Get The Most Out Of Your Herbicide Application

Jun 18, 2015

—Tips for windy conditions. Too windy, according to the Guide to Crop Protection, is wind above 15 km/h. A low drift nozzle to spray weeds in windier conditions is preferable to waiting longer for a relatively calm day suitable for a finer spray.

—Spray within label crop stages. Crop stage window for glyphosate-tolerant canola: Seedling to 6-leaf. Liberty Link: cotyledon to early bolt. Clearfield: 2- to 7-leaf for Ares and 2- to 6-leaf stage for Odyssey Ultra and Tensile.

—When to spray uneven crop. Patchy emergence due to a few weeks of dry and then a rain, or due to reseeded crop emerging among the few original plants, has created a wide range of stages in some crops. Make herbicide timing decisions based on the stage that represents the highest proportion of plants. And rather than planning on two applications, growers may be better off spraying once at the highest registered rate when weeds that are more advanced than the crop, and with rapidly growing canola plants.

—Clean out the whole sprayer, not just the tank. Herbicide residue can be in the booms, filters and herbicide filling pump, among other places.

A Canola Digest article “Contamination station” describes how the glyphosate left in the sprayer pump was enough to damage a whole Liberty Link crop.

—New products/new registrations. Just because a product is registered in Canada for use on canola does not mean that it should be used. In some cases, key market countries may not have approved the same product or have not set maximum residue limits (MRLs) for that product. Before using a new product, check with the delivery point to make sure canola sprayed with this product will be accepted.

Source : AlbertaCanola

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.