Dry Side Dispatch • October 30th • Peter Dotray and Todd Baughman

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the not quite as dry as usual side of Texas today. You have me, Dusty Timmons here and I have Todd Baumanbach and Dr. Peter Dotray and we. Our guest we had on schedule. I want to tell you right off the bat, I really appreciate you guys coming in on such short notice. The guest that we had, his wife was pretty inconsiderate and decided to have a baby on Wednesday. And so he's being a good husband and you know, we appreciate him and hope they're. Hope for all the best for them and we will get Jeremy Ram back on the show here before too long. But Dr. Doate, it is great to see you again. It's been a long time. It's been a frighteningly long time. [00:00:45] Speaker B: I believe the last time I saw you was in Fort Worth. I think you were there for a convention and I was there for a board meeting and we happened to overlap for a day. And I remember going to the convention and seeing you and Andy and. And a bunch of other folks. [00:01:00] Speaker A: That would have been a twigga convention. And that's been a while since I've been to Texas Wine Grape Growers Association. Not talking jargon, but [00:01:07] Speaker B: yeah, [00:01:08] Speaker A: yeah, that was, that was a while back. It's. Yeah. When you were a professor, you know, teaching at Tech. When I was at Tech, I never took your weeds class. There was always in the ag department. There's a joke. There was two hard classes, Dot Tre's weed class and Bl. Allen Sowell's class. And so I took Bl. Allen Sowell's class. And I always said I found out why it was so. It was so hard is because him and Dirk grew up together. I mean, it's great. Now that's what [00:01:38] Speaker B: they say about you, Pete. [00:01:43] Speaker A: But to those of you that don't know who Dr. Dautre is, he's a weed specialist and has been for a. For quite some time. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Started my position in 1993. [00:01:57] Speaker A: 1993, [00:01:58] Speaker B: a joint appointment with Texas Tech and at that time Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and extension service. Now AgriLife Research and Extension. So similar split, similar focus than what I had 30 some years ago. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Yep. And a man who's forgotten more about weeds than everybody else in Texas knows, I think. But. Well, we got some rain. Thank God we got some more rain. I'm grateful for that. But with rain always come the weeds. And that's one of the things that I was out walking through the vineyard this last. Of course, we haven't had any cold enough to freeze Anything. And I have got, you know, purslane in this is one of my annoying weeds. It's not a purslane. Is kind of like, to me it's kind of like California fillery or red stem filler, I think in that it's annoyance to have in your vineyard, but it doesn't really do anything. And, and as a, I mean, honestly, as a quail guy, I'm a pretty big fan of red stem fillery because they eat that. But I noticed it was coming, coming on pretty good. You know, I've got cover crops that's jumping out of the ground. When you're looking at. I'm going to start with a question for you and we'll just kind of ramble across everywhere. I don't have my, I don't have anybody to keep me in check now. So it may go, we may go wild. Today [00:03:21] Speaker B: I warned him that it goes from, from weed control to the price of eggs in China. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Speaking of which, that actually reminds me of something that England is doing to help China. That's really pissing off their farmers. So. And I read that. I read. Anyway, we'll go back but when you're looking at like at the, what's growing right now, what kind of a mindset should a farmer have looking at a cotton crop for next year when he sees the weeds he has this year? I mean, that coming in this fall, is this going to be something that's going to cause more problems down the way and make it weedier in the, and have a more complex weed population to deal with? And how do you deal with something like that? [00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a great question. I would say on one hand, you know, late season rains are a good thing because that population that has now germinated and is growing will not be around next year. So, so some of, of that weed seed bank population has now been removed. If, if you notice, and I'm sure you have, I mean, some of these, some of these summer annual weeds that are coming out of the ground really late in the year, they're almost coming out of the ground with their reproductive structures already intact, ready to go. So I believe the weeds mindset or Palmer pigweed for sure. It's how many seed can I produce at this very late date? And we've done some of those studies and some of the numbers are kind of fascinating. Of course, it's not the 600,000 that typically you'll see from a female Palmer that comes up in May. There may be 20,000 from the ones that come up in August or 2000 in those that come up in September. And we've documented that some Palmer weeds that come up in November will produce just a handful of seeds. So I guess the good news is, again, those seeds have now produced a seedling and they won't cause problems for next year. But it'd be nice to get that first freeze to get rid of some of these before they truly produce viable seed that then is just added back to the population for next year, I guess. Last comment that I would say, per your question, I think the weeds that we're seeing now certainly is an indication of what we might see. So certain areas of the field that may have a diversity of weed species, we may be seeing those right now. So we can kind of be making appropriate plans next year to be selecting compounds that will be effective on that population of weed. [00:06:07] Speaker A: And that's one of the things that herbicide selection has gotten so much more complicated and at the same time easier than it was when I was growing up on the farm in the 80s and 90s, because you have a broad selection of herbicides you can use on it. But at the same time, you have cotton that's resistant to, you know, every time they put some. Put a gene in cotton, they don't take it out when they put the next one in. So you've got, you know, you buy, you know, GMO seed and you've got dicamba 2.4D. You know, potentially, you. Potentially, you would have dicamba 240 Roundup and glufosinate, you know, four different compounds you could put on it and spray it. And, you know, it's always, it's been my contention that one of the biggest problems we have with, you know, we have resistant Marestail. And what else do we have that's resistant [00:06:58] Speaker B: as far as the wind, [00:07:00] Speaker A: I'm sorry, glyphosate resistant. [00:07:02] Speaker B: Of course, you know, Palmer pigweed would be the biggest concern, I feel like, in this area. And there's reports of Johnson grass now developing, you know, Roundup resistance, [00:07:12] Speaker C: Marestail, Kochia. [00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much all the big ones we've got would be resistant, but it's been. [00:07:19] Speaker C: Then you have Russian thistle, which is not resistant. It's been tolerant from the get go. [00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's. Russian thistle's always been the one that when I, in the. My brief time with a chemical company, I used to say if you spray it when it's small enough to kill it, you don't have enough leaf area to get enough chemical into it to kill it. And if you wait till it's big enough to have enough leaf area, it's too big to kill. But one iv. I can. I was. I contended that the use, the declining use of yellow herbicides, which like prowl and. Or pendimethalin and trifuralin, really helped speed up some of the resistance we had. Because you only had one thing that we were controlling your weeds with. [00:07:59] Speaker B: So, I mean, great point. And I would say as we started to see weeds developing resistances to various herbicides that we use, I'm glad it happened when it happened because, you know, we still have those chemistries that you mentioned, the pendimethalins, the trifluralins. We still have a variety of the plant chemistries, Caprols, Cotterans, Diurans, which allowed us to kind of maybe refocus or some of those companies to make sure they did go through the registration process. So those chemistries are available for us to use. So, you know, resistant. The development of resistant weeds is unfortunate, but. But to some degree I'm glad it happened a little bit early because I feel like it has given us the opportunity today to think about a lot of different products that we still can use in our cotton to control many of our troublesome weeds. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that. That is very true. I mean, that's. You know, when I was with extension was. BT had just gone to Australia at that time and they had been. It was just as I was leaving. BT2 had just come in to the market and people don't know that BT is the. Is the gene they put in that makes the. I'm going to butcher this. Maybe I'll let one of you specialists explain BT what it is. [00:09:23] Speaker C: So BT was around for years as a foliar application for resistance, specifically budworms, but also bollworm. But when it was foliar applied, it didn't last very long on the leaf. The insect had to actually eat it. And it was pretty ineffective as a foliar. It was better than kind of the old nun statement. But basically they took that gene and inserted it in cotton so that it expresses that protein that the BT basically. And basically what happens is the worm eats the protein and then basically it affects its gut and it essentially starves to death. [00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:08] Speaker C: And so anyway, because it wasn't exposed to the environment, it went from, say, expecting 50% control to, like 100% control. Almost just amazing how much, how much it worked, how much it added. Probably not as big a deal out here, but I tell People that when I was at Vernon, we did a study with some of the original BT and in the non BT at that time, because of resistance, we also were dealing with boll weevils then too. So that was a whole different deal. But the non bt, the first year that we tested it at Mundy, Texas, we spent $120 an acre on the non BT versus the BT. [00:10:55] Speaker A: And that wasn't yesterday. [00:10:56] Speaker C: No. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Well, where I was going with that was when I was with them. They had an exchange program with a chemical company that was like. I worked for UAP Southwest, which was a division of ConAgra. And so they had a company that was similar to them in Australia, which. Well, they sent a bunch of their agronomists over here and they toured and they came out here for a while and we were talking about BT and what it had done, you know, because we were. At that time, you were talking about refuges, you were talking about how much you could plant. And they told me that, you know, that. I think in the course of a year in Australia, it was overwhelming. The number, the insect numbers were overwhelming. BT Cotton over there. And they said when they got BT, BT2 had just come over there and he said it was like night and day, but it would do. Because BT2 had two modes of action in that versus the one mode of action that you had, you know, you're talking about spraying it on. My dad was one of the. Was farming when organic was just getting started. And he had a circle like, we're gonna put this organic. And so I remember taking Dipel and you know, you'd grow the bait. You take a. You'd buy a jug of dipel and then you would make a. A growth medium and you'd pour the dial into it and you'd basically grow the. Grow it. And then you had this, this stuff that you'd put in there with garlic and fish oil. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever done. I mean, I have cleaned out septic tanks that were less foul than that. It was a terrible experience. It's like. It probably, honestly, looking back, it probably scarred me so bad. It's probably why I have such a visceral reaction to organic. So. But, you know, that, that having that. Those two modes of action in that, you know, improve the control of our budworms and bollworms and that stuff. And having multiple modes of action in like, you know, the number one fungicide I use in my vineyard, my personal favorite one that I guard jealously is pristine, which is 2, it's the group 14 and 8 or I can't remember. I can't remember. I just know it's two different. It's a boskalid, something else. So it's got two modes of action on it. It works fantastic. And with our pressure out, our typical disease pressure out here being so low, for the most part, I can get away with, with maybe two applications of fungicide a year on my vineyard where guys in the hill country are doing seven, eight, nine, you know, they're running through everything and you know, had a guy tell me what he was spray, what he was spraying. I'm like going, I looked at his list, I'm like, well that one, that one and that one that you sprayed back to back to back are all in the same classification. I said, that's the same. You might as well just spray that one three times, you know, but that, you know, anybody's trying to, it's like, well, I've got to use a different chemical. And it's not the chemical that matters, it's the classification, it's the what kind of chemical it is. You know, if you spray Folicure and then you go in and there's a, there's, let's see, Folicure is the great, is the, the cut, the peanut label of fungicide, but it also has an off label deal. I think I may be wrong because I don't use it in the, in the vineyard. But there's that same her, that same fungicide is labeled with a different name in grapes. And you know, it doesn't really give me much bang for the buck. I mean, even though it's inexpensive. So I'd rather, you know, use something that actually works really well. But you know, you could use that one under three different trade names. You know, it's like going and putting out, you know, going to weed control and using Fluming, Flumioxyzin, which goes under Chateau Venue, Flummy sx, Valor. You go through and there's just name after one, you know, like, you know, like I'm using a completely different herbicide. I'm used Chateau last time, but I'm using, you know, Valor this time. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be like rotating, you know, Treflan and Prowl. It'd be like attempting to rotate, you know, Duel and Warrant and Outlook. So, so, so I appreciate that message, even though I really wanted to give you a hard time. Dusty, you brought in a couple of weed guys and you're talking about insects and pathogens. Let's Bring it back. [00:15:01] Speaker A: Give me a second. We'll get back there. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Let's bring it back to the weed side. But the principle of rotating modes of action that you said, I just want to echo, I think that's critically important. It isn't just knowing the herbicide, but knowing what family it belongs into. So we have better awareness to try to be selecting other products, hopefully, that provide similar efficacy, but work to control the weed in a very different way. [00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, you know, the. Anytime you have a broad population, a very, A diverse population of plants out there, you're going to have some. You're always going to have plants that are controlled really well with herbicide A, not at all. But you know, in another plant, you know, or. And all levels in between, you know, you're going to have that. And so that, you know, knowing that you're going to have that, then you go out and you target something that's going to get, you know, okay, I'm going to have to put this in. And then I've got this. This. This one's not going to touch. You know, I was, I was on Instagram the other day and I was watching a farmer in southwest Colorado and he had a newly planted alfalfa fe field and he had volunteer rye coming up in it. And he was like, well, I got to do something, you know, Clint, because he said it was. It was pretty bad. I mean, it was. It was bad enough. I'm not going. Did your harvester not get set right? I mean, it was that bad. But then he started looking out there and he named off like four or five different plants that different weed species had out there in good populations. And he was like, so, you know, I've got to go with this and I've got to add this in to it. And then, you know, in the brown, the, the. It was not a GMO alfalfa, it was a conventional alfalfa. So that makes it even harder. [00:16:47] Speaker C: Yeah, which is a good point. Kind of a couple of things it's, to me around this conversation, the first one being, which is also when you think about diverse weed populations, to me, out here and through the rolling plains, that was really amazing about Roundup was. And part of this I ran into. Because I ran into a field up at Abernathy this year that had Venus Mallow in it. I hadn't seen Venus Mallow in 10 plus years. And all of those weeds, Devil's Claw, those things that Roundup just almost eliminated as a problem in our fields that, you know, Before Roundup Ready, all of those weeds, you know, even silverleaf nightshade is hard to find in a field anymore. I worked on that weed more than pigweed when I first came to Vernon. So that's the first thing is how amazing that technology was. Even though we're upset that it won't kill a pigweed anymore. It was, you know, it was an amazing technology that took care of a lot of other weed problems for us that sometimes I think we forget how beneficial that was to the system. The second thing I was thinking about, and back to your fungicide point was, and Pete can relate to this. When Roundup Ready first came out and a lot of this technology, the argument was we won't see a problem with resistance because we don't have multiple populations within a year. That's one of the big things with insects and fungicides. [00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:20] Speaker C: That you really. And, and for the guys, especially growing peanuts or grapes that you have to be cognizant of, you know, you may get multiple opportunities for that resistance to develop in one season where it's one season primarily for weed, which is why we thought would not be an issue. Obviously that proved to be wrong. And so I'll let you go from there. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I remember too, back then the thought of nothing else is needed in the system. Roundup is gonna get em. So there really is no more need for the residual, the yellow or the white. And yeah, and the fact that that herbicide glyphosate discovered in the 70s, first used maybe late 70s, early 80s, we hadn't seen any resistance. So the chemistry was already pretty old, had not seen resistance. But of course [00:19:16] Speaker A: it was also really, really expensive in the 80s. [00:19:20] Speaker B: That's right, it was available, but folks weren't using it to control annual weeds. They were used using it only on those really difficult [00:19:27] Speaker A: perennial [00:19:27] Speaker B: weeds. Yeah, but taking an old chemistry and using it in a very different way, frequently using it and no residuals in the system. And then of course we are where we are. But I think you bring up a great point, Todd. I too remember first starting my job having trials with Venice mallow Trials, mint weed trials, cucklebur, lakeweed or woolly bursage. You mentioned whiteweed, silverleaf. And a lot of those weeds really kind of went. And now if we're pulling back on the glyphosate, I think we are starting to see, at least on the perennial side, some of those populations kind of coming back, they're not resistant. But if we're not using that effective chemistry anymore, that also picks up those weeds then we probably should expect some of them are going to start making a comeback. [00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah, and I mean it's, the more, the more diverse your weed population is, the more diverse your control methods need to be. And you know it was really interesting this like in the last two years I've seen people literally digging their old 885 John Deere 885 field cultivators out of sand humps and hooking them back up and running them again. And they're going in and just buying it clean. You know, now they've, it's, it's really an interesting thing. And you've also got some people that are experimenting with wider row spacing which gives you more weed potential because you have less bare, less coverage shade coverage. So you don't have that, you know, if you have the 30 inch row and you get it up and it laps or you know, touches in the middle, it cuts out, you got understory underneath there that can't get any sunlight. Well your weeds are going to germinate less, you know and it's a, it's a weed, it's a very good weed control tactic in there. And you, we see the same thing in a vineyard. As a vineyard is young, you have a lot more weeds you have to battle than when it's older. And when it's older that area under, particularly underneath it and on the northern side of an east west row you have wet let have fewer weeds in that area because you just, it doesn't get any sun, that part doesn't get any sun. And if you grow it depending on your training method, you know you've got a sprawl where it makes an umbrella on there. You really don't get any, any light underneath it. And it can be, you know, one pre emergent application works pretty well, you know, can get you most way through the season. Whereas if you've got a younger one, you're looking at at least two pre emergent applications and a con and probably two contacts in intermixed in between them to keep it clean in there. But you know, as people are going to watch, like I talked to a gentleman the other day that had been experimenting with 80 inch rows, you know, one in, one out and on his dry land. And from a yield standpoint it was phenomenal. The number, the yield numbers he was getting was, I was like going are you sure your math is right on that? Because he's like man, I'm making, he said I'm making a belt of the land acre on this stuff on dry land. And he said my neighbor next door that's on you know that solid 40s is making you know he made a third of a bail and I made a bail on and you know you look at he but of course about me had it but he said was unfortunately I'm organic so it's very difficult to control weeds in that space. But when you have that water row spacing it really opens up how you can put down and what you can put down in there too in that stuff. What is there any kind of new chemistries on the horizon or is that because for the last, probably for the last while there's been some re establishment of some older, some bringing back some older, some reformulations of some old stuff but there hasn't been anything really really new that I'm aware of. But I haven't been in the cotton game for a long time. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah great question and Todd, you can correct me. I know FMC has come out with a new chemistry for use in rice and there may be opportunities for the production systems to expand but I think dusty what you said is still kind of where we are. The germ plasms are changing. Were able to use other chemistries that maybe we used in corn before but couldn't use them in cotton. Now developing cotton to have the ability to withstand those older chemistries and I'm referring to or at least I'm thinking of BASF's accent Flex Cotton system where an opportunity to use a very unique chemistry for cotton but it's not not a new active ingredient. The isoxyl flutol piece which is balance or balance flex and then the topramazone piece which is Armezan in corn. So we likely will see those opportunities kind of like what we saw with the 240s and the Dicambies and the liberties and roundups. And one thing I have to say, you forgot about BXN when you made your comment earlier and you said that those traits are still within the germ plasm. That would probably be the one exception because you know the BXN that came out really the first transgenic herbicide in cotton didn't last very long because that little roundup ready technology came shortly thereafter. And you know, as we continue to see stack technologies in our cotton which I'm going to say is a very good thing because it gives us additional opportunities to manage weeds. The downside is from a volunteer standpoint, per your point now we need to be well aware of what was planted last year because likely those herbicides aren't going to be effective at controlling those volunteers. In my mind, in some of the work I did this past year, not just, you know, volunteer cotton and cotton, but volunteer cotton in peanut was some of the most, I feel like problematic weeds that we had to deal with. [00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Because that's one thing that the general person, the definition of a weed that a grower uses and the definition of a weed that a gardener is going to use is going to be. Might be a little bit different. But any plant that's grown out of place. And so, you know, I have nightmares of having volunteer cotton and the only thing we can use to kill it with is tordon, you know. [00:25:54] Speaker C: No, no. And that's a great point. And back kind of like. And I've said this even, even from a talking about herbicide modes of action and stuff now because. And I'll use the Accent Flex that has glufosinate, glyphosate, dicamba and isoxaflutol. So you've got a growth regulator, you know, plus the hppd. So even if you rotate to something like sorghum or corn. [00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah. You're still not getting [00:26:23] Speaker C: 90% of your products that you would use in those two crops will not kill the volunteer cotton. So even rotation is not necessarily the answer. Which used to be, oh, just rotate crops [00:26:35] Speaker A: and you'll kill. Yeah. I mean, because I just go put, you know, plant penis behind it, put pursuit on it and you don't have to worry about your cotton, you know, but holy cow. I mean it's it that, you know, the amount of planning that a farmer has to do to stay ahead of the game now, I mean not just, you know, from the financial side of it just being ridiculously expensive and crops being insanely cheap is, you know, the chemistry side of it is, is incredible. You know, and that's, you know, it's interesting to watch something. You know, it's a lot of the people I thought that I'll follow on Instagram or something like that are farmers and stuff because they're running 1.2 million dollar tractors. I get to run it vicariously with them and I don't ever have to clean our throat and I don't ever have to blow out a machine, you know, and I don't ever have to be up at 2am running when it's dry and they've got a rain coming in. You know, I don't have to do any of that stuff and [00:27:24] Speaker C: don't have to write that check [00:27:25] Speaker A: at the end of the year. Yeah, but watching them and you know, of course a lot of it's because they're making content and they're trying to figure out what to make content for. But it's helped. I think that the side benefit of that is that they're thinking further ahead. And a farmer, you know, used to you had to think a season ahead, okay, what am I doing this season now? And then it was a year and now you better be thinking like multiple years in advance and following not only the market trends but, but the chemistry that's this available. The weeds that you have. And you know, when I cut my teeth as an independent crop consultant, you know, when BT hit everybody's like, oh, we don't have to worry about checking our cotton for nothing. You almost need a cotton consultant to not even look at your plants. He needs to walk through your vineyard and tell you what your weeds are and how and work on building a plan on how are you going to handle your weed complex going forward. Because you know when that, when I was farming, the big one was purple. Purple night shade, not shade at night. Nut grass. Good Lord have mercy. I'm sorry. You would think I'd been drinking, I swear. It's just sweet tea, I promise. But you know, purple nut sage was just a nightmare for us. And we actually had it have a vineyard that's got yellow nut sedge on it. And it's in, it's part, it's a part of, part of it does. It's a. Basically a lake bottom. It's an old buffalo wallow is what it actually is. And so it's like at the crest of a hill. But this area that covers it spans about an acre and a half. And it's just a little, it's just a depression in there, but it catches all the rainfall in that thing. And so when they planted the, planted those grapes, it was back in one of those springs that it rained a lot. I mean a whole lot. And so they planted them and we ran our drip tape out like we normally did. And then when we went to build trellis, there was still water standing in there. And as far as I know, it's the only vineyard in the entire state of Texas that has never been artificially watered because we cut the drip tape outside of the, outside of that low area and then just left it alone. And then we went in with a different training system and head trained them, which means that there's no wire in there. There's just a t Post at it. You train it up, you tie it to it and then you just kind of let it sprawl. Oh, wow. And for people on the radio that can't see me, I'm waving and so. But that vineyard is those, Those grapes are 12, 12 to 13th leaf probably right now. And it's never been. It's never been irrigated and it's still got 94% or so, like last time I counted it, of the, of the original planting is still there. It's still alive. But it has almost a perfect mat of yellow nutsedge underneath that vineyard. And it never gets very big. You know, like when you irrigate that stuff, it, it looks like you could graze it. It's so amazing. I mean it's, it's incredible. But it's, but it's solid and we can't, you know, we're like, man, we're not going to kill it. And it's not. It wasn't bothering anything. All it did was suppress every other weed out there. So you'd have to. Because. Because of the training system we had, it's very hard to control weeds the way we normally do because you can't. We have a piece of equipment that'll go on each side of the road with a hood underneath it and you spray and you can post direct contact and the pre emergent herbicide down underneath it. Well, you can't really do that with this training system because the vines will tip or, you know, they just. The way the canes grow. And so you'll have. We're pat. We constantly on like a third of. Or like two thirds of it. We, we constantly battle kosher pigweed. You know, you name it, we've got it. White weeds, silver leaf nightshade, which. It was the same thing, Johnson grass. We got all this stuff and so we, you know, we have to hoe it and we have to clean it up. That way you run a shredder through it and whatever. And then we've got a third of it. This, that's all it's got, is yellow nut sage. And there's not another weed. Everybody comes up like, what did you spray there? I was like, nothing. It's good. And so it's kind of funny because we've always, you know, in growing up, when we had nuts, as we wouldn't plow through it, you know, you didn't want to plow through it. You didn't want to drag it through it. You know, you want to lift up and go over it and so we'd plow that separately. Like, okay, let's make sure we plow our sweet plow through that and spread that. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Do you ever use a flame cultivator in your vineyard? [00:31:46] Speaker A: I have not. I know people that have and it works pretty well. But we can't. Our drip is above ground and so flames and plastic pipe don't really work. [00:31:57] Speaker B: That [00:31:57] Speaker A: would be. It would be ineffective but expensive application of. Yes, but yeah, no, it's. I'm actually getting ready to pull out some old vines and do some replanting. I actually thought about raising my drip line, which is about a, that's about a foot now, and raising my cord on up higher so that I could raise that drip line to like 2 foot so that I could use a flame cultivator underneath that thing. Because, man, it works good. And [00:32:25] Speaker B: I'm dating myself. And maybe you remember also Bill Leipzig out at the experiment station and he had a flame cultivator and he'd use it in the vineyard and it seemed like it worked pretty well. Of course it required, you know, a series of applications because a lot of those perennials were just suppressed and set back and they regrew. But I feel like he was able to, you know, manage the weeds pretty well, primarily using a flamer. [00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, let's change this. I mean, we're not going to change the subject. We're just going to go off on a different tangent here. We talked about a little bit about rotational crops, you know, how we rotate stuff. Is there, is there any upside, I guess would be to looking at it like if you have a place that's really weedy and saying, okay, let's say you've got a circle, it's 120 acres and you've got a 10 acre block in it that's got a really bad weed problem and it's a lot of resistance in it. Would there be a benefit to that to say, hey, we're going to pull that 10 acre block out and we're just going to disk it every couple, every week or two, just go back to steel. Is that one way that you could maybe get rid of some of that, those harder to kill weeds? [00:33:34] Speaker B: So your comment reminds me of a trial that was done up in Amarillo and the name right now just escapes me, but it'll come to me where they had field bind weed and they demonstrated. Alan Wiese, thank you so much. I'm sorry, Alan, that I would have remembered two [00:33:54] Speaker C: Minnesota weed signage. [00:33:57] Speaker B: And I appreciate you mentioning that. [00:33:58] Speaker C: You should have remembered Alan's [00:34:00] Speaker B: Name he was a good old golden gopher as well. But Alan demonstrated that you could take, you know, some land out of production and till it frequently within a season. And over the course of about 10 years he was able to bring his bindweed populations down to a very low manageable level. And I actually use that discussion in the classroom and talk about, at least in theory with these weeds that have a tremendous below ground reproductive system that's really, it's like a bank and the money is carbohydrates. And if you force those to continuously withdraw or use carbohydrates by sending up another shoot and eventually would transition into sending carbohydrates below ground. But every time setting them back with whether it be tillage or burn down chemistries or bringing in goats or whatever, in theory you can win the game. But it may be 10 or 15 or 20 years down the road before you starve them enough. So back to your question. I think that's a good point. Yes, you can take small areas out, should still be able to be somewhat profitable. But we can't take full circles out of production until them multiple times for 10 years. [00:35:27] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:35:28] Speaker C: yeah. And I think the other point to that is, and back to. I think Alan's deal is that he talks about is frequent if, you know, because essentially if you miss one of those timings and we even talk about this with herbicides, with these, you know, if you miss one of those timings, you're essentially going back to point zero. [00:35:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it would, well, it's, you know, not to go back to grapes too much. But you know, a lot of the high pressure fungal areas spray on the calendar and you're basically going to have to cultivate on the calendar. You're like, okay, every Monday, first thing that you do, you finish your cup of coffee, you, you know, climb on the, you know, the tractor and you go disc it or whatever. And that's, I mean, yeah, that would. I did not realize the time and of course isn't buying we don't the seeds like won't they like last for like. They're like the closest thing to immortality on the [00:36:16] Speaker B: planet. So I like to use that example as well. Of course, you know, the Beale study, which was done in the late 1800s and you know, buried seed and they pull them out every five years and eventually every 10 years and they looked at which ones were viable over time. I think a primrose and wormwood maybe kind of won that contest and you know, 90 years. But I think field bindweed was you know, 40, 50, 60 years worth of viability. And we don't normally worry about the seed of field bindweed, but that does, you know, decisions that are made today affecting production 60 years from now. That's pretty significant. [00:36:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:54] Speaker B: You know, the good news that we discovered more recently as we did similar studies looking at Palmer pigweed, thankfully pigweed seed viability does not last very long. Now problem is there's just so much millions and millions of seed, but I do feel like over a relatively short period of time, effective management over about three or four years, I think you'll see significant progress. But to Todd's point, you kind of let your guard down and you're not timely with your applications in one year, you can really quickly go back to a mess. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you really can. It's one of the things that I, you know, it's in, in my vineyard system, I don't use a summer, a winter cover crop and you know, basically. But my theory is if we get any moisture in the winter, it needs to go into the ground. I need to keep in the dirt. And so last year on part of our vineyard, I tried an experiment. I was like, you know what, August, we're not going to plow this thing. And so I didn't plow it after the 1st of August. I put it right before then. So then when I say plow, we use a, we use sweet plows. I've got a sweet plow that, you know, we used to use a disc and disc it, but it just left it uneven and so. And I can run, I've plowed it enough with my sweet plow. I can run about 7, 8 miles an hour in the vineyard. You can cover some country at 10 foot, I mean, because we only get 10 foot swaths, all you got. And so that's a whole lot better than the three and a half to four miles an hour I had to run that disc. And so we book it through across it. But I let my, my last flush of pigweeds just grow knowing that with a day link shortened, they weren't going to get big and tall. The biggest one I had was about knee to knee high. It was one that just the plowed the, the steel missed it. And that was all I could figure because everything else was about, was about boot top, about 12 inches, 10 to 12 inches. So had lots of weeds out there. But then I went back in this year and I put the full rate of treflan down, which in the vineyard is I believe, two quarts. And I didn't have any weeds in it. But what I did have is that one snow that we got last year. All that snow stayed in my vineyard. It didn't blow out, it didn't go anywhere. It stayed in there. I had good soil moisture for way longer than I should have with no more rain than I had in there. And because of that, but what I've switched to is because I still am a believer in, in cover crop. In a cover crop. I really feel like, you know, we spent 20 years growing grapes in a monoculture and I'm the older I've gotten, the less pleased with the monoculture I've become. Like, you've got to put something else out there. You've got to rotate. And so I planted the cow peas in three rows in a, I've got three rows in 15 inches in the middle of my vineyard. And so I can drop the shanks out of my sweet plow and I can plow the sides of it and I can still use my under vine herbicides to keep it clean. But I get something that's fixing nitrogen and I dug them up and it was actually fixing nitrogen and it also, oddly enough, it never drought stressed. I don't know how I got lucky, but I mean, and they're, you know, the biggest problem I've got now is that most of my peas are still green and they're the height of the cordon, they're about 30 inches tall, you know. And it was kind of funny when I told it. My brother told Andy about doing this. He's like, man, so if you let those go to seed, you're never going to get rid of them. I'm not going, dude. I'm saying glufosinate and Lumi and I said I can kill, I can kill a pee. I'm not worried about that. But, but when I looked at, as I started looking at different options for a cover crop, one of my number one concerns is weed control within that because I don't want to plant cow peas and have a bunch of pigweed out there. And so, you know, so that worked out pretty well because I didn't put, you know where I put my pigweed, my, my pigweed, my cow peas down. I use treflan on it, but I use the lower, a low enough rate that they would come up. And it came up beautifully, suppressed my weeds very well. It would have done better if I would have double incorporated my treflam and but it was just a little 2 acre experiment plot and I'm like, what we're going to spend about 30 minutes on this and then we're going to go to something else, you know. And so but looking at that, then I started looking at different crops I could plant and what I could use. And I realized real quickly that a lot of the high residue crops that I could theoretically put out there, I can't use the pre emergence that are labeled for it because they're not labeled for grapes. And so that. But you know, so then they're not going, oh man, now I got to try to figure out what to do on this and what can I do on that because you know, I would love to grow, honestly I'd love to grow grain, sorghum, because it's out there in the middle of my drip line is underneath my vine row. So. And it's a very heavy, it's a very much a sand. I mean it is a, it is a beach out there. And so when I water with that drip, it does not go very wide. I mean the surface of the surface I'll get wet is probably maybe 18 inches wide if I've got a good profile underneath it. And so I'm like going where my roots are growing. They're growing underneath what my cover crop is going to be. So that's utilizing water that my grapes aren't going to use anyway. That's my thought anyway on that stuff. But trying to pick the, the COVID crop with the herbicide that you can use to it to maintain your weed control so your weed pressure doesn't go insane is just. I mean it's, it's the worst Jenga puzzle ever. I mean it's terrible. [00:42:26] Speaker C: That's a great point because I ran into this years ago. I forgot what they called it. It was a rape mustard seed of some sort. And a guy had convinced me that I needed. I was doing some cover crop work primarily with wheat and rye. And he convinced me that I needed to look at this rape. And he had all these reasons that it was gonna, it was gonna. Of course I don't know how it was gonna reach further than cotton and bring up nitrogen, but that was the theory anyway. But the, the problem we ended up with, and I tell people about this and kind of a warning is that spring because we got very little growth. It was one of those dry, cold winters. And so waiting for that rape to get enough growth by the time we could finally kill it, the marestail were too big. [00:43:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:14] Speaker C: And. And we ended up, you know, luckily that was an experiment and so labor was not as big an issue. But we ended up having to hoe that Marestail. So, you know, if that had been five hundred or a thousand acres. [00:43:27] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:43:27] Speaker C: that would have been miserable because, you know, and with Maristale and Pete can talk about this, it seems like if you spray it and don't kill it, it's like Freddie from Friday at 13 from then on. [00:43:42] Speaker B: So. So to your point, just if you had made that timely application, then you would effectively the stand of the rape. So you had to wait. And then by waiting, then the mare's tail was just too big for it to be controlled by a lot of our chemistries. [00:43:59] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I mean, in that particular field, because we always just went out there in fry in February and put out a shot of either 2, 4D or dicamba in our wheat or rye cover crop. We didn't even realize Marestail was going to be an issue. And then it was an issue. [00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the. I mean, the sneaky weeds, the weeds that you don't realize are gonna be a problem are the ones that can really get up on and cause all sorts of problems. You know, if you're out there and you've got, you know, what's the average farmer in on the high plains now? 5,000 acres, 7,000 acres, something like that. You get one circle that's kind of off in the. You know, there's always. In an operation outside, there's always one circle that you're. It's always called the oh, crap circle. It's like, oh, crap, I forgot about that one again. You know, in that circle, you know, let's just say that you start off with just a little bit. Just a few bind weed, you know, few bound weed becomes a lot of bound weed becomes a big problem in a hurry on something like that. And when you're using, you know, to your point earlier, you know, when you're using rotation and you're. You can't rotate out of the weed problem anymore. And so you've got to, you know, your whole. All of your chemistry is. It's all available to you all time. And so you've got to be able to use that and utilize that. And not only that, you've got to be able to get it. And that's one. That's a problem that I think that a lot of people don't understand is that just because something's labeled doesn't mean you can get it. I've run into a couple, at least not when you need it. And so, you know, if you need Something like, I've got one thing I was looking for. I've already talked to the. To the chemical company three months ago because I was going to. I'm probably going to use it in six months, you know. And so I'm like, let's start finding it now. When you let me know when you get it in. I'll get it in my barn. [00:45:45] Speaker B: And way to not mention that trade name on the air because then, you know, you'd have that competition. So good luck getting that and putting in the barn so you'll have it when you need it. [00:45:56] Speaker C: Great point. [00:45:58] Speaker A: Well, I can be discreet sometimes, just not very often. Don't tell me a secret. But you know, it's. As weed control has gotten more. More complex and more difficult, are we seeing new species of weeds come in or is it still kind of the same mix we had? You know, nutsedge went wild with peanuts. You know, you could always tell who grew peanuts because the nutsedge that was out there and then. But we haven't really had a lot. We don't have a lot of crops that are jumping the. The region. You know, we're not. We're still not growing soybeans. You know, we're still. I mean that some people grow corn, but that's pretty much pretty closely. And it's a unique seed so they can make sure you're noxious weeds and. But if there's not, you know, the first thought I have is a crop like war. You know, that was one that came in shoot 20 years ago or so and that was going to be the next dry land crop, you know, until it wasn't. Which, you know, after about a week and a half it by knew that ain't gonna work. But something like that that comes in and you wind up and maybe the cleaning process was not as good or they couldn't get it as clean. Is there new weeds that are coming in that you're seeing show up in fields now? [00:47:14] Speaker B: So I guess I'm. I really can't give you a specific, you know. Yes, here's a weed. You know, it's always possible. And as we change even our production systems with the same crop as maybe we are shifting more towards, you know, cover and reduced tillage of. We saw that a little bit of a shift in the types of weeds in that new system. Always looking for those new weeds or encouraging growers and consultants to be looking for the weed that suddenly isn't responding the same to the chemistries or the weeds that just. It looks a little bit different. So always a possibility, but I can't right now cite examples. Funny, you mentioned guar and I remember working with guar too. Talk about a plant that has pretty good viability in the soil with that hard seed. It came up for quite a while. [00:48:12] Speaker A: I think you could walk by a field of that with a Roundup jug open and kill it, though it was pretty susceptible to it. [00:48:19] Speaker B: You know, Palmer, still our most common and now is classified as the most troublesome weed in cotton production. And we talked about a few other weeds that maybe kind of went away a little bit to some degree. But as we shift, you know, how we're managing weeds, there's always possibilities of some of those coming back. [00:48:38] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:48:39] Speaker C: no, and tell me if I'm wrong, but you know, we've talked a lot about Roundup and what all it did. But one of the problem weeds that we used to have a little bit more were some of the morning glory species. And obviously the Dicambin 24D has pretty much taken because I don't get those calls like I used to. [00:48:57] Speaker B: And I think that's a great point. I kind of thought of that earlier when we had this discussion that was. And folks maybe thought it was resistant to glyphosate. No, it's just inherently tough and tolerant and yes, that was one of the more troublesome weeds at that time. But I too, Todd, don't hear a whole lot of folks. You know, I see morning glory and it can be real troublesome if you're not timely. But I feel like the current, you know, Dicam 204Ds have been pretty effective on that particular. [00:49:26] Speaker A: They really have been. That's, I mean, that's, you know, for, and you know, for all the trouble that I have with them in the vineyard and stuff and their mobility in the air and stuff, what they have done for agriculture across the country, but specifically on the south Plains, cannot be discounted. I mean, it, it is amazing how clean some of these fields are now. And you know, I know that there's a big, you know, there's a big push to regenerative. Regenerative agriculture and everything. But the one thing that cannot be discounted is that the, the less competition that your primary crop has, the better that primary crops going to do. I mean, that's just the way it is. I mean, it doesn't, you know, you can say whatever you want to say about anything else that's fact. I mean, that's just. Is, you know, if you have a weedy field of corn and a clean Field of corn, the clean field. Corn is going to do better, all other things being equal on it. And you know, I'm not, you know, I'm for. We're fortunate that we live, we don't live in, in Iowa where they have a lot more concerns about runoff and shallow water table, you know, but of course they also have, you know, that thing called rain. This so nice. You know, we go out and dance in it and get, then celebrate it and get all excited about it. They're like, ah, crap again. I was talking to, I was, I was looking at another Instagram page of a farmer in Iowa and he's like, yeah, the problem we had, he was. No, it was, it was a consultant. She was out and she was checking a corn plot and she was, the camera was off in the distance and this corn, she's like, I'm out here going, checking my corn plot. You know, we got a little bit of rain. So now I'm here and she's coming back. She's on a stand up paddle board and the top of corn sticking out about 6 inches on top of the water. She's paddling. I'm like, I have never. And you know, she had to do it just, just for an Instagram post. But that's just, that was just hilarious that you'd have that, you know, that situation. You know, I mean, it's been a long time since we've had a lot of water in our low spots. [00:51:28] Speaker C: I don't think any of us can shoot that same Instagram post if we wanted to. Even right now. [00:51:33] Speaker A: If I stood up on a paddle board and most of my stuff, it'd be on the ground. That may be the only way I could stand up on one. But the only good thing about it is fat floats, so at least I wouldn't drown. But as you go in and you look at what's, you know, it's kind of one of those what's old has become. What's old become new again. We talked about the chemistry, we talked about the weeds coming back into this thing, you know, and as what we're seeing now is the, you know, the cattle market being as big as it is and the growth of the cattle industry out here and, and that's one of the things that I see where I travel and I travel. I mean I have a loop that I go, I mean I travel one road down, but I've seen more five, five strand barbed wire fence built in the last two years than in the previous 50 that I lived out here. And when you build a five strand barbed wire fence, you're it's staying there for a while. It's staying there until it becomes a sand hump is what it's going to wind up is what it'll you know if they quit farming it and quit the scent that's going to be there and it's going to be a sand hump and somebody 75 years from now dig it out and say oh look at this old, this you know, old barbed wire I found. Wow, this is amazing. But when you see a lot you know more as more grasses grow going because I know that there's on I'm watching the fields I go by that a guy purchased and he built a, a feedlot kind of on the feeds but feed box for his cattle on it planted hay grazer on it this this year. And my feeling is based upon what the guy's done and what he did. You know, this winter it's going to get drilled into into native grass or into grass. Not necessarily native grass. I hope it's native grass. So if you're out here and you're and you're listening and you are putting in grass go native grass [00:53:21] Speaker C: for us quail hunters out there. Make sure and choose your grass species based on [00:53:26] Speaker A: Bamert's got a really good one. But when that as that goes in and also with the farm bill has got provisions for updating the CRP program. I don't know that like Terry county is what is that's kind of where I hang out in there. And from all numbers that I can find and I've, I've got two different numbers from two different government websites they don't match. So I don't know if the government even knows exactly how many acres of CRPs in Terry county, but it's roughly 20% which would be the cap of it. And I don't know if the cap expands on it. I know they're updating some of the pricing structure on it but as they go in plant some stuff and it's and you've got things like of course you got little blue stem will be typically in one of those things you'll have grama either side oats or blue. But then you'll probably if, if, if it holds through what the last one did. You're gonna have to put some forbs in that thing too which Forbes is a fancy word for weed and I'm a big fan of Forbes but I call them weeds when they're in in underneath my vine rose that's just the way. And I love quail, and it's no doubt about that. But, you know, you've got some of those weeds that are going to come in that could become possible, could possibly become an issue in the. In the future, too. [00:54:47] Speaker C: Well, and the big deal kind of. Kind of rolling on that Forbes deal is. And I again, being an old quail hunter myself, growing up in southwest Oklahoma, I agree with you. The other thing that they add to is the complication of keeping those other weeds out of there, like broomweed, like ragweed, because basically, if you take them out, those forbs are going with them. [00:55:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:09] Speaker C: You know, you mentioned the torn on or like the raison P. It's not selective to those for. And so that's one thing that I've really struggled with with these mixes. While there's some definite benefits from them, how to make them work with that overall program. And especially if your objective, you know, it's one thing if your objective is, say, for wildlife habitat. [00:55:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:36] Speaker C: Maybe letting some of those weeds go is not as big a deal, but if your deal is putting pounds on the hoof. [00:55:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:43] Speaker C: You know, every one of those ragweeds is taken away from that grass or even that for. And even getting the establishment, you know, they can affect. Because [00:55:51] Speaker A: I mean. Well, I mean, if you go in and you put, you know, yellow white clover Perry vetch or something like that as your forbs in there, you know, those are probably not going to be the best thing to have for your cattle grazing. I don't know how that affects it. I just know that it would make. I would. Unless somebody. Unless somebody knows about cows. Tell me something. I wouldn't want to turn cows out on a bunch of hairy vetch or not hairy vetch, but yellow white clover. I mean, sweet clover like that, it could cause problems somewhere else. But, you know, it's like how many. How many pounds or acres of Illinois bundle flower went in with the last round of it. And have you ever seen an Illinois bundle flower alive in the last five years south of. [00:56:30] Speaker B: Yeah, last five. I don't think so, no. [00:56:32] Speaker C: Well, of course, I used to have guys tell me, you know, they'd put that mix in a drill and basically whichever was the heaviest seed would filter to the bottom of that drill. And so you'd have, say, 100 yards of bundle flower, and then [00:56:47] Speaker A: that was it. [00:56:48] Speaker C: That was the last of that. [00:56:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, my personal favorite was when you'd go in there and do that, and then the weeds would come up and they would say, you have to spray it. And they'd spray it with a glean or alli. And I'm like, you just killed every broadleaf out there. It's great for your grass. But you wind up with just the monoculture of grass. But there's, you know, there's. And that's another thing that we're going to be looking at that I feel like as weed problems. It's not. It's going to go from a row crop weed problem to a pasture weed problem. You know, you could be looking at, hey, you know, we've got a spray. We've got a problem with. With mesquite. You know, I've got. I've have a friend who's got a small place that was planted in grasses, a beautiful grass. He ran cows on it and he went through one year. And I'm like, hey, you got some mesquites out there. This has been three years ago. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I do. And the next thing I know, I came by and he'd shredded it and oh my God, I thought he had mesquites before then because, you know, we shredded it and they all came up from the crown and that place is, you know, it went In three years, it's gone from like, you know, 5% mesquite to 35% mesquite. And you're not going. Well, that's going to be, you know, I'm like looking at it thinking, that's a perfect amount of COVID right there. That's perfect right there. It's just. But I mean, if you want it, if you're going to be running cattle on it, you're going to be facing the same thing that they have. They occur off the. Off the cap where you've got big fields that got a lot of mesquite in them. And then you're looking at mechanical removal or chemical removal, [00:58:21] Speaker C: but no. And I'm even thinking they're. Which. I've kind of had two different thoughts. One was like, if you're going say from an old cotton field, that initial establishment again, all the competition from pigweed. [00:58:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:33] Speaker C: That, you know, how are you going to deal with that? But then the other thing I was thinking about, if you're the neighboring cotton farmer and they don't take care of thistle and kosher and marestail, did they suddenly become a problem? You know, and so that whole thought process, you know, [00:58:50] Speaker A: is going to be [00:58:50] Speaker C: as part of that kind of overall weed management. I know that Pete talks a lot [00:58:55] Speaker A: and I. Man, I had something I was going to ask. Oh, I was going to ask you about salt cedars was the next thing I was going to ask you because that's something that I'm going to have to deal with. [00:59:04] Speaker B: You look at Todd when you want to talk about salt cedar. [00:59:10] Speaker C: I'm definitely not a salt cedar expert by any stretch of the imagination, but my understanding is there is a product that is extremely efficacious on salt cedar. And if I'm correct, my understanding is that product is arsenal. [00:59:26] Speaker A: Really? [00:59:27] Speaker C: Yes. [00:59:27] Speaker A: I'll be darn. [00:59:28] Speaker C: Yeah, there was some salt cedar programs off the cap and I think that was one of the big management deals was that now you have to be careful with it because it's extremely mobile and extremely toxic to other plants, including trees. [00:59:45] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:59:46] Speaker C: so. So it's kind of. I think it's got to be a selective program. But I believe [00:59:50] Speaker B: isn't there biological control options for salt cedar as [00:59:53] Speaker A: well? The patch that I've got, I could. I swear I had. And we had Dwayne Lucia from the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service on a couple of weeks ago and I asked him about it and he said, yeah, you probably had the beetles that they released hit it. Because in. Because I got. I had 6 inches of rain and within a month every salt cedar was brown and bear. And I'm like, what happened here? You know, and my. My rule of thumb is I don't have a lot of acres. And so when the quail are nesting, I don't go out where the quail are. And so I look at it from. And I spend a lot of time walking with my head down, looking at the. At the mix of. I keep missing my hunting buddies always like, dude, you got to look up. And I'm like going, well, I'm looking at the weeds. But it was. He. There is some biologicals that there's some beetles that goes in. [01:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. [01:00:45] Speaker A: But I did notice that it did not do a good job of killing them because on the last rains I've had probably 85% what's out there has green back up again. But it may be one of those things that just. It slows it down enough and it at least slows the spread of it. [01:01:00] Speaker B: They may opportunities to re. Inoculate the area with. With more beetles and hopefully that suppression could continue for a longer time. [01:01:09] Speaker A: Every time I talk, every time I hear anybody talk about introducing anything though, I think of kudzu [01:01:15] Speaker C: or Johnson grass. [01:01:19] Speaker A: But I was. I was watching a guy a YouTube video of a guy that's in. In the southeast and he has got a herd of goats and he basically rents his goats out to go and clean up kudzu fields. And the videos of what goats will do to kudzu is mind numbing. I mean it is incredible to go through this place. It's just like completely choked that you couldn't possibly get through to just bare ground in the course of a remarkably small length of time for such a small animal. [01:01:49] Speaker B: And is kudzu the preferred vegetation for them to feed on or is it just because that's all [01:01:54] Speaker A: those out. They're goats and they'll it. But I mean they not. Not a lot of livestock can feed on kudzu from what I understand. Not. It's not a lot of wildlife don't like it and like deer are of course they're browsers and they're not gonna. But sheep I don't think get into it. Cows won't graze it I don't believe. But goats just don't care. I mean it's green. They're like, oh, food. You know, I saw one of the. One of his videos. I saw him climbing up in a. Look like a cedar tree or juniper tree or something like that. Climbing up and eating that stuff. I'm like, well man, if you can eat that, more power to you. I think that that one was actually in southeastern Kansas where they were cleaning up a bunch of stuff up up in. In there trying to get rid of. Get where they could. They were basically getting the fuel out so they could get the cedars out of that. Trying to stop the green glacier from pushing in a little even further west. [01:02:44] Speaker C: Now I think there was. There was a lot of work done in that San Angelo area long, long time ago about, you know, integrating goats with cattle. [01:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:54] Speaker C: Because of the different things they'll eat that a cow won't eat and so helping with some weed and brushy type species. Yeah. So exactly kind of what you're talking about, [01:03:05] Speaker A: I think. I mean I. Nothing seems like it gets simpler. You know, they always told us that computers were going to simpler, simplify our life and then it's going to be, oh, get the cell phone. It'll make your life like. Nothing gets simpler. It all goes. It all gets more complex. Complex. And it all gets. It all seems like it gets worse, you know. [01:03:24] Speaker C: And you tell me whether you agree or disagree with me. I think it was a lot easier in my early career when I had no email and a cell phone was only for I'M stuck in a field, can you come drag me out? [01:03:37] Speaker B: And you'd walk back in the office and you'd be handed maybe six or seven slips of paper. Some return phone calls. Yes, life was a lot simpler. The good news for the weed management being more complex is. Thankfully, I feel like Todd and I have something to do for a while yet. Job [01:03:56] Speaker A: security. [01:03:57] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [01:04:00] Speaker A: That is funny because I was. I was. Apparently some company makes a flip phone that you can text from more. It's got a regular keyboard, like flips the different way sideways so it flips, but you gotta. You can actually text on like one that might not be too bad. But I still long for the days when I had the bag phone that was mounted in my pickup. At least if I left my pickup at the barn, I could get away from it. And Bob took my wife to. On. [01:04:26] Speaker C: And it would work generally. And [01:04:27] Speaker A: it would generally work every. Yeah. When they went from when I got out to where I didn't have one in my pickup anymore, I couldn't go out around Bledsoe and have cell service much anymore. You know, I used to have a phone that I could have complete so I could call anybody I wanted to from Bledsoe, Texas. Then you get out there west and particularly southwest to Bledsoe, and there's a whole lot of nothing out there. But I took my wife to Oklahoma this week, this last week, and we're over there and there was like, I thought going, you know what? I'm just gonna leave my phone in my pickup. And so I left my phone in my pickup. And she's like, where's your phone? I was like, I left my pickup. She's like, you need to go back and get it. And I'm like, no, you know, I did that for two days. And I'm like going, this is kind of nice. I think I'm gonna start forgetting this at the house. If my. If it wasn't for reading books on my phone, I would never carry a phone. I mean, that is the number one reason why I like to have a phone around with me. It's just. But I keep thinking I'm going to get so unimportant and nobody's going to want to talk to me enough that I don't have to worry about it anymore. Wouldn't [01:05:26] Speaker C: that be nice? [01:05:28] Speaker A: I mean. Well, unfortunately, nobody pays you for that. That's the bad thing. The less important you are, the less you earn. That's kind of the way that works. And so unless I win the Lottery. That point's not going to give. I always joked with the, the secretary we used to have that. The first thing I'm going to do, everybody talks about all they're going to be a buy when they win the lottery is like, if I ever win the lottery, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to hand you my cell phone and then I'll say, get me one. And you're the only person that can have the number to it. If you really need me, you can call me. I was like, it's a. It's worth, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars a year just to not have to do that stuff. [01:06:04] Speaker C: I'm going to be kind of like one of my dad's cousins. He used to always say if he wins the lottery, he said, I'm not even going to call into work and tell them I quit. They could just figure it out when I don't show up for a couple of months. [01:06:18] Speaker A: I saw a place that was for sale and it was a big place in Wyoming, like 76,000 acres or something like that. I'm like, that's. I saw that and I was telling my wife, I was like, that's about big enough. She said, how big? What do you mean that's big enough? It's big enough for me to put a place in the dead center of it where they have to bring me stuff by helicopter so nobody can find one. [01:06:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:06:37] Speaker A: Oh my God. It's, it's, you know, it's. It's funny because everybody's like, well, you know, people are, you know, social creatures. You gotta have people in the one. I got 52 years of people by people around me. I think I'll be okay for about 10 or 15 years. So. But it's just, you know, is what it is. But there was another question I wanted to ask you about weeds. And I can't remember what it was right now, which is. That's pretty par for the course. [01:07:01] Speaker B: You must have solved that answer already in your brain, therefore you don't have to ask it. [01:07:06] Speaker A: No, that my brain is just a series of labyrinths that go through dead end everywhere. Like, I'm like the maze that you can't find the end, the end of because it doesn't exist. It just. Like there's a dead end. Let's go back this way. There's another dead end. That's just kind of the way it works. But [01:07:21] Speaker C: which, which is interesting because I've had this conversation actually with my daughter about. And I'd Never thought about it till the last couple of years. But obviously I have severe adhd. But when I was growing up, like say if a topic popped up in my head, the only way to answer that topic was to go to the encyclopedia book, pull that out and if it was in there, that ended that deal. Well, now you get on the computer and look up like say how to control bind weight. And then all of a sudden you see something about, you know, some might on bindweed. So then you type that and then all of a sudden you're in oh, what might also work on other weeds or whatever. And then all of a sudden it may even drift way off from there. But that instantaneous access to information [01:08:10] Speaker A: has, it's made life better and worse. I mean, that's the thing, that's the thing that's surprised me the most is I think that the easier it is to find out something then the more you're doing, you know, and you wind up instead of having a goal where you focus on your, go to point A to point B, you know, you go to point A and you wind up at point B after going through the rest of the Alphabet and circling back around to it, you know, and it makes, it makes the people that can focus on something and stay on task are always just. Those are amazing people, you know, kudos. Shout out to, you know, the four of you that can do that. Yes. You know, all the rest of us though, we just kind of circle around to it and we get back to at some point in time. But, [01:08:52] Speaker B: and then I would just add to that and I agree with what, what you said. But then you find online two conflicting reports. Right. And then which one are you going to believe? Or you get a recommendation and you follow that only to later find out, well, wait a minute, that's not something I can use in that particular situation, [01:09:11] Speaker C: which I was going to throw out to you because I know this has come up in conversations in, in the weed science realm and you might kind of discuss that about the inefficiency of AI at times in making recommendations and warning people kind of. And your thoughts and experiences. [01:09:29] Speaker B: Well, I don't, I'm not the right person to address it, but you asked me, I would say in, in my limited, you know, using AI to, to just kind of see what AI is going to say. There's a lot of times when I feel like it's providing a very good answer, maybe equally the amount of time it's not the best answer and sometimes even really an incorrect answer. So I think Right now, it's a nice tool. It gives us kind of an opportunity to, as we explore, to see what some of the options are. But I wouldn't stop there. I would then want to explore a little bit further, if it's a recommendation to maybe really go then to that label and see if the label is in agreement with what the AI, you know, information that was provided. [01:10:27] Speaker A: I've seen. I've been as. As, you know, as I've tried to look at different rotational things in the vineyard and different herbicides and trying to make sure that I was using. I wasn't hung up on what's worked, you know, 20 years ago. I mean, I've got a recipe that I use in my vineyard that works really, really, really well, but that does not mean that there's not something else out there that is as effective and less expensive. And, you know, I think I've got it dialed down to where I'm not sure that I can kill weeds cheaper than what I can do right now. But that doesn't mean I don't need to look. And so, you know, anytime I get those recommendations, it's interesting because I'll go back and I'll reread the labels that I. Of what I'm using. And over time, those labels, they'll change a little. They'll change some recommendations. Like, I've got one, there's one that I use that I looked at it, and I'm like going, that rate doesn't sound right. Like, that rate doesn't sound right. And I went back. I was fortunate to have an old canister of it and a new one. And so I went and pulled the label off the old canister and. And it was a different rate and the new rate had changed, and they. They bumped the rate up on the new one. And I was like, going, well, now, that's. That's interesting. And I got. I'm not going, you know, the price of this product fell by 30% two years ago or a year ago. And now they're telling me to put 30% more on kind of like going, does the old one still work? Or. And it's like, you know, of course it gives you the range, but the top end of that range was 12 ounces or something instead of 9 ounces or, you know, something like that. And I don't. But anyway, I know I remember exactly which chemical it was, but I'm not going to say it. But it had jumped that much, and the price had fallen a corresponding amount to that in the in between those two labels. And it kind of makes you wonder sometimes if they're not. If like, well, if it. Is it not working because of resistance and they're concerned about resistance, which I want to make sure I use the higher rate because I always try to always try to use as close to the highest rate as I can. Because I, you know, I'm like, it's kind of like taking it. The way I look at it is like taking antibiotics. You're getting given a five day prescription. Don't stop on day three, you take the two. And so I don't want to. Cause I don't, I don't want to be the cause of my own demise in that because I did something stupid and trying to. But and be like, okay, they're gonna go ahead and hit it here. But then I go, okay, were they worried about, are they seeing something? So I boosted it up and they're boosting up to present prevent resistance that they're seeing chances that, you know, it coming on somewhere else, or is it just they want to keep their revenue the same? And that's always what bugs me. And that makes. Makes life tough, you know, from standpoint is you're looking at, hey, this all of a sudden got cheaper. And you go in your head, okay, well I ran a quart of that last year and it cost me 15. Now they're telling me it's, I can run a quart for 750. And you get the labeling. Like, wait, it says two quarts now, you know. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:13:25] Speaker A: yeah. And [01:13:26] Speaker B: there's so many reasons for that to happen. Exactly. And one of the reasons that you didn't really allude to it could also be a formulation. [01:13:34] Speaker A: Right. The [01:13:34] Speaker B: product now comes to us at half the. So therefore instead of a pint, we really do need two pints. So there's always changes that happen and rates that need to be changed or adjusted to. You mentioned you've got a good recipe, which is good. But we also in this discussion talked about the need to be diverse in some of the inputs that we use. So I also agree it's good to always kind of explain, explore what I'm using, the rates I'm using. Are there other things out there that I could introduce into the system that won't compromise the objective? In this case, effective weed control, but something else that may provide the same amount of weed control, but it's controlling the weed in a different way. And those are always good things to be explored. [01:14:24] Speaker A: And we've talked for an hour and 15 minutes. And I think we finally got into something that's also a bit a hidden thing that I think that we control is the proper use of the proper adjuvant in it. You know, our water out here is not the most conducive for most, for the most effective applications of herbicides and pesticides in general sometimes. And you want to talk about something that gets really confusing, it's adjuvants. I mean that, that goes beyond the bound. I mean like when I used to work for a chemical company, they gave us a power. Back in the days of PowerPoint, they gave us a big PowerPoint presentation and set us through about a five hour class on just the adjuvants that Loveland made, just ours. You know, that doesn't include the ones that Helena makes or they come, you know, you know, anybody else makes. It was just Loveland products at that time. And I walked out of that thing and a really good friend of mine was doing, he was a new product, he tested all the new products that came in for him. And I've just been lost his name. But anyway, he was, he was a great guy. He was an older gentleman. He's passed away now and I got to spend a lot of time with him. And you know, he had a PhD, he'd done weed work, he'd worked for chemical companies developing some of the chemicals that come into stuff. And he, he and I would have discussion on, he's like, listen, he said it's a mess, it's confusing and you've got to just try to follow the label as best you can. But I mean, what like for Roundup, what are they recommending for Roundup now on as an adjuvant as, you know, like getting your, your mix together. I [01:15:58] Speaker B: mean, other than ammonium sulfate. [01:16:01] Speaker C: Well, a couple things there and that's. And kind of bringing this whole conversation kind of part of what you're talking about like getting a new product. Generics have changed this tremendously. And so, yeah, you know, just like Flumey we were talking about, you know, there's, I don't know how many generic flumes out there now. Well, some of those could have a different formulation and all of a sudden that changes your rate. And glyphosate is another one of those because yeah, if you're using say Roundup PowerMax, probably ammonium sulfate may be all you need. But some of these generics out there that don't have that same adjuvant package may need ammonium sulfate plus an additional surfactant. And part of that's back to that being familiar. Not being familiar with a new product you're buying Even though you're 100%, you've sprayed 30 years of glyphosate. But all of a sudden I bought a glyphosate from a dealer offline, online, or a broker. And I've never used that particular brand, let's say, making sure it matches up rate wise. That's a big one. Yeah. With the glyphosate formulations, I think even like some of the paraquat formulations, you can get into that. [01:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:20] Speaker C: And so knowing what that product is, the other thing that I ran into several years ago, it was a generic prow and a generic 2, 4D. We were doing it as a burned down, you know, pre plant deal. Basically those two formulations didn't work together. [01:17:41] Speaker A: Oh my God. [01:17:41] Speaker C: And it turned into. Luckily it wasn't a bad sprayer problem, but it turned into kind of a chalky thick mess. I used to have a picture of it. Anyway, I went back and I pulled out prowl H2O and I forgot what the two. It may have been Enlist that. I pulled out the enlist 2.4D that's used in cotton. Mixed those together, no problem. And so I tell guys even, that if, even if you're familiar with that. Active. [01:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:18:11] Speaker C: but it's a new formulation if you've never mixed it in the tank. Because the worst thing would be to have a thousand gallon [01:18:17] Speaker A: tank [01:18:17] Speaker C: that looked like what I had. [01:18:18] Speaker A: Listen, I. That you. I mean, I just broke out in a cold sweat because I've done that with, with my, my recipe. You know, I just go, oh, there's a different flu. It's a different, you know, I've got this generic flume instead of generic flume, you know, and you put that in there. And when I, I mix up enough, I can literally spray the entire vineyard. I've got it. I've built tanks on a tank system for my under vine sprayer that allows me to mix up one tank load and get across the whole thing because I can do two rows at a time and I can get across, you know, 50 acres in a day. Really not hard at all. I mean, it's not a hard day, but I can get it all done in one day, which comes in handy for the wind out here. Yeah. And that was the biggest reason we did it because before you had a, we had a 30 gallon tank because everything in vineyards is typically smaller, you know, until you get into the big guys where you got, you know, 150, 200,000 acres or something like that. But you go into a tank mix and, you know, we fill it 2/3 up and then we start adding stuff to it and don't even think about it. And I mean, I was just thinking, thinking if that 500 gallon tank just turned to chalk in one fell swoop, and I'm like, oh, my God, that's. It's like I used to say that the most expensive herbicide application you can make is the one that doesn't work. But that one might beat it. [01:19:34] Speaker C: That might beat that one because it didn't work and I got to clean it up. [01:19:39] Speaker A: But you know that I like what. When we were using Valor, when it first came out in peanuts, you know, there was an adjuvant by Helena. And I am going to call the name on this one, Grounded. And I was consulting on peanuts. And the first, I guess probably month and a half after they put that out every time it rained, those peanuts get burned every time it rained. And so. And so I'm like, one, okay, we're not doing that in peanuts anymore. But you know what? I make sure I add every time I put Flummy in my vineyard. Grounded. Because it's. Because it's a different crop. I'm wanting a different thing, a different. I don't want it to splash up and burn my gr. My peanuts. But if it splashes up and burns a pigweed, hey, fantastic. You know, that's great. You know, and so you gotta get a, you know, so one adjuvant is not necessarily, you know, for the same. Even to the same chemical is not necessarily good across all crops because you're looking for different things. [01:20:40] Speaker C: No. And Pete, you'd probably agree with this, talking about adjuvants and even nozzle packages now to some degree, 100% more complicated. Now when you think of all the drift retardants, you know, not just the standard surfactant crop oil, you know, methylated seed oil, but all these, you know, activators, especially the drift control agents, how those work with different nozzles. I always use the example. Another old Helena product, I don't even think it's on the market, was Strike Zone. I don't know if y'. All. And it was a powder. [01:21:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:17] Speaker C: And it was forget for getting rid of fines. It was probably one of the best I've ever put across through my boom. But. And this is probably what happened with the Grounded and the Valor, but it would take my nozzle from a 20 inch and squeeze it to about a 10. [01:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:38] Speaker C: And you know, so I warn guys especially again if you're switching products. [01:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:43] Speaker C: Make sure that they're working like you need to. [01:21:45] Speaker A: Well, we, yeah, that's nothing I wanted to ask you. I've got, I had two questions I wanted to ask you and don't let me forget. One of them is about drones and the other one is this one we like with, with glue fossinate. It foams like nobody's business. And so I am, so I always have, you know, is it on point or something like that? The liquid anti foamer on it did the liquid, the anti foamer products, they have any effect on, on the, the effectiveness of the chemical, of the chemicals you're putting out there or is it just taking away the foam like it's supposed to? [01:22:19] Speaker B: So, so I've got limited experience and there are times when we'll use some and I've never felt like at the appropriate amount that we need. Yeah. As a anti foam agent it's never caused any adverse effects. [01:22:32] Speaker A: Fantastic. That's. I wanted to hear that because that stuff is like, that is the worst. I'm not sure even the old roundup don't think foam like, like, oh my God, it's like they do it just to, just to annoy you or something. I mean it's like it foams like it hates you. [01:22:51] Speaker B: So in, in this adjuvant discussion and I, I'm, I don't fully understand some of these differences. I certainly am looking at labels and if the label says use, you know, a CoC or MSO or NIS and then there's all of these other options. [01:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:12] Speaker B: And then, and then we have folks that, that really like to spray at low carrier volumes and we're adding in more things and more things. I just think sometimes we, we've got a solution that maybe has never really been concocted before and we've got such a low amount of the carrier and we've got all of these additional things. A lot of times we're in new territory where we don't really know exactly how it's going to perform weed control wise or how now our crop may be able to tolerate this mixture of who knows, eight or nine or ten things. We're about ready to be sprayed at, you know, five, seven gallons per acre. So [01:23:53] Speaker A: yeah, [01:23:54] Speaker B: it's, you know, things, things are complex, they're challenging. Very much enjoyed the conversation about the AI coming to us. You know, formulated differently. Yeah, I, you know, I guess the old guy in the room remembers with the roundup ready technology looking at all these different glyphosates. Yeah. And some of them truly burned. And it wasn't the glyphosate that was the issue. It was the solvents that were in the formulated product that were causing problem. So I'm all for trying to shop around and find, you know, the best bargain. But, but the second part of that statement is try it. Don't put the whole farm to it. Try it. See how it mixes, see how it performs, and then maybe next year a little bit more. But, but don't, don't make a drastic change with something that almost seems too good to be true for the price and what it's [01:24:48] Speaker A: well [01:24:48] Speaker B: to deliver. [01:24:50] Speaker A: I mean, where most of our chemicals are made now, they're not. I can, I could, if I spent enough time, I could make a, I could figure out a way to say this that would be less offensive than this, but they're not, they don't pay the most, the most attention to regulations. I mean, you look at a lot of them came from India. India was completely kicked out of the organic program for three years. And if anybody thinks that that's changed, they're kidding themselves. You know, you've got a lot of places where there's, you know, we're not, they're not growing, they're not making a lot of these chemicals in England or in the United States or in Canada or in France, you know, they're not making them even in Australia, you know, they're making them in third world countries or close to third world countries, you know, and those regions are known for a couple of things, you know, violent, violent uprisings and graft. And so you've got to be very careful, especially on the lower end of generics, the lower price end of generics, because there's going to be a reason in there that's done that way. And it could be that they swapped out or swapped out what's, you know, an inart ingredient, quote, unquote in art ingredient with something cheaper, you know, or it may be that the active ingredient is not, is not actually what it says on the label, you know. You know, they may check a jug, but they may not check a container. [01:26:16] Speaker B: Or how about some contaminant that was used previously in the manufacturing plant that now it's tainted in what you're spraying. And you truly don't want that contaminant [01:26:27] Speaker A: in there. And so you gotta be real careful on that. Well, we're about out of time, but I still want to ask you this One question about have you used, have you tried any herbicide applications with drones yet? [01:26:37] Speaker B: I've been a part of some groups where, where those applications have been made. Yes. [01:26:42] Speaker A: Are you seeing it working as. Is it, is it showing up as something that's effect that could be effective now or is it something that we're still a little ways away from having effective coverage with it [01:26:55] Speaker B: and you may have more experience? I guess I'm going to say I feel like I've seen, seen a couple of things. I've been at times impressed with the overall delivery and ability for the drone to be programmed to go in and effectively make an application. Sometimes it seems like, you know, that's a long way for that droplet to fall and there's a lot of wind movement that's happening to keep that drone up in the air. So I, you know, I feel like we've got a little ways to go or at least in my mind I've got a little ways to convince myself of the advantages and the concerns about these deliveries. But certainly I'm seeing more and more of these types of applications and more and more businesses that are adding this component to their overall delivery. [01:27:46] Speaker C: Yeah. And I guess some discussions that we've been involved in, it sounds like it kind of across the board, say across the Cotton belt especially that you know, some areas and you know they're having some success with it. And in other areas it sounds like there's even some just complete failures, whether that be drift control. You know, one of the concerns that we talk about in a lot of cases, you know, not having somebody that understands agriculture running the these things. [01:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:18] Speaker C: You know, I'm going to get in the drone business. [01:28:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:21] Speaker C: Because I like to sit behind the computer at the house. That sounds like a cool deal. And not understanding drift product mixes like we're talking about a great vineyard next to the deal and. Oh, it's sensitive to that. You know, those types of things I think are, are even my big concerns beyond just the technology and, and how that's really going to affect fit long term. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see. [01:28:46] Speaker B: You know, we've been using it more for attempting to identify weed populations, attempting to identify maybe some drift that's occurred or some other symptomology that might be present and just starting maybe to get a little bit more experience on the actual delivery of the herbicide. [01:29:04] Speaker A: And I wish I'd asked this question 20 minutes ago. I got so many more of them all of a sudden and this is the one that I'd forgotten about because I wanted to ask you about Drones. That's. I forgot about it 20 minutes ago. But it's all. That's all of me. We'll have to have you back again sometime. But, guys, thank you all for coming in, and [01:29:21] Speaker B: thank you. Good to see you [01:29:22] Speaker A: again on short, especially on short notice. Peter, it's great to see you. [01:29:25] Speaker C: I asked him about 10:30. [01:29:31] Speaker B: Now, if he had called me, maybe I wouldn't have picked up, but I was in his office, so I had to. I had to say yes. [01:29:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd love to go visit with the Timmins. [01:29:40] Speaker A: Well, you just got one, but at least you got the best one. There you go. They're not here to dispute it. Well, we'll see you all when next time you all come back. And everybody, we appreciate you all being here, and we'll see you. Catch you next time on the dry side, Dispatch.