 Hi, I'm Joe Eichle, the Extension Weed Specialist for North Dakota State University based off the main campus in Fargo. So today is July 1st, and I'm actually standing in Cass County. We're shooting a video today to talk about horseweed control. It is unfortunate that I won't be able to join you guys out in Minot this year for the REC Field Days, as I do like getting out to the western part of the state and talking to producers and seeing the agriculture out there. Due to the COVID-19 situation, we just saw it was best for people in Fargo to remain in Fargo and shoot some videos to conduct these field days. So what I'm going to talk about today is our 2020 Weed of the Year, and that is horseweed or some people call it maristail. Some of the reasons we made this the Weed of the Year in 2020 is we are at the 20th anniversary of finding the first glyphosate resistant weed in the United States, and that was horseweed found in Delaware 20 years ago this month. And so we do have this weed now in North Dakota. We don't have a lot of it in the southeast part of the state where I'm at in Fargo. In fact, we had to look hard in a prevent plant field to find one plant, but we did find one plant for me to stand next to for this video. It's a much bigger deal in the western two thirds of the state and basically anywhere where you have no-till crop production. So horseweed does thrive in no-till systems. It's a weed that's got a very small seed that is wind-borne and it's really made to be an invader of no-till systems. And so we've been dealing with this weed for three to at least five years in the western part of the state. One of the reasons it's becoming more prevalent is because we have more glyphosate resistance that we're finding across the state. So typically we'll just use something like glyphosate for burn down ahead of many of our crops since we have a pretty flexible window of crops that we can plant into if we just use glyphosate. That won't control horseweed in the spring and then we really have limited options for horseweed control in many of our broadleaf crops, especially in the western parts of the state. So when we talk about horseweed management, the main thing that we need to think about for horseweed management is we need to control all the plants that we have before we plant our crop. So horseweed is a winter annual weed, so it emerges in the fall, will overwinter and then bolt in the spring and go on to produce seed sometime early to mid-summer. So what this means is if we have a year, especially like 2019 where we had a lot of rain in August and September, if we get those fall rains, horseweed will germinate in the fall and then we'll be able to overwinter and become a major problem the next spring. So for management, the thing that we found that's most effective is spraying horseweed plants in the fall when they're still small and in the rosette form. And the fall horseweed is relatively easy to control. It can be as simple as a half pound to a pound of 2,4-D, which would control most of the plants that we have out there, usually throw in glyphosate to pick up the other winter annuals, especially some of our winter annual grasses. So glyphosate and 2,4-D about as cheap as it can get and will control most of our horseweed in the fall that way and remain pretty flexible for the crops that we can rotate to the following spring. Other options we can do in the fall of dicambican work that does limit us to more options the following spring. Then we can also do things like grimoxim, but that always requires more water and a different adjuvant system than glyphosate. And it's just as simple as glyphosate, 2,4-D in the fall, the cheapest program that we can have for horseweed control in the fall. Now it can also act as a spring annual weed or a summer annual weed. So we do have some horseweed plants in North Dakota so far, a smaller percentage of the plants that can germinate in the spring rather than in the fall. And it's those spring plants that can become problematic. Other areas of the country that's the majority of their population of horseweed will germinate in the spring. And there we have to be pretty aggressive with our burn-down programs ahead of most of our crops. So if we have glyphosate resistance, that won't control the plants that we have out there. If we're looking for a good burn-down herbicide, Sharpen is very good on horseweed. So we can use Sharpen ahead of several of our crops. We can use Grimoxone ahead of any of our crops that we plant. So those would be two products I'd look at as a base burn-down program for horseweed in the spring. Now I mentioned 2,4-D is effective in the fall. Once we get into the spring, especially the plants that have over-wintered, 2,4-D is a lot more marginal for control of horseweed. Especially once it starts bolting and gets to be over a couple inches tall. Dicamba tends to be a little bit better than 2,4-D on horseweed in the spring. And we have a product, Elevore, that's been on the market for a couple of years now, another group for herbicide. And we can use that 14 days ahead of things like corn, soybeans, small grains, canola, and sunflower. So Elevore, we can use that 14 days ahead of those crops I just mentioned. Dicamba puts us out of planting a lot of our crops. We'll want to plant in the western part of the state. And then 2,4-D would just be pretty marginal. So there's our additional options for spring burn-down, but the main goal here is to control all those horseweed plants before we plant our crop. If we do plant our crop in small grains and corn, we still have plenty of options in crop to clean up horseweed escapes. It's become a more problematic in soybean with glyphosate resistance that takes out a lot of our options. We do have group 2 resistance becoming more prevalent, and soybean that would be first rate. So if you have group 9 glyphosate plus group 2 resistance, that means in soybean that we will be left with either Liberty, Extend, or Enlist, and you need to plant the traded soybean to use those herbicide options. So if you're just straight roundup ready or non-GMO soybean, we wouldn't have anything available in crop. For dry beans, we don't have any end crop options either if we have dry beans that have emerged and the horseweed is there. Our pulse crops, once again, just like with soybean or dry bean, we just don't have the options in those crops once they're up to control horseweed. So especially if we're planting any broadleaf crops, especially if we look at the pulse crops in the western part of the state, if we have emerged horseweed that we did not control, we can't clean them up in crop. And so that's one of the biggest challenges with horseweed is kind of fixing our thinking that this is one, maybe even two passes before we even plant our crop to control horseweed because once we have the crop up and growing, difficult to control and it's gonna be a season long problem. So that's just kind of the quick high points of horseweed management. Again, hopefully in 2021 we're back to in-person field days and we can make the circuit and I can visit with everybody in the western part of the state again. But that's just our quick update here and we hope to see you again next year.