10 commandments of weed control

Growers should adopt a full-season weed management program to stay ahead of tough-to-control and resistant weeds. Agronomist Dean Grossnickle encourages growers to obey the 10 commandments of weed control, as he learned them from Dr. Stevan Knezevic (kuh-nez-uh-vic), professor of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“Commandment number one, know your weeds and understand their lifecycle and biology. Rotate your crops, that's number two. Rotate your herbicide sites of action. Use premixes with multiple sites of action, not looking at the name on the jug but understanding what's in that jug, do we have something that has multiple active sites of action. Number five is use those full herbicide use rates. Number six, you got to scout your fields. Number seven, after your scouting, you need to apply that post emergence applications where necessary. Additionally, manage the weeds along your borders, where do we have the most pressure in a lot of our fields, it's on the sides of our fields as they're creeping in from the edges and on the end rows. Number nine, you always need to use cleaning equipment. And finally, number 10, you must make sure that you know the cost of poor weed control. It would be much more expensive if you spend less money, but don't kill the weeds and then have to fight resistant weeds the next year.”

Grossnickle says its important that growers understand and use these commandments