Weed control this spring is going to be a priority since Indiana and the Midwest have gone through a winter that has left some farm fields ripe with unwanted vegetation. David Hillger is an Indiana based Enlist Field Specialist for Dow AgroSciences who is concerned about the weeds especially entering a wet period that could impact the ability to get in fields.
“Now water is not a huge concern but will it dry up in time to get out there and get those early season activities going? We’ll see,” he said. “As I drive around the countryside I do see a lot of fields that have some green vegetation sitting on them, and that concerns me, especially if we have some of these winter annuals that are coming back from fairly a healthy winter. We had some cold temperatures but not tremendously cold, and not a lot of snow either, so I think we’re going to have a lot of survival from last fall and getting control of those weeds early is going to be a major portion of trying to keep the weeds under control in 2016.”
Hillger says many fields’ problems this spring can be traced back to one year ago and that very rough start.
“We had wet fields. We had poor application conditions. When we thought we could get out in the field we couldn’t and then this past fall we obviously had conditions that didn’t favor good weed control, so rolling into 2016 I think we’re going to see some fields that were either in prevent plant acres or ones that just were not controlled right.”
But he says there’s a better chance to overcome the issues for farmers who have put together a program ahead of time “and not just go around trying to fix an issues but actually have a system in place such as using residual herbicides and a more timely application to keep these under control. One thing we don’t want to do is continue this trend where we have more weeds producing seeds for each year on down
Hillger told HAT that just creates a major issue to contend with over the next 5 and 10 years.