Weeds AR Wild S3 Ep17. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Dr. Jeremy Ross discuss harvest aid timing and situations in soybean.
Weeds AR Wild S3 Ep17. In this episode, Dr. Tom Barber and Dr. Jeremy Ross discuss harvest aid timing and situations in soybean.
[00:01] Intro/Outro
Arkansas Row Crops Radio providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas.
[00:12] Tom Barber
Welcome to the Weeds Are Wild podcast as a part of Arkansas Row Crops Radio. My name is Tom Barber and I'll have as my guest today Dr. Jeremy Ross.
[00:22] Jeremy Ross
Hey, Tom.
[00:23] Tom Barber
Hey, Jeremy. You get the kids dropped off at school okay this morning?
[00:27] Jeremy Ross
I did. They had a good day on the first day and actually a really good drop off this morning. So nothing too exciting to talk about yet.
[00:36] Tom Barber
So is this the first day or the second day?
[00:38] Jeremy Ross
The second day. Yesterday was the first day. So they were both excited to get back and they were excited to go back for the second day. So I say that as a positive for my kids.
[00:48] Tom Barber
Were you excited for them to go back?
[00:50] Jeremy Ross
Oh, absolutely. You know, to give them something to do, keep them out of my hair for a while.
[00:56] Tom Barber
I got two moving to college this week and on the way back to high school for the first day today. So as a public service announcement, I'd like to say that anybody driving through the Cabot area between the hours of 7 and 8:30 should probably take another route because it's a little crazy. First week’s always a little crazy.
[01:14] Jeremy Ross
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it was nuts this morning trying to drop people off too, so.
[01:22] Tom Barber
Well, and I realize I didn't introduce myself properly. I am the extension weed scientist, the only one, the best one for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. And Jeremy, you are the soybean agronomist is that right? That is correct.
[01:35] Jeremy Ross
That is correct. At least that's what they tell me.
[01:38] Tom Barber
Yeah. So we, you know, from time to time, it's good to go through the exercise to figure out what we are and what we do. And today we're doing this little podcast here, and this is the 17th episode of this season for us, and it may be the last one in a while. My phone keeps buzzing in the background I don’t know if y’all can hear that or not.
[01:59] Jeremy Ross
Yeah, we're starting to come close to the end. I know there's been some rice harvested and I think some corn should be coming out. So I think we're, we're kind at the tail end of this season.
[02:10] Tom Barber
Right. And so that's kind of our point today, right? So we talked yesterday and you said that you've had some calls about soybean harvest aids already, and I've had a couple guys call me as well. So and I think we do this, we've done this for the last two or three years anyway, kind of go through our recommendations on soybean harvest aid timing of some, you know, products and rates to use and things to watch out for. So Jeremy, I'll kick it off to you and let's talk about timing. When do we need to focus on making our first harvest aid application?
[02:44] Jeremy Ross
Yeah. So, you know, just kind of talking about the year so far, you know, this is probably the, well, it is the quickest crop I've ever seen go in for soybeans and so, you know, we're ahead of the schedule. And even if you look at the crop progress report that came out yesterday, you know, 19% of the crop is starting to turn colors. And, you know, if you look at the five year average, that's 11%. So we're almost 10% ahead of where we typically are this year. And so, like Tom, Mitch and I started getting calls on, you know, harvest aids, you know, about ten days ago because, you know, some of these April planted beans are really moving, you know, pretty rapidly toward, you know, being ready, being combined. But, you know, reason, you know, we really want to reiterate is, you know, if you go too early, you can really cause some pretty major, you know, not only yield problems, but quality issues. And I think we ran into some of those issues the past couple of years. So, you know, just, just want to try to get the word out there again that if you go too early, you know, you can cause problems. So our current recommendation is R7 and that’s probably a little bit more conservative compared to Louisiana and Mississippi's recommendation, which is R6.5. But you know, even looking at the data that, you know, Tom, you did several years ago, that kind of helped along with, you know, even the R6.5 some of our data showed that, you know, you still, you know, lose 5 or 6% in yield. But we definitely actually increased our yield if we waited to R7. And so, you know, and if you push that back, you know, if we looked at our applications at R6, which is, you know, fully expanded seed within the pod, you know, on one of the four most uppermost nodes, you know, we were looking at almost 60% yield loss. And so just in a matter of, you know, waiting two weeks, you know, to 15 days, you know, we can have some pretty significant, you know, yield loss if we if we pull that trigger too early. And along with that, you know, we have some quality issues. So, you know, the reason we bring it up I really want to reiterate this again is because you know what you save or gain in yield by planting in April and you know come out and you pulled the trigger on the harvest aid too early I mean you can lose that yield plus, you know, so much more, especially if you get some quality issues going on. So, you know, you know, our recommendation is still that R7. Once you start seeing some leaf drop and you get, you know, mature color pod on the main stem, that's that's where we really feel comfortable on pulling that that trigger on the timing
[05:34] Tom Barber
And that's anywhere along the main stem. Key word.
[05:38] Jeremy Ross
You know typically, you know, beans are going to mature, you know, from the bottom up, you know, but if you go out there and you, you know, and everybody's kind of seen that, you know, in the season, you kind of get that dull green and you start getting some yellow leaves on the bottom, and then you start getting those yellow pods. That's that's the time I feel really comfortable on on pulling that harvest aid, you know, application because again, you know we we saw some issues last year. You know, some farmers pulled the trigger just a little bit too early and we had some weather events and, you know, it was pretty ugly. You know, it it was pretty much, you know, 50% dockage, you know, due to quality issues. I think, you know, pulling the trigger a little too early and then having, you know, wet, wet conditions for extended period of time just made those beans rot. You know, it's just, it just wasn't a good situation.
[06:30] Tom Barber
Well, when you say, you know, if we focus on quality, the other thing that comes to my mind is how many acres do we target in a single application or an application timing, if you will. So if I have, you know, some fields that are getting ready and when I look back at this year, I mean, the bulk of our crop is planted in a ten day window due to weather. And so a lot of it's maturing at the same time. And so if we have a lot of it out there, what should we look at? Because I know if we if we even if we wait until R7 and we pull the trigger at R7 on some harvest days and then we have some weather moving, if we spray a lot of acres, we can't feasibly harvest all those acres. So, we really stand to lose some quality in that situation, right.
[07:20] Jeremy Ross
Yeah. So, you know, recommendation is, you know, treat, you know what, you can get harvested in, you know, 2 to 3 days at the most. And so, you know, if you can get across 500 acres, you know, in a 2 to 3 day period, you know, that's what I would recommend. And then kind of, you know, stair step that, you know, so you treat some this week, you know, first of the week and then maybe treat, you know, another block or so, you know, at the end of the week and kind of, you know, be progressive. You know, I know a lot of farmers really like to see harvest aids early in the season or early in the harvest window just to get started. But then, you know, by the time we kind of get later into the harvest window, you know, they they naturally, you know, senesce and already do kind of the harvest without much of a harvest aid at all. So you know just kind of watch the weather and I know you know we've kind of been in a rainy period the last five or six weeks, you know, and you know, it's really kind of hard to, you know, to see what the long term forecast is going to be. But, you know, this calling for, you know, any kind of major rain event in the next, you know, 7 to 10 days and you're wanting to really put out some harvest aids. You know, I’d kind of watch the weather and kind of, you know, play that game. But, you know, the thing is, you know, especially with gramoxone, you know, you're looking at, you know, a 15 day pre harvest interval. And so, you know, that's that is really kind of hard for meteorologists to kind of know exactly what's going to happen in two weeks. And so just kind of be cautious. You know, I wouldn't treat the whole farm and because any time we put a harvest aid out, there's nothing good that can happen to that crop until we can run it through the combine. And so any kind of wetting/drying event, we can have shattering, we could have mold issues, you know, if we have extended period of time like we had last year in southern Arkansas, in northern Louisiana, and have, you know, a, you know, ten days of cloudy, rainy weather, that's just not good. You know, once we have desiccant on those crops.
[09:28] Tom Barber
Yeah, I look at it like we've always said in cotton, you know, cotton can weather the rain of the storms better with the leaves all than it can with the leaves off or desiccated.
[09:40] Jeremy Ross
Absolutely. I think it totally applies to the soybeans.
[09:42] Tom Barber
So we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Considering, you know. But I know everybody wants a place to start and everybody wants to work the kinks out of their harvest equiptment. And that's the thing, you know, getting the combines rolling and and handling any issues getting a combine out of the shed or whatever so, just not get too far ahead of ourselves. And then, you know, from my standpoint, I guess I get a lot of the questions on what do we use? And there's, you know, Gramoxone or Paraquat is still the standard product with Paraquat in them, all of our Paraquat products now should be 3 pounds per gallon. So that rate is going to be the same for pretty much any brand you use. And that's going to be, the max rate’s 10.7 ounces of that 3 pound material. If we're going straight Paraquat, I like to put a surfactant with it. You don’t have to have a crop oil or MSO or anything like that, straight surfactant to me has looked good, as good as anything. Some other options Sharpen as a quicker harvest interval. I guess if you want to run the combine a little faster, it's seven days. But you know, all our experiences Sharpen is not going to be as fast acting and do quite as good of a job as the Paraquat. So to me Paraquat is still our number one material to use for desiccation. You can mix the two together. You could do Paraquat-Sharpen if you've got morning glories or anything else you want to dessicate. Because that 10.7 ounce rate of paraquat is not, you know, the best for desiccating vines and that kind of thing. So adding a little Sharpen to that can help with some MSO. If you put the Sharpen in it I really like to have an MSO and I really like that Sharpened rate being about an ounce and a half especially if you got a lot of vines to burn down. But an ounce you know depending on the situation may be okay. Aim is another one that's got a label. Aim doesn't get much work because it's just not great as soybean desiccant to be honest. It can desiccate some by the morning glories. You could also mix them in with Paraquat for some help there and then sodium chlorate and you know, a lot of my recommendations that if we're going to go with a Sharpen route for a quicker harvest interval, I like putting chlorate with it just seems to help on the desiccation process. But when we talk about the green stems, Jeremy, to me nothing does better on the green stems than the than the Paraquat and Paraquat chlorate mixture probably.
[12:16] Jeremy Ross
No. And even with that mixture, I mean, you know, if you just have stems out there, it really doesn't do. I don't think a whole lot just because, number one, you're not going to be able to get much product on, you know, just a steam sticking out there. You know, if you got leaf material, you know, you can get pretty good coverage with the leaf material and knock it out. But yeah, I mean, the green stem issue that we've seen, you know, for the last several years. You know, we really don't have a really good handle on exactly what's causing the green steams. I think it's a combination of probably several different things on, you know, genetics, environment is probably the biggest role, you know, any kind of stress throughout the season. But that yeah, if you've got, you know, green stems but yet the pods or, you know, brown and the seed or at the maturity or the moisture that you can harvest at, the best thing to do is to slow the combines down. I mean, because if you're sitting there waiting for those stems to dry now, you're going to have a lot of quality issues and has some yield, lost yield due to shattering, you know, the things like that. And, you know, I get those calls every year. You know, I've got green stems, but yet the pods are mature, you know, is there anything we can put on it? And really the answers is no. You know, if you don't have any leaf material out there to desiccate, then it's really hard to kind of desiccate just those green stems because they're hardened off. And again, you just can't get enough material on those stems to really do any good.
[13:51] Tom Barber
Well, and we've tried to do a few things with our, you know, with our research with the seed destructor that doesn’t like anything green. And most of the time we're separating those stems out through the top portion of the chaff fraction. But the only way we're able to brown them down, the top third, sometimes the top half, is increasing that Paraquat rate. And that gets us off label. And so from a recommendation standpoint, we're not going to recommend that. But just from my research standpoint, that's the only way I've been able to desiccate some of those stems is in our research is by upping that Paraquat rate a little bit. So the other thing I have a note here on and and we can circle back if we missed something but is watching out for our neighboring crop because a lot of these desiccants go out by air. Right. That’s my assumption anyway. So yeah. And so be careful. But what's around these soybean fields? I know corn is pretty much mature at this point in most of our locations, but there's a lot of rice out there that may be later maturing/ There's a lot of cotton out there, maybe some beans in the surrounding area that aren’t 6.5 yet. So I think, you know, we really need to pay attention to our surroundings and what the winds doing and not push it to the point to where we get a lot of calls here at the end of season about off-target movement. Because we have done some work with that on cotton and subtending leaves and on rice, late season Paraquat drift to rice and none of that's good especially if the if the rice is just, you know, just past heading, you know, so, you know, our later planted rice would be what we're talking about here. But in any case, just be careful out there when we make these applications. So did we miss anything, Jeremy? Something we need to? Well, that's basically all I have on.
[15:55] Jeremy Ross
Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, we're just. We're sitting on a really good soybean crop. I mean, this probably, I'm usually pretty pessimistic on the crop, but I'm pretty excited about what I’ve seen so far this year with, you know, the percentage that we got planted early. The USDA came out last week predicting a new state record at 53 bushels per acre. If you look at the, you know, the conditions for this past week, you know, 67% of our crop is either good to excellent. So, you know, with the weather conditions we've had this year and the frequent rainfalls, you know, even though it's been a little bit hotter than normal, you know, you know, the beans I've been walking in the last couple of weeks are just loaded from top to bottom. You know, depending on the varieties, I've seen some varieties have a lot of 4 bean pods. So I mean, I think we're sitting on a really good crop, you know, here in Arkansas this year. And so, you know, I'd really hate to see somebody go out there and pull the trigger a little bit too early on, you know, harvest aid and really kind of shoot themselves in the foot with with the crop that we got. So just be cautious, you know, I'll be more glad to come out and then walk your field with you to, you know, to look at you know, growth stages and different things like that and give you some recommendations on, you know, what, I think you know when you need to pull the trigger. But, you know, I think, you know, just just be cautious. You know, don't treat more than you can get harvested in a couple of days. And, you know, number one, follow that label. You know, there's some the labels are there for a reason. And so just kind of be aware of that.
[17:32] Tom Barber
All right. Well, good. And I agree, I think our crops look great. I know at the Jackson County Extension Center we've got one of the better bean crops than we've had in a while.
[17:40] Jeremy Ross
Pretty impressive OVT up there too. And soybean variety test.
[17:44] Tom Barber
It all comes down to management. But as far as the Weeds AR Wild podcast is concerned we'll probably do another podcast in a couple of weeks on Italian rye grass in the fall and herbicides that we use, the importance of the management in that weed in the fall. I know we're at harvest, but there's more for us to do before the end of the year with ryegrass so tune in in a couple of weeks for that may be the last one from the Weeds AR Wild crew for a while anyway.
[18:22] Jeremy Ross
Speaking of that, I did see probably more ryegrass in beans this year than the last several years. So I think that's going to be our next biggest issue we're going to need to be efficient not only in our grass crops, but also in soybeans. So.
[13:36] Tom Barber
Well, that's right. And so tune in in a couple of weeks and we'll cover that. But Jeremy, thanks for really initiating this. It was, it was your call on this. I think it's good timing, I think it’s a good topic. So if anybody has questions, you heard him, he can come walk any field in the state of Arkansas, he has nothing but time and so we appreciate that appreciate our listeners. And I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Weeds AR Wild podcast series on Arkansas Row Crops Radio.
[19:06] Intro/Outro
Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information, please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.