New finger weeder for cotton

In this week’s Home Grown segment we take a look at a new project in Yuma that is helping growers deal with weeds.

Being that we are in the middle of cotton season, this new technology is being tested in cotton fields.

Dr. Mark Siemens, with the University of Arizona has been working on this project for one year now, testing this rubber finger weeder and how it works eliminating weeds in cotton fields.

Most in row weeding tools have steel fingers and are rough on the plants, but this one uses rough fingers to gently remove the weeds.

During this project they have found that they are even gentle enough to be used on young cotton in the two to four leaf stage of life.

There are other ways to tackle weeds like using herbicides.

Dr. Siemens shared that this is just another tool for growers to have when sometimes weeds build up a resistance to the herbicides.

This is an on-going project that is funded by the Arizona Cotton Growers Association and Cotton Incorporated.