C.O.R.N. Newsletter

A uniform wheat crop can provide effective suppression of marestail, especially when combined with some in-crop herbicides.  It is nonetheless typical for marestail plants to be evident after the wheat is harvested, and these should be controlled prior to double crop soybean emergence.  There can be a couple types of marestail plants to deal with in this situation:  1) small ones that were lurking near the base of the wheat plants, which are largely not disturbed by the combine; and 2) larger ones that may have been present in areas of thin wheat stand, which get cut off by the combine and

There is obviously a lot going on with the dicamba issue, resulting in uncertainty as to where exactly we are headed with regard to future labels, restrictions, and stewardship.  However, we are fairly confident that the label for early-season use of dicamba in preplant/premeergence burndown programs will be preserved into next year at least  (“dicamba” in this article refers to the three dicamba products approved for use in Xtend soybeans – Engenia, XtendiMax and FeXapan).  Dicamba is more effective than 2,4-D on marestail in the spring, and has a good fit in burndown programs to help with

As a result of the warm winter and early spring, weed growth in no-till fields is ahead of schedule.  Fields not treated with burndown herbicides last fall or during the earlier drier period this spring can have some large weeds at this point.  Many fields need time to dry out following the most recent rains before they will tolerate traffic, which will allow weeds to get even larger and more challenging to kill.  Large marestail can be especially problematic due to the combination of glyphosate and ALS resistance in most populations.  Cool weather can reduce the activity of the herbicides

When you finish every possible indoor task during this rainy spell, take a few minutes and check out our latest video on pigweed identification.  The video compares four aspects of pigweed biology that we use to differentiate between redroot pigweed, waterhemp, and Palmer amaranth – pubescence, petiole length, leaf shape, and inflorescence (seedhead) characteristics.  Find it at the OSU weed management website – http://u.osu.edu/osuweeds.  There are far worse ways to spend a few minutes.