MD GenX - 6/23/2024 12:09

We struggled with a late wet spring here too. Previously have been planting a fair amount of winter barley (sometimes in mix w/ clover or radish and sometimes alone) as cover crop. It is easy to kill but grows fast in spring so if one can not get it killed early then it creates a lot of biomass to deal with. This year we could not get a lot of it killed until after heading.

We would rather plant soybeans no till and the large amount of biomass is not a problem until you have slugs... and we have slugs in areas. Our consultant pre scouts for slugs on a field by field basis in March and IIRC if he finds more than 10-12 per 2 square foot area then he recommends action. We had some this year in the 30's per 2 square ft.

The best mode of action for us is tillage and so the problem is trying to till all the biomass and it has to be fairly aggressive tillage. It makes for a rough seedbed which is certainly not ideal. We have had slugs eat off stand even where we turbo tilled 2x so it needs to be more aggressive then a straight coulter turbo till.

Our plan for fall of 2024 is to plant more wheat as a cover crop since it grows more slowly in spring. Problem is wheat does not break the disease cycle so we planning on trying some triticale this fall to see if that works better for us.

Ps - we do not run an insecticide on our soybean seed treatment but it is hard to tell if that is helping with our slug predators.