Managing Weeds in A Forage Crop
27 Jul 24

The importance of understanding soil health and its impact on crop performance. Kelly explains how weeds can indicate soil nutrient imbalances, particularly focusing on calcium availability. This insight is crucial for making informed decisions about soil management and herbicide use to ensure sustainable and productive farming practices.

00:00 Standing out here in the rotational grazing part, uh, the sorghums coming, some of the clovers are coming, the peas are looking good. 00:07 The oats came back more than we thought, but there's a problem and problem is chemical damage. You know, the drought from the last two years has 00:17 probably led to chemical build up in here. We don't know for sure if you read the label on authority, which was our bean chemical program in, uh, 22. 00:26 It says, don't use sorghum for 24 months. Well, here we are 24 months later, and with the drought, it probably didn't precipitate out 00:32 like we thought it was going to. I find that to be a problem in agriculture. We as farmers want perfect wheat control, but if 00:39 and when we do achieve that, the chemicals used to achieve that are probably holding our crops back a little bit. 00:44 And here there's the potential that I have held this crop back, this rotational grazing crop 00:50 by the chemical choices I made the last couple years. Atrazine and authority would be the one that I would talk about here. 00:55 It doesn't mean I can quit using it in my corn and soybeans, but it's a real problem in my forage mix. 00:59 So here we can see the sorghums coming. I can't even tell you what these plants are, but they're the different clovers and beans 01:05 and brass that we planted over here is, uh, an example of the peas that one of the plants that didn't grow very well is a fava bean. 01:15 And if we walk up here ways, I had scouted it and, and seen it. It was, uh, it looks a lot like a soybean. 01:21 At first I thought we had soybeans in the drill on. I said, I'm like, you know, where did that come from? But Austin and I did some further research 01:28 and, uh, it's the fava beans. This sorghum is well behind where I thought it should be, things like that. 01:33 We've had plenty of rain and moisture. I think maybe that the oats are holding it back a little bit. 01:37 So between the oats, the atrazine and the authority from two years ago, it's holding us growths back a little bit. 01:43 So I don't have as many cows here as I wanted. I'd like to have 200 cows here and I have 80, but they're doing fine. 01:49 Thankfully, with all the rain we've had, we have plenty of feed and I haven't had to supplement 'em. The Broome and the other, 01:56 the other paddocks are holding off. Well, this is the, uh, paddock that we drilled first. So the sorghum is the biggest in it, 02:02 and probably on Monday I'm going to, uh, turn 'em out here and we will graze over this rather quickly to try 02:08 to get the oats down and to allow the other species of plants to come up. We'll see what happens. I do have one pasture 02:14 that has 34 cows in it that is starting to get short. It's a B Broome pasture. It, it's rotational grazing, but it's Broome. 02:20 So it's starting to get short and uh, hopefully we can provide enough seed here for the rest of the summer that I can haul those 34 pairs 02:28 over here at supplement it. There's a nice amount of feed out here with the oat and things like that, but they're, 02:32 they're heading out obviously. So, uh, we do need to clip it down. So we keep growing the chemical Carryover is a real problem. 02:40 I look at it in my corn, I look at it in my soybeans, and, you know, the drought magnifies the problem, but I assure you it's a problem every year. 02:48 You know, here's the, here's an example of the reason. Here's a spot where the oats are thin and look at the sorghum coming. 02:53 You know, so maybe we get these oats down, the other plants will come up. That's something that we talk 02:58 About. But then I've talked about with TJ Cortes. He talked about a, a book when Weeds talk and how we need to listen to them. 03:06 It says in this book that when weeds come out, you need to look at the species of weeds and what it means. This book says that water hemp is a 03:13 sign of unavailable calcium. So does the water hemp germinate because the calcium is not there? 03:18 Or is the water hemp trying to bring calcium up? It also says in the book that when you have thistles, the thistles are a tuber type. 03:27 But here's an example right here. The thistles are a tuber type plant, and they are trying to bring the calcium up from down 03:34 below with the root system. That's a fascinating thing to me. So I, we have to read further into the book. 03:39 Evans is reading it right now after TJ talked about it. Evans went and got it. And we need to read further into the book to see what, 03:45 and we don't know, I I've even talked with TJ about this. Is the waterhemp there 03:49 because the calcium is unavailable so it allows it to germinate? Or is the waterhemp trying to be like the thistle 03:56 and bring the calcium up? You know, I've talked many, many times about our biggest yield limiting factor here. 04:02 Our number one priority is to address the base saturation with the calcium. And we have all kinds of calcium in these hills, 04:08 but it's in available and it really is a foreign concept to me to have calcium available to the plant. 04:14 That's why we continue to, uh, supplement it and things like that. I talk about using the liberate from agro liquid Calcium is 04:20 such a tricky, uh, nutrient to work with that it, it's very challenging. I would tell you that the water hemp problems 04:27 that all farmers are facing across the Midwest, it could partially be attributed to how our soils are out of balance. 04:33 And if we get our soils in balance better, can we control the waterhemp better? That'll be something that we're gonna look at next year 04:39 as we, uh, read more into this book. When weeds talk.

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