Crp planting

[gundog870]

I'm planting about 40 acres of CP2 in the coming months. its all corn stubble, I had half of it bailed and the rest just sat. Right now they appear to be pretty clean, but imagine there's will be some weeds in the weeks to come. I'm planning on a late May planting.

Only thing I don't like is the amount of wasted chemicals on the areas where no weeds are present.

 

[fl3157]

Not sure why you would need to spray, if you are converting an ag field to Cp2 and there isn't any cool season grass to deal with?

"weeds" are part of the equation when establishing WSG's, and many are very beneficial to wildlife. I wouldn't be concerned the first year of your planting, going forward you can manage by mowing or clipping the weeds as high as possible to protect any forbs you planted until your stand is established and then manage with controlled burns.

 

[Sligh1]

The weeds you could have to deal with that are a disaster (some history would be these plants making it to seed in those fields in the past - I'm guessing you don't know the full history, maybe you do?).... The nastiest probably has to be foxtail..... carpet, nasty, thick, grows fast, chokes things out. You get some thick giant ragweed for example, geesh, that alone can shade stuff out. Pigweed & Waterhemp in NSWG's.... Hmmm, mediocre I guess, not the worst thing in the world and the deer do eat it. If it's "too thick"- could be harmful. But, like above, if you're mowing, heck, that saves you from most of this or at least makes sure a lot of the natives will not die. I love my pre & post on CRP (say for example a Plateau tolerant mix of grasses & forbs) but mowing solves a lot of things too if a guy makes sure to time & do it right.

 

[gundog870]

Everything I've read said that mowing can be detrimental and best avoided if spray can handle it. I didn't notice any real bad weed problems last year but could be wrong.

 

[nemohunter]

We planted our crp into corn stubble. First we mowed the stalks down and then waited for some weeds to start to come up and then sprayed. It was worth the money to spray. At first it didn't look like it would even need spraying but weeds started coming up.