Proactive Weed Control for Strawberries and Winter Vegetables

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Strawberry and winter vegetable growers will want to be proactive about applying a residual herbicide to the row middle. This is according to Steve Li, extension weed scientist and assistant professor of crop and soil science at Auburn University.

Li… “So in the vegetable world or in those plastic culture production systems, growers just need to put down a good residual in the row middle to start a crop with. Instead of having to come back and deal with these tall winter weeds in the row middle later on, because that will be very hard.”

Li’s says it’s important to be proactive in these strawberry and vegetable crop systems, because there aren’t a lot of other available options.

Li… “The row middle is only about three feet wide. So any type of tillage is almost impossible because if you use a rototiller or something like that, you're gonna damage your plastic bad. And then when you have a lot of winter annual those weeds in the row middle. Spraying them later in the season or in early spring is almost impossible because your crop is also getting pretty tall. So at that time, when you spray a row middle, the concern for herbicide drift, you know, what you spray drifting onto your crop is pretty high.”

Also important is to be conscious of certain weeds developing resistance to commonly used herbicides like glyphosate.