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CapitalPress.com
October 6, 2017
Put row crop fields to bed for winter
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
By the end of harvest most
farmers are out of gas.
“They get really tired of
farming by the end of the
harvest,” said Ed Peachey,
weed scientist and vegetable
specialist with Oregon State
University’s Horticulture De-
partment, “but there are a few
things to do before the fall
rains start that can make farm-
ing easier in the future.”
For processed vegetable
producers, it is important to
stop weeds such as night-
shade and keep them from
producing seeds. Spraying
herbicides such as glyphosate
is easy but it doesn’t stop seed
production very quickly; it’s
usually better to try to destroy
the plants with flails or tillage
equipment to crunch up the
berries. Otherwise, the weeds
keep producing seeds, some-
Photos by OSU
Ed Peachey inspects weed control efficacy in green onions. Herbicide programs typically must be
adjusted so that cover crops are not harmed.
times into mid-November, he
said.
Fall is also a good time to
identify new weeds that have
shown up and make plans for
control, if needed.
“If there are weeds you
haven’t seen before that are
exposed after harvest, that’s
the time you’ve really got to
pay attention,” Peachey said.
“If it’s an invasive species
and it’s got seeds on it, it’s not
unreasonable to think about
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removing them from the field,
especially if they’re in isolat-
ed spots.”
Velvetleaf has Peachey
concerned; he’s seen it in Ore-
gon’s Willamette Valley since
the mid-1990s but never in
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such high numbers.
“I don’t know if it has
reached some critical mass,
but this summer I found a
couple fields infested with
velvetleaf,” he said. “Usu-
ally it’s been maybe one
plant per acre or less; sud-
denly there are hundreds per
acre.”
Fall is also a good time to
plant cover crops to improve
soil quality, reduce erosion
and suppress winter weeds,
but that can be a challenge
given the factors involved.
Herbicide carryover is one
factor that must be taken se-
riously when considering
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A cover crop of oats and crim-
son clover planted between
corn rows.
cover crops. Herbicides with
long residuals — Raptor, Re-
flex and Sandea, for example
— limit the crops that can be
planted in the spring and may
affect cover crop growth in
the fall.
Producing a good cover
crop requires the same exper-
tise and attention to detail as
planting a cash crop.
“You have to think about
how you’re going to manage
slugs,” Peachey said. “If I
have this amount of crop res-
idue on the surface; can I get
slug bait down to them?”
Most growers don’t have
the time to fully work down
a field in the fall to bury all
the crop residue, he said, and
disking or plowing deep is
pretty risky as far as losing
soil.
An alternative to fall-plant-
ed cover crops is to inter-seed
cover crops into crops such as
sweet corn during the sum-
mer. Peachey has been con-
ducting several trials through-
out the Willamette Valley this
year in conventional and or-
ganic sweet corn and squash
crops through support of the
Western Sustainable Agricul-
ture Research and Education
(WSARE) Program.
The objective is to find
ways to get more cover crops
into the system without hav-
ing to do all the planting and
tillage in the fall, and without
jeopardizing weed control in
the vegetable crop.
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