Clover and weed control

[Mattyq2402]

Got a couple frost seed clover fields that took off. Got some weed competition. Looking to spray, looking for an economical approach. Is slay my best value?

 

[White Birch Farm]

Your simplest option is gly. Alternatively, Clethodim and Butyrac 200.

 

[Mattyq2402]

Glyphosate wont kill the clover?

 

[White Birch Farm]

Glyphosate wont kill the clover?

Once it is reasonably established, it will not. It will set it back some but that is generally about it. 1qt an acre is what most people would use, but I wont reccomend that because I dont need to hear from the yahoos screaming about creating resistant plants. In an established plot even 2qts will barely dent most clovers.

 

[White Birch Farm]

Perennial clovers can also be controlled with glyphosate when the plants are seedlings, but once the clover is established, it cannot be controlled except by digging it out. Glyphosate at high rates will suppress some clovers.

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7490.html

One of the biggest benefits of gly, besides the low cost and ease of application is that it will also kill sedges in addition to grasses and broadleaves, which few other clover herbicide options will unless you use at least three products.

 

[yoderjac]

Got a couple frost seed clover fields that took off. Got some weed competition. Looking to spray, looking for an economical approach. Is slay my best value?

Your best value is to fall plant with a WR nurse crop. Each time the WR gets much over a foot, mow it back to release the clover. The role of WR is to out-compete weeds and the timing of fall plant allows the clover to germinate and then get a jump on annual weeds that are just germinating. Once you have established your field, re-define success and become weed tolerant. I mow once a year in the fall before the season opens. The cool nights and increased rain fall in the fall will favor the clover. Many broadleaf weeds are better deer food than the clover itself. Weeds will eventually take over any clover field. When that happens, rotate it to an N seeking crop.

The industry has convinced many that field plots should look like farm fields. While my fields look like magazine covers when first established, they get uglier each year. Deer don't care and fighting weeds with selective herbicides is taking time and money from other things I can be doing to manage deer. My deer actually favor using weedy fields as the weeds provide more vertical cover than clover.

If you go the glyphosate route, there are several things to watch. First, you want to use 1 qt/ac, not 2 or 3 quarts. 1 qt/ac is enough to top kill the clover and kill grasses. Mowing is sufficient to manage most broadleaf weeds. So, unless you have a particular problematic weed, I would not worry about herbicides. Timing is critical. The gly will topkill the clover but it will bounce back from the root system. This stresses the clover. If there are other stressors on the clover like drought, it may completely kill it. So, you want to do this with good rain in the forecast. The clover must be well established to do this. If it has not put down a good root system, it won't bounce back.

Best of luck,

Jack

 

[White Birch Farm]

This section of this plot was sprayed with 2qts/acre gly several weeks ago. It contained residual clovers from a prior seeding. If you scroll into the picture you will see the green clover mixed in with everything else that is dead. When spraying this section I intentionally overlapped the existing clover on the right so I could clearly observe the side by side effect along the length of the entire edge. I drove over it all while drilling seed this week. The average foodplotter would never even notice the difference between the clover sprayed with 2qts/acre and that which was not. Nothing was top killed. The only observable difference was some burnt leaf edges and and lighter shade of green to the clover that was sprayed.

I will take pictures of more examples this week.

 

[White Birch Farm]

Looking through my pics, I found one I took as I drove by the line mentioned above. Everything left of the yellow line was hit with 2qts/acre about 3 weeks ago. The clover just to the right of the line is in the bottom of the ditch. I bedded this field for drainage, so when I mow along that ditch that clover stays a little taller and more flowered out compared to the stuff on the top of the bed a little further right, which is why there is a couple foot wide strip with more blossoms. In another two weeks there will be virtually no discernible difference on either side of that line. I have another 40+ acres of fields with NWSG/Pollinator/weeds. I dont need more mixed in where I am stock piling high quality forages.

This week, I drilled WGF Sorghum, buckwheat, soybeans, sunflowers and sunn hemp together into that area that I sprayed. The second pic is about what that line will look like in 3 months.

 

[yoderjac]

Good pics and great example. You can see the yellowing of the clover to the left of the line. As I recall, the general total kill rate is 2 qt/ac. For some clovers it is 3 qt/ac. So, if conditions are right you can spry 2 qt/ac on established clover and only top kill it and have it bounce back, but if it has other stresses the bounce back can be spotty. At 1 qt/acre you are safer and that is enough to kill grasses that are the usual culprit for infiltrating clover fields.

One think I like to do with aging clover fields if I don't have time to rotate is to spray them with 1 qt/ac in the fall and then drill brassica and WR into them.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Native Hunter]

Will 1 or 2 qts per acre kill smartweed for you guys?

 

[yoderjac]

Will 1 or 2 qts per acre kill smartweed for you guys?

Haven't looked into it as I don't have a smartweed issue.

 

[Suburbhunter]

Clover was being over run with switch grass. It also had a smartweed infestation. A light does of gly (1 oz per gal water), appropriate cleth, 2-4 dB, and crop oil has it looking pretty good. Brown is dead stuff. Thanks Mennonite Man for the advice!!

 

[yoderjac]

Clover was being over run with switch grass. It also had a smartweed infestation. A light does of gly (1 oz per gal water), appropriate cleth, 2-4 dB, and crop oil has it looking pretty good. Brown is dead stuff. Thanks Mennonite Man for the advice!!

Oz/gal are meaningless if we don't know how the sprayer is calibrated. That is why for ag gly is specified in qt/ac. This takes the sprayer out of the equation.

 

[yoderjac]

Will 1 or 2 qts per acre kill smartweed for you guys?

I did find this study: http://www.apms.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/japm-53-02-224.pdf

If I did my kg/ha to qt/ac calculation correctly, it looks like 1 qt/ac provided fairly good control after 6 weeks. 2 qt/ac did not show significant improvement.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[FarmerDan]

Will 1 or 2 qts per acre kill smartweed for you guys?

I'm not sure there's a yes or no answer. I've stopped using glyphosate on clover. For the longest time I was a proponent, but I found it fairly ineffective on smartweed. And I've killed a crop of clover or two along the way. The big problem, for me, was the rebound of smartweed from seed. I've switched to IMOX.

 

[Suburbhunter]

Oz/gal are meaningless if we don't know how the sprayer is calibrated. That is why for ag gly is specified in qt/ac. This takes the sprayer out of the equation.

I know my calibrations. Not everybody knows there's. A lot of folks ask how many ounces per gal of water all the time. Simple math really. 1 qt per acre for me, maybe a little less.

 

[Native Hunter]

I'm not sure there's a yes or no answer. I've stopped using glyphosate on clover. For the longest time I was a proponent, but I found it fairly ineffective on smartweed. And I've killed a crop of clover or two along the way. The big problem, for me, was the rebound of smartweed from seed. I've switched to IMOX.

I have one plot where smartweed is a problem and will probably just go ahead and use IMOX at some point. I was kind of brainstorming that I might go straight clover for a few years and do the Gly, but IMOX is probably the best solution.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

I find the oz per gal to work better for me. If you don’t know the size of your plot calibration is meaningless. I go 2 oz per gal and spray my plots til the tank is empty. If it’s a bigger plot or the weeds are taller I will go 4 oz per gallon and spray till empty. This works for me. My sprayer is only 16 gallon. That means I spray heavy. I don’t want anything to survive when I spray if I do I mow.


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[Mattyq2402]

This is probably what I needed to hear. Im 2000 miles away from my farm but it looks like its the WR or WW that is growing up. We cut it couple weeks ago and the clover took off. Ill try the no spray method.

I find the oz per gal to work better for me. If you don’t know the size of your plot calibration is meaningless. I go 2 oz per gal and spray my plots til the tank is empty. If it’s a bigger plot or the weeds are taller I will go 4 oz per gallon and spray till empty. This works for me. My sprayer is only 16 gallon. That means I spray heavy. I don’t want anything to survive when I spray if I do I mow.


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Your best value is to fall plant with a WR nurse crop. Each time the WR gets much over a foot, mow it back to release the clover. The role of WR is to out-compete weeds and the timing of fall plant allows the clover to germinate and then get a jump on annual weeds that are just germinating. Once you have established your field, re-define success and become weed tolerant. I mow once a year in the fall before the season opens. The cool nights and increased rain fall in the fall will favor the clover. Many broadleaf weeds are better deer food than the clover itself. Weeds will eventually take over any clover field. When that happens, rotate it to an N seeking crop.

The industry has convinced many that field plots should look like farm fields. While my fields look like magazine covers when first established, they get uglier each year. Deer don't care and fighting weeds with selective herbicides is taking time and money from other things I can be doing to manage deer. My deer actually favor using weedy fields as the weeds provide more vertical cover than clover.

If you go the glyphosate route, there are several things to watch. First, you want to use 1 qt/ac, not 2 or 3 quarts. 1 qt/ac is enough to top kill the clover and kill grasses. Mowing is sufficient to manage most broadleaf weeds. So, unless you have a particular problematic weed, I would not worry about herbicides. Timing is critical. The gly will topkill the clover but it will bounce back from the root system. This stresses the clover. If there are other stressors on the clover like drought, it may completely kill it. So, you want to do this with good rain in the forecast. The clover must be well established to do this. If it has not put down a good root system, it won't bounce back.

Best of luck,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

I find the oz per gal to work better for me. If you don’t know the size of your plot calibration is meaningless. I go 2 oz per gal and spray my plots til the tank is empty. If it’s a bigger plot or the weeds are taller I will go 4 oz per gallon and spray till empty. This works for me. My sprayer is only 16 gallon. That means I spray heavy. I don’t want anything to survive when I spray if I do I mow.


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My point is that we have no idea how much gly you sprayed on the plants. The size of your plot is pretty easy to estimate and with today's mapping applications it can often be done from your living room. If your sprayer put out 10 gal per acre, you would be spraying 20 oz per ac but if your sprayer puts out 20 gal per ac you are applying at twice the rate, 40 oz per ac. So, there is no way for someone else to know how much gly you applied.

Oz/gal are typically used for spot-spraying applications.

Having said that, if you are killing everything you want to kill, you are applying at least enough gly, but you don't know if you applying too much.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing your method. I'm just saying it has limitations and one limitation is that can't be translated to others.

Thanks,

Jack