# A Forced Frost



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

AgWeb.

Regards, Mike

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2016/09/02/forced-frost


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## aawhite (Jan 16, 2012)

I know several farmers in Kansas doing this with milo, since harvest ends up dragging out for weeks due to slow dry down.


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## Farmerbrown2 (Sep 25, 2018)

Chemical company or flying/applicators are going to say its great they make more money and cost you some.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

farmerbrown said:


> Chemical company or flying/applicators are going to say its great they make more money and cost you some.


That's true, but the real determination would be is it worth the additional costs....and for some growing Milo I am sure that it would be.

Regards, Mike


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

Thinking about hitting some of my beans with gramoxone where the water hemp is the worst just so I can get it thru the combine. Going to spray when leaves start dropping on beans.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

farmerbrown said:


> Chemical company or flying/applicators are going to say its great they make more money and cost you some.


Exactly... OL J R


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Some guys use chlorate on sorghum around here... don't really know why because when we grew sorghum, we never had a problem combining by the middle of July, at 13.5% moisture, and without chlorate. In fact, when Dad was still doing custom combining, he REFUSED to cut for people who wanted to use chlorate-- it acts like salt and would eat up your combine with rust-- it'd be a rust bucket ready for the scrap yard in a just a few years...

I had a corn crop one year that got ate up with morningglory that we hit with Gramoxone, to burn everything down. Worked fairly decent, but the vines were still damp and sugary and sticky and wrapped a lot, but we did get the crop out.

Cotton, of course, had to be defoliated every year... Our old standby was a tankmix of Def 6 and Dropp... Def would drop the leaves within about 3-4 days, but they'd start growing back almost immediately. Dropp would inhibit regrowth of the leaves for about 3 weeks or so (depending on the weather) but would take up to 10 days or more to get the leaves off the plant. SO, a tankmix of the two at cut rates of both would do a great job-- knock the leaves off in 5-7 days (weather dependent) and keep them off up to a month (again depending on the weather). That would allow plenty of time for first and second picking, even a third pick (back in the old days-- nowdays with diesel fuel costs and machinery costs, they pick once and shred it down... can't afford a second pick or scrapping the cotton). Back then Def 6 and Dropp were really the only two materials we had.

Nowdays there's Ginstar and Flexstar and a bunch of other defoliants; some do better jobs than others, some are VERY weather-dependent and can be "too hot" at full rates and can stick the leaves (for a crop to drop off its leaves, it has to form an "abscission layer" of dead, calcified cells between the petiole and stem, which is where the leaves fall off... if the plant is "damaged" TOO much TOO quickly, the abscission layer doesn't have time to form, and the leaf "sticks" to the plant-- even though the leaf and petiole and maybe even the stem is dead, the "separation layer" of abscission cells in the petiole never had a chance to form so the leaf stays attached to the plant-- a VERY BAD thing to happen in cotton since it contaminates the lint as it's picked and the leaves grind up into "pepper trash" in the picking units... ) I've seen more than a few fields and field trials with "stuck leaves" due to hot defoliants... the old Def and Dropp might take longer under some conditions or might not do "as good" a job as some of the hotter stuff, but it never stuck the leaves either...

As for beans/corn/grain-- I'd never use chlorate on a crop I was harvesting with a combine I didn't want to turn into a rust bucket. If you're hiring it custom combined or renting/leasing a machine, so be it, but if you want your machinery to last, I wouldn't touch chlorate with a ten foot pole... Gramoxone will kill every living thing it touches, and IMHO does a better job, but applying it is a little hazardous and requires the proper PPA and extra care. We've done it and I'm still here... and with open-station tractors/sprayers no less... Gramoxone kills SO quickly that the leaves WILL be 'stuck', but that's not a problem with grains being combined, anyway-- combines are DESIGNED to separate the trash efficiently. Might have to cut a little slower, turn the air up, etc. to get as clean a sample as "un-burned-down" crop, though...

I guess it all comes down to "is it worth the extra time and expense for your conditions". Air service to fly the stuff on AIN'T cheap, and running a high-boy through a crop DOES lead to SOME extra losses, unless one has tram-lines or something like that... even in cotton, a high boy knocks some bolls off or shakes the cotton locks out of the burr in places... Losses with a ground rig in ripe soybeans would seem prohibitive to me...

Later! OL J R


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

I can see some of the thinking behind this....but I'm reminded "It ain't nice to fool Mother Nature.!"

I wonder what the long term effects are/will be.

Ralph


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## aawhite (Jan 16, 2012)

The first farmer I worked with tried it on 100 acres of milo. He now regularly sprays 1200 acres of milo to kick off harvest. He can be harvesting in about 2 weeks. The same acres might take him 2 months with the start/stop moisture issues we seem to have these days. The time savings, plus allowing him to get back in early with wheat, made it a no brainer for his operation.

Not sure why, but milo harvest seems to stretch out longer and longer every year due to dry down issues. The longer it's in the fields, the bigger risk for wind/storm damage, loss from birds, missed window for wheat follow-up crop, etc. Timing needs to be very precise, but can be worth it.I know Iowa State, University of Illinios, and K-State were conducting trials on chemical application for fast dry down in corn, beans, and milo.


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