MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

Come on, where's my mouse going on? I guess what I wanted to go over for today is that I didn't really want to go so much into a whole bunch of papers and give you a whole bunch of nitty gritty data on this. I just wanted to get you thinking about different weed control methods. Get you to go and try and look into some of these to talk with the extension people here. And I would have my contact information at the end if you want to talk to me more about it. But just to get you thinking, get you new ideas and things like that and then things that I've done and how I think they've worked and what I plan on doing in the future. Why are we talking about alternative weed methods? I put this quote in here to remind everyone that we need to keep innovating, we need to keep trying new things, we need to keep doing those side by side projects. And see what what difference there is and don't buy into 100% What exactly everyone tells you to do. Make sure you question your salesman. Make sure you ask that they answer your questions. And if you don't feel like they answered them correctly, go to extension, talk to them. Or maybe get talk to a different salesman and try and get multiple opinions on it. I guess some of those reasons why we're talking about this is the the environmental and government restrictions. It seems like every single day in the farm news or other news sources, you'll see that the different herbicides being looked at, whether it's going to be usable here in the future and what it will mean for different farming systems. Then I guess going down to the health and safety, some of these herbicides, we don't 100% know exactly what's going on. I'm not saying any of them are safe or some of them are safe, but we just want to be aware of that, that there is concerns of that. Then you got to look at the expense of chemicals too. If there's other alternatives and we're improving our return on investment, we want to maybe look into some of these alternative ideas that we got. Then finally, the big one of why we're looking at alternative methods, we've seen quite a bit of resistance pop up over the last few years. I guess we want to know what we can do to change that. What we can do if we do have resistance, what we can do as an alternative for that. So going back into the resistant weeds here, I just put the map of Michigan up here of the different resistant weeds that we have. I put the link there so you can go and look yourself and see what might be in your area, what you might need to be on the lookout for. Yeah, I before we get into some of these alternative methods, I guess we want to determine what a weed is. I'm not going to give you a whole lecture on what a weed exactly is or anything, and I'm pretty sure we've all seen that description there on that first bullet point. Wild plant growing where it's not wanted in competition with cultivated plants. But a lot of what we don't think about and I wanted to bring up is looking at the physiology and biology of each of the plants. We manage our crops like our corn and soy beans, and we know how they work. What's the advantages of putting fertilizer down at certain timings? What fertilizers to use and things like that? When I was doing my Master's, I was in Karen's class, Karen Renters class. I took a weed biology class. And it really made me think Abu, maybe we should think about how we manage weeds a little bit differently. Why is a wet growing where it is? I guess one of the questions that first pops up into my head, is it something that my soil is telling me, is it a ph problem? Do I have excess or limited nutrients that might cause that we to germinate or give it ideal conditions? Every plant has that ideal range of what it likes to do and things. We have different fruits and things where we want lower phs and things like that, where some of the other crop we usually want a pretty neutral soil. I just think about that where if you have a ph issue, if that's something why you are seeing a certain weed that you don't normally see or something that your neighbor doesn't have that you do. I guess that's something you got to think about a little bit. Then the other thing is looking at compaction. A lot of certain they like those anaerobic conditions with lots of moisture Canada, this is my biggest problem and I got some compacted soils and not very deep subsurface water. Just something to think about there. Let me see. I think I gather thing on that point. The next question that I have there is, what happened to make that seed germinate? We always check our soil temperatures before we go out and plants. We're looking for those ideal conditions where we want to plant that seed so it actually germinates and starts to grow. I think about that too, some of those weeds, maybe they didn't germinate right away. If you're just using round up or something like that that doesn't have any residual in the soil. That weeds might, just because they're not there when you spray it doesn't mean they won't come back in a little bit after the conditions are right. But again, I guess I wasn't really going into herbicides too much, that was just something to think about. And then some other physiological characteristics of why we're seeing resistance and other things that are popping up. We look at some of these species and you got a male plant, a female plant. And we are getting more genetic variability in between these. That's why we're getting this resistance so fast. Just think about some of the properties of each of these weeds. Again, add on to that. I guess I meant to say something about perennials versus annuals or biennials, and how we can break those cycles. Then the last point there, now that we learn about some of these characteristics of these different weeds, what can we alter in our cropping system to make better management choices? Can we go in and try and improve soil structures? We have less compactions where some of these weeds might not be able to germinate and have other cause problems in our fields. Going on the next slide here, pretty much, probably everybody's seen this IPM triangle for weed management. If not, I'm sure everybody's heard about IPM and taken multiple approaches to manage weeds. But I guess I want to make the point on this triangle. At the very top is chemical control. The bottom of the triangle shouldn't be our first approach to it. We want to build our program up until Chall be last option rather than the first option. But yeah, I guess the whole group of IPM as a whole is you've got many little hammers working on to get success. I guess the four practices that I wanted to talk about most is crop rotation. Managing your soils hoops, then cover crops, and mechanical control. I guess I don't know what the first session was, but I heard a little bit about cover crops and I know the people who talked that their cover crops are big for them to nutrient cycling and cover crops. Caleb, you're good to go a anyways, crop rotations, the main one that we start with is how can we break these pest cycles starting off with not just for the weed side of it, but also just any pests in general. We can break those pest cycles by removing holes from the system and allow them to survive to the next year. In terms of weeds, we can break their cycle as well by disrupting the reproduction cycle, not allowing the produce seed we get annual in a perennial system and we mow it off before it produces seed. That's one way to manage it. But if we have a consistent motto, culture of just corn on corn on corn, we're going to build up those specific weeds, that system that thrive in those conditions. I guess that's something we want to think about. We're making crop rotation that we're looking at managing different weeds, especially the ones that are problems for us. Say it there then I guess the other thing is like adding in different crop rotations. There has been studies showing that just going from monoculture, so they've seen a decrease in different species of weeds and then you add in more crops to that and decreases even farther. But also think about the different aspects of those different crops, or are you going to get a nitrogen credit from any of that if you have any alethopathic effects or anything like that that we want to include in it. Again, we got to think about our bottom line though when we're going through this. If we can. Potentially we're not making as much money in theory, but if we can put a value to some of these other aspects, like adding a nitrogen credit that gives us more value and decreases our nitrogen inputs. And then also for the allelopathic effects. If we get any weed management out of that, we can maybe reduce our chemical bill a little bit as well. Now I want to go into soil, you wouldn't really think about it, but I guess I didn't really think about it until I looked into this a little bit farther at first is how much soil can have an effect on the weeds. We can see like in the compacted soil, in the less compacted soil on the far left there, we get really good root growth. That's going to go loose good aggregates all around soil. Then we get that good root growth. We're getting lots of nutrient uptake where we can produce that bigger root mass. We can have better uptake of nutrients and water. We have less competition for those nutrients With weeds, you look at the right and we're compacted there. We're limited to that top little bit. Now we have weeds competing for that in that same little area. We're not getting as good a take up of nutrients and water and your weeds might be more effective in taking it up in that first little bit. But yeah, going back to why we want good soil structure, usually we planting deeper than that top layer, we get that compaction layer on the top, that's where a lot of your weeds are going to germinate. You're going to have good seed to soil contact. If you got good aggregate soils, you're not going to have good soil contact on the weeds. We're also getting good flow of water and moisture and opening it up for air and good soil biology altogether when you have good soil structure. So now we're going into, I guess I want to talk a little bit more about, a little bit more about soil structure here. When we think about soil structure to, we're also looking at what's our inputs that we're putting in for these. Are we putting in something that's high in salt and that's going to have more of those issues and cause tightening of the soils? Are we putting in something that's got a good carbon source like manure or compost, Even just using cover crops of the green manure or anything like that, that opens it up and we're reducing the salt altogether in the, I guess it opens it up, makes it more available for the roots to go through. Then the next slide, I'm going to talk about this a little bit more, but there's a lot of organic guys and a lot of stuff I read in the organic side, that calcium, the number one thing, you've got to have all this calcium in your soil to make a difference. But looking at why this works, I'll go into that a little bit more. But anyways, our base saturation is you want to have to 75% calcium, 15% magnesium, 5% potassium, and remaining 5% sodium, and your hydrogen, you want to have the lower amount. Again, I guess that opens everything up for better biology altogether. In weeds, they tend to like the infertile soils a little bit better, with the exception of a few weeds. Unfortunately, those weeds are usually the most problematic. Lambs quarter and pigs weed. They tend to thrive in those fertile soils where the rest of them are more infertile. There's a book when we 100% I'm not promoting it, that's the Bible, truth or anything like that because there isn't a whole lot of science backing to it. But there is some good ideas and some good thoughts in there that I think is important to look at. But it's, you got to take it with a little bit of grain of salt because not the research to back it up, but it's also one of those things it's hard to really research because there's a lot of variables that go into it. And whether we decides to grow, where it grows for certain reasons, whether we put a bunch of calcium in it, is going to fix the problem. That's how that book talks, but you got to think about it. Just take it away, a grain of salt. It is good to read just to see different things going into that calcium thought there. We're looking at the molecule calcium versus magnesium. I didn't have a, I was trying to find a slide that was really good for this because I know somebody who has one, but I couldn't get it from them. It shows the different size, like calcium to magnesium to potassium. A lot of guys, they tell you if your soils are tight, you've got a lot of weeds, you want to put gypsum down, it's going to loosen up your soils, it's going to make that, it's going to make everything better is what the organic ground in this will tell you. I guess why it does in theory, why it works is because that molecule is so much bigger. You're adding more space in between each of those soil particles and increasing overall ferocity of it. Again, like I said, I don't know that I 100% agree with calcium for weed control, but I do think it has a part in expanding those different molecules and making everything more open and breathe, and flow better. I wanted to show the soil test here. We got a lot of guys that will say, well, my calcium level is too high, my ph is too high. This is the soil that we had there with an 81 ph. In, your calcium levels are really high. You wouldn't think that you want to put a whole lot of more calcium into the soil system there. But we look at this solubility test that we do, a bioag, and show it this is our normal soil test. We're removing this calcium with a high amount of acid basically is how we're pulling it off. But if we look at what's truly available, or more likely available to the plants, that the roots can actually get to where we're just pulling it off with basically just water. This test was a saturated past growth media test, whatever you want to call it. Where you've got a vacuum and we're running water through it and we're slowly pulling those molecules off. This is more realistic of what the roots can intercept here, but we only have about 40% of that. Calcium is actually available to the plant and available to help with that ferocity of the soil. I guess that's something I just wanted to point out there. And then you can also show how much more like the sodium side of things over here is that we get 40% of that, that sodium is there as well. That's going to be there for the plant uptake and plant needs some sodium but we don't want to put too much in there and dry it out, I guess is what we want to avoid going back. Now, we talked a little bit about the soil side of things. We cover crops are another important aspect of that, we'll help with that. Yeah, we talked about it in our crop rotation. We're breaking up cycles, that's another advantage of cover crops. Then we also are going into the allelopathic effects of it, known as the cereal is producing a chemical that's inhibiting germination, weed seed germination. That's one advantage of cover crops to be can added in there to help manage weeds. Another subcategory under a lethal pathy is the fumigation side of things. We got mustards that are used, some of them are used for disease control and things like that. But overall, there has been some research that shows when you break different mustards and release this chemical from when they break down, it's causing some innovation we seeds as well. Then I guess the more important part that I look at when I'm looking at cover crops is I'm looking to some other crop surface. I want to make sure that my soil is always covered. Not so much also for the soil health part of it, but I also looking to make sure the sun can't reach the weed seeds, they can't germinate. And then we're also looking at the big one that I want to try and I've been looking into and reading a lot about, saw some good research on is using like Sedan grass and sudex or whatever you want to call it and using it for a smother crop on Canada Thistle. Canada Thistle is my biggest problem, so I've been trying to figure out ways to help get rid of that. There's a lot of good research showing that if you go out and put it out there, it'll help. It won't allow the Canada Thistle germinate. It'll germinate, but it won't stay. It can't compete. Basically, it'll eventually die out. It'll lose its reserves and you'll see a reduction is what the research shows. We do have one guy locally that's been doing it for a couple of years and he says he's had really good luck with it. I didn't know he was doing it, otherwise I probably would have tried to catch up with him a little bit sooner and actually trying to see it in process. But hopefully over the next couple of years we'll have some good results on that and see a reduction in Canada this way. Then again, going back to soil structure, you're adding carbon to the soil, you're opening up cores, getting more diversity in your soil biology and all of that just cover crops in general are good resource to improve your soils and improve your weed management. Now going into what I guess my specialty is here, what I actually do on a regular basis, I went through the whole process. There's one thing on two things on here I don't really use. I know a little bit about them and there's still some research coming out. I think in the long run it'll be a good thing. And I think it'll definitely help with herbicide resistance. But I guess I just wanted to start with our initial tillage or deep tillage. As much as a lot of people that are on this group here are on the cover crop team. So health team, they're cringing with my picture here probably, I'm sure, and looking at the plow, but the research shows that. In organic system, the best way to manage weeds with plow. That's what a lot of science has said. You're burying that seed and you're covering it up. I don't like the plow. I'm in agreeance with a lot of people on the soil health team, but I also feel that there is a place for it and there's a need for it. In some situations, farm I worked with, there was against plowing as well, and then he brought it back here. In the last few years, I was surprised at how much weed reduction we've had. It made me rethink it a little bit, but I think it's an important tool that we got to have in our toolbox. Primarily I don't like. Okay, I like to plow in my system about once in a five year rotation. You do it every year and you keep consistently doing that. All you're doing is taking the weed seeds from the top, putting them on the bottom, and then taking them from the bottom and putting them back on the top. You got to have a little bit of time in between there, let those weeds break down and get rid of them. But yeah, I guess the other part I want to add to that too is I'm always putting cover crops down. After I plow, I go out and spread dry. It's not a fun drive going across the plowed field spreader, but I feel pretty important to do that. I want to protect my soils as much as I can when I'm doing this much. Major tillage issues. I also prefer to do spring plowing as well so that I have less time when I'm going through that. I have less time for my soils exposed. The discripper pretty common around in the area for a lot of the organic guys, it seems to do a good job. There's a lot of guys that think that that's the way to kill Canada Thistle is just to till it. A whole bunch of times of the descriptor. I don't 100% agree with that either. You're opening it up, you're getting down there, you're getting that deep tillage in there so you can get a little bit better drainage out of your soils. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is on that, but then a disc is common for some of my grounds. Lighter grounds, I like the disc for that, for my primary tillage, I don't like to do a whole lot other major disturbances to the soil if I can help, but I don't really like to leave my soil exposed all win. I'm probably one of the few organic guys that like to leave the crop residue in the field all winter long. And I try and get cover crops on as best as I can that I'll have something to cover in it. I got another one that I forgot to put on there that is also pretty important. I'd like to see more of it is an inline ripper. I like to get a good cover crop on there and run the inline ripper on some of this ground, being able to get the soil broke up down right in my row where I'm going to be planting as well. Then we go into our first tillage. If you don't do fall tillage, your first pass is usually going to be your cultivator. In the spring, we're usually going through probably more times than I'd like to admit with our cultivator, at least twice, if not three. If we have a really bad tal, problem and we've got lots of time before we're ready to plant, we get an early spring and we can get out there. There's times where it might be five passes with the cultivator. Before we get out there, we actually go out and plant our crop then where a lot of organic guys are transitioning more is the time. I like the time if you don't have a lot of residue timewters, great tool. If you got a lot of residue, the timewter gives you more of a headache than what. It's worse sometimes I think. But in lighter ground that farm, I feel the Tineter does a lot better job than say, the rotary hole. But this is your blind cultivation or your blind cultivation pass. You're going through there preferably like a day after you plant and you want to get across that field. You're going, I don't know, a decent speed, like 7 miles an hour, being pretty aggressive, you're tearing out any of those little thread roots, those white thread stage roots, and then just try and keep that soil clear of all weeds. I guess I'm going to bring one of these up. It's not usually where we do it, but you can do it as the burner, you can go through and you can go right over the row and trying to sterilize that top half inch of soil. Anything that's in there, you're going to try and get it so hot that it's not going to survive, but the seeds deep enough that it'll be fine to come back, usually at least one more time after that first line before the crop pops up. And then we might come back two or three more times after the crops out of the ground. With that, we're going to slow down quite a bit, some of the newer tinters, I got a. Threfler that I really like for it is you can go through almost knee high corn if you really want to. You've got to be careful that you're not breaking it off or anything like that. Rotary hole is a tool that I don't really think does a whole lot for me personally and lighter ground. But I feel like it buys me a day or two to get the corn or beans up a little bit bigger so that I'm not worried about killing them with a or the tiny meter. It's a tool that's there. A lot of guys will like it if they got the heavier ground. If we get a rain, they get a little crust on there, that's when the rotary hole really shines. But then going in farther and along the end of the year, essentially your next pass is in corn, it could be a burner, it could be cultivator cultivation. The new cultivators are pretty advanced compared to what was around back in the '90s, in early 2000 when people stopped cultivating. There's been quite a few changes since the camera steer hitches. Well, first of all, RTK is really nice in the situation, just helping you be able to turn around and watch what's going on behind you. You don't really have to worry about staying on the row. You just got to make sure you're following there where yeah, managing where they're at so you can watch and make sure you're not taking out any crop bearing, anything like that. Overall, the new or the new cultivators are pretty nice, especially when you get a camera steer hitch on them. And that even reduces the operator fatigue even more. Overall, cultivations come a long way, even fingers have come a long way. They're expensive. It costs a lot of money for fingers to add them to a cultivator, but they do a really good job. I don't have cultivators I use, but that's something that I think is going to be pretty high up on my list of upgrades. I guess the act the last three there, more of a rescue thing. You don't really want to use these. The zapper, it's expensive to use. First of all, going across the field, basically you're taking electricity and touching the plant with it and it's taking it down and it's grounding it out. And it's basically breaking all the cells in the weed and killing the weed, you're reducing your overall viable seed. It doesn't work very well on certain weeds like velvet leaf or grasses. However, some of those, even though it doesn't really seem to kill it, it does seem to affect the viability of the seed from what the research is showing, it helps with harvestability then too, because you have less stuff going through the combine and making things easier there. Then finally, the next one is the mower there. It's not like a typical mower that you think of that you go basically we're taking it and we're going right above the canopy and we're managing it. It's another time when RTKs really nice where you don't have to watch where you're going. So you can sit there and you can lift your three point up and down as your beans adjust with different conditions. If they're a little bit taller in one spot versus that. But yeah, again, you're limited. Depends on how much. If your beans are too high and your weeds are just above that, you're not going to be mowing them unless you want to cut off the top a little bit of your beans. There has been some research in Europe showing that going out and actually topping your beans a little bit right before you get to the reproductive stages has actually helped. But I haven't tried it yet. I guess I just learned about that yesterday. I guess I want to look into that a little bit more. Maybe do a trial with that. We'll see. Then finally, the next one is the latest research that's been going on. This is coming out of Australia, was pretty popular where they're taking, they're actually just grinding up all the weed seeds coming out of there, out of the back of the combine and preventing it from getting into the point where it's going to be able to get back in your weed seed bank. The disadvantage of it is that if that we seed doesn't make it all the way through the back of the combine, it's still getting out of the weed bank. Research they see in here in the United States has shown about 33% of the weeds actually get lost right at the head, so it doesn't even make it through the combine. In theory, then two thirds could be coming out the back, but we also got to be thinking about the stuff that's staying with the grain and going up in your clean grain tanks. Whether you're losing that when you're putting it in, we take off our shields because we usually have a bunch of weed seeds, so we're trying to get as much out as we can. Some of these organic fields, we usually get pretty decent pile at some of these spots. Just something to think about when you're doing it. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that was where I had to go for this presentation. I probably showed went a little bit more detail with some data and things like that. But I was just trying to get people to think, I guess a little bit more about different practices and things like that. I'm happy to take any questions or anything like that. So we have a question. What's your opinion on the laser weed control implements that are the newer thing coming out and they know it's an expensive option. I haven't really looked at it. Did at the vegetable show? I heard the price tag and I decided I didn't wasn't looking at any of doing that. I mean, the idea behind it I think is good. I mean, it's going to the same thing about point spraying with some of the newer sprayers and going out and be able to pick out a weed and spray it. I think it's a good idea and everything like that, it's just got to be economically feasible. And right now, it's not for row crops. Maybe in vegetables and things like that, but not in the system. Absolutely. I heard somebody in Southern Michigan, a vegetable producer did indeed buy one. That being said, I know you and I've had a lot of conversations around weed zapping. I know that there is a gentleman in our, in the area over here who used it on sugar beets as a rescue application in a conventional system. Where do you see as herbicide resistance? And people may not know it's there right until after the fact. What do you see as some of the best rescue methods? If people are seeing some of the resistant weeds come through per expensive. I don't 50 bucks to have somebody accustomed to do it for you. It's cheap. Option hoeing is always an option. But again, if you can get a crew and that's not cheap either. Ideally if you're just trying to get it, sugar beets would be not that bad to do. Is getting a mower like that, you're just going right over the canopy with it. That's probably the most cost effective for managing it. You want to get it before those seeds become viable as well, so you got to be monitoring where things are at. Yeah, yeah. Running across with the mower, it's really not that expensive. You're not burning a lot of fuel. It doesn't take a lot of horsepower to run, one of those. Most cost effect would probably be the, usually you're already going to have a yield loss at the point when you can see that you're not going to save any yield at that point. You're saying mainly by the time you notice it, you're doing rescue to eliminate the seeds from getting back in the bank. Yeah, that goes back to that quote. If you keep on doing it and letting those weeds go to seed and then you just keep on going through and doing your same herbicide program, you're just basically insanity thinking that you're going to get a different result. But yeah, you may not know anything about this. But we'll ask if anybody has any questions, please drop them in. Because I'm just going to keep coming up with questions for Caleb and they're going to go off the wall here. Have you heard of any control methods? I know there were a couple chemicals that were coming potentially in the organic world that would be labeled organic for her. Besides have you heard anything about them? Do you have an opinion on them? Yeah, there is some options out there, but it's they're expensive, first of all. They're more of a non selective herbicide basically. It's going to kill everything out there. It's not going to be specific to anything. You're basically limited to use it as a burned down. What's the cheaper option? Cvatornnive looked into it as a spot from what I've heard about some of the products as they don't stay very well in suspension by themselves. Keeping a hand sprayer in the wrought stone box in the front of the tractor and going out and hidden some of these spots. I don't think it's a very viable option. We're going through and cultivating maybe if you're going to go through and you're going to come back and that's all you're focusing on. You could have a little sprayer and go with that and just a hand wand coming off the sprayer to treat those spots. But overall, I think there's more cost effective ways of managing weeds than using the herbicide. So great, we have a question on weed control options if you're in an organic no tail situation, and I'm going to be impressed if you know people who are no tail completely. Inorganic. Caleb. There is a guy that does a little bit of it. Michigan is hard to do it, we just don't have a long enough growing season in the spring to get the rye big enough. Essentially what a no till system with rye you're going to go through and you're going to roll or crimp rye, but then you put it in June before you're planting beans or anything like that. I don't know, I haven't really seen a whole lot. There is a guy that has been successful I think in I don't remember what state he's been successful doing that with, corn. And he's actually roller crimped alfalfa and had success, what I've heard. But I guess I haven't, I don't have a lot of experience. We don't have a good early enough growing season, I guess, to get the growth that we would need to get that kind of mat that we need to cover that. And still be able to have good enough yields to make it cost effective. Perfect. Somebody would like to know your opinion on no till things we hear about do not disturb the soil biome and whatnot. So what's your opinion on no till? No till I think is better for those lighter those situations anywhere where you have heavier ground and being able to I don't know how you prevent it from getting a crust on the top of it or getting a compaction layer. What about your nutrients stratification? There isn't that first few inches getting it down to wear deeper into the root zone. That's the issues I see with no till. I think there is situations where it'll work just fine. But I think that like a strip till or something like that was a better option than doing that and getting the nutrients there. That'll also help with your weed control too. What I've seen there is if you're keeping the strip till and you're just putting the nutrients where you need that, a lot of those weeds can't access that nutrient when it's in the row with the crops. Yeah, yeah, I guess hopefully that answers it. But yeah, for me, I like the idea of it. I like how you're building your soil and all that stuff, but there's a point where you got to think about how are you getting nutrients into your plant and what is the overall effect on Yeah, especially when you get into resistant weeds and things like that. We're going to need some more different tools to attack these different weeds. Yeah, I know you said that. Oh, I know grandpa also wanted to turn soil, so it's hard to change was the comment that was made. Yeah, it's something about turning soil over. It always looks like a nice thing, but Yeah. And then you kind of cringe when you think about it, what's really happening there. So at least that's how I feel. I don't know. I'm going to go back to the electric. To the zapper again real quick and then we'll come back. We had two more come up. I know before you told me that when you hired a guy, you had a two pass. You got two passes. When you when you had the zapper come out, sometimes were necessary. And I mean, I know why that is, but if you want to explain why sometimes you may need two passes of a zapper. Yeah. So I guess I meant to mention something about that too when I was talking about the zappers that so last year was okay. The year before that it did not work at all because we were so dry where we were at that there was no moisture in the plant. If you don't have the moisture, you can't conduct electricity across it. I guess that's something you got to think about when you're zapping. That's also the situation why sometimes you do need to. But if you get some big weeds, then you got to be able to come back. It will take two passes to kill sometimes it also depends on what your speed is going to. But then you also have weeds that were just below the canopy and then you zap. And then two weeks later those weeds are above that you didn't have an option to get the first time. Yeah. All right, perfect. I'm going to guess you don't have much knowledge on this question, but you might. And if any of our other participants have knowledge on it and want to comment on it, we'll take your comments to any thoughts on removing bindweed from sweet cherry trees. Little guys that are like two to three years old. I'd love to learn how to take care of bindweed and soybeans. We got to feel that's really bad with it. I don't know that binds. That was one I haven't figured out yet. I really hate that weed. Fair enough. We cleaned up the cultivator pretty good before we moved from that field. Yeah, there's one of the neighbors has his field also that's organic. And he actually went and worked up 20 acres with the rototiller just to try and get rid of it and not spread it, but he still seems to have it too. So yeah. Wow. And then we're going back to till question. I believe, David, if I am wrong, please correct me. He was the one who was asking about no till and tillage, and he says, could we use it every few years? I guess my understanding of no till to get the advantages of it, you have to build it up to get to that point. I think it's an option. Yeah, you can do that. It'll help with some of your soil health stuff. But overall, I don't know that it's going to help your yields, I guess is what I would say with that. Fair enough. All right. Now Michelle has one for us. She has an invasive grass with rhizomes that predominantly run horizontally 4-6 " deep. The goal is to see native grasses and pollinator plants would Repeated tillage as there's regrowth followed by Sudan sorghum legume mixed cover crop, outcompete the grass terminate and see natives in the fall. I'm guessing you could probably talk to the spread at least. Yeah, we had a field, I'm pretty sure it was quiet grass. I wasn't 100% positive. We don't farm that field anymore because it was just terrible. It was always wet. We could never get into it. So we couldn't really do that repeated tillage to try and get down breakdown its reserves. But I guess I don't know for a fact whether the smother crop on some of that stuff will work or not. I haven't looked into it. I guess the only one I really ever looked into was was with the thistle. Hoping I'll also work on milkweed too because I do have a field that's got pretty bad milkweed as well. But we'll see. I don't know if I'm going to try. Absolutely. Makes sense. All right. If anybody has any more questions for Caleb, please feel free to throw them in the chat. Caleb, if you can hang with us for another 10 minutes. I know we're going to wrap up a little bit early here. If nobody has any more questions, I'm going to throw up the information. I'm here for the survey, so thank you, Caleb, for helping us. If anybody has any questions, wants to talk to him one off. He has his contact information currently up on the screen. I can tell you he is wonderful to talk to on this stuff because he has the scientific brain behind it as well as the farmer practical brain behind these things. Not that I want him to get inundated with phone calls necessarily, but he is great to talk to on a lot of this stuff. We have one more, this isn't directly weed related, but I'd appreciate your advice on this. I've learned over the years, growers have used lots of phosphorus to help their plant grow, but now much of the soil has too much phosphorus. This is actually an issue that she's facing in her gardens and fields. Do you have this concern and what do you do about it? Yeah. I try and monitor, I guess my phosphorus and try and put as least amount as I can. I mean, I'm putting chicken litter down, so that doesn't help. But I guess I did want to mention that too, why I talked about calcium there on that solubility and why we are seeing that tie up, why it's not available, some of that phosphorus is tying up with calcium and that's part of the reason why it's not available for plant uptake. I just don't want to mention that too, but specifically, I, I don't 100% know how you go to decrease your phosphorus numbers trying to limit the amount that you put down. The problem is it doesn't really move much in the soil as your plant getting what it needs. That's another test you can do to tell what is actually soluble For that actually, that would be a true growth media test. I'm pretty sure that test that I showed was just the solubility test, if I remember right. But yeah, that's how you make it available and how plants can access it. You got to be careful. I'm not the expert on phosphorus and trying to manage it. Yeah, that's fine. You don't have to be the specialist on it. Farmers point of view and how you and how you're handling it. I was going to say test, test your soil. That's the only way to know, right? Test this one. All right. So I want to thank everybody again for participating here today.