Burning Down Partial Cotton Stand To Be Planted Back To Soybean

DR. LARRY STECKEL

JACKSON, TENN.
   It has been a very tough spring for cotton. There have been a good deal of questions this week on ways to clean up partial cotton stands to make way to plant soybean. Judging by these calls and some field visits it is apparent that cotton in Tennessee will be raised on record low acres.
   The very cold wet spell starting in mid-May killed off much of the cotton that was planted in the latter half of our very limited cotton planting window (May 1 to May 15). It has rained seemingly every other day since then giving no time to replant cotton. It is very clear now that most of the ill-fated cotton will be planted back to soybeans later this month.
   There are several different ways to go about removing the partial stand of cotton in soybean.  Gramoxone burndown applied at 40 to 48 oz/A would be the surest way to remove the old cotton stand. Even a low rate of Gramoxone mixed with metribuzin or a premix with metribuzin in it (Boundary, Intimidator, Canopy, Authority MTZ, etc) should provide effective control.
   Verdict tankmixed with glyphosate according to the label should also be effective controlling partial stands of cotton. This tankmix I have not looked at personally with respect to controlling cotton but judging how effective most PPO herbicides are on small cotton I would expect it to work. If there are a few cotton survivors up with the soybeans later then many of the PPO herbicides (Flexstar, Prefix, Marvel, Resource, etc) used for pigweed control are effective controlling cotton. ∆
   DR. LARRY STECKEL: Extension Weed Specialist, University of Tennessee