Plant Cover Crops

Learning about the benefits of planting cover crops.

controlling annual ryegrass

Killing Cover Crop Annual Ryegrass – How Are We Doing?

This Annual Ryegrass plant was almost killed. But almost is NOT good enough!

Over the winter of 2011-12 I did nearly 55 cover crop meetings across the Midwest.  And one of the “hottest” topics was how to kill annual ryegrass in the spring. This topic is almost like the Tim Tebow of the cover crop world. Some have no problems managing it and some hate it (cannot get it killed).

During the meetings I suggested that farmers read a really good article on Ag Web that I was asked to help write along with Mike Plumer, Dan Towery, and a few others.   In the article Mike Plumer and Dan Towery both give excellent advice on killing annual ryegrass.  I have also written quite a bit on the blog about killing tall annual ryegrass.  The one theme we make sure producers know is that they need to kill the annual ryegrass dead!

At this point many farmers swear that they have no problems and others just swear!

I have done a couple of videos that I hope help in this matter.  They are pretty representative from what I have seen this spring across the Eastern Corn Belt.  The first video was taken before spraying, the second taken after spraying was done. A third video shows the difference between killing annual ryegrass versus killing cereal rye.

One of my key points is that we be ready to spray again if we see green.  Don’t assume that if you see green that the initial herbicide application will eventually work.

Please forgive the wind noise on the second and third videos. I used the mic but it was very windy.

 

Annual ryegrass on the left and cereal rye on the right. Look at the massive amount of cover on the annual ryegrass!
This green leaf tells us that the plant is not entirely dead. While we may have a 99% kill this plant will end up producing seed if it is not terminated.

Formula for Killing Tall Annual Ryegrass

These varieties of Annual Ryegrass were already knee high on April 28th in Lexington, KY in the U-K Annual Ryegrass trial. On that date there were already some seed heads starting to be visible.

It’s May 7, 2011. I received five phone calls yesterday from farmers that have wet fields…flooded fields, and knee high annual ryegrass and winter rye.  The question from all five can be summed up as “I wanted to kill my cover crop earlier but it was too cold, now it’s too wet; this stuff is growing like crazy…what should I do now?”

Again, I will tell you that I am NOT a chemical expert.  However, I get to rub shoulders with guys that do lots of spraying that have had very, very good success killing ryegrass over the past few years.  One of the gentlemen that I trust (because I’ve seen his very good work) is Chris Nuest, who works for CFS at Winamac.  He has done the spraying at Four L Farms where we saw a total of four escapes on ARg last season (on 200+ acres).  Chris told me today that he will use the following formula to kill his taller annual ryegrass on his farm.  These rates are per acre…he uses Round-up(R) at a 2 QT rate and Basis(R) at the 0.5 oz. rate along with a non-ionic surfactant, AMS, and a pH reducer.

His other recommendation was to maybe look at Basis(R) + Balance(R) Pro with Round-up(R)  at full rates (again with AMS, and pH reducer).  Here is another helpful site from Purdue.

Like I said, Chris has an excellent track record of killing annual ryegrass.  E-mail me at dave@plantcovercrops.com if you want to contact Chris.

This field of annual ryegrass in north eastern Indiana is needing to be killed pretty soon! This photo was taken May 5, 2011. The field is still too wet to cross with equipment.

To quote a friend of mine…”the rain is falling, but the sky is not!”

Cover Crop Annual Ryegrass – Kill it dead!

By mid-October it was very evident that there was A LOT of volunteer annual ryegrass in this field. At that time the question was whether it would survive the winter...the answer was "yes it would". So now what? KILL IT DEAD this spring!

I was recently in a field of ryegrass cover crop that we had looked at earlier and there is still a lot of ryegrass in the field.  That sounds good, right? It’s unfortunate that it was volunteer annual ryegrass.  This producer had not followed the proper steps to killing his annual ryegrass.

We need to kill the annual ryegrass cover crop in the spring.  Take a look at this site from the Oregon Ryegrass Commission on how to have the best opportunity to kill annual ryegrass cover crops. Now, there are questions brought up occasionally about whether killing volunteer annual ryegrass is more difficult to kill than ryegrass that was planted the previous fall.  I’ll ask the experts to weigh in on that question in the comments section…I do not know the answer to that question!

This beautiful field of cover crop annual ryegrass will need to be killed before planting season.

Is Annual Ryegrass a weed – part 2

These annual ryegrass seedlings were around 3-4″ tall underneath the soybeans. I’d imagine they could be 2-3 feet tall at harvest.
The soybean field looks great! But underneath the green foliage you will find lots of annual ryegrass coming.

Today, August 3, 2010 I visited some fields in Whitley County Indiana to look at fields where annual ryegrass was not killed quite perfectly this spring.  Even though the soybeans look awesome there is a problem lurking under the bean canopy.  That problem is a fairly thick stand of annual ryegrass.  I found ryegrass in the 2-5″ tall range.  My guess is that in one field we checked that there is close to 10-15#/acre seeding rate equivalent.  The grass is relatively thick in many areas.  While the beans are planted in 15″ rows there is still enough sunlight hitting the ground to keep the ryegrass growing and green.  The biggest problem is yet to come when the beans start to drop their leaves and the ryegrass gets more sunlight and takes off growing more quickly. On thing about annual ryegrass…it loves Nitrogen and the soybeans are providing plenty for it.  I’m afraid that the ryegrass could be 2-3 feet high at harvest time…making for a “fun” harvest.

This is why it is so vital that annual ryegrass is “killed dead” in the spring.  Count on two applications of glyphosate.   More will come on this in a later post.