Cotton is starting to look like cotton now, according to Bayer technical agronomist Zach Webb, who says growers need to be looking out for plant bugs.

“For early season scouting, prior to bloom, we’re looking at taking a sweet net, making about 100 sweeps across the field, and in those 100 sweeps, if you’ve got at least eight or more plant bugs, that’s threshold on plant bugs. But early season, we couple that with less than 80% retention. So if you’ve got more than eight plant bugs in 100 sweeps, and you’ve got 75% retention or less, but that triggers a spray.”

If you hit those thresholds, Webb has some recommendations on what to do.

“There are a few products out there, and I’m not gonna name too many of them, but there are some that just don’t bring a whole lot of value anymore. And take shit with your state entomologist on what you what you’re spraying, to make sure it’s still working, because they got resistances and things the main problems early on is product or transform. I had about two ounces. It’s pretty safe on beneficials, if you’ve got nymphs out there, adding that four to six ounces of diamond gives some really good residual on that as well.”

Post bloom, Webb says it’s time to break out the drop cloth.

“And on the drop looking probably two or three plant bugs per shake on a drop off that triggers a spray. Now, later spray, there’s other things we can use, like transform again, a very popular one is acephate. And normally, when they put acephate out, they’re adding Bifenture to it, just to take out stink bugs as well. And then the kind of the last spray that they want to put out. There is something called Bidrin, because Bidrin pretty much takes everything out. But all those are very effective in that, in that litter season application for plant bugs.”

What about plant growth regulators? Webb advises that stance may be a good choice.

“And what we’ve seen is for that early first, maybe even first or second spray, when cotton small, we’re seeing stamps being a little softer kind of chemistry. I know a lot of guys were scared to go out there and cotton, eight, nine, ten nodes to put any kind of growth. They go because they want to grow. But we’ve got varieties now with such strong terminal growth that we’ve got to get out there in that time frame prior to bloom, match, head square, whatever you want to call it, and get some level of a PGR in there. We’ve seen stance work very well.”

For more information, visit with your Bayer technical agronomist or your local retailer.