Weeding

[Pilothawk]

It has been bone dry here in East Texas. Hotter than blue blazes as well. Leaves are falling not due to the coming of cooler weather but due to lack of rain.

My question is a simple one. Should I withhold spraying for weeds until there is more activity in the plants. Should I wait and spray after we have had some rain to jumpstart plant activity? My primary target weeds are goatweed, horse nettle, and ragweed.

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[Allen57]

(quoted from post at 19:34:58 08/21/10) It has been bone dry here in East Texas. Hotter than blue blazes as well. Leaves are falling not due to the coming of cooler weather but due to lack of rain.

My question is a simple one. Should I withhold spraying for weeds until there is more activity in the plants. Should I wait and spray after we have had some rain to jumpstart plant activity? My primary target weeds are goatweed, horse nettle, and ragweed.

Thanks in advance guys.

Getting a little late in my opinion but better results are obtained by spraying when the target plant is actively growing. At this point if your grass is short I'd opt for shredding. Growth points are usually easy to take out when the weeds are tall and maturing as they are now and generally won't regrow. But then I would hate to shred off to much grass since we don't know if it will ever rain again.

We've had a pretty mild summer (as summers go) till a few weeks ago when it went from hot to sizzling...

 

[camju]

I don't know your sittuation but...When it is dry around here that's when I get out the cultivator and start workin the fields.I am organic so no spray.I find that I get a real good kill on weeds when I work the field when it don't rain for at least 3 weeks and work it twice.
Soil here is clay base so it don't blow easily.My dad can't do it because his sand will blow away and ends up being my topsoil.15 miles away.

 

[Pilothawk]

I would like to move into organic raising of my hay, but here the goatweed is so bad that any scratch on the surface will result in a line of new goatweed.

I should get another cutting off this hay. We will start to get rain sometime in September and the first frost will not happen until late October. The only tilling I will do until then is to attempt to level off the areas the hogs have torn up (and there are plenty of those).