 This is the Sugar Beet Report bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Today we're talking about nurse crops that are planted in the spray. They are companion crops with sugar beet to reduce sugar beet damage caused by blowing soil and wind. However, nurse crops need to be carefully managed and nurse crops are a component of an integrated strategy. We will dive deeper with our guest today, Tom Peters. NDSU and University of Minnesota Extension Sugar Beet Agronomist. Tom, do farmers choose between nurse crops and soil residual herbicides or can farmers choose both? Bruce, that's an interesting question and you know there is this saying about having your cake and eating it too? Well that's kind of what you get here where we have the advantage of using nurse crops but we can also use herbicides as well for weed control, for water hemp control. So I'll give you some examples, we'll go through some basics. First of all in the spring with nurse crops we're usually talking about three species, oats, spring wheat, and barley. So out of those three, oat probably tolerates herbicides the best. Wheat and barley are okay but oat will tolerate them the best. And out of our common herbicides we use, ethofumazate and dual magnum, ethofumazate is definitely more harmful to our nurse crops mainly because it's taken up through both the root and the chute of our nurse crops. Here's a scenario, I have Kosha and I need to use six pints of Ethyl. Any suggestions on a nurse crop? There's a point where nurse crops don't have value anymore and when our ethofumazate or nortron rates are that high to target Kosha it's very difficult to get both nurse crops to protect the sugar beets from wind and weed control. So I think there's an example where you have to pick one or the other. I've heard you mentioned giving the nurse crops a head start, what do you mean? It's interesting, we spray our herbicides on the surface and they don't do any good at all when they're on the surface. What they need is rainfall for them to be incorporated into the soil. If you spray your herbicides and it rains one hour after you apply them and that herbicide goes down to the seeds you're going to potentially cause a lot of damage. But a workaround is to delay your application, to delay the herbicide application to give the nurse crops a head start, to allow them to sprout, to allow them to grow a little bit and that head start is a way of getting them to survive or coexist with the herbicides. But here's the thing though Bruce, the reason why we're using herbicides is because we want to control weeds. If we're bypassing a rain event for the sake of protecting our cover crops we're probably not accomplishing the other objective which is weed control. What if I want to incorporate my soil residual herbicide before planting with tillage? Is there any hope for nurse crops? I mentioned when we started about having your cake and eating it too. Well here's an example where you're going to have to pick one or the other. When you incorporate your herbicide now it's immediately surrounding the seeds and unfortunately it's going to damage the seeds. So the reason why you're incorporating is because you're so worried about your weed control that you want to do everything you can to maximize control. So in this situation I think you're going to just have to allow weed control to supersede the use of nurse crops and probably not even apply them at all. I don't think that happens a lot. I think there's a balance between weed control and nurse crops so the scenario where we're incorporating herbicides is probably done on less than 25 percent of the acres. Thanks Tom. Our guest has been Tom Peters, NDSU and University of Minnesota Extension sugar beet agronomist. This is the Sugar Beet Report bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.