(Music)
Welcome back to the War Against Weeds Podcast. This is Sarah Lancaster, extension weed management specialist at Kansas State University. Our co host today is Dr Essman. Howdy, Alyssa,
Hey, Sarah.
We have a couple of guests with us today, both from the great state of Illinois. You may or may not know, fun trivia, but I believe Illinois is the number one pumpkin producing state in the country. Is that accurate? Head nods from my from our guest. So, so let's start off. We have a returning guest and we have a first time guest. So let's start off with Dr Marty Williams. Marty, can you introduce yourself, what you do, and kind of what kind of work you've done with pumpkins?
Sure, yeah. And Thanks, Sarah and Alyssa, appreciate the opportunity to come back and chat with you. So I'm an ecologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, and I'm co located at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, and my program is about addressing issues related
to weeds and climate change in our food production systems. And I have done a little bit of research with pumpkin although it has been a few years, therefore, I was twisting arms to see if we could get Alan Walters, our other guest, to join us. So for, for, for, you know, have a definite expert on hand that has done, I think, a lot of great pumpkin research, not just related to weeds, weed management, either. But anyway, that's a good segue to our next guest.
I think it is. Alan?
Oh, thanks for having me here, Sarah and Alyssa, first timer, and maybe not the last, right? Yeah, I am a professor of vegetable science at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. I've been at SIU since 1998 so I'm getting to the point where it's time to retire. I have done a lot of work on pumpkins over the years, and I have to put a little spot in here for another major crop that I work on besides pumpkins,
which is horseradish. And we're talking about weed control. And in horseradish, they have a major weed that we can't control, and call Palmer Amaranth. So Palmer is a tough one to kind of control. But on going back to pumpkins, I've been working on pumpkins since around 2000. We grow pumpkins every year. We do some trials, different trials every year, not
always on, on weed control, but we do variety trials. We're now working on some pollination research trying to understand what the feral pollinators are in pumpkin production and how if they are working, or if we need to kind of add beehives in there. More more so.And we noticed that some pumpkins are more attractive to honeybees than other pumpkins. Some are more attractive. We'll go into that a little bit later. But we're, we're also, or have been, highly involved in weed control.
When my good friend Brian Young was here at Southern Illinois University. We did a lot of work together on on pumpkin production, but I did most of the work. You know,
we'll make sure Brian hears this episode.
but we worked really well together for that period of time, from when he was here at SIU until he left around 2014 so we did some really good weed control, because we started off when I got here, a lot of the growers wanted to go in and start growing things a lot in No Till situations. So a lot of them were using conventional tillage, and we were trying to make a switch to no till and to see how we could kind of grow
pumpkins and other cucurbit crops in no till systems. So we got the no till kind of worked out using cover crops like wheat or winter rye, and then we started having weed problems, right? So because in most pumpkin production systems, they'll use tillage in between the rows to come come back and pick up those weeds before the. The vines start to run. But you
can't do that in no till, right? So what you have is what you you have out there for weed control, because you're not going to go back in you're not going to kind of do any more tillage operations in there. So your pre emergent herbicides become very important at that point. So we did a lot of work on evaluating different systems and using different herbicides and different cover crops, trying to focus on what would be the best
possible scenario that we could kind of work out. So we've done a lot of work, and just kind of also depends on what your weed populations are for a given system. So we were working mostly on amaranthus, waterhemp and pigweed control, some grass control, but grass is usually you can kind of control in pumpkin production, it's the broadleaf weeds that cause all the issues. So that's some of the stuff that we've done over over the years and in pumpkin related to weed control and a
lot of other things we've done. We've done some fertility trials, because the fertility needs of a plant can change. When we're growing cover crops, because of the carbon nitrogen ratio kind of changes. And usually we apply about 90 pounds of N per acre, and that can kind of go up to maybe 120- 130, because of the residue that's there on the surface, tying up
some of that nitrogen. So I think that's a good introduction to kind of get started with and from there we can kind of go whichever direction you want to.
So I thought it would be good to kind of lay some groundwork to get all of the listeners on the same page. The last guest I interviewed was one of the last guests I interviewed was Lynn Sosnoskie, and she really kind of let me have it about all of our emphasis on corn and soybeans and row crops. So with that kind of fresh on my mind, I think it would be good to give the listeners kind of maybe like a sequence of events for pumpkin production. So you talked about
the switch to no till, but are they on beds? Do they use plastic ever like? What do all those kind of iterations of planting practices and harvesting practices and things of that nature look like.
Alan if I could go just for a moment here to provide a little more context, I probably should have talked about my introduction, and the listeners will be very interested as well. There's kind of two major end uses of pumpkin or market classes, right? So there's the Jack O' Lantern type of pumpkins, which is kind of timings really well for this
podcast, coming out right around the time of Halloween. And then there's also pumpkins grown for the processing industry, either for canned or frozen, but winding up as a food product and given. And so I should say that most of my experience,at least with research draws on that pumpkin grown for processing, or the food food uses, which is, yeah, which Illinois dominates, does the vast majority of the processed pumpkin production in
the US. But probably most people will be thinking about pumpkins in terms of the jack o lantern, and really, they actually are different species. So the the processing type pumpkin is the same species as what you what we call butternut squash, yeah, so it's, it's butternut squash, but they're varieties that result in
really large squashes. Well, probably averaging 15 pounds is probably the biggest thing that they target, but you can have fruits that are up to 70 pounds and and they really, they do look like, I mean, they're, they look a lot the same color of a butternut squash, not necessarily the same shape. They tend to be a little bit more round, but and then, and then the jack o lantern types there are, you know, I'll let Dr. Walters talk about all the variation of the cultivars
there. But, yeah, so that's, that's kind of one kind of key distinction with pumpkin production is sort of the two major types end uses.
Thank you for reminding me to start there, Marty. So I guess one one way than to segue from the different types of pumpkins to some of the practices Uh, are the practices production practices vastly different between processing pumpkins and Jack O' Lantern pumpkins?
Well, it just kind of depends on particular grower, because growers use totally different production systems. Some here in Southern Illinois will grow strawberries, this is atypical, on black plastic, and then kill the strawberry plants and come back and plant pumpkins on black plastic. But that's not generally how most large scale pumpkins are produced. They're produced in a field on bare soil systems in in which there come the harvesters will come through and go along and harvest those
and put them in a wind row along the dry road. So usually you have dry rows in your pumpkin field, and that's on both types
Jack O' Lanterns or the processing pumpkins. And if it's the processing pumpkins, they have a machine that kind of comes through and picks all those up that are windrowed along the edges of the drive row, where, if it's Jack O' Lantern pumpkins, those are harvested by hand as well and wind row, but they'll come along with a trailer with bins on it, usually pulled by a tractor, and those will be placed in there by
hand. So it just kind of depends on the situation. But most of them are field grown, no raised beds, generally, usually anywhere between six to seven to eight foot centers. And depending on what the ultimate size of that pumpkin can be, you can kind of change your in row spacing for whatever that will be. If you're going smaller pumpkins, maybe two to three
feet between plants in a row. If you're going large jack o lantern types, you're going to go a little bit larger, because they require generally more square footage per plant to kind of develop the large fruit on there. So the production system between the two is really not that different, except on the
way that they're really harvested on there. And go back to a pumpkin, a pumpkin is generally round, so we're looking at a Cucurbita, that's the genus of pumpkins, and we have Cucurbita mashata, Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita peepo, which are the Jack O' Lanterns, and Cucurbita agrosperma, which is the used to be Cucurbita mixta, which are the cushal type of squash. So pumpkins around squash deviate greatly from roundness. So that's the typical definition
between those two. And you can have, like what Marty said. You can have cucubra mashata. They can have the round fruit as well as the typical butternut which deviates greatly from roundness, right? So it's classified as a squash, a butternut squash. So it's it's interesting to see how all these kind of fit together, because pumpkins and winter squash and pumpkins and summer squash are are very similar species in a lot of ways.
So you said that these are grown flat. Are they direct seeded or transplanted?
Usually direct seeded, smaller growers will transplant a lot of times and they can either transplant or direct seed into the straw mulch, but a lot of times they'll use transplants in straw mulch because of all the different issues they have with mice and other things feeding on the seed in there. And a lot of growers have went to transplants
to kind of solve that, that problem. But generally open field situations, you don't have that cover crop mulch on the on the soil to kind of have that issue with with mice, but most are still directly seeded.
So next curiosity question, what would be a big field versus a small field. like I'm thinking that the acreages are different than what I'm picturing for wheat in central Kansas,
large field, I would say is somewhere like 20 to 30, 40,50 acres. Smaller fields would be less than five acres. And if you're you have an agritourism, like where I'm at here in Southern Illinois, a lot of the orchards will have agritourism, and they'll have, like, just a few acres of pumpkins, and a lot of the the orchards all throughout Illinois and the Midwest, all of them have a pumpkin patch or two, and they can be anywhere from a half an acre to to an acre to five
acres. Just kind of depends on on how much they really want to spend time all. The pumpkins and and get away from the crop set. They say you're making money like apples and peaches, right? But I know I used tovisit in my vegetable production class in the fall, we would go visit one of my former students. He has an orchard up near St Louis, and when I first got there, he said, Oh, Dr Walters, our number one crop is peaches, right? And then, oh, Dr Walters, two or three years later, oh, our
number one crop now we make more money off of is apples. And like the last time I talked to him, he's he said, Oh, now, Dr Walters, the the most money we make off of everything that we have here in the farmer pumpkins, so everything, it kind of changes. So I thought that was kind of an interesting way to look at things, because you think that you're primarily started out as an orchard, and you have all these cool apple
varieties and peach varieties that people really want. And then now in the fall, it's become such a huge deal, even since I've started at SIU the last 25 years, all these pumpkin patches everywhere and families want to get out enjoy the cool weather we have this time of the year. And it is nuts at these
places. I mean, people are all over each other. If you've ever been to these this time of the year, especially during the weekend, if you go during the weekend, it's going to good luck and find a parking spot even at some of these orchards, right? So it's, it's, it is really something spectacular to be able
to see, because I love pumpkins, right? I've dedicated a large part of what my research program is to pumpkins, and I really enjoy working with pumpkins, and I really do like how it's kind of changed over the years, from a guy who was primarily an orchard for 4050, years now, pumpkins are their number one crop.
So before we get too far away from this topic, I have to ask something really quick. So I'm from circleville, Ohio, for those who aren't so familiar with the region, that's kind of like pumpkin show land. So this past Saturday, we just ended the pumpkin show. And the big contest there is the big pumpkin growing contest. So how does that kind of play in? Are they different varieties? I know it's probably very different
management. Or, I guess, how much do you guys interact with the kind of the large pumpkin growers?
I can go ahead and and say my part of this, Marty, if you wanted to, but go for it. We can't grow very large pumpkins because of the temperatures, right? So south of 64I 64 it gets kind of hot. So there's a delineation line around Champaign Urbana, where pumpkins will grow very large. North of that line, like in Wisconsin, Michigan, Northern Indiana, Ohio, northern Ohio, Pennsylvania. But the further you get south, because of the heat, the pumpkins really don't
like temperatures like 8085, 90 degrees. They like temperatures more in the 70s. So that's why they can produce photosynthates at a much quicker rate. Because if they're respiring, trying to survive, a lot of that photosynthate gets diverted into plant survival and not into the fruit. So we can grow some large ones, maybe like two, 300 pounds, like a variety called prize winner Atlantic giant. Those are the big, big pumpkin types. People sell their seed for like $5 a piece or so, or
more if it wins. But we can't. We can grow them here, but they just don't get that large hope. That makes sense.
Okay, Alyssa, so what was the biggest pumpkin circle pumpkin show?
Oh, I could tell you who it was. So he's an optometrist named Dr Liggett, and he wins so very often. But I think it was 1000 pounds. I'll have to look it up before the show's over.
The other kind of pumpkin event that hasn't came up yet. I don't know if it's still going on. I would imagine so, but I don't know for certain. But the pumpkin chucking contests, do we still have that?
I think it's still done in Morton, Illinois, you know where the processing pumpkins are primarily a girl, yeah, a major thing where they have the cannon that shoots the pumpkin and who can
Yeah, different categories of types of machines, from cannons to catapults to trebuchets. Yeah, it's I've never gone personally.
I'm trying to decide if I should look For YouTube videos to show my children this conversation.
I don't want to be the one that goes out in the field to pick up the pumpkins. You know, shot right
the pumpkin patch here does osage orange hedge apples like yeah, that's what they chuck. They don't check the pumpkins are too valuable.
pretty solid. I wouldn't want to get clocked by one of those either.
Here in Carbondale, they have the Great Pumpkin race, you know, like soapbox cars. So you put little wheels on the pumpkin developed a little, you know, cart to put it on. And, you know, they have them different, you know, colors and, you know, all these different designs on them, and
that should be coming up soon. That's kind of another there's all these crazy things that people do with pumpkins, you know, we talk about chunking the pumpkins, you know, and all the crazy other things that that people have they want to go see, right?
Yeah, and Sarah, you just come circling back to field size, as it relates to the processing pumpkin. All of that's grown under contract with a food processor. And normally, these food processors will have some quote, unquote pack that they want to achieve each year. So how many? How many pumpkins
do they need for the year? And they'll contract in advance with growers to get the correct amount of acreage for that, and, and, and so there probably tend to be larger sized fields for processing pumpkin in that this is a crop that they're rotating about every five years to pumpkin. So they just to break up some of the disease cycles. They want non pumpkin crops for
about five years. So tend to be, you know, if you're, if you're working with the same growers every year, then the grower has to have enough, enough, you know, enough size to be able to enough land to be able to come back to every five years. Otherwise, they're, you know, they're, they're working with different growers from year to year to get the equivalent acreage, or sufficient acreage.
So what would those processors do? Like, if there's a drought or a weird freeze and all of a sudden the production they contracted isn't enough?
Oh, that that happens every now and then, yeah, it usually makes the news. It seems like too. And then the then the shelves are empty at the grocery store, because everybody's like, Oh my god, I got a pumpkin for the pie things, yeah. But yeah, these are, yeah, it happens. I mean, there are events, you know, weather events, that can be detrimental. And impact, impact, I think,you know, we're talking like, even though Illinois is the largest pumpkin producer,
you know, we're probably talking of 10s of 1000s of acres. So it's not, so it's, it's a major crop, but still, you know, relative to some of the agronomic crops, it's, you know, it's kind of a rounding error, but with a finite number of acres in it, especially when they're concentrated in the, you know, the same area of the US. Yeah, there's, there's a little bit of risk, and sometimes it happens where the yields are down.
yeah, the the acreage in the state's about 30 to 35,000acres, and that's total, right? That's, that's a lot, and it's a little bit split half and half, with a little bit more on the processing side than the especially pumpkin jack o lantern side. But when you look at a five acre field of pumpkins, it looks like a lot, right? Because somebody's got to go out there. Pumpkins and not just get on a combine, start
driving, it's a little more back breaking work. And I can't do that type of work as as I could when I was like in my 30s and 40s, as much, right?
So I'm going to use this as an opportunity to steer us to weed management. So okay, labor how much does the labor issue affect? Not necessarily harvesting, but we can talk about that, but also weed management and things of that nature, right? As a specialty crop, there's limited herbicide options, which leads me to assume there's a fair amount of at least in some of these, like smaller jack o
lantern types of pumpkins, some of these more manual labor. Is that a misconception, or is that I could take a shot at here? First, Helen.
Um, the there are some organic processing pumpkin grown. And hand weeding is relied on heavily there. And, yeah, it's a significant cost. And also using other types of tactics. Some of the electrical weeding tools are pretty effective because it's a relatively short statured crop because it's vining out along the ground. But, yeah, the hand weeding is, is pretty much necessary for organic
production, the conventional processing pumpkin production. I yeah, there's, there's, probably, I get the sense there's very little hand weeding used, not because it's not needed, it's sorely needed, but just the availability of a crew, just for that crop at that time, and the cost is less common. So what we see in processing pumpkin is actually some of the organic fields or some of the cleaner fields in the state, because they're they're putting a lot into their weed management
program. And yeah, as you mentioned, there's not a lot of products registered. It's a really short list. So in comparison to Jack O' Lantern types, how does that fit with what you've seen Alan?
Usually, what growers will try to do, and you hit on a little bit, is they'll try to manage those weeds during the rotational cycle, right? So if you have, like, a 3,4,5, year rotation, you do a really good job in your corn and soybeans, right? So that will kind of allow you not to have the significant weed control problems that you would have if you were just kind of going following another specialty crop, because you have limited options in other specialty crops
as well. But that weed control to me, and I tell them this is that weed control during that rotational cycle is of the utmost importance, because you can almost control every single weed you have in that crop. But once you get to pumpkins, you're kind of limited on your weed control options, and they do have to go back sometimes and do some hand weeding, but they try to limit the hand weeding because it costs so much money where you can apply some of these herbicides for, you know,
$20 an acre or less. That's much cheaper than having someone to have to go out there and hand weed all the time.
It seems like an interesting, I want to say, niche, but that's not quite the right concept. It's an interesting spot between, like, the value of a broad acre crop and the value of lettuce or snap pea, you know, some true like vegetable, it sounds like it's kind of in between, that the the economics don't play out to go for a lot of hand weeding, like you might see in some of the higher value specialty crops.
But we also, at the same time, have the same limitations, and don't have the herbicides available for like we do for corn and soybean. Is that accurate Marty?
yeah, yeah, I'd say, so yeah, it's Yep, in Yeah, my sense from the, you know, of all the production challenges, weeds are one of the biggest for this, this crop, it's, it's a big challenge. And yeah, that's glad you raised that. Alan, about the crop rotation that is, that's, that's the chance to get things kind of cleaned up a little bit and, and I know for some of the other veg crops I work in that are grown under contract, it's, it's like, oh gosh, we had to follow, we had
to follow pumpkin. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be a problem. Time to clean the field again.
So okay, so go ahead, Alyssa, I'm just curious. So what does weed interference look like in pumpkin? Is it less fruit, smaller fruit, poor quality? Or, I guess, how does that play out in pumpkin?
Well, I can kind of answer. It depends on when you achieve your weed control, right? So if we are able to kind of have late season weeds that kind of come in and it looks really bad, it's not going to really affect the yield. It's just going in and trying to harvest everything. I've seen some really weedy fields with amaranth in there, but the
pumpkins size is really not affected. Now, if it's before that period, you're going to have some weed interference, causing some yield loss if they're able to compete with the pumpkins For most of their production season, you're going to have a problem. But if it's after about 40-45, days, usually it's really not going to influence the yield. But once it once the pumpkins vine out a little bit, they kind of
suppress weeds a little bit too. So if we can get it to the point where we have a few weeds coming up, and we're able to kind of get those pumpkin vines kind of growing out a little bit. Even though we have later season weeds coming in, it's usually not a problem. We just have to kind of get them controlled early in the season. That's the number one, the number one issue that I would kind of point out to everyone,
yeah, and because the opportunities for doing anything later in the season is very, very limited, not only, you know, pretty much like a single broad leaf post emergence herbicide that isn't, isn't all that comprehensive on But also, you know, in a row, cultivation can is limited once these plants start to vine. And so there's a there's a point where a person can do some cultivation, and then, and then there's a clear point beyond which you cannot.
So then we've talked about amaranth species, water, hemp and such. What are the other kind of problem needs for pumpkins?
I can kind of take this a little bit. It just kind of depends on the particular grower in a particular region of where they're producing pumpkins. It's going to be anything from. I've seen fields totally devastated by cocklebur. I've seen a lot of other grass weeds that you would think that they would be able to kind of manage a little bit better, but they came in late and they didn't want to spray. And you
had those kind of coming up and and taking over as well. But where I am the memo, the most important one is the Amaranth species. I've seen a wide array of different of other ones, like Eastern Black, night shade, some of those in there as well, morning glories and other one that if and it's hard to control
with the herbicides that we have available in pumpkins. If you have a field with Morning Glory, you need to kind of grow those corn and soybeans in there for several years to kind of take care of your morning glory problem problem, because there's no herbicides that I know of in pumpkin that are available that will do a really good job in controlling those unless you're
using something in between the rows to kind of control it. But if you're trying to go over the top of pumpkins, there's not much.
So maybe this is a good time to directly ask you guys, what would a typical herbicide program look like for pumpkins?
Well, the first one would be your Pres. So the pre emergent herbicide, which we would put down before we transplant, or put down before or right after we seed, right so we're seeding, we kind of come back right after that with a pre emergent and then use a post emergent herbicide along the way. So for example, the standard is a herbicide called strategy, which is a combination of clomazone and Ethalfluralin And a lot of growers will use that. Some may use Sandia, which
is how you sulfuron as a pre emergent as well. There's a new product that got a 20 4c label here in Illinois, reflex, which is fomsafen which does a really good job more on some of the other weeds that the clomazone and ethalfluralin does not do. And one that I use a lot, also a lot of growers use, is dual s-metholachlor. Are all really good pre emergent herbicides, but you got to know your weeds, right? You got to know what
weeds you that's in that field. To know what herbicides you have to start off with pre and then if, if you do a good job, and you get a little moisture, because most of these are grown in rain fed systems, right, with no irrigation, so you hope for a little rain to kind of activate those pre emergent herbicides. You don't want too much, because then you have problems with your lack of residual activity in the soil with those pre Emergent
herbicides. And then, if we do a really good job, and we know what the weeds are, and we know that we've kind of controlled the weeds for about 35 days, we got to think about, oh, what are we going to do now? Right? The the weeds are going to start to
flush. At this point, we want to kind of control them. So I always kind of recommend using a grass herbicide somewhere along the way to kind of control those grasses that are going to kind of show up a little bit later, and if things get really bad, I guess you could use how you sulfur on as a post emergent for
some of the amaranthus species that are, that are there. But usually there's once you get past that 3035 day period, 40 days, you really want the pumpkins to spread out a little bit, so they're kind of going to suppress that, where you don't have to really worry about a lot of broadleaf weeds coming through to be able to manage at that point. I hope that makes sense. It's a little bit different, because it depends on where you are, what weeds you have, what production system
you're using. You know, if we can kind of come back, if we're growing in conventional till we can come back and until, if it gets too bad in between the rows, if we need to right before they start, vining. But if you're growing in no till, you're kind of really limited to the cover crop mulch, as well as what your herbicide program is at that point.
So it's interesting that you talked about the 24 C's, I know shortly after I started here. I mean, we don't think of Kansas as being a specialty crop state, right? It's the weed state. But we have a specialty crops group here, and they were asking about 20 4c for dual reflex, and they wanted valor for Roman row middles is what they wanted. And so I was
actually just searching the databases. I thought we were successful with the reflex, but I don't see Kansas listed here on the list of 20 4c so, but I know it, it these guys are, are kind of grasping at straws a little bit, trying to find products, as far as something that will kill pigweeds, yeah.
So, and there's, there's not a lot of products coming down the pipeline for this, because all those have kind of been pulled out of other crops that we use on pumpkins. They were never designed to be used on pumpkins. They were designed to be used on other other crops. So we just kind of did the evaluations and said, Well, we can use this one on pumpkins. This is great, you know, and then you get all the resistance issues and all that starting to kind of come about.
And it's for those out there who really don't know, especially crops are very difficult when we come to weed control, because we have very few herbicides that we can use, and weeds are always going to be an issue in specialty crops, because we have no designed program for us to get this except for leftovers from other crops.
That's kind of sad, yeah, that way the leftovers,
yeah, you know. And, you know, we talk about, like, some of the products that are registered. And, you know, thinking about something like Sandia, haloulfuron for amaranthus control. Well, this, this is an ALS inhibitor. You know, how that was, that chemistry, right, right? So it's, it is, you know, it's, no matter what we do, it's, it's hard to be, you know, at best, we're good, never satisfactory.
But, you know, maybe good. And that's sort of the well. And I think it also speaks importance of integrated weed management,
right? Just the things that are things we were talking about before, of having taken, you know, a multi year approach to this, and doing what you can in these, in these crops that do have some tools and and have have more competitive canopy as well, and reducing seed bank inputs, you know, over time, yeah, just kind of speaks to the and that's, that's what's kind of fun with, actually work with working some especially crops the growers is that they're, you know, they're, they're kind of
forced to think broadly about how to manage weeds.
Okay, so we're talking rotations a little bit here. This was not on my pre planned list of questions, but what about rotation restrictions, like carryover concerns from a crop like corn or soybeans or whatever else they might be growing? Are there any like definite no nos for that preceding crop?
There are restrictions, depends on what's being utilized. And you can kind of see in some fields where they didn't follow that, and you'll see a little bit of herbicide injury on on some of those herbicides. I'm not a corn and soybean herbicide guy, but I know there are some out there that they have problems with falling restrictions. So they're
going to kind of go to a pumpkin crop that year. They have to kind of go back and and not utilize some of those herbicide chemistries that provide some problems for pumpkins.
I saw this somewhere. Sarah and trying to prepare for this podcast, a really nice table of the different products and rotation restrictions for pumpkin. And which window Did I leave that window up? I've seen it. It's really helpful. I and I'm not finding at the moment,
we can always post it in the show notes too, so folks have access to it.
Okay, yeah, good idea, yeah. Cuz I don't. I'm kind of scanning. Let's see. So, so we talked, you guys mentioned earlier about the importance of like drive rows and these wide row centers and wide spacing between the rows.
How much does the like the drive rows and some of this other I mean, we talked about the fact that the canopy is going to take care of the row middle stuff, but the drive rows, how much is that an issue for weed management and just being like a source of of concern for especially like the you pick guys who want this kind of picturesque, inviting field,
there's a couple of different ways they can kind of approach that. They can kind of use these sprays with shield shields on the edges to kind of go through there and spray the dry rows to kind of keep them weed free. A lot of them will use mo will mow. Some will put grass seed, grass in between there to kind of help with preventing weed emergence and
and just kind of continually mow it. And some of those look really nice, but no, till is really, I didn't say this, but no, till is a great production system, especially if you have people coming onto your farm, because they can go out soon after it rains, right? They're not going to go in a muddy field a lot of times when there's like mulch there, and you can go in and start harvesting. So you can do a lot of your operations even
soon after it rains with with no till. And if you have straw mulch down, usually it's going to kind of help and weed control a little bit in between. But there's different ways that that people kind of manage those, those drive roads.
So I think we've kind of gone through all the things that we had planned to talk about. Alyssa, did you have any other questions for these guys?
I have a question and a comment. So the comment the largest pumpkin at the pumpkin show this year, Bob and Joe Ligget 2226 pounds. wouldn't want to be chunking that pumpkin.
Make a tiny house out of it.
The little old lady who lived in the pumpkin,
I there is one final question, Sarah, do you want to ask it or do you fire away? Okay, so our final question for you today is kind of simple, not just pumpkins, but you know, crop diagnostic, is there a silver bullet for weed control?
(Laughs) No.
For those of you who believe in God, it can. He can put his finger down and say yes, there we go. But no, there isn't a silver bullet.
Yeah. It's an attractive idea, for sure, but yep, it's a Yeah. Weeds are kind of a unique challenge, and pumpkin, as in many of our crops. Obviously, but yep, it's, it's a, it's an interesting one for this crop.
We've, we've been asking that question this season, and it's fun to see all the ways people say no way.
Well, and it's good to talk about, right? Because we knew do need some new solutions, and there's some technologies being developed, and there's things that look promising and and the last thing we want to do is to is to lose it once you know, as we gain tools, to lose them from relying
too heavily on just that tool. So I think it's, I think it's a great question to continue asking, even though you know you know the answer, for the folks that you bring on, for the listeners who may be less familiar with Weed Science, to have an appreciation for how quickly weeds can adapt to To the types of management used to control them.
but chemical weed control is of the utmost importance, and for those who are against the use of herbicides that enjoy going out on a fall day to a beautiful looking pumpkin field, they can thank The use of herbicides to get it to to that point. And I just, I think there's a lot of people who don't really appreciate the the use of these herbicides, and we can't lose these herbicides, right? So we
have limited herbicides, the way it is. And sometimes herbicides don't necessarily make it through the approval as they as they once did, and they kind of take them off the market, but we're kind of really limping along with the herbicides that we have today, so we need to kind of make sure, any way possible to keep these herbicides available for our pumpkin growers, to kind of continue this great Fall tradition in America of having the pumpkins and being able to
go out and enjoy the pumpkins in the fall. So we really need to appreciate, you know what really goes into pumpkin production? And most people will go, oh, the pumpkins. These are more expensive this year than last year. I don't understand why, but the costs are going up for everything, and we have to put that cost somewhere. And unfortunately, that cost always goes to the consumer, right?
All right. With that, I think we're going to land this plane. Did you find your table Marty?
I'll start looking again. I was listening to the discussion. Sorry.
So, um, so I think with that. Thank you, Alan, thank you Marty, for coming to talk about pumpkins and weed management in pumpkins. Thanks to our listeners and thanks to all of our cooperators, and we'll see everyone again next time on the war against weeds podcast,
thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the war against weeds podcast. We appreciate your listening. We appreciate support from the north central IPM center, and we appreciate the collaboration with the Crop Protection Network. At crop protection network.org you can find the war against weeds podcast as well as other podcasts and a variety of other information related to crop protection. Thanks again for listening, and we hope to see you next time you.