Pumpkin herbacides

[jbp]

Read the post below about seeding pumpkins and am curious about what herbacides are used for grass and weed control. Grass and weeds would smother pumpkins on my farm without chemical control. I assume herbacides for pumpkins would also work for watermellons and cantalopes.
Thanks , Joe

 

[maxwell99]

I have the same problems with my watermelons and pumpkins. till and cultivate as long as possible, then the grass takes over.

always have a complete cover of grass, am sure it cuts the size of the melons.

I would like to have a good product to control grass, weeds.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Best bet would be your chemical distributer or your county ag office. I know there must be something because commercial pumpkins are grown in my area and fields are pretty clean.

 

[Jim in Ma.]

I burn down the field with Roundup 2 weeks before I plant. That helps the plants get a head start.

 

[Anonymous-0]

We never had a problem with weeds. We plowed and planeted the same day. After that we cultavated them till we couldn't get through the field.

 

[paul]

I have not used any of this, so do your own research....

Select is a very good grass killing herbicide, I see on the label it lists Pumpkins and many other such garden produce. There are many generic versions of this product as the patent is up on it, some may be labeled, some will not be, for these type of crops.

Relative of mine plants an acre or so of pumpkins, he plants, when the pumpkin hill gets as big as a plate, he puts icecream buckets over them, sprays with glyphosate (Roundup), waits a few hours for the stuff to dry up, and removes the pails. Thise leaves a very small spot to hoe around the plants - after waiting a few days for the weeds to curl up and die from the glyphosate. While weeds do come back, this really cleans things up and puts the pumpkins way ahead of the weeds.

There are other herbicides that work on broadleaves, but tend to be rather odd or expensive from what I hear.

Select is a good one to kill off the grasses tho, doesn't harm the pumpkins if you follow the label.

--->Paul

 

[ihman73]

http://btny.purdue.edu/Pubs/ID/ID-56/
This is the Midwest Vegtable Producers Guide from purdue university. It has very good information for anybody growing vegetables. Came in handy for sweet corn. Showed it to a friend of mine that grows pumpkins and was told I had better info on what he was trying to do than he did!

 

[mazemeister]

grasses are pretty easy with things like Select, Poast, Fusilade, etc. that are safe on all broadleaf crops.

clomazone (Command) is very good for many broadleaf weeds- PRE to crop only.

halosulfuron (aka Permit for corn) is good for nutsedge, several broadleaf weeds POST or PRE. will not control common lambsquarters POST.

For those areas where it"s labeled, metolachlor (Dual) apparently is safe to use PRE also.

ethalfluralin (Curbit, also I think Sonolan) is labeled for PRE control of grasses and I think a few broadleafs.

 

[Flat47]

I wondered about Preen. It's granular and available at the local hardware store and is marketed for veggie gardens. Package says it'll prevent weeds, not kill existing weeds.

 

[kyhayman]

Best and cheapest I found was black plastic. I've used the Poast/Command combo and Poast/Prefar before that. Using a bed shaper with plastic in 6 foot wide bands and trasnsplanting pumpkin seedlings was faster, cheaper, and better than anything I tried. Kept the crop cleaner too. I did put trickle tubes down under the plastic for fertigation. Really sorry that the co-op that bought them closed. The pumpkins were ok but the winter squash was better. Clear was a little over 4K per acre on the squash, about 1.5K on the pumpkins.

 

[NW MO Poppers]

Preen is nothing more than granulated Trifluralin (Treflan). So, got to your local ag chemical dealer and buy either granular treflan, or just buy liquid treflan. I would prefer the granular, as liquid treflan stinks, and stains everything yellow...

 

[NW MO Poppers]

We have used several over the years, most all pre-emergence. Status is a chemical labeled specifically for pumpkins. It is a pre-mix of Command and Treflan. It is expensive. We have also just used command and treflan, back when we could find command readily available (it's hard to get a hold of now). Command is for broadleaves, treflan is for grasses and small seeded broadleaves. We now just use Dual II magnum pre-emergence for grasses, and cultivate. When the weeds get really big, we used our old weed wiper and kill them that way.