By Darren Hefty

Winter Wheat

If you have tough winter annual grasses still living in your winter wheat like cheat, downy brome, Italian ryegrass or others, you have a battle in front of you.  The best time to control them is in the fall.  The second best time to hit them with a herbicide is right now.  As soon as they are actively growing in the spring, you can spray them.  Some words of caution:

  1. Your best options were fall treatments of Maverick, Olympus or PowerFlex.  The spring options are not nearly as good, so set your expectations accordingly.
  2. Mixing grass herbicides with broadleaf herbicides will lessen the effectiveness of the grass herbicide.  If you’re already using a “second best” option, don’t reduce its power by spraying a broadleaf herbicide at the same time unless there are hardly any grasses out there at all. 

Your best options now are: GoldSky, Rimfire Max or Everest 2.0.  These all contain Group 2 (ALS) grass killers.

Spring Wheat

Pre-emerge: You have a couple good options for grass control that can kill weeds before they emerge from the ground and start competing with your wheat for water and nutrients.

  • Pre-Pare is a Group 2 (ALS) herbicide with good activity on foxtails and wild oats, along with suppression on cheat.  It will also kill some broadleaf weeds.
  • Zidua is a new herbicide option in wheat from the Group 15 family.  This is a unique site of action for use in wheat.  Zidua will be a good choice for foxtails, Italian ryegrass and a number of broadleaf weeds.  This year, however, Zidua is pretty much sold out across the country.

Post-emerge:  There is nothing new for 2014 in the post-emerge grass control market.  The real keys here are to spray early, rotate sites of action (chemical families) and spray broadleaf and grass herbicides separately when there is a major grass problem.

  • Group 1 (ACCase Inhibitors):  Axial, Discover and Puma.  Good on wild oats and foxtails.  Axial has shown the least amount of antagonism (reduction in performance) when mixed with broadleaf herbicides.
  • Group 2 (ALS):  Everest 2.0, GoldSky and Rimfire Max.  Good on wild oats and foxtails.  If you used Pre-Pare as your pre-emerge herbicide, you should use a Group 1 post-emerge whenever possible.