Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Quality Deer Management Chufa Pics

I had asked some herbicide questions on here earlier in the year; can't find the thread now. My question was regarding the yellow nutsedge I have growing in my chufa patches and how to get rid of it. Turfgrass told me to get halosulfuron to spray on a field where I was growing RR corn to try and keep the nutsedge killed for a year. Its been an interesting experiment.

First, I found that gly won't bother yellow nutsedge at all. I tried 2 quarts an acre, then 4, and it thrived. I had found a place that had halosulfuron, but 10 oz cost $380 and I was to cheap to buy it. I finally decided I had to.

After only 2" of rain the first 60 days, I thought the chufa crop was doomed, but it suddenly started raining and they have recovered very well. And I want to say thanks to all the posters on here that have helped me develop a spray program that will keep them free of weeds. After years of experimenting with all sorts of stuff, I believe I have a mix that will work. I spray one acre with 25 gallons of water in an atv sprayer. In that tank I put 1 pint of 2,4-DB, one ounce of Milestone, 3/4 ounce of Aim, 1/2 ounce of Escort, 10 oz of Clethodim,and either crop oil or Top Surf for a surfactant.I think I will use some of both in the future. This may not be ideal, but here is the result:



This is a field where I have battled sicklepod, crabgrass, ground cherry and all sorts of other stuff, but there is nothing of significance growing in it now except nutsedges. Here's a pic of 3 different sedges:



The closest plant that is bunching up is chufa; that is yellow nutsedge behind it. The chufa turns into clumps as it get older, but the yellow nutsedge sends up single stems that are close together. Its hard to tell them apart when young, but easy now. And there is another sedge that is smaller in this pic; I think it is purple nutsedge but I'm not sure. It doesn't compete much with the chufa and gly will kill it. There were several big clumps of yellow nutsedge in this field, so I used the halo on them:



I used the hand sprayer on these 3 weeks ago and its killed the tops. I've no idea if they will come back. Not sure what I ought to do at this point. The chufas will have made what they are gonna make in about 3 weeks, but the yellow nutsedge will thrive until frost. I was thinking I might wait a few weeks and hit it again. All of my fields have yellow nutsedge growing in patches, and one field is almost taken over by it.

So I have finally figured out the herbicides to grow chufas, and now yellow nutsedge is taking over. Its always something. Hope this is of some benefit to the chufa growers out there, and thanks again to all that have helped me.

Wow preach, that's a lot of money, time, and effort. I hope it ends up working out for ya. If it don't, I think I'd spray soil sterilizer on it all and haul in 6 - 8 inches of top soil. Sounds like you have spent enough money and time now to have done that.

Well, I think the first chufas crop we grew was in 1968, and have grown at least a patch or 2 almost every year since. I would hate to know the number of hours and amount of money we have spent growing them. But you can't look at it that way; trying to grow chufas in these old fields has been a great challenge, but to me its very enjoyable, miles more fun than deer hunting.

You never know in farming, but it will take something very unusual happening to keep me from making a good crop this year. And now I have enough of the expensive herbicides that I shouldn't have to buy any more for several years. All I should need next year is rain.

pcp- fwiw, you may want to consider applying your clethodim as a stand alone. I get A LOT of antagonism on both sethoxydim/clethodim from sulfonylureas such as metsulfuron, etc etc.

I have much better performance out of those two when applied alone.

Thanks for the warning; I've heard it before, maybe from you? Anyway, the first application I did this year I took the time to make 2 trips over each field. My pump moves about 1.5 gal/min, so it took a looonnggg time to fill the tank each time and get it done. Second spraying, I decided to take the shortcut and mix it all together. I don't really know what I should have been looking for, but the Clethodim did a good job of killing crab grass even though it was just mixed in with the other. I'll try to do it right next year.

I also mixed the halo stuff with gly when I applied it. I looked all over the internet to try and find out if that was ok and never could find anything, so I just mixed it in. You can see from the pics that it killed the yellow nutsedge when I took the gun and drenched it, but it didn't do so well when spraying the yellow nutsedge in the corn. Maybe one ounce/acre just isn't enough; the nutsedge in the pic got a lot more than that. Was it a mistake to mix it with the gly?

Thanks again for all your help!

Tough to give good answer without being there and knowing all variables, but mixing halo- with gly- is fine. One oz/A is plenty with that material. I used to use a bunch of it and only used 2/3 oz when I did with good results. Only reason I switched to a different material is price.

I'll say this, I treat 6-7k acres for nutsedge every year with the top three sulfos for that purpose, and I never seem to see major consistencies from any.

Nutsedge is a plague, no different than bermuda. Treat and Re-treat....over and over and over. Year after year after year.

Should you plant corn again next year, you may want to consider metolachlor(Dual) as part of your pre-emergent app. Can also be found in "Halex".

Thanks for the info! The corn was planted just because I wanted a crop of some kind there while I was trying to kill the nutsedge. I knew I wouldn't wipe it out with gly, but I thought I could set it back some. Wrong on that; I think it likes gly. I'm starting to understand why so many people hate yellow nutsedge so much.

So do you think that spraying the nutsedge areas with halo again just before the first frost would slow it up any next year? Or would it be a better use of the expensive chemical to just wait until it comes up next spring and hit it then?

You ol nutgrass farmer.

Good looking field!!

Steve,
As you have a lot of Johnsongrass out there, I would think about buying Outrider. It is one of best products I have seen on the sedges and also does well on the Johnsongrass. However, I feel pretty confident it will smoke your chufa as well. If you have an area you want to put in chufa next year, you can spray it before you plant your chufa. There are restrictions on planting back with some crop species, I think corn can be a year or longer. Soybeans could be planted sooner. You will need to check the label. It is a fairly expensive material.

Good looking patch PCP. My first attempt at planting chufas was a bust even after you gave me all that good advice. I'm thinking I didn't cover the seed deep enough since I used the same chain link drag we used for our food plots. I didn't spray the plots either. Oh well, live and learn.

Thanks for the info. One constant with herbicides seem to be that they are expensive. I'll check and see if I can locate any Outrider before next season. The chufas are putting on tubers now and I'm thinking about hitting the yellow nutsedge again before frost.

I have applied one tank using your kudzu-killer and it smoked it in just a week. Didn't get a chance to take pics this trip, but plan to spray some more next week and I'll try to get some good pics. I like looking at dead kudzu.

A guy that grows chufas for the seed and sells tons every year told my dad that you can't plant chufas too deep. I don't know if that's right or not, but I've always covered mine pretty deep. But did you use NWTF seed? I put out 100 lbs of their seed this year and had terrible results in getting it to come up. I think the germination rate of what they sold me must have been very low. I'm gonna try to get seed from the guy in Jay, FL next season.

But unless you have new ground, you gotta spray them.

It was seed I bought at the feed and seed store in Pike Road. Tried to spread it with an atv spreader and it would barely fit through the holes even in the widest setting. Ended up throwing out alot of it by hand.

Well, I guess it still could have been bad seed. If you got it covered and it rained, it should have come up. Hope you have better luck next year!