Scattered rains have accumulated over the past week, with many receiving several inches or more. With even more rain in the forecast and many of our acres quickly entering their second and third week of bloom, the question of the week has been what to do with plant growth regulators. In contrast to previous years, the introduction of the active plinazolin (Vertento) has created a more interesting question- what can we do, from a plant growth regulator standpoint, to take full advantage of the long residual control window provided by this new product? In this blog, I outline the best approach to balance a possible opportunity to save an application cost with the risk of being too aggressive. Continue reading →

All the frequent rain lately has made it difficult to spray fields timely. This has left some cotton fields with large goosegrass and Palmer amaranth.  The typical post application to control both those weeds is a tankmix of Liberty and clethodim.  This tankmix will typically provide fair control of large goosegrass.  However, we have found some goosegrass populations where that tankmix is not very effective.  Palmer amaranth too often will recover. In those cases, hooded or post-direct applications should be considered. Continue reading →