Those that finish what they start.
There are two types of weeds in your crop right now. Those that germinated early and survived all the herbicides that you threw at them, and those that germinated late.
Both are a pain in the proverbial.
The early germinators that survived the herbicides are a pain because they survived the herbicides. If the herbicides worked seamlessly, with no resistance issues, we wouldn’t need to bother with things like Seed Terminators.
The late germinators are becoming more common. There’s a lot of science showing that our weeds, particularly the grasses, have adapted to germinate late to avoid the herbicides that we throw at them early in the season. Germinating late means they come up against a competitive crop, but at least they survive.
The genes for herbicide resistance are really rare, and weeds actually find it pretty hard to develop resistance. The genes for late germinating are as common as dogs balls, and the shift to later germinating weeds happened pretty fast.
There’s two reasons why a Seed Terminator is the answer to late germinating weeds.
Everywhere I go, growers are complaining about late germinating ryegrass in their crop. In fact they’re complaining about all of the grass weeds germinating late.
There’s no disputing it, it’s real, but why are they there?
My thoughts are that if you see big numbers of ryegrass germinating late in your crop, you have big numbers. The first part of the answer to this problem is the seedbank. Growers that I visit who have smashed their seedbank are not complaining about late germinating weeds. Sure they see a few, but their numbers are low and a few late weeds are of little consequence.
This is reason number one that a Seed Terminator is the answer. Smash the seedbank. If you smash it hard enough, for long enough, with herbicides and competitive crops, and good rotations and harvest weed seed control and so on, you’ll get your seedbank to a point where you’re not having your Sunday afternoon spring croppy ruined by the emergence of a heap of weeds that are too late to do anything about.
The second reason that a Seed Terminator is the answer to late grass weeds is they hold onto their seed at harvest. One of the ways harvest weed seed control can fail is that the weeds fall over in late spring before the harvester gets there. They’ve been in crop for so long that they’ve mature and hayed off well before harvest.
Late germinating weeds, on the other hand, are just getting around to setting seed when the harvester comes along and scoops them up and delivers them into a mill spinning at 2950 rpm.
Hasta la vista baby!
And if you have a really big problem, you might need to think about windrowing (swathing) some crops to bring harvest forward a couple of weeks. Do this for a few years and you can then sell the windrower to the farmer down the road who is now so impressed with your low seedbank.
Late germinating weeds are a problem, and they’re also a huge opportunity to catch and smash with a Seed Terminator.
The Terminator Agronomist
Proudly brought to you by Seed Terminator
Please note this advice is general in nature and not based on your specific circumstances.