Sam Hill, Cotton grower and manager of the Farm Chemical Group in Tallulah Louisiana, provides a grower's view of Liberty Link cotton and how best to achieve reliable weed control with it.

Sam you are obviously a cotton grower.  You are growing Liberty Link.  How are they going so far?

That’s right we have the 832LL and it has been extremely successful this year because of the abundance of rainfall.  That is our main problem around here is that we get so much rain that our weed control can get a little out of hand.  With the Liberty Link you have got a wide window to put it out and it is a very broad spectrum chemical that just annihilates our worst weed problem which is the morning glories, hemp sesbania, red weed, hog weed some of the harder to kill weeds.

So with the Liberty Link technology the pressure or emphasis has come off pre-emergent weed control?

None.  We do a no-till situation.  We burn down our fields, we cull in February, March and from then we put out, we plant our seed and we rely I would say mostly on the Roundup® technology but now that we have the Liberty Link and it is new to us that we have got the advantage of the Liberty Link is the wide window.  There are numerous occasions that we don’t even get one application of Roundup® when we try to do it prior to the five leaf stage.  But it really takes a lot of pressure off and we are learning as we go.  This is the first year that we have had it other than just little plots and it seems to be working real well, we have got some 800 acre farmers that are using it extensively and it is, we just went and looked at it, it is no problem what so ever.

So do you think the key to getting the technology to work is to target those weeds, the young weeds early and not let them get too big?

Well to be honest with you we have had cases to where we couldn’t get in there.  One of the situations we had is that we had a lot of rain early in some areas and we just couldn’t get the water out with aerial applications so we pretty well have to do it with ground rigs.  I saw some pretty tough cases that Liberty took out some knee high weeds.

And obviously there is a dependence on or a use of laybye sprays late season just prior to row closure that’s used?

That is exactly right.  We did a dual application.  Two applications of the Ignite and then row closure I think you said but we call it a layby application and we put out direct Diuron plus a little grass herbicide and sometimes a dual metalochlor application.  But it fit our program perfect.  I believe that once we really learn how to use it, it will be a key player.  

Do you have any comments on the activity of the Ignite herbicide on the grass weeds?

It is not as well on the grass as it is on the broadleaves.  But one of the things that we do like and it has no bearing as far as how good it is we can see where we went in a couple of hours and some humid conditions around here you don’t have to have a field and we go eat dinner, when you come out you can see that it is working.

And keeping water volumes up to get that coverage is important with using Ignite?

We went this year strictly on the recommendations of our chemical consultants, our reps, and he says that it was very very important.  Now we did not try at low volume water rates we went with his recommendation at a minimum of 15 gallons per acre with our ground rigs.