Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep15. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Matthew Davis, Jackson County Ag Extension Agent, discuss current weed control issues across cropping systems, herbicide cutoff stages for corn and a quick update on the Jackson County Extension Center office construction.
Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep15. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Matthew Davis, Jackson County Ag Extension Agent, discuss current weed control issues across cropping systems, herbicide cutoff stages for corn and a quick update on the Jackson County Extension Center office construction.
Weeds AR Wild Series, Season 2 Episode 15.
Title: Weeds AR Wild Series, S2 Ep15. Current Weed Control Topics and an Update on the Jackson County Extension Center
Date: June 2, 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 part of Arkansas Row Crops Radio. This is Tom Barber, Extension weed scientist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. If you're a regular listener on our show, you know that we have various guests from time to time join us on the podcast to give us updates in their area. Today, I'm joined by Matthew Davis. Matthew is the staff chair and agriculture agent for Jackson County in north Arkansas. Welcome, Matthew.
Matthew: How's it going, Tom? Yeah, as Tom said, I'm an ag agent up here, and like I said we're always running into problems. So, I guess I figure I need to get on here with Tom and discuss a few, maybe help you all out in the process.
Tom: Well, that's right. There's plenty of problems to discuss. I guess that's why we have jobs, because that's usually what we get these days is just questions about issues and problems. So, as long as there are problems, we have job security, I guess.
Matthew: That’s right.
Tom: But it seems like every year I say that man, this year is just really crazy or difficult, and I'm ready for a normal year, but I don't know really what that looks like anymore. So anyway. Well, if you could, Matthew, let's just talk about Jackson County and what's going on and how your farmers are doing up there and kind of give us a crop update and let us know where y'all are at.
Matthew: Alright. Well, for Jackson County, I hate to say it, but I had somebody planting rice two days ago, but we did still. And I usually say by the middle of May, I like to be done planting rice in this county, but it doesn't work out that way anymore. Seems like we've had a lot of rain, a lot of wind. There's a lot of issues in general but we are, I think, finally finished planting rice. There may be a few guys here and there, but we're done with that. Corn has been done for a little while. Soybean acres are still getting planted every single day. I figured we'll plant at least through the middle of June into late June this year, especially if we're getting more rainfall. It looks like next week scheduled seven days of rain with a chance every day. So, we'll see how all that goes. We've planted beans as late as 4th of July and later some years, so.
Tom: Well, you know, we always make the joke in Arkansas, Matthew, that we can be somewhere around 90% planted in soybeans and 5% harvested at some times at the end of the year. [laughter]
Matthew: [laughter] That’s right. Yeah. That's typically how it is. I was in a field the other day and I saw standing soybeans and I was thinking, “Where’d them come from?” – and I got to looking down through there and I realized that was some that got cut off by the river last year and had to be abandoned. Never got harvested. So, it's always something. But as far as corn acres go, they we're good. All the corn is up. Looks good. Not had any major pest issues in corn. I did get a lot of calls last week or week before last – really the last three weeks total, about rice stinkbugs in corn. Everybody was kind of freaking out about that and that's not really been an issue. We don't look for rice stinkbugs. We're looking for browns and then greens that cause damage. I think because of the wheat this year, rice stinkbugs are real heavy this year. And they're real fickle. They go in and out of that wheat field so fast, that people wanted to spray them in wheat. And then they saw them in corn and wanted to spray them in corn. I didn't ever have to spray. I did say some true armyworms in some corn that was causing some damage, but never at a threshold that warranted of an application or anything. But that's another thing I've got a few calls about and saw them. Cotton, I guess, that's something I didn’t used to have to worry too much about. I only had two growers, and last year and I had one grower for cotton. But this year we've doubled up. We've got about 2500 acres around the Tuckerman area, and we've got another few thousand spread out amongst – between all the way from Oil Trough to Newport, from Newport down to Shoffner, down to Tupelo/Weldon area this year. And it all looks good. We've got some that got in little early had some issues of stand ability – didn't come up. Cotton looks for a reason to die as soon as it comes out of the ground, unfortunately. But everything I think is squared away now. We've got some strip till cotton this year, planted into cover crops. Trying to check thrips on that, keep a close eye and make sure we don't have some insect pressures coming into those areas. We're also in the heat of spraying for rice herbicides, and I think we've kind of discussed it off the camera here, but we need to discuss it here. You know, since I do have these cotton acres, you got to start watching for your herbicide applications as a rice farmer and try to be a good neighbor. Watch for those applications, because Facet and some of these other products that is going to be going out for grass control can really ding up the cotton field. And we've got a lot of cotton right beside rice or within the vicinity of it right now.
Tom: Well, that's true. There's a lot of guys growing. We've talked about this on the on previous podcasts. Just across the state, when cotton gets up above a dollar per pound, there's a lot of guys that want to be cotton farmers all of a sudden. That provides a good opportunity, and you know, I personally – I love cotton. I mean, I love working in cotton. I think it's a cool crop to mess with, plant, and grow and watch. But a lot of rice herbicides don't play well with cotton. And that’s a great point that you bring up. I know last year we had some cotton move into some traditionally non-cotton areas – a lot of Newpath and Facet injury across some of those acres. Most of our Propanil, Newpath, Facet can cause some tremendous issue to cotton that's next door or it even doesn’t have to be next door – if we get those herbicides hung up in an inversion. And so, you just need to be careful. I know, Matthew, we talked about, like you said, kind of off-the-air for a minute here. But as we get into talking pigweed control, a lot of those herbicides – well, Propanil that we just mentioned, that's got activity on pigweed. It seems like this year, I don't know if it's because our residuals didn't get activated. I know in our plots, just about at every location. We've got some different tests that we got planted, got sprayed, but we had a four or five-day window, maybe six or seven in between spraying those PREs and getting an activating rain. And so, we had some weeds germinate in the middle. And so we've got some larger pigweed in some of this rice, probably more so this year than we have in a while, I guess, based on the calls I'm getting. But Propanil, if that pigweed is four inches or less, Propanil or anything with Propanil in it is a pretty good application, especially on flooded rice – where we can get that flood up and either cover the pigweed or get it pretty high on the pigweed. Pigweed doesn't like wet feet, as a lot of you have witnessed out in the state. And so that flood is important for pigweed management. If we're in a row rice situation, that's a whole different story. We're going to probably, likely make multiple applications for pigweed if you've got it up now in row rice. And so again, Propanil can help, but Propanil plus Grandstand, or in your county Matthew, I know y'all are not on the banned list for 2,4-D. But, like you said earlier, you’ve got a lot more cotton in the area. So,we have to be careful with that 2,4-D. The Loyant is a great pigweed herbicide, but depending on the size of the pigweed is going to depend on your results with that. And in the past that eight ounces is pretty much good on pigweed. But if that pigweed is up five, six inches – I'd feel probably a little better with ten ounces than I would eight in those situations. Back to this 2,4-D comment real quick. You know, Matthew, if you had to guess how much of your cotton in the county is, maybe Enlist versus Xtend. Do you know?
Matthew: Off the top of my head, as far as I know, we're 100% Enlist right now. I think there were some intentions to grow some Xtend varieties, but I believe to my knowledge right now everybody went with Enlist cotton just to kind of protect their self if there was a 2,4-D drift. But I believe, per the rules, even if it is Enlist cotton, the buffer requirements are still in effect. So, you still have a four-mile by air buffer and a one-mile by ground buffer for 2,4-D, because a lot of those rules pre-dated the Enlist system for cotton.
Tom: Right.
Matthew: And I don’t know if they’ve ever been updated.
Tom: Well and it does get confusing because the 2,4-D we use in rice is not the Enlist One formulation of 2,4-D.
Matthew: Yeah. Not the choline.
Tom: It’s not the choline.
Matthew: Yeah.
Tom: And so, when we're using these generics if you will, 2,4-D’s – the old rules apply to them. Like you said one-mile by ground, four-mile by air applies in those situations. The rules get a little more gray, if you will, in dealing with that type of situation. So, I guess at the end of the day we just need to be careful. Know there's more cotton out there than maybe in years past and plan accordingly, and make sure you touch base with your aerial applicators in the area and know that you've got the cotton, if you haven’t yet. So any other issues or discussions in rice?
Matthew: Not with rice. Like you mentioned with the Loyant, running that ten-ounce rate, I think we've had escapes. Or not escapes, I guess. We’ve knocked pigweeds down with that eight-ounce rate but just didn't seem to get them when they were over that 4 to 5-6 inch size. Grass issues. We’ve got a lot of barnyard. Everything is resistant. We're going to keep running into those issues over and over and over, and that’s just beating a dead horse at this point. We're trying to figure that out, without having new products on the market. I think there's always been some confusion with guys running this FullPage system versus a Clearfield – thinking that FullPage will still take care of those resistant barnyard and it doesn’t. You know, nothing changed. It’s the same group and you're still running that same product and you're not really gaining anything overall.
So, you know, don't assume that you’re getting it with the FullPage – you still need to be looking at other options. Keep your PREs down, keep them activated. Overlaying them – that’s critical. You know we've been discussing that a lot with this late planted rice. It’s going to have to be done. This rice that has been planted in last three weeks needs to be getting overlaid with a Command, Prowl – something that's going to stay down there keep. These little rains we’re getting right now, these spurts – two-tenths to a half-inch rains. If you can get something down in front of that, do it. Because it's going to make a world of difference if you got resistance out there later in the season, especially in row rice. Because we’ve got crabgrass and goosegrass and Johnsongrass and all these things we're trying to deal with. I've already got calls on crabgrass in row rice, and there's not many good options. I think Ricestar is something I’ve recommended, some Clincher with some of that Johnsongrass, but nothing is great on those bigger grasses that get up above that flood zone, because you're not in a flood. And so you're kind of just trying to limp it along and trying to control those areas. So that’s something else we’ve just ran into last few weeks now. It'll only get worse as the summer heat kicks up and everything starts germinating.
Tom: Absolutely. You know, that goosegrass. You mentioned that one, and I know crabgrass can be a problem, but goosegrass, if we have that, that's the that's one that will stay with us all season, especially in a row rice scenario. It's hard to kill. It's hard to get out. We've tried different management schemes there at Marianna in our row rice with it. But you know, you hit the nail on the head with the residuals. Overlapping those – Command, Prowl. Any time we can get Command out there, if we're going across the field, we need to be putting a residual with it. So overlapping those residuals is important for that goosegrass control until we can get rice growing large enough to compete anyway to help reduce some of that germination. But it's tough. You mentioned the FullPage system. The biggest benefit I see from a labeling standpoint in that system is, it allows us to use Postscript over the top at an earlier stage. Although you're right, if it's resistant to the Beyond or Newpath, it's not going to matter. It's not going to matter. But these populations where we need a salvage situation, my favorite salvage is Postcript plus Ricestar. That's year in and year out where we have bigger grass. It just seems to be, from the options we have anyway, one of the better options to use as a as a salvage treatment. It does provide that opportunity. But you're exactly right. I mean, PostScript and Beyond basically same AI, same herbicide. It just allows – the labeling allows for a little different application window there.
Matthew: And with the weather the timing hasn’t been right at all, so that’s just what you're going to run into. If you can't hit those timings, then you throw that out the window too. So then you are in a salvage situation. We’ve run a lot of Ricestar in salvage, trying to get things cleaned up. We still run some Regiment sometimes. And a Regiment is a hot thing, but with soybeans nearby we try to watch Regiment and Loyant, and all those products to avoid burning a bunch of soybeans in the area.
Tom: Yeah. Regiment can find a soybean pretty quick if you're not careful, that's for sure. Alright, well Matthew, from my standpoint, I guess lately, other than some of the things we've been talking about in rice, probably growth stage cutoff for herbicides in corn is probably one of my bigger calls over the last week. And we actually have a publication that Tommy put together. I can't remember if it's two years ago or three, but it's on our website. If you can find our website, uada.edu. If you just Google that, you should be able to find it. And then in the search bar, you can search for “application cutoff timings for common herbicides.” It’s a pretty quick reference guide for all of our major row crops and major herbicides. I'm sure not every herbicide is listed there, but a lot of them are. It provides the growth stage for cutoff in crops like corn. And so just some common ones that I've been getting – glyphosate or Roundup. Actually, I got a comment from a consultant that was wrong in our guide. I got to looking, and it's hard to keep all the straight. So everybody keeps us pretty honest, which is good. I mean, we need all the help we can get keeping things straight. But I think glyphosate in our guide says “7 days pre-harvest interval,” or something like that. And you know, that is true for a harvest aid application of glyphosate, but prior to that, the cutoff is 30 inches or V8. So even on our Roundup Ready 2 corn hybrids it’s important. If we need to make a glyphosate application, honestly, it's not going to do you any good much past that growth stage to spray it over the top anyway, due to coverage. But we need to keep it out of the world of the corn because that can cause some injury, and it usually relates to pollen development type injury – ear development. So, keeping a product like glyphosate out of the world of the corn when it's that size or bigger is important. Halex GT, another common one. 30 inches, same story – or V8. If you've got a corn hybrid tolerant to Liberty, the cutoff for that is V6. Capreno, another fairly common used herbicide, is 20 inches or V7. And then the most common herbicide of all, which is Atrazine, is 12 inches. And, that's the hardest one I think for everybody to follow. We've sprayed a lot of Atrazine past 12-inch corn in our plots and everything. We know we can survive that, but we just want to try to stay below that 12-inch mark if we can, when we put our Atrazine out. So, that's just a few common ones. The rest of them are listed there in that guide. Check that quick-reference guide if you got those questions. But other than that, I think for the most part our corn crop has finally turned a corner. Maybe. I hope, anyway.
Matthew: It appears to. I've got a lot of calls saying that's really taken off. It was liking that weather when we kind of had those nice warm days, but not so hot nights. And we'll as this weather changes in the next few weeks. But back to what you were saying about cutoffs. Something I got the question on. I called and I talked to you, and I talked to Jason Kelly about it last week – as far as how to measure to that whorl, when they say 30 inches. Most people are thinking measuring that uppermost leaf to the tip – from the ground to the tip of that leaf is your cutoff. And it's really to the whorl. It’s what it should be. And then as far as growth stage, you're still counting those collars. But if you're trying to use the measurement side of it, they need to be measured to the top of the whorl, not to the top of that leaf, because they might be missing an application because they're measuring wrong and they could have sprayed, potentially.
Tom: Absolutely. That's a great point to bring up. And I know it's either/or, but that growth stage is a lot easier to count when you're out there than it is. Because you're going to have corn of various lots throughout the field.
Matthew: It's good not to just walk in that edge, where it's probably double planted anyway and a little short. You need to get out there somewhere in the field and kind of make that verification. Because dinging the main part of your crop is a lot worse than dinging the field edge. So definitely pay attention to that, because we've had those issues that I could talk about. Then I've had guys calling about the hooded sprayer. “Can I run a hooded sprayer in my corn?” You know, that puts it below that growing point and things of that nature. That changes up some of the things, but you still need to be real cautious when it's at that point, as you said.
Tom: Well, and I just know it’s more expensive and it's just another labor-intensive application, I guess. But getting some drop nozzles to just get our herbicide out of the whorl of corn. Or you know, nobody really wants to take the time and we don't have the time. It's not nobody will take the time.
It’s hard to manage all the acres that we're managing with the equipment that we have and the people that we have, especially finding qualified people to run it. And so just by having drops, we could actually open the door to spray more things in cotton, just keeping it out of the terminal of the crop. And so, in the future, investing in some drop nozzles for these larger sprayers I think will be important. One of them, we talk pigweed all the time. But one of the more problem weeds in our corn crop is becoming morningglories.
Matthew: Right. Yeah.
Tom: And a lot of it is because we're in this one-shot program or our two shots, but the second shot is early and our residuals are just running out well before harvest. And these morningglories are coming up with the corn starts drying down. Then the morningglories vine up the corn, and we've got a problem with harvest efficiency. And so, it really would be beneficial to have the drops where we could go back in with a later application of something with mesotrione in it. Callisto or whatever, to give us an extended morningglory residual to reduce some of those morningglory issues.
Matthew: Yeah. We've had that issue in the last few years in some fields. You go out there with a drone. Even a get up in there and look at how those vines, the morningglories reached up and grabbed a bundle of corn and pulled it all together and you're trying to cut through that. And it’ll slow you down as much as you pay for that combine, or as much the farmer pays. But it'll put you in a bind real fast if you’ve got too much corn balled up with morningglory tied all around it and creeping up it. And the same in cotton, too. We've had a lot of that issue with seeing some morningglory getting away from us and having to run some Aim or something underneath the hood when the cotton's a little bigger, trying to get those things cleared out and not have that issue. It seems like year after year, we always have something. Last year it was grasses in cotton. I couldn't seem to get the grasses under control. And then we had some later in the season, had some morningglory start showing up in huge clumps in fields that have been neglected. That's another thing. I had a lot of guys take on acres this year. Fields that have been neglected in the past, and a lot of those went to cotton and acres and things like that. So, it's been a task to try to get the weed control back under where it needs to be at.
Tom: Well cotton can be difficult for that, because there's just not a whole lot of herbicide options available like we have in a lot of these other crops – unless we use hoods or a post-direct rig or something like that. You know, Aim is a great herbicide and it's fairly cheap herbicide to use in cotton. We can mix it with a fairly cheap residual and have a good program for morningglories, but we have to have the equipment to put it out. And really the only great option for the over the top morningglory control is Envoke. Envoke is one of those herbicides we don't talk about a lot, but it has some special uses that that can be beneficial. Morningglories is one of those a tenth of an ounce of Envoke with whatever else you're putting out POST, the Roundup or whatever. But morningglories, sida, weird weeds, spurred anoda. Which I get pictures of every year, people wondering what spurred anoda is. It looks kind of like wild cotton, but anyway it has activity on that. So it has some niche fits. Nutsedge is another one.
Matthew: Yeah. I was about to mention nutsedge on rice, soybeans, and cotton too. I mean, sedges have been ridiculous the last two years to the point that we're having guys that have been spraying Permit year over year in rice, thinking it was controlling it and really needed to switch the Basagran, because the top of the sedge they have out there. Same in cotton. Same in soybeans. I wish we had a dozen STS varieties, but we don't. We have like two Enlist, I think, and maybe a handful of Xtend varieties that are STS or BOLT. Just to help knock the sedge down, because it's becoming a growing issue in some of my best producing fields that I work with guys on. It's just bad. I mean we're getting it in rice so bad that I thought the rice was double planted the other day, and it was not double planted rice. It was that much sage in a two or three acre block and you couldn't see the rice hardly. So that's a growing concern for us. And I hope we don't get any of these new sedges that Tommy Butts has been talking about the last few years, showing up. That white margin sedge. I hadn't seen in this county yet, and I hope to not see it in this county if I can keep from it.
Tom: You know, in rice we have – and corn, I guess to some extent. But in rice, we have more options than we probably do in any other crop to control it. But you get a bad sedge issue in cotton and soybeans, I mean that's a yield robbing event. I mean it is extremely competitive early on. Later, it doesn't matter. We don't have a lot of great products to use. Like I mentioned in cotton, Roundup plus Envoke is probably the best thing in cotton. In the Enlist cotton system that you have there in your county a lot, the glufosinate and Enlist One in our plots has done decent. Roundup and glufosinate has done decent, but nothing is just the hammer on sedge, really in in cotton or beans – as much as what we can use in rice. So the trick to that Envoke though in the cotton is, it's got to be at least five true leaves and for some of the new cotton growers, they may not really know why. But cotton is really sensitive to that Envoke early, and Envoke is going to cause some injury at that six to seven leaf stage. But what it does typically, is just like a typical ALS, it's going to stunt it. It may turn it a little yellow, but those nodes will start stacking and you just don't want to – you know, if you do it too early you'll set that cotton back. The bigger that cotton gets, it'll still set nodes, but they'll just be a little more stacked or the internodes won't be as long. And so, it actually works good as an application of PIX. So if you use Envoke, you won't need much PIX, at least for that first application, you'll be good.
Matthew: That may be good to know on some of these new Enlist varieties. We’ve had some that’s gotten away from us, even with PIX applications. But circle back to you saying about your plots and the glufosinate and Enlist One working. That's something I've been hammered on. These soybean growers if you're Enlist, and you don’t have an STS Enlist, you need to be going with Liberty Enlist One first. And then come back with maybe a Roundup/Liberty later, because it seems like that first shot, going with those applications, always puts a hurting on the sedge enough to set it back. As your beans get on and are competitive, then you can come back with that Roundup/Liberty application to keep them suppressed. You're not really ever killing them completely, but you are suppressing them enough that I think we're gaining yield later in the season. Because like I said, I've got fields that's carpeted with yellow nutsedge, some annual sedge, some flatsedge. And so far, that’s been my go-to if it's not STS and we can't run something else out there, we're running that glufosinate and Enlist One first, in our first application POST.
Tom: That's good. I think that's probably your best option in those in that situation. Well, what else? Anything else we need to cover?
Matthew: Like you said, you mentioned Texas Panicum earlier. I don't have a lot of that here, but I think there's a lot of issues of guys missing it – and I might have more of that than I think. A lot of that I think that gets misrepresented as other grasses is maybe Fall Panicum or some other type of grass, I guess. Correct me if I'm wrong. On Texas Panicum, it’s a lot more hairy. It's more hairy grass and from even when it's a younger grass. And it does have the ligule. I try to think of what the ligule looks like on Texas Panicum. But we've had some close calls. And I know you said South Arkansas had some trouble with controlling it, but we hadn't really ran into that, that I know of. But I'm sure it's up here and we just maybe misrepresented it as something else.
Tom: Well, especially on our sandier soils it tends to be a pretty big issue. Yeah, it comes out of the ground and it's going to be your bigger, fatter leaf and it's going to be fuzzy. I mean, so hairy it's fuzzy, and then it keeps those hairs. It will be as hairy as it gets bigger. But I mean, they’re there if you look. The biggest thing and the reason, you know, a lot of people are seeing it – we're using these Group 15s for our pigweed control and overlapping residuals with where we’re talking about Duals, the espitolochlors, the Warrants, the Outlook, Ziduas or whatever. And that works great for most grasses and pigweed, but basically it's a miss on Texas Panicum. So that's what's left, and so we're essentially probably selecting for some Texas Panicum in a lot of these fields, just by what we're using from a residual standpoint. Prowl to my knowledge is about the only thing we can use as a POST over the top. Prowl is to go in cotton or soybeans that will have some residual activity. But what we know about Prowl this time of year, you know, I put some out yesterday because I felt pretty confident that a rain was coming. But I like chasing thunderstorms with Prowl just to get it activated pretty quick. If I can't run a pivot or feel like I can get it activated by running an irrigation system. So, if we can get that Prowl activated, Prowl over the top, with our POST program – it is probably the best thing for residual activity from Texas Panicum. Because the calls I get, we don't have a problem killing it, but when we irrigate or we get a rain, another flush comes up. So we're constantly having to spray for it. And so it's not necessarily that we're having problems killing it. It's just that we can't keep it from coming up and getting calls on this issue later. I would suggest get some Prowl in that system if possible, if you do have that issue. Well, anything else we missed?
Matthew: Oh, not that I can think of. We covered most everything I had on my list and I think on your list too.
Tom: Well, hey, let's talk about the new Jackson County Extension Center Building there. We didn’t talk about that.
Matthew: Yeah, we didn’t talk about that. That was on the list. Yeah, if you don't know, Dr. Tom Barber is the director here at the Jackson County Extension Center. And I'm just a guy up here floating around a lot of times trying to figure out what's going on so I can make sure he knows what he can do to make the boss decisions and make the call to spend the money. But right now, the facility we’re in is actually the facility that was built by a tenant of this property years ago. And it's become a little bit of disrepair and needs some work done to it. But I think it's always been Dr. Scott's dream – and Rick Cartwright, when he was in Extension, they wanted to see this facility have a new building that could be utilized for both Extension and AES functions, public and private partnerships and to have a meeting space. You know, we hold the Soybean College here and several research functions over the years, and we've never had a good space to meet. We are always renting tents. We’re always putting up chairs. We’re always spending a lot of money on that year over year – maintenance, cost, all of those things. So, this new building is going to facilitate my offices and several research offices for this campus. And that's going to give us, like I said, the ability to hold more meetings and do more functions. And, you know, right here, I don't think there's a better research extension center. I guess I better say it the right way because Bob, would get after me. Dr. Scott would say and Research Center, this is an extension center and that was always Bob's plan. This would need to be the Jackson County Extension Center, because this center is and possession of the Cooperative Extension Service and not the Arkansas Research, or the Arkansas Experiment Station. So Extension does have full ownership of this facility and how the maintenance goes and it comes out of that budget. And so for us, right here on US 67, I don't think there's a better station in the state that has more highway frontage as this one does, as far as on a major four lane highway. So I think for not only the Extension service for the state and for people traveling, it'll be something that we can be proud of and look at and utilize, and in the future grow it to be something more than it is right now.
Tom: That's right. It's definitely a work in progress. And I'm just kind of following up with Bob with the work he started. The fact that – for those that don't know, the facility used to be a World War Two Air Force base. And so it's got runways that still exist, although they're old. But they still exist out on the property. And the land around the runways was built for drainage off of the runways. And so now we're trying to drain the fields back towards the runway, off the field. And it's been a pretty difficult situation. So drainage has been our biggest hurdle, but we've got probably half, if not a little over half, of the land leveled now. Hopefully plans in the future to finish that up to help on drainage and dig some more ditches and provide some places for that water to go. But, it amazes me the ability of people to work together. Extension out there to provide demos and applied research that's applicable to farmers there in Jackson County and really North Arkansas or just the whole state, really. There's a lot a lot of stuff going on there. Nobody's more excited than me that we have got our footers finally poured for our new building and hopefully a slab maybe by the end of next week, or middle of next week. Looking forward to that. Hopefully this project will be finished October – November-ish. And we'll have a facility there that has a bigger conference room for about 80 people. We can have a little larger meeting for there. So that'll be good.
Matthew: Yeah. When we can definitely do more field days and have more options out here. And like I said, I think we've got a lot of support from the private industry and the public part of it, and I think the county is very supportive of it and the cities are in the area. So, I think we're geared up to be here a long time. That's what I told somebody the other day, that I'm the youngest one on the station so I guess I'm the one that's going to deal with it for the remainder of my career in Extension. Hopefully it's a long career. Unless I get a good deal like Randy did, the previous agent. He got a good deal, so when he retired, he stayed here 20 – 30 years and retired. I'll stick around that. I'm five years in, and I still got another 25 – 30 to go. So, I don't figure Bob's going to get rid of me any time soon or anything, so I should be good to go.
Tom: You're stuck. You’re stuck right where you're at. Sorry. [laughter] Well, we want to thank all our listeners for, for tuning in to this episode of the Weed’s AR Wild podcast. And again, thanks to Matthew Davis, Staff Chair there in Jackson County, for joining us today to provide his local update. Obviously, he's available for any of you growers, farmers, consults there in Jackson County for your questions and that. And, we always welcome your feedback to this podcast. And I've gotten, usually it’s by text or call, but you know, a lot of good feedback, a lot of good suggestions. So, if you've got any of those, you can – if you know my number, shoot me a text. Send me an email, it's tbarber@uada.edu. And again, we're just wishing everybody a successful middle and end of the growing season. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Weeds AR Wild podcast series on Arkansas Rock Cross 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.