Weeds AR Wild, Ep. 15: Around the State Weed Control Discussion (6/9/21)

Weeds AR Wild podcast series, S1, Ep 15. Dr. Tommy Butts is joined this week by crop consultant Rick Deviney, agronomist Randy Chlapecka, and Faulkner county staff chair & agriculture agent Kevin Lawson. The four discuss the 2021 cropping season so far, especially rain, rain, and more rain. They also discuss what’s worked well in their respective areas for weed control, problems observed, and recommendations moving forward.

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Title: Weeds AR Wild, Ep. 15: Around the State Weed Control Discussion (6/9/21)

Tommy Butts: Welcome to the Weeds AR Wild podcast series as a part of Arkansas Row Crops Radio. My name is Tommy Butts, extension weed scientist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Thank you for joining me today. We’re changing up our schedule a little bit as opposed to what our normal schedule is suppose to be so I’m hosting this week. What we’re doing today is actually getting some different perspectives from across the state and some different recommendations and problems we’ve faced in our different row crop producing areas. Joining me for the podcast today is Randy Chlapecka. He’s an agronomist with Farmers Supply Association. Rick Deviney, who’s a crop consultant with Deviney Ag Service. And then Kevin Lawson, our staff chair and Faulkner County agent over in the river valley. Thank you all for joining me today, I appreciate it. To start off the podcast today I actually just want to kick it to Rick. We’ve had a ton of rainfall, especially down there in south Arkansas down around Dumas and elsewhere down there. Really just I want to kick it to you and you can give us an update on what you’re seeing and kind of what you expect to do moving forward with the amount of rainfall that you’ve gotten down there.  

Rick Deviney: I hadn’t even looked to see how much rain we’ve gotten yet. I mean because I know it is what it is and it’s still raining, but anyway me and the guys we all slept in this morning, because we had a long day yesterday in it. We balled up 4-wheelers in buckshot and set multiple times but anyway it’s been like the rest of the year in a way. We get three days where we can blow and go and three or four days from the rain has hammered. We just over it in DeWitt, well just south of DeWitt to the White River. Last week we got two, two and half inches. So you know, it’s just, I’m saying all that to say, yeah it’s all happening, but it’s just like always and thankfully we have residuals out that are activated and we’re being proactive in our weed control in the POST sprays, so yeah, we’re in good shape for the shape we’re in. Not counting a foot of water on some fields right now, but I feel pretty good about it. Most of the rice was just going to flood or it’s already sprayed and we’re waiting for it to firm up and fertilize. We’re going to make it. 

Tommy: That’s good to hear. I would say, and check with Randy and Kevin too, but what you just said and what I’ve been hearing a lot of this year, if you’ve got the residuals out, they’ve done wonders because of all the moisture so we’ve gotten good control out of those. And then if you didn’t get those out and you’re trying to play catch-up with POSTS, you know that’s where it gets a little more tough, especially now with, you know if we’re going to have that much rainfall sitting in fields and the weeds are that much more covered up with water, trying to get coverage with our herbicides, it’s going to be very difficult from a POST perspective now, so hopefully maintaining that we had that weed free going into a lot of this, that’ll help us out a lot in those fields and the ones where we weren’t necessarily clean, it’s going to be a little bit more difficult if those weeds can still push through this flood too, so yeah I’m right there with you. Randy, do you want to give us your perspective? I know you’re getting a bunch of rain too. Not as much as south Arkansas but still a lot of rain up in your direction too. What have you been seeing, any problems, what’s working, that kind of thing. 

Randy Chlapecka: Our moisture situation is a little more varied than down south. Here in the Tuckerman area where my office is at we’ve had probably about five inches or so in the last few days. I live over in Jonesboro and going home yesterday I was amazed when I got home. They’re doing some work on the future I-55 there and there was dust flying there and my neighbor was actually watering his shrubs and his flower bed. I was just like hey what are you doing, I’ve been walking in mud and water all day. So it’s a little more varied but it’s kind of filled in a little more even on that east side, they’ve gotten a little more rain so we’re all wet here too, but a little more varied. Actually we had some guys putting out fertilizer yesterday, was white capping and putting out a little fertilizer, but over all we’re wet and getting wetter today as well. 

Tommy: How’s, in your area, how’ve the fields been so far? Is it kind of the same premise? Residuals have worked well and if you got them out you’re good or has it been different things breaking? What are you kind of seeing on that?

Randy: Our earlier rice, our residuals were outstanding this year. Especially where we got the overlaps out there. We started with Command and then either more Command or Facet/Prowl, Bolero/Prowl, Facet/Bolero, whatever you want to do, they all work if they’ve got the rain to activate them. So we’ve had some great control. We’ve got a lot of fields that have gone to flood over the last couple of weeks and a lot of those just needed those two residual applications and maybe some Permit Plus or Gambit, to kind of clean up some nutsedge and coffeebeans and things like that. Those early fields I’m very tickled with how well they cleaned up, how well the residuals worked and the kind of control we got. On this later stuff, it’s a whole new ballgame. About the 10th of May or so, we got about a two week dry period through here. The 10th through the 25th, our biggest rain was three or four tenths and some of those later planted fields, residuals have not been as active and we’re starting to see some escapes and we’re having to point towards some of those POST grass applications which are just a crap shoot every year.

Tommy: Yeah, I’d agree with that too. Like you said there’s so many factors anymore that we’re finding, especially with the Clincher’s and Ricestar’s and things like that. Even Regiment to some degree too. There’s so many environmental factors that seem to impact it. What’s the temperature at application, what’s the high temperature for the day, how much moisture do we have, which now moisture seems like a weird thing to talk about, but what’s the moisture situation with those? I’m right there with you. When we get to those POSTS, our control just seems to get so variable anymore and they’re expensive and so it’s tough, so like you said if you can get those residuals activated and things, they do wonders but with some of those dry spells we get with the later plantings, I’m with you. It can be difficult to really maximize those residuals, but on whole it’s good to at least hear at least that the majority seems to be looking pretty decent, especially the early planted stuff and the residuals were working well.

Randy: Yeah, a couple of issues I’m dealing with up here is some leveled fields, we’re unable to really use residuals effectively. I mean there’s some things you can do to delayed PRE with residuals on cut ground and some things you can’t do, so I’m dealing with some issues on that. And also adjoining crops is really an issue. You can’t get sprayed because you’ve got beans in every direction from you. You obviously can’t use, I mean you can use an ALS I guess if you have STS beans around you, but a lot of times you don’t have that every time, so I’m getting a lot of issues with some of these late fields where I have escapes, just being able to spray because of  weather and adjoining crops. That’s been a real problem for me.

Tommy: Yeah and I would echo those too. That’s been a lot of my phone calls honestly too throughout the year so far. On three sides I’ve got different crops and I need to get this sprayed, what can I use and it’s just almost impossible to find something that’s not going to hurt something. So like you said, very difficult there. And this year seemed more diverse than a normal year. We’ve had more milo acres than normal. We’ve got more corn and then you’ve got rice and soybean like normal and there’s still a fair amount of cotton out there as well, so you’re actually battling all kinds of diverse crops that crop injury can pop up on which is difficult. And then like you mentioned with the cut ground thing, we’re actually trying to do a little research again on that this year just to try and evaluate which residuals in rice can we use on a cut field that might not cause as much injury or can we change rate a little bit and those kinds of things. Just some real initial results that I’ve seen out of it, one of the major take-aways that I’ve got so far is that the delayed PRE-effect is even more crucial with Prowl and Bolero on some of those and typically we don’t necessarily expect Prowl and Bolero to be a big issue on cut ground, but just some of the initial things we’re seeing was that if we didn’t have a good solid delay in that application on the cut field, we saw some real significant stand reduction from it. And we know that can even happen in a non-cut scenario, but it just really made that situation worse where if it wasn’t delayed pre that Prowl and Bolero made our stand loss worse on a cut field. So that was kind of a pretty big take-away and Command is always one of the ones that’s an immediate no on a cut field and so you really start getting limited in a hurry on the specific timings of things that need to go out or the specific herbicides that can be used, If it’s a cut field, we always recommend right away, go the Clearfield or the Fullpage route so at least you’ll have Newpath, Preface and Postscript and Beyond, because there’s at least a couple of added options. If you don’t have those you’re even limiting yourself further on residuals. That has been a struggle too for several phone calls I’ve gotten. Kevin, how about you and the River Valley, what are you seeing up there? What’s going on in your area? 

Kevin Lawson: Well one thing we don’t have to worry about is getting on any beans. We may be ten percent planted if we’ve got that much. Beans are not the issue right now. As far as rice goes, we’ve been very blessed with Command. I’m going to tell you talk about working, Command worked really well. It got us through on all those early planted fields really quick. And luckily over here, I think we learned a lesson last year. A lot of guys planted as much rice as they could plant and didn’t get to the Command and get into these rainy situations and we played catch-up with those late grass herbicides all year long. And it was a pain. This year I’ve got to give my guys credit. They all jumped in there and made sure when they planted that the Command went out and I’ve got rice anywhere from going to flood to some that just come up last week. And anywhere that we didn’t get any Command out is mainly on some water-seeded stuff and it’s all Provisia so Provisia works wonders on big grass and it’s doing an excellent job. We have a little bit of Newpath and the Preface going out the last couple weeks too. But a lot of our problems on rice were flooding. I had a few fields that just kept getting flooded. They flooded twice, they stretched and we’re even like, do we put our Preface out, do we wait, do we need it to recover? There were just all kinds of issues. We had the control options, we just couldn’t use them right away. But in the end our rice looks good and we’re going to flood on a lot of stuff. So I got one field like you said, half of the field has water standing, half of it don’t, so I can’t do any weed control because half of the weeds are covered. So it’s a problem but the majority of them, the Command has done an excellent job and I appreciate the Command but my problem this year’s been corn weed control. A lot of our producers don’t go with a PRE on corn and I’ve tried to get them to and tried to get them to, but they just wait and put out the Halex and the atrazine and they come down to the wire this year. They finally had to make some ruts in some fields and corn went from looking like really, really bad, the weeds were pulling out the fertility to everything was cleaned up in one shot and fertilizer was put out and corn’s finally starting to look good. We’re having stand issues with all of the rain on our corn. The thing that surprised me the most right now believe it or not has been the milo. Milo has come up, it’s growing and it looks great. I just knew the milo was going to be awful with all this rain but I’ll be darned if it’s not the best looking stuff we got around.

Tommy: Better knock on wood there for that. 

Rick: The headaches are on their way.

Kevin: I know it. I’m going to tell you about milo. They’re like, when we used to grow milo, I don’t know why we quit growing it. Well it’s when they cut it, I remember why we quit growing it.

Randy: It’s looking for a reason to die.

Kevin: That’s why I’m surprised it’s still alive. I can’t believe it. But yeah, we’re just behind on everything. All of our beans are going to be June, July beans. And we’ve got wheat that we can’t cut right now too. So we’re worried about wheat quality. 

Tommy: Yeah I’ve heard that too from several places. Actually I've heard reports out of Oklahoma, the guys over there because they’ve gotten so much rain too that they are struggling with their wheat quality as well, so that’s another topic that we don’t even really hit on that much, but I’ve definitely heard that a lot too. So we probably need to go around too just talking about beans. I know that there’s still a lot not planted out there and we’ve still got trials that we need to get in the ground too on that front. How late do you think your guys would plant soybeans out there vs maybe go the prevent plant route or do something different. What’s the longest you think, especially like for you Rick, down south when we’re going to have so much rain and so much flooding, what’s the chances that they do get back in some of those fields to plant soybeans later here? 

Rick: Well thankfully we’re pretty much all planted up. Two growers and they’re kind of on par for the half that aren’t planted up, so they’re kind of on their normal schedule just due to the tougher circumstances. We don’t have any lapped but we have some R2’s now. We’re feeding the deer very well too. They’re happy as can be. 

Tommy: There’s never just one problem is it? We’ve always got to have multiple problems for our fields.

Rick: That’s alright. The more emergencies, the more the deer are going to eat.

Tommy: How about you Randy on the soybean front? 

Randy: Yeah, we’re behind that. We’re probably less than fifty percent planted up here and we’ll have guys go well into July I think finding beans you know with price and everything. We’ve got some R2 beans as well, here but then again a lot of them are still in the bag. But we’ll still, I think they’ll start drying up next week, I still think we’ll plant most of those beans.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s the way we are. These guys are real used to planting in June and July. It’s not uncommon around here. Everybody’s still watching the Arkansas River. It’s still brim full and I think you can get out at any time and change everybody’s mind. But yeah it’s, nobody’s really concerned right now with the soybean situation. It was more getting the rice and corn in the ground, so now they’re just now thinking where am I at on beans. So that’s pretty common around here.

Tommy: On the soybean front I should mention too since this is kind of relatively breaking news in the last day or so. We did just get word, it actually was last night that the Arkansas Supreme Court came down and lifted the restraining order on dicamba. So actually now it is legal again to spray dicamba over the top of Xtend and XtendFlex soybean and cotton until June 30th. Basically what they did is just lifted the restraining order so it’s back to this last initial rule that had just gotten passed, so glyphosate is still prohibited in the tank. It’s those same buffer zones that we had talked about before, but now the cutoff date is back to June 30th and it’s legal to apply dicamba again over the top of our soybean and cotton. I say that as of today I’m staring at the time, it’s June 8th at 11:20 a.m., that’s the case. It may change in the next five minutes. I’m not going to say that it’s going to stay that way, but as of right now recording this podcast that’s where we’re it is that it’s legal again. And again that June 30th would be the cutoff for both soybean and cotton in the state. So I did want to mention that just while we were on that topic a little bit. As far as moving forward like I said it’s going to be a lot of battle in this rain and flooding conditions. A lot of it as well is going to be, I think we’re going to have to play catch-up in a lot of the areas in the state because of this rainfall and we actually have some temperatures now, we’re sitting at 80 degrees almost every day so we’ve got the growing conditions, we’ve got the moisture, so weeds are going to be ready to take off and like Rick had mentioned earlier, well now we’ve got this window closed where we can’t get in, we can’t spray anything, and so it’s just going to be an ideal situation for some of these to get out of hand. So the one thing I did want to mention to you is, is to everybody and I’m sure you guys are telling all your farmers and everything the same thing, is just be ready that as soon as you can go, get out there and hit it with the next applications, whether it’s POST, whether it’s residuals, whatever it is, be ready as soon as you can go, be ready to go because we’re going to need to, like I said, weed size is going to quickly get out of hand, we’re going to start losing our other conditions, whether our temperatures get too high or we do lose moisture or anything else, I think that’s going to be a message from all of us is basically be prepared and be ready. As soon as you can go, go and get that next herbicide application out to help out getting those knocked back again. And there are, at least on the rice side too, soybeans and everything else is a little bit different, but at least on the rice side there are several options that we can spray into standing water which helps. Clincher is one that can get sprayed into standing water. Beyond can be. Beyond or Postscript. Things like Gambit can be sprayed post-flood and help out a lot on our broadleaf junk, or nutsedge, those kinds of things. Basagran can be sprayed post-flood to help out with flatsedge issues so there are a lot of options at least than can still get sprayed into standing water. The big thing comes back to making sure we can get coverage. Making sure that those weeds are emerged and we can get some of that herbicide actually on a leaf surface and not just get washed off by that water. So I did want to hit on that a little bit too. As far as, I kind of just figured we could just wrap it up here a little bit, is there any concluding comments or any kind of recommendations that each of you are seeing moving forward for your growers especially for this year. Again, I’ll just kind of go around. Rick is there anything last minute that you want to mention? Like I said, you’re #1 recommendation going forward, anything there, what you’re thinking? 

Rick: Like as far as beans go, pretty much set up for first over the top shot, working on a Roundup system, Prefix just because we don’t have a lot of Metrabuzin, Zidua, Boundary or just whatever, Outlook, Verdict, it’s all working good, but it never gets every morningglory out there, so we’re spraying for a low number of good sized morningglories now. That’s always the biggest fight to me.

Tommy: I know we chatted a little about that morninglory. What’s been working best for you down there to really knock those out especially from the POST perspective like you said? 

Rick: PRE, Zidua and Scepter, we use a lot of it, but really everything lets a few morningglories get by and so then we just run, I just use the whole shot of FlexStar, and a  run of Prefix and especially time it in front of rain and then usually we get by with just a Roundup shot to clean it up, maybe a residual with it. I’m not scared of Blazer, but it’s nice to not burn the beans. I’m excited about the dicamba. I’ve had a couple of guys that use it and they’re in the right locations where they can. That’s always nice seeing sick weeds and not sick beans, burnt beans. We’ll be doing a little of that and the Liberty all that the shortage has not shown up for us really but some of the Liberty guys don’t like to use the preemerges and this was the year where they all did and thankfully it rained a lot where they can see the results of how doing things the right way, the safe way. 

Tommy: That’s awesome to hear and that’s a great point too and we hadn’t mentioned that yet, but the shortages too have just been headaches after headaches for different people and what’s crazy is exactly like you mentioned. You haven’t see the shortage but I know we get calls from other areas in the state where it is and they can’t get their hands on glufosinate. Then there’s, we’ve heard there’s Roundup shortages out there, especially with Powermax’s and then on the rice side I’ve heard Bolero has been short, and things like that. So it’s been tough kind of across the board on who’s got what and where they can get it from and things like that so that has been an extra challenge tooin 2021. I mean it’s just 2021 just kind of took the hand-off from 2020 and has just kept rolling on with it so it’s been crazy but that was a good point too, that’s been a challenge for some other guys as well. Randy, any concluding thoughts, recommendations moving forward from your end up there in NE Arkansas. Well Randy may have froze, we may have lost him there for a little bit. Kevin, you want to take over for the River Valley there, anything, final thoughts, recommendations, that kind of stuff? 

Kevin: Yeah, you know a lot of our beans are going to be Enlist beans. We’re learning a lot about the Enlist system. Last year a lot of our guys went in that hot, hot Enlist, Liberty, Enlist/Liberty/Roundup shot early and really burnt the heck out of some small beans, so I’m really trying to do a lot of education with my guys on going Enlist/Roundup first, just be gentle and then comeback. Because we’re going to be all POST. These guys don’t use a lot of PREs, which I’ve got a preemerge demo out that’s shining right now with all this rain. It looks great, because the field is just haired over, these plots are just clean as a whistle right now. It’s early, small beans. But we don’t use a lot of PREs and they want to come in there with something really hot early to kill stuff and they really don’t have to, so I’m trying to switch guys to let’s go with Enlist/Roundup first come back and Liberty later if we need it. And hopefully we’ll have a better crop of beans this year.

Tommy: Awesome. Well it looks like we kind of lost Randy so I feel bad about that but I’ll give him a call afterwards and tell him thank you, but thank you both, to you Rick and you Kevin for joining me today for the podcast. I really appreciate it. Just kind of getting multiple perspectives from across the state on what’s been working and problems we’ve got and that kind of stuff. It’s been really great so I appreciate that. As far as next week, again please join us for the Weeds AR Wild podcast. Dr. Jason Norsworthy will be the host next week and cover a new and different topic. As always thank you for listening and if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to get a hold of one of us weed scientists or any of our other guests, Rick or Randy, Kevin would also welcome any questions as well in their different areas, so feel free to get a hold of any of us. So with that, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Weeds AR Wild podcast series on AR Row Crops Radio.

End notes: 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.edu.