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Blain Pearce
Pearce Consulting LLC
McGehee, Arkansas
Growing up, I always wanted to work for a man named Steven Walls who scouted cotton and soybeans. When I was 12 years old, he picked me up at 5:30 one morning and let me work with him until dark. After that, I continued working with Steven and scouted rice while he looked at the other crops. Years later, I opened my own consulting business but still credit him as the person who gave me a chance.
In 2021, I started out with about 6,000 acres of rice in southeast Arkansas. On June 10, we received a 24-inch rain in 14 hours in Desha County. The rice was under water for two months. I lost every bit of it except for one 300-acre plot. This spring has been wet, too, so no rice was planted the first week of April.
Barnyardgrass is the weed that gives us the most trouble. We also have some pockets of sprangletop and are beginning to see more flatsedge on the low-lying ground, which has been in continuous rice for a long time. Where I have bad sedge problems in levee rice, I apply Loyant® herbicide with Newpath herbicide on fields that are in a Newpath system. I scout row rice and levee rice, but most of the fields in this area are row rice now because of the soybean rotation. We typically don’t have sedge problems in row rice, but baryardgrass and pigweed are always a challenge. Loyant is a great fit for controlling pigweed in row rice.
My standard weed control program includes applying Command and Sharpen herbicides behind the planter. When the row rice emerges, I come in with a Newpath, Loyant and Prowl herbicide tankmix. Newpath helps with the grass, Prowl gives me another pre-emergence herbicide and Loyant knocks out the broadleaf weeds.
If I am in a non-Newpath system, I apply Prowl and Facet in the first postemergence shot, wait two weeks and then come back with Loyant to clean up the broadleaf weeds. If any barnyardgrass comes back, I apply Clincher® SF or RebelEX® herbicides. If I have a big wad of barnyardgrass on levee rice, I use Clincher in the first postemergence shot. Clincher is one of the best grass killers we have if used early on small grass.
Weed pressure is so bad in some of my fields that if I didn’t make a postemergence application because of being behind or not getting a good rain, we would never be able to cut the rice. That’s one reason I like row rice. As soon as we pull the sprayer out of the field, we can turn on the water. In 12 to 14 hours, the field is wet enough to activate the herbicides.
