Harvest for many Indiana farmers has opened up again, and it’s not just a time for checking yields and checking market prices. It is also a great time to assess your weed management program’s success or shortcomings this year.
Nick Fassler, director of Technical of Services at BASF says at harvest is a perfect time to evaluate whether your program performed.
“Hopefully this has been going on for the last month or so, but that final performance, are you satisfied with the program? But, it’s also a great time if you’ve struggled and you’re in a no-till environment and you’ve been struggling with winter annuals or marestail, that’s where it becomes very important to start to consider maybe a fall-applied herbicide. So, what are you trying to get ahead of? Is it the winter annuals that are going to be germinating here in October-November, or is more your summer annual weeds like water hemp or palmer. Balancing those two pieces and then looking at what’s the best approach there.”
BASF spends each year with growers in their environment to assess what weeds they’re struggling with. It helps the company stay on top of weeds like palmer amaranth and water hemp which have been spreading quickly, but it also helps the farmer.
“We have a lot of tools to offer from the crop protection standpoint,” Fassler told HAT. “When you look at soybeans there are a lot of trait offerings today, Xtend Flex, Enlist, LL GT27, offerings that allow you to tailor the right seed on that farm, and then we like to come in and bring the right technology to help optimize that. BASF can help farmers beat down weeds with Zidua, one of the longest lasting residuals, and then those post herbicide solutions. Liberty has become a cornerstone product in that post-application timing. And then if you have the dicamba tolerant crops, Engenia is really good at knocking down those difficult weeds.”
Learn more about these BASF products at their website:
Zidua: https://agriculture.basf.us/crop-protection/products/herbicides/zidua.html
Liberty: https://agriculture.basf.us/crop-protection/products/herbicides/liberty.html
Engenia: https://agriculture.basf.us/crop-protection/products/herbicides/engenia.html