Dealerships looking to keep their mechanics busy in the off season typically offer discounted inspection rates for machines through the slower late fall and winter period.

“A lot of dealers will have inspection programs going,” says New Holland’s parts product marketing manager Aaron Booth. “There’s 15 per cent off (NH) OEM filters until the end of this year.”

While many farms have fully equipped shops and employees capable of doing mechanical work, having a dealership inspect a machine could still offer a benefit, Booth says.

“Because they’ve had so much experience with different models, they know where to look. They know this model machine in conditions around here is going to have these kinds of issues. They’re going to be able to go a little deeper with the equipment they have.”

When it comes to catching wear on components early, brands may offer kits such as auger liners for combines to extend component life and postpone major repair costs.

“Even if you’re doing your own repair work, connect with the dealer to see what options are out there,” he adds.

Often machines will develop small problems during peak seasons that don’t force a stop to operations — and those minor defects can often go forgotten.

“The big thing for combines at the end of the season is having a checklist of what went wrong,” Booth says. “It’s not just mechanical issues: it’s software, your precision, and making sure all those little things that weren’t big enough to stop you, you take care of those right away. They tend to get put to the back of your mind and not get fixed until you realize a year later it hasn’t been done.”

Giving machines, particularly combines, a good bath before they get parked for the season is also a good idea.

“All the dirt that gets packed in there is going to attract the wrong type of animals,” says Booth. “It’s going to get mice. The more you clean it up, the better off you’ll be.”

Greasing components and changing engine oil before long-term storage will help prevent damage.

“Engine oil does have those contaminants (from combustion) and the cold weather makes it a little thicker, which doesn’t help,” he says. “So it’s a great time, particularly if you’re using a semisynthetic that has a longer oil change interval, it’s going to be better for the engine as it’s sitting there.”

Protecting batteries from discharge during storage is also key. Typically machines always have a small amount of amperage draw which can discharge batteries over time, making them more susceptible to freezing in the winter.

“Make sure you disconnect it and put a maintainer on it,” Booth says. “They have smart (maintainers) now that let it draw down a bit and charge it back up. You don’t want a battery to sit in a reduced (charge) state.”

Leaving maintenance and repair until machines roll out of the shed in spring could end up hitting farmers hard in the wallet. And as dealership service departments get busy, that could also cause delays.

“If you’re in the group of farmers that call a month before you want to use (a machine), it gets pretty hectic,” says Booth. “And that’s where you’re going to pay a premium.”

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A long-lasting lure attracts the rodent to the trap. When it sticks its head into the trap a piston strikes it on the head, killing it instantly. A spring retracts the piston, readying it for the next strike. The rodent is then left to be carried off by a natural predator such as a fox or raccoon.

The lure remains fresh for up to one month.

Traps retail for $99.99. A more sophisticated option is the Smart Trap Kit, which relays trap data to a smartphone app, which includes number of kills, date, time and environmental conditions. That system retails for $199.99.

More information is available on the company’s website.

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Post-harvest weed control, or fall pre-seed, offers the benefits of spring pre-seed with the added workload and time management payback you gain in the spring.

Several products are registered for fall pre-seed weed control that, tank mixed with glyphosate, cover a wide spectrum of weeds. Most important in fall are winter annuals and dandelion. Canada thistle shouldn’t be ignored either. Winter annuals left unchecked reduce soil moisture and nutrients throughout fall and in the spring, when they resume growth. Dandelion, with its large root system, is difficult to control; however, research has shown that fall is the best time to tackle this persistent weed. Cooler conditions lead the plant to translocate energy to the roots, carrying the herbicide along and increasing the likelihood of complete control.

Once the soil cools in the fall ( ≤ 10 C), certain products offer control that extends to spring. The breakdown of the active is halted over the winter, and early-emerging, susceptible weeds are controlled when activity restarts in spring. This is especially important for volunteer canola, which emerges in flushes in fall and spring and can be high in numbers.

Generally, fall pre-seed sets you up for spring. Additional control may be required due to high weed populations, delayed seeding or the effectiveness of the chosen product.

Bottom line, plan ahead for fall weed control as part of your post-harvest workload. You will thank yourself come spring and your crops may deliver bigger results.

Kelly Bennett is the category leader for herbicides in Western Canada at Corteva Agriscience.

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Manitoba

Tammy Jones, a Manitoba Agriculture weed specialist, lists redroot pigweed, lamb’s quarters and green and yellow foxtail as the biggest weed threats this year. Winter annuals like stinkweed are likely to be less favoured, she says, as there is an expectation of more spring tillage after the wet fall.

“Cultivation should hopefully get rid of them, but how well they are managed depends if there is a good job done of cultivation.… Certain types of tillage equipment have a higher level of disturbance and better uproot the plants.”

Pre-seed herbicides also work for these weeds.

Jones advises growers to make sure their herbicide application timing is optimal by scouting to determine weed growth stage, applying herbicide before the weeds get too large. “It’s also critical to ensure you are using the right water volume for good coverage and to get the correct dose to the target,” she says. “And never use poor-quality water with bicarbonate or sediment, for example. There are a lot of factors in the water that you use that can affect herbicide efficacy.”

Saskatchewan

Clark Brenzil, a provincial weed control specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says the top five weeds in surveys have always included wild oat, green foxtail, wild buck­wheat, Canada thistle and volunteer canola.

Wild oat is showing significant herbicide resistance, Brenzil reports, with 60 per cent of samples in the last provincial survey showing resistance to Group 1, 30 per cent to Group 2 and 20 per cent to both. He predicts those percentages will increase this year to 70, 40 and maybe 30 to 35 per cent resistance to Groups 1, 2 and both 1 and 2, respectively. Brenzil also reports some wild buckwheat is showing resistance to Group 2 and green foxtail to primarily Groups 1, 2 and 3.

Because resistance is growing at a steady and fairly fast pace, producers need to be proactive. “Many of them don’t yet realize how fast the situation can blow up in their faces,” Brenzil says. “You can go from noticing the escape of a small patch of a weed to a full-blown resistance across the field in two or three years. Many growers at first dismiss what’s happening, thinking it’s a herbicide application problem or a late flush of weeds. But once there has been time for the weed seeds bank to increase, it’s too late.”

As growers well know, the many tools to manage resistance include increased seeding rates and narrower row spacing where appropriate, which Brenzil says can also provide benefits like reduced days to maturity, increased yield and improved test weight in cereals. “There is also research showing side-banding instead of broadcasting will give you 75 per cent less weed biomass with the same fertilizer rate,” he says, adding that nitrification inhibitors have increased the amount of fertilizer being broadcast.

Brenzil also reminds growers that the more diversified their rotations, the bigger will be the impact on reduction of resistant weeds and on disease and insect control. “A full four-year rotation is optimal, alternating grass with broadleaf crops within that,” he states. “There is also research that shows including a three-year perennial forage in the rotation can drop weed populations by 75 to 95 per cent and can also drop the disease and pest cycles that growers are dealing with as well. There has been a strong hay market in the last couple of years where hay in the rotation could have been lucrative.”

Alberta

“In many fields in Alberta, volunteer crops (primarily canola, wheat and barley) will by far be the most important weed problem of the coming season,” says Chris Neeser, a weed research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. “For many growers, other weed issues will pale in comparison to the problem of volunteer crops emerging from seed shatter in fields.”

Because the province was subjected to early snowfall in September 2019, with continued cold temperatures afterwards, winter annuals like shepherd’s purse, stinkweed, flixweed and cleavers didn’t have much of a chance to get growing last fall. This means there is a lot of seed out there that will germinate this spring and into early summer, says Neeser.

“The normal burndown will not get it all and growers should consider pre-emergence applications with residual control in addition to appropriate in-crop options to control the later-emerging weeds.” Other weeds should not be any worse than usual in Alberta, in Neeser’s view, and hopefully no glyphosate-resistant Canada fleabane will be found in 2020.

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And, as reported by Canola Council of Canada (CCC), Palmer amaranth, another aggressive pigweed with populations resistant to many herbicides, is moving north from North Dakota toward Manitoba and Saskatchewan as well.

Each waterhemp plant can produce up to 200,000 very small seeds, which can be spread by contaminated equipment, waterfowl and more. Like Palmer amaranth, waterhemp is present in both North Dakota and Ontario. As reported late last fall, researchers have found waterhemp populations in two areas of Ontario with resistance to glyphosate, independent of resistant populations in the United States.

Clark Brenzil, a provincial weed control specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, has heard rumours that waterhemp is present in a couple of counties in North Dakota just south of the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He will be looking for it in southeastern Saskatchewan this coming summer and encourages any producers who think they have it (it’s similar to a pigweed with narrow leaves) to contact him by email (clark.brenzil@gov.sk.ca) or phone (306-787-4673).

Under Manitoba’s Noxious Weeds Act, waterhemp and Palmer amaranth are categorized as Tier 1 Noxious and must be destroyed — but should be tested for resistance first. Farmers can be fined if they do not comply with notices to destroy it, and any equipment that’s been in a field containing waterhemp must be thoroughly cleaned. Contact Jones by email (tammy.jones2@gov.mb.ca) or phone (204-750-1235) to report the presence of waterhemp. She can help arrange for herbicide resistance testing using green leaf material as well as a weed destruction plan.

“There are seven modes of action that this weed is resistant to, and resistance to Group 2 and 9 are so far confirmed by PCR testing in Manitoba,” says Jones. “We really need to be proactive this year with surveillance and do a lot of testing to optimize management. It costs about $200 to test 10 plants from a field. Compared to the cost of the herbicide and of spraying it — and the impact of the weed growing out of control because the herbicide doesn’t work anyway — $200 is a good investment.”

Alberta is at low risk for waterhemp to get a foothold, says Chris Neeser, a weed research scientist at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, because it doesn’t do as well in the cool nighttime temperatures of the western Prairies. However, it may arrive in future.

There are two other weed species on Jones’ radar. “Woolly cupgrass in North Dakota also may be a threat in the future,” she says. “I keep expecting resistant Canada fleabane to take off in Manitoba but it doesn’t seem to be happening as it has in Ontario. I’d be very happy to have it stay that way.”

Herbicide-resistant kochia

Kochia is another weed found across the Prairies that has resistance mostly to Group 2 herbicides and with some resistance to Group 4. There has also been a sharp increase in resistance to Group 9.

Jones believes this is the tip of the iceberg. “A lot of farmers are using glyphosate and in many populations it will now control 80 per cent of kochia, but in two years, with continued reliance on glyphosate alone, it will not be effective at all,” she says. “Kochia has a short seed life of one to three years and we should be able to get rid of it, but it’s more resilient and adaptable than I had thought.” She reports that growers can get a green leaf material test for glyphosate resistance through the Pest Surveillance Initiative (mbpestlab.ca) with results in one to two weeks, however, seed testing takes longer.

In terms of spread, CCC reports in Canola Watch that kochia produces 15,000 to 25,000 seeds per plant, and mature weeds, once they break from their stems and start to tumble with the wind, can spread these seeds over a fairly wide area. In addition, kochia often takes over saline or other marginal areas. Farmers should consider seeding kochia-infested areas to salt-tolerant perennial forage rather than continue to throw inputs at it, the publication states.

In Alberta, Neeser reports normal and glyphosate-resistant kochia is present south of Highway 1 and north of it up to Red Deer county. “Use rotation and other integrated weed control practices as much as possible in addition to alternative herbicide options,” he says.

Alberta growers who wish to test for kochia they suspect may be glyphosate-resistant should contact Charles Geddes, lead investigator in weed ecology and cropping systems at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Prairie Herbicide Resistance Research Lab in Lethbridge (403-359-6967 or Charles.Geddes@canada.ca). Geddes can direct farmers to the appropriate lab. His lab also tests other weeds for glyphosate resistance and carries out tests for dicamba/fluroxypyr resistance.

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The province might be losing the war on herbicide resistant weeds; reports from the U.S. say despite some kind of trade deal with China, U.S. farmers figure they will need more than a $25 billion bailout in 2020 — (yes, that’s correct, more than $25 billion); and swine fever continues to spread through Poland, heading for Germany. I quit reading after that.

It must have been that late January blues that attracted me to those items. I know there are plenty of good things happening in agriculture, but those headlines seemed to gang up on my psyche.

I’ve often wondered about the war on weeds. There are plenty of great herbicides promising to be the solution to some of the most complex weed spectrum problems, and yet I don’t believe I’ve ever heard any farmer say, “thanks to herbicides we are seeing a lot less weeds in our fields.” (If that’s happening on your farm please let me know.)

In the Co-operator article written by editor Gord Gilmour, he talks to Tammy Jones, provincial weed specialist, about what she’s seeing out there. And it’s not all that pretty. With certain weeds, Mother Nature plays a tremendous numbers game.

Manitoba is dealing with a couple of new weeds that could become a threat for all Western provinces. As the Canola Council of Canada points out: “Tall waterhemp is confirmed in eastern Manitoba. Palmer amaranth is in North Dakota and moving north toward Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Both are big aggressive weeds with populations resistant to many herbicides, including glyphosate. If you find them, destroy them immediately.”

Jones is repeating that no nonsense message. Last summer she spent a few hours in a Manitoba field yanking about 300 well-rooted waterhemp plants from the ground and carrying them to the edge of the field to be destroyed. She estimates that effort removed about 90 million herbicide-resistant waterhemp seeds from the environment, helping to reduce the spread of one of the most aggressive weeds on the landscape.

She says that’s the type of vigilance farmers need to apply. If they see a small patch of weeds, whether it be this new waterhemp, or any other patch of weeds that seems to have survived a herbicide application, stop, get out, hand pull the weeds, remove them from the field and make sure they are destroyed.

Jones says it can cost money to apply proper control measures to remove waterhemp plants, but the alternative of doing nothing isn’t really an option. A waterhemp infestation can reduce soybean yields by 40 to 95 per cent.

And here’s where the numbers really mount up. One Manitoba farmer last year had a 35-acre patch of waterhemp weeds, resulting in zero crop yield over those acres. Not only did he lose about $9,000 worth of inputs spent to seed the crop on those acres, he then had to pull out all the stops to eradicate that large weed patch. With tillage and/or mowing and other measures, total cost of those weeds came to about $15,000.

Jones says it seems like a lot of money, but on the other hand that 35-acre weed patch had the potential of producing about 305 billion seeds. Even if normal control measures had eliminated 99 per cent of those weed seeds, that would have left a potential 300 million waterhemp plants. As Jones says, how can you grow any crop if you already have 300 million yield robbing seeds just waiting to take over?

It may seem like a losing battle, but researchers aren’t giving up. In Alberta, Breanne Tidemann, a weed scientist with Agriculture Canada in Lacombe, is urging Canadian farmers to consider some weed control measures that have been developed by Australian farmers. Chaff burning, chaff collection and removal, feeding chaff to livestock and installing weed-seed crushers on combines are some of the ideas being put forward. These measures aren’t necessarily winning the war on weeds, but they are helping farmers hold their ground on the battlefield.

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It may surprise you that Canada thistle is an excellent nectar producer for honey bees and that the thistle occurs in the form of distinct separate sexes, male and female. These thistle clumps or clones have deep-rooted stem-like rhizomes that spread rapidly in good soil and also serve as food reserves for the plants.

The old method of control, particularly in pastures, was to repeatedly mow them down three to four times a year in an attempt to exhaust their food reserves. Digging out the rhizomes or cultivating them only served to multiply the thistle clones. Sheep and goats are used in Europe to control thistles but cattle will only eat young, freshly cut but wilted thistles.

Before the advent of herbicides, Canada thistles and quack grass were the top farm weed enemies due to their persistent, perennial nature. The only way to control these two dauntless weed enemies in the UK was to grow a well-fertilized crop of kale (a seven-foot giant of the cabbage family) that would shade and choke out these farm enemies over a season.

When you see a clump of thistles on your cropland, roadside ditch or headland, check out the thistle’s sex in late August or September. If you pull out the fuzz before it blows away, you will notice that the fuzz either has seeds attached or no seeds. No seeds mean that it’s a male clone; seeds indicate a female clone. Often in the seed heads of a female plant you will find quarter-inch maggots instead of seeds. These maggots are the offspring of flies. These flies lay their eggs only in female thistle flower heads and depend on bees to carry pollen from male to female thistle flowers. No pollen, no seeds since it’s the developing seeds that feed the fly maggots which number one to three per head. The maggots are about a quarter- to a half-inch long and make excellent bait for rocky mountain fish or trout. These maggots severely reduce the seeds available in thistle patches and thus act as a fairly good biological control for seed that otherwise wold be dispensed.

White flower-like growths

As you drive or speed by the local un-mowed highways from Winnipeg, Man., to Dawson Creek, B.C., do you notice those white flowerlike growths in the ditches? I have seen these white-to-cream flashes on virtually every roadside ditch in prairie Canada. What’s up?

Stop, get out of the vehicle, park on the road shoulder with flashers on and take a close look. What you see are bleached white Canada thistle tops. These thistles have been infected with a fungus disease called Phoma macrostoma. I first saw this sporadically on roadsides and ditches in Alberta in the 80s. I dug up and forwarded lots of specimens to researchers at universities and provincial and federal governments. Eventually, around the 90s, research on this biocontrol was initiated by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada at Saskatoon. The fungus, technically identified as P. macrostoma var macrostoma reproduces by means of conidia (asexually produced spores) released from pycnidia which are dispensed by wind and water. Its conidia are somewhat similar to those of the blackleg fungus on canola. One of the Phoma isolates identified as P. macrostoma 94-44B is an isolate now registered for broadleaf weed suppression in both Canada and the U.S. The fungus has no effect on grass species, including all cereals. The fungus is primarily intended for dandelion and clover control in lawns, particularly where herbicides are banned.

As you can see from the photographs, the odd sighting of this fungus (Phoma macrostoma) along prairie highways has now exploded into massed infections where up to 80 per cent per cent of the thistles in some ditches and pastures are now bleached white. The distribution of this fungus all over Europe and North America and has recently been found on thistles in New Zealand.

While I do not expect this fungus to wipe out Canada thistle or even dandelions, I can see from its distribution in this area of Alberta that we have strong biocontrol of this most noxious of pests. Along with the seed maggots’ natural biological control, this fungus may significantly reduce the all-too-common dense stands of pasture and roadside Canada thistles that are still major problems for organic farmers.

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A. It’s been well established that competition from early-emerging weeds is most detrimental to crop development. Weeds emerging along with the crop compete for moisture, fertility and light before the crop has a chance to get the upper hand by developing its root system and getting above any later-emerging weeds. But how early is too early for weed control? Weeds are emerging from various depths and germinating at varying times, making the spray timing decision difficult.

Do I spray now or wait? Planning ahead can help you decide. Too often we focus on controlling what we can see, forgetting the value of soil-applied pre-emergent products. There are now more options available to growers for both broadleaf and grassy weed control in front of more crops. Many of these products can be considered a great setup to a complete weed control program, and often have the added benefit of using alternative herbicide modes of action such as Group 3, 8, 13, 14 or 15.

Adding these herbicide groups can decrease early weed pressure on a crop while also providing an opportunity to use an alternate herbicide group to control weeds in crop for effective herbicide-resistance management. While pre-emergent products often require a followup in-crop application of herbicide, they are part of a complete weed management program that can help a crop achieve its full yield potential.

Scott Anderson, P. Ag, CCA, is a manager of agronomic services for Nutrien Ag Solutions in northwest Saskatchewan

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For nearly 50 years, Canada thistle, wild oats, wild buckwheat and green foxtail have appeared in the top-five list of problematic weeds in Saskatchewan. The fifth weed in that top-five list varies, often reflecting climactic conditions of the time, said Saskatchewan Agriculture’s provincial weed control specialist, Clark Brenzil.

“In 2003, it was lamb’s-quarters and 2014–15 it was volunteer canola,” he said. “This was the first time that volunteer canola ranked this high in the survey.”

“This may be the result of a fall with high winds that resulted in heavy shattering losses in canola,” he added.

Canada thistle made the news last year because of its impact on shipments to Vietnam. In June of 2018, Vietnam’s Plant Protection Department (PPD) found wheat and pea shipments to be in noncompliance with its phytosanitary requirements. As a result, PPD announced its intention to reject any shipments affected by the weed beginning January 1, 2019.

In a recent interview, Cam Dahl, president of Cereals Canada, said the risk of rejection effectively renders shipments to Vietnam economically unfeasible.

There are two good options for managing Canada thistle, especially in wheat, said Brenzil. Growers can use pre-harvest glyphosate, he said. He does caution that they must keep residue levels in mind and apply when the crop is dead ripe.

Products containing clopyralid will provide some level of control as well. Research conducted by Dow AgroSciences in the 1990s found that a combination program of a clopyralid-based herbicide, plus a pre-harvest treatment resulted in 95 per cent control, whereas each product alone was around 80 per cent. “With Canada Thistle being a creeping-rooted perennial, control measures you take in one year impact the next year,” he said.

“With Canada thistle, you kind of have to think a little forward as to where you’re managing that, unless you’re doing pre-harvest glyphosate on every single crop that you’re growing,” said Brenzil. “Not every producer is willing to do that.”

Glyphosate provides a good tool at harvest, he continued. When applied in the fall it kills the growth of new roots for the following year. Applications can be made post-harvest as well, but keep in mind the tops of weeds will be lopped off at that point, making them more difficult to target. Before implementing post-harvest control, six weeks must pass before spraying and even then, the glyphosate rate must triple compared to pre-harvest.

Because Canada thistle is very competitive, Brenzil suggests spraying low-value crops in preparation for high-value crops. “If you have a patch of Canada thistle, it will nearly completely exclude any crop that’s growing in it,” he said.

Wild oats and others

Wild oats are another weed of concern, said Brenzil. Sixty per cent of Prairie populations have Group 1 resistance, and 30 per cent of populations have Group 2 resistance.

“I suspect if we looked for Group 8 resistance, we’d find that probably 20 to 30 per cent had resistance as well,” he said. “We’re running out of options for wild oat management in Western Canada.”

Volunteers are also pervasive. “Canola and wheat volunteers are as high as they have been,” said Brenzil. “Some of this has to do with pre-harvest shattering [canola] and material running off the sieves of the combine.”

Some of this can be chocked up to harvest speed (going too fast) and combine settings, whether intentional (blowing fusarium diseased kernels out the back) or accidental (non-optimized settings for canola).

Kochia also raises concerns, after two hot dry seasons. Well-adapted to high salinity levels, kochia appears where water tables are high and evaporation brings salts to the surface.

“On its own, it’s not super competitive, but it’s really good at taking advantage of gaps in the stand,” said Brenzil.

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Wild buckwheat is an annual weed found in cropland in the southern Prairies. Despite farmers’ best efforts, the weed is hardy and persistent to the point of infuriation. Each plant can produce up to 12,000 seeds in a single growing season. While they won’t all germinate, most of them will remain dormant in the soil, sometimes for years.

What makes wild buckwheat so hard to control? Part of the problem is that the weed blooms indeterminately throughout the growing season. It’s a vine-like plant that creeps along the ground before becoming entangled with the crop. Brenzil says that, ideally, wild buckwheat should be controlled at the four-leaf stage or smaller. Weeds that come later in the life cycle of the crop are less competitive, so producers will want to deal with the weeds that are there as the crop is coming up out of the ground.

“Once it starts putting on any amount of stem, then it has more lateral buds that can survive and re-boot the plant allowing the weed to continue growing,” said Brenzil.

Herbicides

Research shows that bromoxynil, clopyralid, dicamba, glufosinate and sulfonylurea products are the most effective wild buckwheat control. Bromoxynil has been one of the stalwarts for managing wild buckwheat in cereals, said Brenzil.

“It’s a contact, so its job is to burn the early leaves off, starving the plant,” he said. “But what that means is that you have to get wild buckwheat relatively early in its life cycle to get successful control.”

Systemic herbicides such as glyphosate and Group 2 herbicides have some challenges controlling wild buckwheat on their own. If conditions are perfect they do a reasonable job, but if things are a bit cool or light is low, they will hold the wild buckwheat down for a while, but it ends up recovering and growing back later on.

Relative to other weed species, wild buckwheat has a low predisposition for developing herbicide resistance. In fact, there are only four reports worldwide. Group 2 herbicide-resistant wild buckwheat was confirmed in Alberta in 2007, but no cases of resistance have been reported in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. The Alberta sample was tested and found to be resistant to florasulam (a component of Frontline and PrePass), thifensulfuron (a component of Refine) and tribenuron (a component of Express and Refine). According to the International Survey of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds, one other case of Group 2 resistance was found in Australia in 1993, and two cases of resistance to atrazine (Group 5) were found in corn in Austria and Germany in the 1980s.

Another factor that makes wild buckwheat a challenge is the way its seed is designed. It has a relatively impermeable seed coat, which means the seed coat needs to be damaged from weathering to allow the seed to germinate. “And that never happens at exactly the same time in every seed,” Brenzil said. “So that means that you could have an extended germination of that weed out over a long period of time, especially if it got worked into the soil where it’s protected from those breakdown processes. This makes it hard to time herbicide applications just right.”

When wild buckwheat escapes

Because it’s a twining weed that climbs up the standing crop to reach sunlight, wild buckwheat creates mechanical entanglement problems during harvest. “It causes an increase in blood pressure, is what it does,” said Brenzil. “Because it slows down harvest. If you don’t stop to unwrap it from the header reel, it can cause damage to the bearings in the machinery.”

Wild buckwheat’s seeds can also act as dockage. For the most part, it’s relatively easy to clean out using screens, but if it’s not cleaned out well at the combine level it may have to be cleaned out at the seed cleaning plant level. It does count as dockage against crops with similar seed sizes, like canola, cereal and flax.

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