The question of the week is on how to burndown fields that are grown up messes before planting soybeans (Picture 1).  The problem is when fields are heavily infested with 3’ tall goosegrass, Palmer amaranth, horseweed and volunteer corn that is tasseling there are no good answers.

Paraquat, the usual “go to” for late spring burndown, will not control grasses with size or even pigweed that has gotten so far out of hand. As such, the best approach is aggressive tillage.  That unfortunately is not an option on our highly erodible fields.

In those cases, a tankmix of a high rate of Liberty plus clethodim is the best approach to try to control the grass weeds and set the pigweed back.  Then, if possible, a couple days later apply paraquat.  This approach would have the best chance of success with herbicides.

In fields where the soybeans may emerge before a follow-up paraquat application could take place then a dicamba application in XtendFlex soybean or Enlist application in Enlist soybean followed shortly by Liberty is the last best hope.