There are a lot of things that happen between the time you put seed in the ground and you harvest. One of those things is weed competition, “and that starts right off the bat,” says Gery Welker, Technical Service Representative for BASF in Indiana.
“If you’re a no-tiller, the weeds are there already and we need to take care of some of those. It’s best to take care of them before we plant because our options to take care of them in a postemergence scenario are limited,” Welker adds.
To help control weeds preplant and/or preemergence, Welker recommends using Sharpen® Herbicide powered by Kixor® technology from BASF.
“It has good strength on many broadleaf weeds, and one that I think is the most troublesome is marestail. Marestail, unfortunately, has become resistant to many of our other products that we’ve used in the past. So, I think it’s one we ought to target and control early because, again, options postemergence-wise, depending on what platform you are, are either nonexistent or limited to one or two things. So, adding Sharpen® in that burndown takes it out as far as being problematic later on.”
Welker says one of the benefits Sharpen® has is that it drives burndown three to five times faster than 2,4-D or glyphosate.
“So, we can make an application of Sharpen plus some other things and the Sharpen component will take out those broadleaf weeds, get them dried up, and the seed bed will be in better shape than if we didn’t do anything or relied on a more systemic type product like RoundUp, 2,4-D, or even Dicamba, which are slower killing products.”
Welker says using using Sharpen® will help you start clean and stay clean. Always read and follow label directions.