C.O.R.N. Newsletter: 2019-10

This month provides one of the two preferred times to seed perennial cool-season forages, the other being late summer. Two primary difficulties with spring plantings are finding a good window of opportunity when soils are dry enough before it gets too late and managing weed infestations that are usually more difficult with spring plantings. The following 10 steps will help improve your chances for successful forage establishment in the spring.

• Make sure soil pH and fertility are in the recommended ranges.  Follow the Tri-state Soil Fertility Recommendations (https://forages.osu.edu/forage-management/soil-fertility-forages).  Forages are more productive where soil pH is above 6.0, but for alfalfa it should be 6.5 – 6.8. Soil phosphorus should be at least 15 ppm for grasses and 25 ppm for legumes, while minimum soil potassium in ppm should be 75 plus 2.5 x soil CEC. If seedings are to include alfalfa, and soil pH is not at least 6.5, it would be best to apply lime now and delay establishing alfalfa until late summer (plant an annual grass forage in the interim).                                             
• Plant high quality seed of known varietal source adapted to our region. Planting “common” seed (variety not stated) usually proves to be a very poor investment, yielding less even in the first or second year and having shorter stand life. 
• Plant as soon as it is possible to prepare a good seedbed in April. Try to finish seeding by late April in southern Ohio and by the first of May in northern Ohio. Timely April planting gives forage seedlings the best opportunity to get a jump on weeds and to be established before summer stress sets in. Weed pressure will be greater with later plantings, and they will not have as strong a root system developed by early summer when conditions often turn dry and hot.
• Plant into a good seedbed. The ideal seedbed for conventional seedings is smooth, firm, and weed-free. Don’t overwork the soil. Too much tillage depletes moisture and increases the risk of surface crusting. Firm the seedbed before seeding to ensure good seed-soil contact and reduce the rate of drying in the seed zone. Cultipackers and cultimulchers are excellent implements for firming the soil. If residue cover is more than 35% use a no-till drill. No-till seeding is an excellent choice where soil erosion is a hazard. No-till forage seedings are most successful on silt loam soils with good drainage and are more difficult on clay soils or poorly drained soils.                    
• Be sure to take time to calibrate forage seeders because seed flow can vary greatly even among varieties, depending on the seed treatment and coatings applied. I have a link to good video on our website entitled “Drill Calibration” at https://forages.osu.ed/video/.      
• Plant seed shallow (¼  to ½ inch deep) in good contact with the soil. Stop and check the actual depth of the seed in the field when you first start planting. This is especially important with no-till drills. In my experience, seeding some seed on the surface indicates most of the seed is about at the right depth. 
• When seeding into a tilled seedbed, drills with press wheels are the best choice. When seeding without press wheels or when broadcasting seed, cultipack before and after dropping the seed, preferably in the same direction the seeder was driven.                         
• In fields with little erosion hazard, direct seedings without a companion crop in the spring allows harvesting two or three crops of high-quality forage in the seeding year, particularly when seeding alfalfa and red clover. For conventional seedings on erosion prone fields, a small grain companion crop can reduce the erosion hazard and will also help compete with weeds. Companion crops usually increase total forage tonnage in the seeding year, but forage quality will be lower than direct seeded legumes. Take the following precautions to avoid excessive competition of the companion crop with forage seedlings: (i) use early-maturing, short, and stiff-strawed small grain varieties, (ii) plant companion small grains at 1.5-2.0 bu/A, (iii) remove companion crop as early pasture or silage, and (iv) do not apply additional nitrogen to the companion crop.
• During the first 6 to 8 weeks after seeding, scout new seedings weekly for any developing weed or insect problems. Weed competition during the first six weeks is most damaging to stand establishment. Potato leafhopper damage on legumes in particular can be a concern beginning in late May to early June. 
• The first harvest of the new seeding should generally be delayed until early flowering of legumes, unless weeds were not controlled adequately and are threatening to smother the stand. For pure grass seedings, generally harvest after 70 days from planting, unless weeds are encroaching in which case the stand should be clipped earlier to avoid weed seed production.

For the second year in a row, we are scrounging to find enough marestail at the OARDC Western Ag Station to conduct the research we had planned on this weed.  After years of having plenty of marestail, we have had to look around for off-site fields where there is still a high enough population.  Which, since we are scientists after all, or at least make our best attempts, left us thinking about reasons for the lack of marestail, and our overall marestail situation, and seedbanks. 

While the short game in weed management is about getting good enough control to prevent weeds from being a yield-limiting factor and interfering with harvest, the long game is about preventing seed production and managing the soil seedbank.  One of the characteristics shared by marestail, giant ragweed, and the nasty pigweeds, waterhemp and Palmer amaranth, is a rapid decline in seed viability in the soil within the first year, and an overall decline to 5% or less viable seed within 3 to 4 years.  Another characteristic of marestail and pigweed seed is a relative lack of dormancy, which results in the potential for an almost immediate increase in population the year following a year of substantial escapes and seed production.  How big that increase is depends upon how many plants go to seed and how many seeds are produced per plant, with the potential of up to about 200,000 seeds per marestail plant and one million per waterhemp or Palmer amaranth plant.  The net result of these two characteristics, though, is that these weeds can ramp up population fast following a year of poor control, but populations can also decline rapidly with good control that prevents seed.

Marestail has probably the most variable emergence pattern of any annual weed we study, which is the reason that control requires a comprehensive management program.  Trying to plan herbicide use based on a guess about whether the major emergence will be in fall, or spring, or early summer won’t work.  A management program should be planned on the assumption that all of these can occur.  We assume that environmental conditions over the year determine the patterns of marestail emergence, and that it’s possible a certain set of conditions have just greatly reduced emergence at our research farm.  Not sure we buy this completely though – two years in a row?  Thinking about the broader picture, one could conclude that we are just obtaining better control of marestail and reducing seed production due to adoption of more effective management strategies and the increased use of LibertyLink and other technologies.  This is certainly occurring at our research farm, and our end of season survey of weeds in soybean fields shows about a 50% reduction in marestail over the past 6 years.   Marestail seed is moved by wind, and based on the above thoughts, one could conclude that we just have fewer seed floating around in the Ohio airspace.  This means less overall potential for sustained high marestail populations or reintroduction of marestail into fields where effective management has driven down the population.  A good thing.

Before we collectively pat ourself on the back for this, we should state that there are growers and areas where marestail is still not well controlled, for one reason or another.  And the fact that there is plenty of marestaail going to seed in natural areas, parks, right of ways, etc means there is still a source of new infestations.  And having more effective technologies available does not mean we can go back to an oversimplified herbicide program that overuses certain foliar herbicides, such as glufosinate, dicamba, and 2,4-D.  The fact that almost all marestail populations are resistant to the two herbicide sites of action that were effective in POST applications to begin with, glyphosate and ALS inhibitors, means that we should assume the potential exists to develop resistance to glufosinate, dicamba, and 2,4-D.  So the use of residual herbicides and cover crops are still important, along with diversification and rotation of site of action in herbicide programs.  Those few marestail plants that seem to be able to survive even the most effective herbicide program can still produce a few hundred thousand seed, and may be the ones that carry the next type of resistance.  

But if we are good enough at reading the signs correctly, this may be an example of how practices affect the dynamics of our weed situation, and how that can change over time from both a local and more global perspective.  Or maybe that we just had too much time to think about weeds on a Monday morning late in April when it’s too wet to do anything in the field.  Next week – but what about the pigweeds?

Addendum.  Info about marestail management can be found in the OSU/Purdue marestail fact sheet.  There are lots of herbicide issues right now, and it’s worth tracking other university newsletters to keep up with it all.   Examples – thiosulfate use and glyphosate efficacy, inversions and dicamba, cover crops, etc.  One way to do this is the Purdue Chat n Chew website, which provides an updated list of links to university newsletter articles.