By Darren Hefty
I learned a lot this year about how to raise a great wheat crop and what the keys to success are for farmers all across North America. Fertility and the timing of fertilizer applications are really important. However, if you don’t do a GREAT job keeping weeds, insects, and diseases out of your wheat crop the fertilizer won’t make the kind of difference you’re hoping for.
WEEDS
While most of the country hasn’t done much with wheat pre-emerge herbicides, the top-yielding farmers sure have. Let’s talk broadleaf weeds like kochia, for example. There aren’t a lot of post-emerge options, and if the kochia is really thick in patches, it’s tough to get good coverage down to the smaller plants. Sharpen at 1 ounce per acre is a great burndown tankmix partner for Roundup with fast activity on broadleaf weeds. At 2 ounces, Sharpen gives very good residual control to stop the next flush of weeds, too.
For grasses, we’ve used the Group 1 (ACCase) and 2 (ALS) herbicides exclusively in wheat for years. With the new Zidua, we now have an option from the Group 15 family. Zidua does a nice job suppressing a number of grass and broadleaf weed species. At the minimum, it’s going to thin out the population of weeds in your field, allowing your post spray to more easily wipe out the escapes. Best case scenario is that Zidua takes out nearly all the grass, allowing your wheat to get off to a better start and ultimately reaching canopy weed-free.
Other grass control herbicides include the popular Pre-Pare herbicide, which at around $4 to $6 per acre is likely the most inexpensive treatment you can use. Pre-Pare offers suppression of grasses such as cheatgrass and controls a number of non-ALS-resistant broadleaf weeds, as well. Olympus has been a common choice for cheatgrass suppression, too, especially in areas raising continuous cereal crops.
INSECTS AND DISEASES
With the premier seed treatments on the market, you get a combination of fungicides and a neonicotinoid insecticide (Poncho, Cruiser, or Gaucho). There are certainly some differences between the available products, but for the most part the biggest difference is between using any of these seed treatments and using nothing. The cost is significantly less than one bushel of wheat, and the yield protection (gains) from using a complete seed treatment are often in the 2 to 5 bushel range, depending on the year and pest pressure.
HIGH YIELD TRIALS
At the Ag PhD Field Day this year, Brian and I competed against 4 top producers and 1 top agronomist to see who could raise the best wheat and who could make the most money doing it. If you were at the Field Day, you saw what each of these competitors did and also got a chance to see some tremendous-looking wheat. Every one of those guys used a seed treatment with one or more fungicides plus an insecticide, and most utilized biological products like QuickRoots for even more of a yield boost. One of the biggest concerns for all the competitors in our wheat plots was that the field was kept weed-free, and a pre herbicide was a must.
ACTION PLAN
If you have been using a seed treatment program and a pre-emerge herbicide to wipe out weeds, you already know the positive return this has had on your investment. If you haven’t used them, I challenge you to try these practices out on your farm. Keep track of where you try them. Take them to yield. Then, run a return on investment analysis with your results. I’m confident you’ll see why top producers are using them and why you should, as well.