Hope this finds you all well, some of our good no-till friends are ill and we pray for them all.  A lot of us older no-tillers are starting suffer from our age, and this crazy spring didn’t do one bit of good for us on that issue!
 
I’ve been bugging Darrell for a good tank-chemistry classroom for us no-tillers who spray. We’re finally getting our own sprayer and commercial pesticide license, which has brought back all the memories of trying to kill weeds before RR.

Farming was too easy for us no-tillers and all farmers when that stuff came out, and now we have so many resistant weeds we have to go do what we should have done in the first place: Read labels, follow them and learn about adjuvants and tankmix partners.
 
Ignite or Gramoxone are contact killers, so they require more water and different droplet size than glyphosate.  Marestail, tall waterhemp and resistant pigweed or palmer amaranth has made us all re-think this spray-issue deal.
 
The crop in Ohio has really caught up, with fields tasseling now or wanting too, but it’s all confused. I wrote a blog on that issue this morning at www.hymark.blogspot.com.  I hope it makes you think about your no-till cornfields because ours are confused!
 
Spraying is job one this week in Ohio, so farmers have all kinds of questions about adjuvants, glyphosate tie-up of manganese and other nutrients, how to kill tall weeds, how to kill weeds that didn’t die the first trip, and so forth and so on.  Tons of questions, few answers!
 
We’re thankful though for the heat and moisture, and for places like the NNTC, where we can all go learn and talk about these things this winter.  I have spent all my life killing weeds and learning how to build and save soil instead of tearing it down. 

Life and Mother Nature hit me hard this spring! Hope to talk to you in January if not before.