I think I’m going to have to start paying you a consultant’s fee as many questions as I’ve asked you in the past week! Seriously though, I very much appreciate all the time you’ve given me, and of course the information you have provided on both sprayers and chemicals is invaluable, so thank you so much.
I was just about to re-order several of my fruit tree sprays from my local co-op (I have found them to have better prices than any online seller, especially since they don’t charge shipping and have a satellite pick-up location less than 2 miles from my house!!!) I tell you this to tell you that I’m going to check on the products you just told me about.
HOWEVER, from everything you have told me, including the price you gave for the pre-emergent and the broad leaf “tank partner” you use, I’m honestly thinking I might be better off to just bite the bullet and buy some round-up ready sweet corn. Even if I do have to spend $350, for me it might be worth it. I’ve definitely had 3 year old corn seed germinate and do well, so MAYBE I could get 3 years worth out of my one seed purchase. Then all I’d have to do is spray glyphosate (I’ve mistakenly been abbreviating it as “glyco” for some reason) 2-3 times. Besides, while I’m sure pre-emergent stops the weeds for a while, but surely you still have to deal with weeds before corn is ready for harvest, true or not true? Plus if the round up ready corn has the Bt gene that I getting the added worm protection, and I’ve had a problem with them in the past. So all in all, even if it ends up being the more costly route, I’m leaning toward trying round-up ready corn and spraying with round-up (generic). Am I missing something that would make that the wrong decision for sure? THANKS!!!
I forgot to mention with non RR corn, we do have to come through and spray a broad leaf contact herbicide during the growing season. Something like corn amine.
At risk of completely exceeding my question asking quota, I do have one more…
All we have talked about is corn. For whatever reason I haven’t been thinking about the rest of my garden. Is there any reason I couldn’t spray my entire garden (esp watermelon patch) with the aforementioned pre-emergents either before planting or before my rops come up? If so, would I do that before or after I plant seeds? There may be some obvious reason why I can’t (the spray might kill other vegetable seeds, etc) but my first thoughts are that it might work on the whole area?? Thanks
@Chikn Thanks for your information as well. VERY helpful, as usual. I suspect you have an awfully lot of weed control experience from your massive asparagus growing operation. I find them to be one of the hardest things to keep weeds out of since its hard to till the area under the big canopy they make.
Have you ever considered selling some of the stuff you grow and turning your hobby into a part time business?
You could buy the mist blower and other equipment for what you want to do and generate a farm loss for a few years. That doesn’t make the equipment free, but it helps some.
Bet the sweet corn would sell quick and for a good price. You could spray the corn with the new mist blower!
Unfortunately, a lot of the herbicides sprayed are fairly selective for the crops to apply.
Let me break it down to the simplest components.
There are basically two classes of “weeds” (weeds being defined as a plant you don’t want in the crop you plan to harvest). There are grasses - and broadleaf weeds. Grasses you know as what you see in lawns, but there are other grasses which don’t grow in lawns (i.e. corn is technically a grass, so is wheat).
The other type of plant is broadleaf. This encapsulates a lot of plants, and weeds - watermelon, beans (of any kind), nightshade family (including tomatoes and potatoes). Most garden crops are broadleaf. Most trees also behave as a broadleaf.
Selective herbicides are generally designed to kill either broadleaf, or grasses. Non selective herbicides kill any plant (like glyphosate).
To go a little deeper, you can spray a selective herbicide (like a broadleaf herbicide) on any grass plant (like corn or wheat) without any detriment to the crop. That’s because the herbicide targets broad leafplants and has minimal activity on grass plants.
Likewise, a selective grass type herbicide can generally be sprayed on a broadleaf planting (something like Poast or Dakota) generally without detriment to the broadleaf crop, because the herbicide is designed to kill grasses.
Of course non-selective herbicides like glyphosate will kill anything, unless the plant is gene selected to be resistant to the herbicide (through gene engineering, or natural selection - both of which are out there).
These categories pretty much hold true for pre-emergent herbicides, as well as post-emergent herbicides.
That’s the basics.
Now, chemical companies will “tweak” a selective herbicide to make it even more selective. An example is Dual Magnum. It’s designed to kill grasses. But it’s tweaked so that it won’t kill corn (a grass).
Chemical companies tweak this stuff all the time. For example, they will take a non-selective herbicide and make it so that it won’t hurt fruit trees. Alion is a broad spectrum herbicide which is designed not to injure most fruit trees we grow in N. America. It’s broad spectrum because it kills both grasses and broadleaf.
So far, I’ve not made much distinction between pre and post emergent herbicides, but of course there is a distinction. A pre emergent is designed (for the most part) to stop germination of seeds. A post emergent is designed to kill a plant which has already germinated and pushed through the soil.
The overall point is there are different herbicides to be applied to different crops for different weeds. It’s not as complicated as it sounds when you break it down into grass, broadleaf, and non-selective (i.e. broad spectrum) herbicides. Then recognizing there are post emergent and pre emergent herbicides of those categories.
Of course the label will ultimately tell you what herbicide is safe to use on what crop. For example, I used Prowl as a pre-emergent on my tomatoes, but I also could have used Dual II Magnum had I wanted to (both are labeled for tomatoes). But I don’t have a lot of grass problems in my tomatoes, so there was no need for Dual II Magnum. Prowl controls more broadleaf weeds which are problematic for me, so that’s what I used.
Kevin, As always with any pesticide, Read and follow the label directions. I’m sure Mr Olpea will agree. If you have specific questions, ask before you spray. Don’t kill something because you don’t know.
The first two Contender peaches we planted last summer look like they survived our near record cold last winter, two nights -38F actual. Buds are starting to swell so we are hoping for a good spring flowering. Sure want them to do well as the peaches that came on them last summer where delicious!
That’s very interesting. Sometimes cold damaged peaches will start to leaf out then collapse because the trunk is dead. I hope yours made it. Please post back a follow up. I’d love to hear of some peach trees making it through -38F.
I haven’t seen any trees at our walmart yet. I’ll be on the lookout. I’d pick one up for that price. Menards a couple years back had them…they were very nice looking trees…full of flowers…sold very quickly.
once again, incredibly helpful. Honestly, I wish we had put this bit in a thread of its own because I feel like there will be a lot of people who will end up using your responses and my questions as future resource/reference and I’m not sure they can find it here. Anyway, your tutorial on types of garden weeds and methods of fighting them was truely helpful, and I sincerely thank you.
I think I’ve used by quota of Olpea answers for a while so I’ll try to leave you alone for a few days! haha. Thanks again.
BTW…I like the trick of using pond dye to keep up with what you’ve sprayed. At risk of having a funny looking orchard, I’d like to do that on fruit trees too. SInce I have so many different trees and different sprays and different schedules, I constantly find myself trying to remember whether I have sprayed a particular tree or not. I sometimes use surveyor tape or put one of those small wire marking flags under trees after I spray them, but its a lot of trouble. A little dye would go a long way!
Olpea, looks like you might be right sadly. All of the branch tips are getting shrunken and buds are fading. Don’t know if we have total tree kill yet or not but with them being just planted last year I expect the roots didn’t get to any depth below last winter frost line. I knew we are on the northern limits of Contender. Nothing risked , nothing gained. They are guaranteed for two seasons so I will try replacements again this year. Having 50 yr record lows I guess global warming hasn’t hit us yet, lol.
I bought a tagged contender 1 or 2 years ago from Walmart and it bloomed at the same time as my red haven and white princess. When I spoke to a man at Vaughan’s he was surprised and thought it probably wasn’t that variety because it shouldn’t have bloomed yet. It has a few fruits which survived a few late freezing nights but now I wonder.
Yeah, I guess that’s the risk one takes when you buy a fruit tree from a store, especially peaches. My third year Contender has one pink bloom on it, but that’s about it, other than leaves starting to show.
As an update - All three NCSU peaches - Challenger, Intrepid, and Carolina Gold - survived our test winter this year and have leafed out and are looking to be doing OK so far. They endured back-to-back nights of -22F and -30F.
