As harvest approaches for Indiana farmers it’s a good time to consider whether or not a fall burndown program might be put in place this year to clean up the fields after the crops are brought in. Last year there was ample opportunity to get in and treat the weeds, but what about 2013? AJ Woodyard is Technical Crop Production Specialist at BASF.
“You know we’ve had a few falls here in a row where the crop came off pretty early and there was plenty of time for weeds to germinate. That may be one change that we see this year with the crop taken off a little bit later and we may see some weeds that emerge a little bit later, but the other challenge is going to be timely applications and getting in there and being able to get those fall applications on.”
Each year weather and field conditions will determine whether a farmer can complete fall burndown, but Woodyard says there is certainty when it comes to the success of these programs.
“There’s no question the value of a fall burndown application and especially in Indiana when you’re trying to manage marestail, your chickweeds and your henbits, some of those fall purple deadnettle’s and fall emerging weeds that become real challenges to control in the spring when they start to harden off. Your best bet is to aim those things off in the fall.”
But until now he says the percentage of farmers running fall burndown has been somewhat small.
“I know quite a few guys that were trying them for the first time this year on some acres, and there’s a full conversion of those guys after they saw year one of using a fall program. Again it’s all evolving from our mindset of glyphosate, glyphosate, glyphosate. But there have been some benefits of using residual herbicides in our programs more frequently and some of us using some chemistries that are giving us more residual of those winter annual weeds which is overall going to be a good thing.”
Woodyard suggests that the fall burndown mixture from BASF include Distinct Herbicide and Scepter, depending on the amount of spring residual activity you’d like. He also says when waiting until spring the key is a very timely application. Hear more detail in the HAT interview:AJ Woodyard