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Wendell Minson
Bootheel Crop Consultants
Dexter, Missouri
I received a B.S. degree in agricultural education from the University of Missouri. After obtaining a teaching certificate, I taught vocational agriculture for four years in Dexter, Missouri, before going to work for a manufacturer as a sales rep. In 2000, I started my own business — Bootheel Crop Consultants — where, today, I consult on rice, wheat, corn and soybeans.
Last year was extremely wet, so planting was delayed by two weeks. When we got the rice in and got it up, conditions went to extremely dry in the middle of the summer. This affected our weed control, especially on row rice. It was difficult to get the grasses in check. You can irrigate, but Mother Nature still needs to throw a rain in there for you.
Resistance rears its ugly head
Battling resistant grass that we’ve never had before, along with some resistant sedges, is going to be our biggest challenge this year. My clients rotate from rice to beans and then back to rice, so resistance hasn’t been a problem for us in the past. But now we are seeing more of it.
We overlay herbicides to keep residuals out there. The goal is to never see any weeds come up. We’ll change up our chemistry a little bit, too.
Barnyardgrass is the main weed that’s resistant to different products. Palmer amaranth in row rice is not resistant to any of the products we use, and Loyant® herbicide does a great job controlling it. I apply Loyant as the last shot before flushing in the fertilizer in row rice. If pigweed is in the field and it’s a pretty good size, Loyant is an excellent choice. We’ll be watering right behind it, which makes it work well.
Grandstand® R herbicide is still a good product for pigweed, too. I’ve used a lot of Clincher® SF over the years for grassy weeds. You can put it out early and not bang up the crop, and it’s as broad spectrum as anything on the market over the top. I may start using more Grasp® SC herbicide to take out resistant grass in every rice stage, including one-leaf and two-leaf. It also helps control coffeebean, indigo and eclipta. Application timeliness is a key component for killing post-emerge grasses.
On a positive note going into this season, some of our expenses are down, and the price of rice is still good. If we get rice in the ground in a timely manner, we have a good chance of making a good crop.
