackson County. I am sandwiched in between Independence and White County, up in the hills. But a lot of my neighbors are short on hay and a lot of things going on. And so, sometimes what's good for one segment of agriculture is not so good for the other segment. And that's the way it's always been, not just on a county basis or the country basis, but look at the world.
Tom: Uh, huh.
Bill: Look at what's going on in Ukraine. I don't know what's going to come down the road. But I know that's not what we're here to talk about today. But you got to get me back on the subject, Tom.
Tom: Let’s reign her back in. Let’s reign her back in.
Bill: [laughter]
Tom: No, you know, in all seriousness, I know most of the farmers I talked to, they're pretty antsy right now. Because they haven't been able to plant rice, beans, corn, our early planting window crops. And when we talk about early planting, cotton doesn't come into my mind as a quote unquote, early planted crop. I mean, we've got a window, like you said, we have to hit.
Bill: Yeah.
Tom: And we're not through that window yet. So we still have a lot of time. I mean, this crop can be planted in ten days. Bill, easy.
Bill: Oh, exactly. You give us ten days of having planters rolling, ten consecutive days of planters rolling in the field, then we can get 90% of our crop or better in the ground. But, with the challenges we have with product availability and prices, and in knowing what our input prices are, is just kind of really been a big challenge. I know a lot of farmers that have said they have a lot of their stuff booked by now. And they have their product in and all that. It's just they're going more by the see their pants this year than they ever have. So, it's so important to do things, and do things right. Isn’t it? And that includes our pest control, the insects, and the weeds. And, we got to. Y'all got big plans trying to help farmers work around some of these challenges, don't you?
Tom: Well, we do. I mean, when I say we have big plans, we're just kind of ebb and flow, too. I mean, we just roll with the punches as well. And it's crazy this year, like you say. I mean, I've never been in a situation where farmers or consultants call me and tell me, “This is all I can get. Can I develop a program around this?” – and just have a handful of select products that we use. I mean, if the farmers haven't been proactive in ordering their herbicides, then a couple of things may happen. They may not get that herbicide that they need, or they may get it, but they may pay double what they paid last year for it. And so, our applications that we make for weeds or insects, anything really, is going to cost us a lot more money this year just in general. But still to me, that drives home the importance of sticking to what we know that works and taking the time to do it right.
Bill: Right.
Tom: It's times like these when everybody gets in a hurry that, “Oh, we forgot to spray that thousand acres over there with residual herbicides. We just couldn't get to it. We had too much going on.” And, you know, we do definitely need to keep our weed control budget, if you will, at a somewhat manageable level in a year when everything costs twice as much. We've got to. You know, the little things make a big difference. And it's not that little, but we need to use residuals and we preach that every year. And the importance of starting clean. I've already talked to people like you say, we're getting in the field now with weeds in them, because we haven't been able to spray due to rain or we can't get the airplane in a certain field timely before we can plant. And it's very likely that we're going to be planting into weeds this year in a lot of crops. And that never does end well for us when we do that. So, my advice is to take the time. Let's spray the weeds, or work the ground, or whatever it takes to get it clean. Starting clean to maintain yield is critical. We've got to start clean from a weed control standpoint and using residuals is critical. And in a year where herbicides may be limited, and the choices that we have may be limited, finding the residuals that can work and using those residuals up front, will buy us important time to come back and make those POST applications when we're trying to spray everything. And time is critical. Time is money, when it comes to farming. Especially with the acres we're trying to cover in a in a short amount of time. And so every year, and I've been getting calls over the last week pretty regular about what my favorite PRE program is in cotton. And it really hasn't changed much as far as what I consider to be the Cadillac, if I could call it a Cadillac treatment or a Cadillac application, on our lighter soils, our sands, and light mix dirt, the Brake plus Cotoran continues to be, in my opinion, our number one go to especially if we have bad pigweed problem areas. That's a pint of Brake and a pint and a half of Cotoran. And it's just to me, year in and year out, it outshines everything. Now, the more heavy, the more clay content we get in the soil, the heavier ground – if we're growing cotton on heavy ground this year, we don't recommend Brake on that heavy ground, because it does bind pretty tightly to those heavier soil colloids. So, heavy clay content don't use it, otherwise Brake plus Cotoran still my number one. Cotoran plus Caparol at a pint each – that’s a pint of Cotoran and a pint of Caparol. From an economic standpoint, this is a very good residual application for pigweed, morningglories, grasses, a range of weeds, but it will not give you as much time as Brake/Cotoran. The one thing with that Brake and Cotoran, especially if we continue our rain or wet pattern that we're in right now, the wetter it is, the better that Brake is going to work. The Cotoran/Caparol are both fairly water soluble. They're going to move through our system pretty quickly and be washed out. And so not as active for near the length of time that the Brake/Cotoran treatment it is. I've had some folks put out Cotoran and Warrant, and in our plots, that looks pretty good. You know, you don't want to get too heavy on the Warrant rate when you mix those two together. Just because we can, under the right circumstances, get some stand loss from any Group 15’s – that's the Warrants, Duals, Outlooks, those kind of things, that we put out PRE. But Warrant is encapsulated, so you don't get that full dose of that herbicide all at once usually. So we reduce the injury by using that instead of like a Dual at planning, and so that would probably come in third. Then a lot of people ask me about Diuron. And Diuron is a really good residual weed control product at planting, but it's going to give us more cotton injury than the Cotoran will. So, if we're substituting – anywhere we can substitute Diuron for Cotoran, that's fine. But we want to keep that probably down at a pint and then on our sands, I just I cringe on recommending the Diuron on our true cotton sands, because just of the injury potential that it has there. And one other point I think I'll bring, you know, especially if we're not doing tillage and we don't know for sure if we're completely clean across the field, we want to definitely add something to our residual program at planting to make sure no pigweed are up, or any of these winter annuals that are still hanging around. We go ahead and burn those down. And to me, that's either Paraquat or Gramoxone with our pre-emerge, like we were talking about in the cover crop situation – or it can be Engenia or XtendiMax. I think, Bill, we were talking earlier still 90-95% of our cotton going to be Xtend this year, you think?
Bill: Yeah I really think so. I'm looking to see a jump in some of the acres of our Enlist cotton. They've got a variety that really performed well last year, but I really feel like we were 95% Xtend cotton last year and, I look for us to be pretty close to that same number.
Tom: OK well and if it is Xtend, I mean we've seen the benefit of adding either Engenia or XtendiMax in that at-planting application or that pre-emerge application. It really can do two things. If there's any pigweed up or any marestail or horseweed up from our winter applications or left over, it will take those out and then it will provide us – if we do turn out into a dry period of 10 to 14 days, let's say – it'll provide us some protection for pigweed in that 10 or 14 day period. Where our Cotoran or Caparol, or whatever else we've put out PRE hasn't been activated yet. So by using Engenia or XtendiMax on our Xtend acres at planning, we can provide some residual protection, when we have that small window, where we may not get an activating rain for our residuals, but there is enough moisture for pigweed to germinate. And so we'll have some come up in between, when we make that application and we get an activating rainfall. So the Dicamba application there really kind of protects against that and gives us some insurance. If it is an Enlist based system, then it's pretty simple. We just take our Dicamba out of that application and we add Enlist One, and we can do the same thing with it really. And so, in either system, those are good options. If we're in a situation where we don't want to use those, then again it's to me, back to at least mixing some paraquat in with that residual at-planting to make sure we're clean and get a good start.
Bill: Yeah, that’s great advice, Tom, because, you know, you think about the cotton plant, how the cotton plant grows. It's a poor competitor early and so from the weed standpoint, we got to be clean early, just like what you were talking about. But just think about fertility. You know, the demand for fertility don't go up until we get close to flowering and up. So we’ve got to concentrate on our fertility as we get later in the season. You know, where do we get the biggest bang for our buck? And some of the things you were talking about, we get the biggest bang for our buck on some of the herbicides early, because we got to start clean. We get the biggest bang for some of our fertilizer, especially we’ve got to cut back some by putting it out closer to flowering. So, avoiding issues, avoiding problems is a big thing. You know, labor is hard to come by. Fuel is expensive, everything's expensive. It doesn't cost us much to do things right, does it Tom? To have our boom height right, our nozzle size right, and all that. Even with our fertilizer buggy. If we have a big old wind, we're not going to get good distribution. We're going to streak our fertilizer. Just think the things that we can be smart about and in and help make sure that what we do put out that we get the biggest bang for our buck. We're going to have to pay more attention to that, because we don't have the luxuries of do-overs, do we?
Tom: No, not normally. And I know a lot of people step out in previous years and just start planting cotton, because they know they may have some replant protection there. But even in a year like this and the environment that we're growing crops in these days, with everything being so expensive, that just means I've got to spend more money on a lot more herbicide or just diesel fuel anymore, you know. And so doing it right, taking time to do the little things and it's just like checking that forecast before you plant it. I mean, I know we're in the time window. Everybody thinks we got to go as soon as the ground gets right or as soon as it dries up. But for cotton, we really need to check that forecast don't we, before we start those?
Bill: Oh, yeah. You know, we talk about soil temperature and all of that, and that’s a good measure. But, Tom, if I could just use one thing to gauge on being time to plant, well, I say two things. We're going to have to have a little bit of a dry period behind the planter. But anyway, if I look at the DD60’s that we get five days after planting, that tells me a lot. Soil temperature might be marginal on the day we plant, but as long as I can average five heat units a day, you know get 25 heat units or better in those five days after we plant, that tells me that temperatures are getting better and soil temperatures are going to get better. It's going to be on incline to get better and better. Sometimes, I've seen people where we have the soil temperature just right, but that forecast is going to drop off and we're going to be down in the in the 50’s for the low and all that. We're good when we start, but it's not so good when that little root and that little cotton plant is trying to get going, and we lose yield potential when things like that happen because those first two weeks, like you talked about earlier, are so so important to getting cotton off to a good start.
Tom: Well, I just remember that, I still have that chart burned in my memory when we put that publication together of how much yield you could lose each day if that seed or that young seedling stayed in the ground longer than 10 days. I mean, our yield potential starts falling off drastically. It was eye opening to me, because we don't see that as much with other crops as we as we do with cotton. So planting it when it can get up out of the ground and get going is critical in my mind.
Bill: Yeah. With our soils in Arkansas, our silt loam soils, they tend to have some chemical hardpan issues. We have physical hardpan issues. And, there are a lot of things that are going on that inhibit our root system. If we don't have a root to go down two-foot to get nutrients and water, well then it's like we handcuff the plant because sometimes we end up growing our cotton plant in about the top six inches of soil. So it's like growing in a clay pot. The day you water it's too wet, and then the day afterwards it's just right, and then the third day after it's too dry. You know, that's kind of an exaggeration of growing it in a clay pot. But with our with our soils, we can go from being way to wet, to way too dry, way too quick. And that just is chaos for the plant. It just doesn’t know what's going on and drives it crazy. But anyway, the bigger, better root system we can get on a cotton plant, the better we're going to be.
Tom: Yeah, before we wrap this up, I want to talk a little bit about cotton stand, because that's another thing that I know everybody gets – or you and I especially, get questions on every year. How important is that final plant stand? Because I know if we're talking about planting into a cover crop or we may be planting into some less ideal bed situations, just because of all the rain we're getting and not enough time to rebuild all the beds and that kind of thing. So let's talk about an even stand, how important that that is, and that final plant stand or plant population is.
Bill: Yeah, I was talking to a farmer the other day, and he talking about cutting population back and whether to the hill drop or to drill down the row. And you know, if we’re in a situation where we have crusting issues, then we have to hill drop. No matter what you do after you plant, how good of a farmer you are, if you don't get a stand, well none of that from there on doesn’t make a difference. If you look at the data, one plant per foot of row, evenly spaced – you can stay with that and really not lose much yield potential. And a lot of times you're way better off keeping a thin early stand, compared to a perfect later crop of cotton. But the big challenge is, when we go in, if we get hail, or we get bad weather, some issues come in, we don't get a good stand. It's not evenly distributed. You have big spots here. And so, I like to walk down a row and look at the occurrence of skips three foot or bigger. And then when I start having some big skips, bigger than I like to see, because a plant will spread out pretty good and it'll cover that three foot gap. But if I start having big gaps on this row and rows adjacent to it have big skips on them, then that makes the decision to replant pretty simple. A lot of times the decision to replant cotton is pretty difficult. And most of the time, if you're out there and you're having a hard time deciding whether you need to replant or not, most time it's better to keep it. But I tell people, just imagine when you're out there and think about times when you've been on the picker looking out the window of your picker, when you see skips in the field, then you've lost yield potential. But that three-foot skip, Tom, that plant will cover that three-foot skip, and you won't see bare ground when you're running that picker through, so you're not losing potential. But when you start having those big skips like that, you have issues with weeds filling in the gaps and other things going on. If we can average one plant per foot of row and not have many skips over three foot, and then we're still in good shape. One thing with cover crop a lot of times on soils that tend to crust really bad, we just don't have the crusting, so we can plant a lot deeper and get away with. But we have a lot of soils in Arkansas where if we get a hard packing rain right behind that planter, about the only way we're going to get a stand in that field is to plant again. So, that's really important to look at the forecast and all that. But, sometimes we know what we need to do, but we just do the best we can and hope for the best. And that’s the way farming is. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it's always going to be, isn’t it Tom?
Tom: That’s it. That's why I like it. You know, I learn something new every day. [laughter] But, you're right. And we talk about that a lot with the cover crop benefits. But I mean, it can really help us on our crusting issues and getting that cotton up out of the ground, as long as we can get the seed in the in the soil good there.
Bill: Yeah. You got to get good seed. And one of my personal challenges on planting into cover crop is planting it deep enough that I get all the seed with good seed contact and to get a good stand, because I’ve just been so conditioned to plant three-quarters of an inch or so in our in our soils that tend to crust. Where on something like that, we can plant two inches and still get a stand.
Tom: Yeah, that’s right.
Bill: Sometimes if a drill doesn't close good and all that we may have the planter sit where it's been at two inches in the ground, but it's only got about an inch of really good moist soil on top of it and all that. And it can still come through that. And it's just amazing at what having some residue on the ground does to reduce or even eliminate the crusting problems. It's just unreal.
Tom: Absolutely. Well alright, Bill, what else do we need to cover from your standpoint here, agronomically, before we get this cottonseed planted out there in the next couple of weeks?
Bill: I think the things we talked about is getting off to a good start on our pest issues. You know, the major challenges early are fertility. We need to do the right things at the right time, and do it right the first time. But hopefully we can get our crop in. I think we've got some really good varieties, some of our varieties that perform really well, especially if everything clicks or some of our later maturing varieties. And I get a little antsy when we get past about the middle of the month on that. And I've seen some of our later, maturing varieties be a little more variable in yields as we get past about the 15th. But I've seen them do very well even planted almost at the end month, and I've seen them not do so well when planted at the end of the month. Management on those with our plant growth regulators are very important. But the big challenge on our varieties that tend to be pretty aggressive, is to make sure we don't plant them too thick and make sure we don't use too much nitrogen. I know a lot of people, well Poinsett County. Them and North, they had really good yield last year. But I worked in a field last year that picked 1800 pounds of lint and had 96 units of nitrogen. And so we don't we don't have to have the big tall nitrogen rates. They were split application on their nitrogen. But we do things right at the right time, and they cut back on their plant population. They didn't have a lot of problems with pix. They didn't have disease problems. Defoliated it real well. And so we can keep from shooting ourselves in the foot by adjusting some of our cultural practices and really make a big impact on our bottom line. So the potential is still there to continue to improve. We did a pretty good job. You know, we set an all-time record yield last year but, when we look at things, we can always do things just a little bit better, can't we, Tom? I know I certainly can.
Tom: Well, we set a record yield, and we didn't even have southeast Arkansas really picking at their potential, I guess.
Bill: Oh, exactly.
Tom: You know, there's all kinds of potential still out there. And, you know, Bill, I started thinking we have a lot of growers this year that are going to be farming cotton for the first time, maybe ever, just because of the price opportunities. I know on the west side of the ridge, there's a new gin there in White County that's been there a couple of years that's building some acres in the area. And so
Bill: Exactly
Tom: For those folks that have never grown cotton, I mean, to me, listening to what you're saying on, “don't add more nitrogen.” Nitrogen is not the cure of everything, because a lot of our crops, especially rice, if it's sick, first thing it gets is a shot in the arm of nitrogen. And that's really not the same type of management in cotton. We don't have to have those big nitrogen rates to get that big yield.
Bill: Right. You know, with cotton production, you need to think of it like a long-distance race. You have to pace yourself. I'm not a runner, but you know that. But I can just imagine that, if you were in a long distance race and you sprinted the first part of the race, you would run out of gas. I think the finish would be ugly. So you have to pace yourself for a long distance race.
Tom: That’s right. Bill, if you see me running, you better look at what’s behind me, because there’s something coming.
Bill: [laughter] Because, if you're running all you’re worried about is running faster than Bill Robertson.
Tom: That's right!
Bill: You don’t have to out run that bear, you just have to out run Bill. [laughter]
Tom: Well, alright. We’re going to wrap things up here, I guess Bill. But a couple of things I wanted to mention first, back to those guys that maybe growing cotton for the first time this year. I would encourage you to visit with your aerial applicators in the area, especially if it's west of the ridge and in some counties that are not typically high in cotton production. If you're growing cotton in the area for the first time, reach out to your aerial applicators or just neighbors and let them know, hey, I got cotton over there because of a lot of our rice herbicides can be pretty detrimental to cotton from a drift standpoint. So I encourage you to do that. Also, before I forget, I want to mention I've got a lot of calls on the Dicamba rules for 2022, for the growing season this year. And basically, best I can tell, I read back through them yesterday, they're the same as we had last year. We are past April 15th now, and so tank mixes with glyphosate in Arkansas are prohibited. The Plant Board decided that a few years ago based off a couple of things. One, it increases that volatility and that's really the reason they, of Dicamba, and that's really the reason they prohibited that tank mix. But from a practical standpoint, from a weed control standpoint, it also causes some severe antagonism, or Dicamba can with either glyphosate or our other grass herbicides like Clethodim or Select. So, keeping those applications separate will help control your grasses in your weed control system as well. So same recs as last year. Our cut off is still the 30th of June for soybean and cotton in the state. Other than that, just make sure you double check with the websites for either XtendiMax or Engenia to make sure that the tank mixes you want to spray is a recommended and a label approved tank mix with that dicamba formulation. Other than that, Bill, any final comments before we wrap this up?
Bill: No, I think we've pretty much given the whole load of feed.
Tom: Well, that's good. I think it's been good. I appreciate you joining me for the podcast. As always, I encourage any listener, if you have any feedback or have any topics that you'd like us to cover on the Weeds are Wild podcast, you can shoot me or Tommy or Jason Norsworthy and an email. For me, it’s tbarber@uada.edu. Just send me a note with any potential topics you’d like us to cover here on the podcast. We want to thank you all for joining us for this episode of the Weeds are Wild podcast series on Arkansas Row Crops Radio.
[Music]: Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information, please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.