Welcome back to the war against weeds Podcast. I'm Joe Ikley, extension weed specialist at North Dakota State University. My co host today is Alyssa Essman at The Ohio State how's it going Alyssa?
Pretty good, Joe, we got a week of 60s and 70s out here. So I think people are starting to get antsy.
Yeah, the day of recording, we're going to be mid 60s, not quite flirting with 70, but it should be single digits by tonight. So march in the northern plains. But our guest today, we're going to be talking about potatoes. So we brought on Dr Andy Robinson, also from NDSU. So Andy, welcome to the podcast. And why don't you tell all the folks out there what you do here?
Yeah, great. So, yeah, my name is Andy Robinson. I am a associate professor and potato Extension Agronomist for North Dakota State University, and I hold a joint appointment with University of Minnesota.
All right, And since you live and breathe all things potato, we thought we'd have you on so most of our guests are certainly used to row crops and buying some seed planted in the ground and then going from there. So we figured we should probably take a little bit of a step back and talk a little bit about potato agronomy first, as that's kind of the first question. And what are some of the major production differences between potatoes? And when you think about your typical seeded row crops,
yeah, so there's a lot, there's a lot of differences, and there's also quite a few similarities. But probably the big thing to first start out with on potatoes is we asexually reproduce them, because they are tetraploid, so they're very difficult to cross two plants and get a seed that is exactly what you want. So we actually will take tissue, we cut it, we grow tubers in the ground. We harvest those, we
replant them. So that makes the process a lot different than row crops, instead of just crossing a couple hybrids and getting the seed right and planting it. So because of that, that does change. As far as herbicides, we have a lot of pre emergent herbicides that can be utilized because you have a large tuber that has a lot of energy. Also it changes also our rotation tube, because there's a lot of soil borne pathogens that can
affect potatoes, as well as viruses. And so we're typically on long rotations, maybe once in every three or four years, and seed might be once in every five or six years in the field. So big rotations, seeds, a lot different. It is a crop that actually has a high nutritional value and very low cost. So lot of value that way too. And it's grown in more most countries in
the world. So it's, it's people think about potatoes a lot, because acres in North America are probably less than 2 million, but the production is quite high because of the amount of water that potatoes hold.
just sticking with the kind of more the agronomy or maybe even the marketing side. But you know, a lot of people think when they hear potatoes, or think Idaho, when it comes to the US, but we have quite a few around here, and so maybe it also be good to go through just some major potato growing regions. Maybe we'll stick with just the US on that one and different varieties market classes that are out there.
Sure. Yeah. So most of our potatoes are grown in the states that border Canada, in the northern us, because potatoes are cool season crop, and also it helps us store them through the winter. The majority of potatoes are actually grown in the Pacific Northwest. It'd be Idaho, Washington and Oregon. That's probably over 60% of our potato
production. And then as you work your way across to the east, you've got production across most of those states, and it varies based on where you're at. As far as market types go. There's more or less three major markets that potatoes are grown for. You've got processed, frozen process, which would be like your french fries, your hash browns, those kinds of materials that are made in a factory and frozen. And that's going to be about two thirds of the US production. And then
there's a chipping potatoes that are made for chips. You know when you buy in the store in bags. I don't know the exact percent off the top of my head. And then the other big market is going to be our fresh potatoes. Those are the ones you see in the grocery store that you go and buy, or they're sold to food service industries, you know, to restaurants and and whatnot. So those are your three main industries you're growing for
seed. Seed is kind of an industry because of this asexual reproduction that we do, because you'll grow seed usually for three or four years before it goes commercial. So it's kind of got its own little, I guess, niche. And then we do have some dehydrated potatoes, but that's typically for potatoes that may not make grade, and also for, I guess there are some grown for that specifically, but we do export a lot of dehydrated potatoes, and there's a lot of dehydrated potatoes put in food
products like soups and things. So yeah, there's a lot of potatoes are very versatile, I guess, and there's a lot of uses for them. So
maybe going just a little bit more explanation than making great things when being from Maryland, when I hear that, I think about crabs and crab sizes and number ones versus number twos, etc. Is it similar with potatoes? So you dig up a whole field at the end of the year, and you. Based on the size that comes out of the ground can influence the market quality.
Yep, yep. So yeah, you're paid on quality and quantity. So you got to be able to either process that potato into the product that you want at the end of the day, or it's got to look really nice when they have it in the grocery store for someone to buy it, right? So yes, we do, depends on
the variety and depends on what you're doing. But you may only sell 80% of what you harvest or 90% of what you harvest, just as a rough estimate, but there is typically some culling of potatoes, or you have other we have grades, us, one, us two, and you do get paid different amounts for the quality of your potato. So, yeah, it it is really important. Quality is a really important thing for potatoes. And so like, when somebody comes and says, Oh, I got this product, we can
increase your yield by 10 or 20% that's great. But are you going to make more money at the end of the day, you know? Or is that going to reflect the quality of the potatoes? And that's a really important thing that we have to deal with in potatoes. It's not just, it's just, not just total yield.
I'm assuming weed competition, weed pressure is one thing that can decrease the quality make for smaller potatoes.
Definitely. Yes, yeah, weed pressure is, is important for production size. But also weeds are interesting in potatoes too, because potatoes are a solanaceae crop. So when you get your nightshades in the field, they can also harbor some diseases that are problematic to potatoes, or also be a host for some of the insects that also prey on potatoes. So weeds are problematic in different ways in potatoes,
and today, we'll use that as our transition. So what are, and this probably also varies by region, so we'll focus within your region. So what are the major weed issues? You mentioned night shades. So what else?
Yep yeah, hairy nightshade, Eastern black nightshade are certainly quite problematic, because you're trained to control them, but not hurt the potatoes, right? So trying to kill a cousin off, but not kill your major crop off, right? With the herbicide. So that's always a challenge, right? So yeah, night shades are big issue, but it's gonna be similar to a lot of other crop production. Or pigweed species are a challenge. Our lambs quarters are a challenge. Those
are probably the main ones we deal with. Sometimes, some weeds can be problematic too, like nutsedge, they can actually grow in the tuber, which then makes that tuber non sellable. It's not as common, but, yeah, it's it's the pigweeds, the lambsquarters and night shades. I'd say those are our big
issues. And then, as we get into, like, some of these rotational fields, because we're often renting land from other growers to get our rotations, where you're having no till, we're starting to have a little bit more trouble with some of the giant ragweed and common ragweed, because most of our our chemical portfolio, we just don't have a product that controls them well. So some of these larger seeded, broad leaves do cause problems for us because we have no tools except iron.
Just thinking, if I remember my history correctly, quack grass is another thing that can also grow straight through the tuber. Luckily, we don't have too much quack grass in agronomic crops anymore at least.
Yeah and the nice thing is, we have our group ones that work really well, typically potatoes, so we're usually able to clean our grasses up quite well.
So curious how I think being more familiar with row crops folks are probably more familiar with, kind of the different stages of weed management. Could you walk us through, like, a season of weed management and potatoes and what that looks like?
Yeah. So what's cool about potatoes, and, you know, my background is in row crops. When I did my PhD at Purdue, so I worked in soybeans and corn so, and I grew up on a farm, so, you know, I've been around it my whole life. But what's interesting in potatoes, I think, and it's a good maybe it's a good model. And I often talk about this when I'm talking to different groups about weed control and potatoes, but we use a nice integrated, I think, a nice integrated weed management
in potatoes. And like I said, one of the things that starts with is that rotation, when you're on a four year rotation, that's actually quite nice, because you can have other crops in rotation that you might be able to use different herbicides to clean up some problematic weeds. And then once we get into potatoes, we we do use a fair bit of tillage in our potato production, just because that soil, we usually Deep Rip the soil because it needs to be a little bit looser to allow those
potato roots to grow and the tubers to grow. And then also, when we're planting, we actually will form these little ridged hills. You know, you know you ever see these triangular Hills out in the field? That's intentional, because if a potato tuber gets too wet, it's really prone to get bacterial rot, and that's not good. And so it helps with the air movement. And so when we plant, we're actually forming this hill. We're
disturbing the soil. And then, typically after planting, we will come back and reshape that hill, just to make it a little bit, maybe broader and bigger, because we don't want the tubers to actually stick out of the hill, because they'll turn green and then they become not suitable to eat because they get Glycoalkaloids in them, which could make you sick. But also, prior to that healing, we usually fertilize. We'll put a dry fertilizer on pretty commonly, and then. After that,
we rely on a pre emergent herbicides. And our pre emergent herbicide portfolio in potatoes is much larger than our post emergent herbicide options. So I don't remember how many we have labeled somewhere probably between 15 and 18 herbicides, and only two of them are used for post emergence. So we rely
heavily on our pre emergent products. And so products like metolachlor, metribuzin, dimethenamid-p, pendamathalin, those are all very commonly used in potatoes and and kind of the general rule of thumb, like, I like to give people one herbicides, okay, two is good, but three is excellent. So we're really big on on tank, mixing multiple pre emergent herbicides, especially trying to hit different modes of action. Sometimes we'll put in a we'll put in, like a PPO inhibitor,
like, like a reflex (fomesafen) or flumioxazin. We call it chateau, not valor, but it's, there's a label we have, but so depending on your weeds and stuff. But yeah, we're usually trying to get two to three pre emergent herbicide options down, and that's right after we do the final hilling and then, usually with potatoes being a seed to they grow quite rapidly once they get out of the ground and get growing. We can usually close row and about three to about four weeks, four to five
weeks, depending on the year and the variety. But if we get that row closure, that helps a lot with weed management, and then we try to clean up any weeds post emergence, we have two options. It's metribuzin and rimsulfuron. So those are our two post emergence options, and some varieties you can't even
put Metribuzin on, because they're sensitive to it. So you get really beautiful Veinal chlorosis from metribuzin on some of these, like, typically, like on our yellow whites and red potatoes, they don't handle metribuzin Very well, generally, just the russets do. And so you get really great symptomology. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of what we do. We don't have, because a lot of options. And then often Tim, I guess, at the
end of the year too. The other thing to at the end of the year, we often desiccate, usually with diquat at the end of the year, which helps our actually helps the quality of the tubers, helps us the skin, the cells on the skin dry down and they harden so they don't get damaged as much through harvest. So it's kind of the program, heavy on the pres, clean up with a post one or two treatments if you need, and then end of the year we'll desiccate,
and that's what we do. And we use a lot of tillage in between and large, long rotations. And it's a long answer, but yeah, it's a general book kind of practice that we have for potatoes. So
So you said something there that I was thinking about, as you were talking the differences in varieties and maybe herbicide sensitivity. Are there also differences in, like, maybe competitive ability, or how well, or how quickly they close rows, or anything like that.
Oh there is, yeah, certainly, yeah, some Yeah. Potatoes are really complex. That's why I think there's a person hired to specifically work in potatoes. Your seed size can vary on how fast they grow, your temperature, your variety, you cut your seed, you have a whole seed piece. So there's a lot of different things, and it's physiological age, when is that sprout going to start growing? So there's a lot of things in place, certainly. And so it is
tricky. And one of the big things with potatoes too, from a cult or agronomy or cultivation standpoint, we can't go out and plant like 1000s of acres or even hundreds of acres in a day. It's a slow planting process. You might get 8200 acres in a planter in one day, maybe, if you're lucky, same with a harvester, well, something like that. But the point is, is we
often plant into conditions. We probably shouldn't be planting into maybe too cool of soil, but you have to to get everything planted in the ground in time, especially as the farms get larger and they're planting, you know, more and more acres of
potatoes. So and that makes weed management more challenging, too, because then sometimes a little slower to grow if they're putting cooler soil, right So, or we run into every few years, especially up here in the upper Midwest, we'll run into chloroacidomide injury because it's so cool the plants can't metabolize the compounds like, you know, the Outlook or the dual are the common ones we see issues with. So we see that,
I would kind of hope, though, having a slower planter means higher chance of catching that planter with your residual herbicides, because it's on the row crops. Man, we can put crop in the ground fast and just go 24/7, and can't keep the sprayers caught up. So maybe you benefit there, yeah.
I mean, there is, I mean, it is true. I mean, the biggest thing, I think, is weather, though, that we're always dealing with, right? I mean, you get in, you start planting, and then it starts raining. It starts raining or something, right? And that's the challenge with our pres, is you plant, and then you're following that up with your fertilization, your hilling, and then you're in your pre we try to put our pre on after that final hilling, just to kind of get that next
blanket coverage, right. But sometimes, a challenge we run into, if it gets warm or you can't get in the field, all of a sudden, those potatoes will start falling. Start popping up. And then some compounds. It's there are some labels like, I mean, like Prowl, you can put on over top, right? But it's not going to control any weeds that have emerged, but we have to worry about issues with with other herbicides, right? If the
potatoes have emerged. So it's a challenge. And a lot of labels might say two inch sprout has to be two inches under the soil too, just for that crop safety aspect. So yeah, it's there's not night, it's not never an ideal world, but you do the best you can.
So will your weed control program change? If it's seed potato versus potatoes go in the market?
Yeah, it does, especially the first generation of seed that comes from a greenhouse. We call them mini tubers. Are smaller. They're not as vigorous. And so we we do use, typically, to use cut rates. You know, you might take mix two or three compounds, but you may only be using, say, a half to three quarters of a rate, just to be on the safe
side, because those are very expensive. When you're paying 60 cents for each seed piece, you know, you multiply that out over an acre, or half an acre, or whatever it is that's there's a lot of money there, if you're planning on it, say, 20 to 30,000 plants per acre, right? So, so you have to be very careful. And then on the commercial side too, especially we export potatoes, we have to be careful too. Sometimes it has to be an MRL established, especially for newer compounds.
So, but generally that's not a big issue. But yeah, the later generations see this bigger and stronger. It can usually withstand the full rates of herbicides. But we do have funny things like matrix. Rimsulfuron you can't put it on the first year seed in the field, because it's so sensitive. And I've seen, I've seen injury from it before in the field, where it was actually a pivot and it overlapped, they were putting the herbicide on and overlapped in a small section, and, oh boy, it was ugly.
Thinking back towards the desiccation some so you mentioned, it's kind of also affecting the skin, but I guess I'd always thought it was more or primarily, to kind of get those vines dried down and assist with the harvest operations. But
no harvesters are built. They can, they can dig green vines. It's not a big deal. It's it's all about quality. It's all about tuber quality, especially you'll see it in the Red River Valley a lot, because most of the potatoes grown in the Red River Valley are grown from the fresh market. And I didn't mention that earlier too. Most of our potatoes are actually grown under irrigation, because they are a crop that is very sensitive, and the quality will
go off really fast if they get too stressed. So it's really only here in North Dakota, Minnesota, in the Red River Valley and Maine are the two areas where you grow potatoes without irrigation. In the US, pretty much everywhere else it's going to be under irrigation. Again, it you're looking at for commercial crop. You're looking at $5,000 an acre production cost, roughly. So it's, again, it's not a cheap crop to grow, so you really have to take good care of it and babysit it if you
want, if you want to make good money on it. And
that, that may be a good transition kind of the other. It's the last prepared question I had on here, just because we've compared notes in the past about, you know, some of the issues of off target movement when that happens for a potato production field. And I guess there's a couple ways to peel that onion layer back for for what issues it'll cause you,
but things just worth, kind of getting into that. And you kind of mentioned the cost of a per acre, but what other considerations come into play when there's an accident?
Oh, yeah, to start out with, the not good thing about when you have a herbicide off target injury issue is nobody wins, right? And that that sometimes may what so a typical, say, row crop grower may not realize the cost of production of potatoes, right? And, and most states have a minimum insurance if you're a if you're a sprayer, you know that's being contracted, right? You have to have minimum
insurance. But that get, that would get eaten up really, really fast in potatoes, just with the cost of production issues with Dr so starting out with seed potatoes, this is what I first actually run into. My first major problem. When I started here in 2012 we had a bunch of seed that wasn't growing properly, and had to figure out what was going on with it, and it was actually glyphosate drift. So in seed potatoes, if potatoes get drifted on again, that seeds
harvested it's stored, it's replanted the next year. And what those tubers do is they actually will they're a storage organ, right? It's just a swollen stem that is storing up nutrients and energy so it can regrow the next year. But translocating herbicides will also get stored in that tuber, and they're just hanging out there all winter, waiting, and then when it gets planted back, they take effect as that plant starts to grow and so on. Seed potatoes, herbicides are a major
issue because it can affect your seed quality. It really can affect that early growth and development. And so that's a major problem. And so we have seed certification. Every state that has seed grown has a certification agency. They actually will test it during the winter as well as the summer months. They go out and walk fields, mainly for diseases, but herbicides have become certainly an issue that they test for too.
And so if there is a herbicide issue in a seed field that state certifying agency often will not recertify it to be grown as seed because there's too much risk involved. And so that, again, becomes a big issue. The other thing is, it can also cause those tubers to become mouth. Formed, they get really ugly. They can get big cracking on them because they that stress they get. And so herbicides can really disrupt that growth that
puts a big stress on the plant. And so that could happen to a seed crop as well as a commercial crop, and then all of a sudden, you become off a grade, right? But the bigger issue is actually, because potatoes are a direct consumption crop, all of a sudden, now you've got herbicide residues in the crop. And can it be used for food or for feed? And you know, the EPA does have levels set for a lot of
herbicides, but not every one is listed. So some of them, if you get it on there, there's a zero tolerance, and it's an immediate loss. Others there are, I mean, again, like life says, got a level, it's pretty low, but it does cause problems from food safety, because even when these potatoes go to a processing plant and get processed, they do pull random samples, and they do
have to do food quality testing. And so it's not just herbicides, but there's a whole portfolio of compounds that they're checking for to make sure they're safe for human consumption. So that's a big issue, too. As far as you know, the drift or off target. Movement goes but and one of the things we deal with this time of year a lot, too, is people are looking at pieces of land to grow potatoes in. So I get calls from time to time because they're looking at what herbicides have been using the
last one to three years, and can we plant potatoes there? Can we not? Because they don't want again, it's an expensive crop to grow. Us a lot of risk if there's a potential herbicide residue carryover. So one of the things to kind of full circle
back to the seed growers. One of the things we did with our extension work early on, when we identified the glyphosate in the seed potatoes, we learned that a lot of our seed growers were using the same sprayer that they would use for their potatoes, as well as their soybeans or corn, whatever other crops they were growing. One thing we did is really educated them about this and encouraged them to get it by a separate sprayer. And so
that's what most of them have done. They have a separate sprayer now for their potatoes and a sprayer for all their other crops. That way, you don't accidentally leave a little bit of, you know, you leave a few gallons of glyphosate in the tank that's enough to cause problems and potatoes a very low amount. But a lot of them have now, most of them, I'd say, yeah, they have their own separate sprayer just for their seed potatoes, and they typically do their own spraying.
It just reduces the risks. And they're also very careful where they put their seed potato fields, and they communicate with their neighbors, because, again, nobody wants to have an issue with a herbicide problem. Unfortunately, you do everything you can, and there still are problems almost every year I deal with, but it's very minor compared to what I've seen in the past. So I think we've had success in our extension education, as far as that goes.
And so I guess, you know, then for, you know, growing potatoes, it's kind of in many regards, there is still this cash rent system where it's not just like this is once a potato field, always a potato field, you can still kind of go into different areas, or are they the good ground for potatoes? And sometimes there's just someone rents the ground out, puts a crop on and has a long residual herbicide application.
Most potato most potato growers will have they're kind of using their neighboring partners they work with, right? So it may not even be cash, it may just be swapping land. Simply say, hey, you've got all these acres right next to my potatoes. Okay, I'll swap you these fields, you know? So you're going to grow dry beans on there this year, and I'll put potatoes on there next year, and then I'll have potatoes on my field next year. You can have it and put your dry beans on and
you figure out a rotation, right? So there's a lot of land swapping that goes on like that. So that happens. And then we do have the cases where growers are looking for an extra field or two, or some more land to grow potatoes on, but part of their due diligence is they they need to know the herbicides that have
been applied there the last few years. And some growers may be hesitant to share that, but they need to understand the importance of sharing that information, because you don't want to plant a potato crop in ground knowingly that there's been, say, a long residual herbicide that could severely
affect the growth and production that potato. And so it's actually really important that that shared, because, I mean, the growers are fine, and they just want to know, because nobody wants to have the problem, because it just gets, you know, it gets messy and it gets expensive, and, you know, we all want everyone to succeed. So, yeah, there's a lot of products out there that can last quite a few years. Most are, most of row crop products, typically, that we use are a one
to two year type, you know, rotation. But there are a few, yeah, certainly they can push three to four years, and then sometimes we have issues with like drift from some of our right away type applications. And those can, those can cause serious problems in the potatoes. They don't typically carry over too much, because the rates that drift aren't too bad, you know, they're pretty low amounts, but, but, yeah, so it
is an issue. And every year, every year again, it's something usually we see, we see it, or you just see a very little bit of it, you know, in the field. So you wonder how much is taken off the top of the yield. Because even even sometimes, there's labels that will say X amount of time, and you've met that, but you still see injury for various reasons. So kind of an interesting project where. Working on right now is looking at the effects we fumigate a lot our soils, to kill off soil
borne diseases. And an interesting research project we're looking at because we feel like some of these herbicides last longer, and I think because of fumigation, it kills the microbes that break down the herbicide, and so it causes that herbicide to last longer. And so we're in the second year of a project that we're looking at the effects of fumigation and herbicides carry over. So got a gratitude working on that. So hopefully we'll have some information in the next year or two to share
that that makes a lot of sense to me with how many microbes we rely on to degrade herbicides. And we'll see it occasionally. Feel like we'll we can see the summer once a year up here in the northern plains of a corn crop the year before, and then soybeans next year. And you can basically see the anhydrous lines the next year because of clopiro lid carryover. We're basically on the hand, hydrous lines where we
had some, probably killed off some microbes or something. And anyways, that's where the clopird carryover will show up on occasion,
that's interesting, yeah,
yeah, that the previous question was more, I think I've gotten one potato call since I've been here, and I forget the exact product, but they basically mentioned a long lived als residual herbicide. And I kind of told them, yeah, that sticks around for a while. And their only answer was crap. And then they hung up the phone and probably called you next, I'm guessing.
Maybe, I don't know, I'll give somebody those. I mean, the big thing is, the big thing is, is it's better to err on the side of caution when it comes to soil residual herbicides and potatoes, because potatoes are growing in the ground, right? They're like sugar beets or carrots or onions. You know, a lot of these crops can be very sensitive, right? To soil born or soil residual herbicides, right? So it's just best to err on the side of caution, is what I would say.
Alyssa, do you have any other lingering questions?
I think the only other thing I've been bouncing around my mind is we've mentioned some of the like, typical management programs. Are there any like alternative or non traditional types of weed control, or some of these new technologies that are coming out that have an interest in potatoes. It's a very different system. So I just trying to think through if any of those would be practical for use in potatoes.
Yeah. I mean, I'd love to see more of those in potatoes. But typically with potatoes, with the acres in the US being less than a million, most products are not developed for potatoes. They're going to focus on the large acreage crops. You know, your corn, your soybean, your wheat, things like that, right? Because you have the most potential to make the most money back. And it's the same with a lot of the
herbicides. They're not developed for potatoes. They're going to be developed for other crops, and then they're going to come to potatoes to see if they're fit. So, yes, what I like? Yeah, we don't have much of that going on right now. As far as new technologies, it would be cool, because even when we do put herbicides on potatoes, it does, I mean, you do have a yield penalty, right, but it's a risk, reward
situation, right? Versus maybe you lose half a percent of yield because that plants got to metabolize that herbicide, versus if you leave the weeds going, you might lose 20% yield, right? So it makes sense to do that, right? So, yeah, if we could get some of these tools, and that'd be cool. So alternative methods, so we'll say, like organic farming, they're going to typically rely on tillage a lot more. They're going to go through and run a lot of iron through the field.
Traditionally, there's been some they call drag off. It's basically they just have these little they just kind of just go on the side of the hill and just kind of cut or run some rollers across it, just to break the soil up, you know, to control weeds. The downside to that mean, we're trying to reduce the amount of passage through the field for compaction and greenhouse gas emissions, because that's a big thing for us with our our potatoes, we're really getting pushed on
sustainability greenhouse gas. So we're trying to reduce our fertilizers. We're trying to reduce our gas use, right? So that's why we're not going through the fields as much anymore. And you also prune roots, which isn't good either, but yeah, using a lot of tillage has been used in the past. Still does in organic, I say you still use a lot of tillage. You still can today, if you need to. But as far as other alternative methods, sometimes in research, what we do, we'll put this in
research. Sometimes we'll push herbicides as pre or some products that typically use pre to see how far you can make them work on a post, like barely emerged plants, because you always have those situations right where, like I saying earlier, you plan on putting this pre package down, but something happens, and all of a sudden the potatoes are popping out of the ground. What do you do? Right? So understanding what their tolerance might be, even though it's not labeled for it.
So we do some work on that from time to time. But yeah, I think that's probably what I'd say right now for that. Yeah,
I was thinking through some of the other things we've talked about, and didn't sound like much opportunity for like the weed Zapper. If you only have four so weeks till canopy closure, and you need a definite height difference for the weeds versus the crop to really make that system work.
And if you're like this up and down, or. Right? Even, even drones, like growers, try to use drones just gonna stand count. But it just doesn't work very well, because our emergence typically is over maybe about a week period, and every seed piece has a different amount of stems that come out of it, based on the eye number and the physiological age. But you might have one stem here, right next to it. You might have one, four or five stems. So how do you fly that and figure out what
your stand count is kind of difficult to do. I mean, we do space them about 10 to 12 inches apart, depending on the variety, but, but again, it's, it's, it's a little bit different system than your typical row crop and and again, it's not typically the it's typically cutting your mid size comp, mid to smaller size companies, if one's going to focus on potato, you know,
they see that as an opportunity. Or very large companies out there, at companies, they don't typically have potatoes their main focus because, again, they're going to focus on the large acreage crops. And, I mean, they often do have a potato group, but it's usually, you know, something down the road, typically for us, it seems like,
so it's not really a new or exciting technology, but I got to thinking through just herbicide banding, as you were, as we were talking through these things. And could there be a difference between, like banding in between the rows or over top of the hills on could it open up some different product portfolios, or is it just kind of too risky of a of a system?
Dual actually has that label. So that's not totally core. You can actually ban that one, but it is a challenge because, again, they grow so fast. Your Windows pretty short, right? And I know some growers that have done it, and I've seen it, so yeah, you can do that. It works, but, but yeah. Again, I don't know. It's not highly common. It's not a commonly used practice, is what I'd say.
yeah because I was thinking of get out there at the hood or something in between the rows. But like you said, it just grows so fast, it's probably
well, and that's the thing, if you can get a good pre emergent program down and get it activated, right? That's the key. And if you, if you have a good program, like said, maybe using three different modes of action, full rate on all three. You know, some take more water than others, but you get it activated, and those plants come up out of the ground. Sometimes you can get away with just that, and that's the only herbicide
you need. Sometimes you don't, sometimes you got to come back a couple of times, maybe with some new rimsulfuron and clean it up. But, yeah, it's, I don't know it's, it's farming, right? You never know from year to year what you're going to get. So, I mean, we do have other ways we deal with like buckwheat, which is a pain in the neck, because it can, I think I read a paper once it can emerge from 11 inches down anytime of the year. And we don't have good control options for that, right? Or, you
know, we have wild cucumbers floating around. You've probably seen those sometimes, especially by tree lines. What do you do? What do you do? Right? It's like, get the shovel out, get the whole out, go to work.
Well, I think I just have one question left. I didn't prepare you for so we'll see your potato knowledge goes, Why is Good Friday mark the beginning of potato planting?
I don't know. It's probably not a good place to plant potatoes here, though, at that time of year,
that's always, always here. Good Friday time to plant my potatoes.
Well it probably just is based on the time of year and the temperature and whatnot. But like, if you're a home gardener or something like that, realistically, you want, you want your soil temperature to be about 50 degrees where you put the seed piece, which is often five or six inches down. So it's not going to if you're below 50 degrees, it just
doesn't develop very fast. And it's going to get inundated, usually, with diseases, and it's going to cause problems, because you want to emerge, really, you want it to merge in two to three weeks. So warm temperatures drive emergence, and cool temperatures are tend to stay wetter in the soil. It drives disease and rotting. So it probably has to do with that.
Yeah, not too often we have 50 degree soil temps on Good Friday in the northern plains.
Nope. I've seen in Minnesota down, down, just by St Cloud. We've had years. There we have, we've got potatoes in the ground pretty early, like that. But it's not common. It's rare, I would say on commercial potato acres,
which does, all right, one, one last question. Then I popped in my head, does make me think about frost risk? Then, because we're almost guaranteed to have a frost sometime in the second half of May up here. And so being in broadleaf is it, you know, as susceptible as others, or being that tuber system, can they recover a little bit better?
Yeah, no, they're susceptible. Just like any other crop, they'll get burned up. I've seen plenty of crispy black potato leaves, but having that big seed piece, yes, they'll just, they'll regrow. You know? They'll, they'll push up a new sprout, and they'll regrow. Depends on where it gets killed at right? It's usually an axillary STEM is going to grow off of that. Main stem, or they'll regrow from the eye. But it does. It does cause yield loss, right? Because you're
setting the plant back maybe a week or two. So it does, yeah, it does affect them, just like a herbicide injury, right? Like I said, if you've got a quarter of a seat of my injury, it's going to set the plant back. So, yeah, yeah. So potatoes are interesting. You really want the temperatures between 45-50 to 85 degrees. It's kind of a sweet spot for potatoes. And much above that, they're not going to grow. Much below that, they're
not going to grow. They're going to be sensitive to frost and killing and, you know, and they're also sensitive to too much heat too because, again, they don't grow. They'll get elongated. They'll get we call sugar ends on them, so they get kind of jelly instead of starch. It doesn't convert over, which
isn't good. So yeah, potatoes have this really little, narrow window of happiness that we try to give them, but we can't do everything when it comes to temperatures, right and rainfall, so you do the best you can based on the knowledge you have and hope for the best,
narrow window of happiness. That sounds like a lot of weed control programs, regardless of the crop, all
right? Well, and then the funny thing about potato talking on, you know, being the weed scientist and talking with you guys, most crops, what do people spend the most money on for control is for herbicides, right? Not so in potatoes, we we spend a ton of money on fungicides because they're so susceptible to so many diseases. So if you're a
plant pathologist, potato is your dream. For we scientists, it's, you know, it's still fun, but I do a lot of other things because I'm an agronomist, so we do a lot of other stuff, but, but, yeah, we still do a little bit of weed science work, but not a time.
So with that, Alyssa, any final questions for Andy?
I think I'm good today. Thanks, Joe.
All right, and Andy, the last question we'll ask for you is, any online resources you want to point us towards. We can put in the show notes, any social media or website or online resources?
Yeah, you can follow me. Yeah, sure. You can follow me at sputology is my handle on x and Instagram too. So, but yeah, we put some stuff up from time to time, but we don't use it a lot. But yeah, but yeah, just make sure you go eat some potatoes today.
All right, we'll make sure there's some during lunch. With that. Andy, want to thank you for coming on. I want to thank the listeners as always for tuning in and check out next week's war against weeds. As always, we thank you for listening to the war against weeds podcast. Just another reminder, you can find our podcast hosted on the Crop Protection Network, or CPN, for short. So this is another great resource that's driven by extension scientists at different universities for pest
management. And with that, we will see you next week on the war against weeds podcast. You.