Slow planting progress this spring has led to all efforts focused on getting the crop in the ground. Often the first operation thrown to the wayside is application of pre-emergence herbicides in soybean. A decade ago this practice could be successful, but with widespread multiple herbicide resistance, it either sets up an imminent control failure or contributes to further evolution of herbicide resistance.

The world's most widely used weed killer is not responsible for perpetuating Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) in soybeans, research shows.

We've received a few calls lately about options for killing out poor stands of corn and planting a new stand back into those areas. Most of these calls have to do with killing a Roundup Ready/LibertyLink corn variety and planting back into these fields.

Being able to predict when a field of corn will reach particular leaf stages can be useful for scheduling post-emergence applications of certain herbicides and sidedress N fertilizer, especially if your farming operation is so large that regular field inspections are difficult to work into your busy schedule. Leaf stage can be predicted on the basis of heat unit accumulation (aka growing degree days) from planting to the date in question.

As past experience has taught many of us that live in the "frozen tundra," a Wisconsin spring can appear rapidly, so here are a few thoughts to mull over before we all get busy and throw recommendations out the window to get those crops in the ground.

Because of the dramatic swings in air temperature that we've experienced already this spring, we've received a few questions about the effect of air temperatures on our spring burndown applications. Specifically, most people are asking, "When is it too cold to apply a burndown herbicide?" and "What are the conditions that lead to poor weed control following a burndown herbicide application?"

Precision farming technology that will allow reduced herbicide use by accurately identifying and spot-spraying weeds, developed from research funded by the Horticultural Development Company (HDC), is to go into commercial production.

Check out the latest crop protection offerings from some of the industry's leading suppliers.

Cover crops can be excellent systems to capture excess nutrients and reduce the risk of erosion over the winter months.

From visiting with retailers the past month it is very apparent there will be a major shortage of dicamba for burndown again this spring. A number of folks from different retailers have stated that they have been allocated only a fraction of all the dicamba they sold two years ago.