A fresh incident of weed resistance (see Newpath-resistant barnyardgrass confirmed) has been confirmed in Arkansas’ Prairie County. Otherwise, planting season has been gone extremely well.

“The last two years, we had all sorts of rain and were held out of the fields,” says Brent Griffin, Prairie County Extension staff chair, of the central Arkansas county. “This year, when soil dried well enough to run equipment, it has been running. We have rolled hard. We were able to begin planting when we wanted and the dry weather has cooperated and warmed up.”

By Friday (April 16), “we’ll probably be 80 percent to 90 percent planted with rice. Probably 10 to 15 percent of the soybeans will also be in the ground.”

March-planted rice “is up and growing. We’re also spraying some red rice, barnyardgrass and signalgrass.”

While it is difficult “to say what ‘normal’ planting conditions are after the last few planting seasons, we’re about a week ahead of schedule. And while we complained about all the rain last year, we’ll actually need a rain this weekend. How things change! We may need to flush rice to make the residual herbicides work.”

e-mail: dbennett@farmpress.com