Noxious weed control

Noxious Weed Control in pastures is becoming more of a challenge. A lot of commercial spray businesses are no longer spraying pastures. If they are, there may be restrictions on the time they will spray, what products they will spray or they may only spray if they also have all of the rest of your spraying business. These restrictions are making spraying pastures more difficult and limited. It is still the law, however, to control noxious weeds. Not being able to find a sprayer is not a valid reason to not spray.

So I want to remind you now before we get into the heart of pasture spraying. If you need to get a sprayer that will do pastures, now is the time to be looking into it. There are some boomless sprayers that are on the market that can work real well. With these sprayers most of them take more water per acre that other sprayers and also they do not work well with any windy conditions. Also if you have not sprayed in the past you will need to take a test to get your Private Applicator card to allow you to spray.

Now anyone who has a farm that has the potential to gross more than 1000 dollars of income from their farm is required to have this certification to apply any pesticides to their property whether they are restricted use pesticides or not. If they are applying restricted use pesticides they also need to keep records of those pesticides for two years after they are sprayed. They also need to have an emergency response plan developed for their farm if they are spraying. For more information on these requirements stop by your local regional Extension Office.