UCIPM and California Department of Pesticide Regulation are holding 

Weed Management Expos for School Sites

at Long Beach on June 19 and Dixon on June 22 [8am-3pm]

Open to all but focused on school staff and landscape pest management contractors that work with (or want to work with schools)

The Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has organized school-specific Weed Management Expos for educational facilities staff, school-affiliated contractors, and other interested community members. Topics will include:

• Practical application of saturated steam at school sites
• County laws,...

Occasionally plants show up in our office for identification and no one in the office knows what it is. So it's sent off to others who might know. This was the case of a perennial amaranth, also called goosefoot for some reason. This is Chenopodium californicum, also known as Blitum californicum.

Like other amaranths, it can be upright to 3 feet in height, or if mowed or grazed be more flattened or decumbent. It has a thick, fleshy stem that along with the leaves can be eaten. I guess pigs like it, because it's also called pigweed.

The leaves look sort of lettuce like, which gives it another name—Indian Lettuce.

The stem has also been used for...

Lettuce in the Salinas Valley is direct seeded by planting 3–4 times the amount of seed need and then thinning the stand to the desired spacing. Lettuce is one of the few crops that is still thinned because seed is still cheap enough and high yield potential is dependent on having maximum plant population.

In 2013 automated thinners were introduced to the Salinas Valley and are now employed to thin a significant portion of the lettuce crop. Labor shortages have spurred the growth in the use of automated thinner machines. The machines have basically three key components: 1) a camera to detect the crop, 2) computer for processing the images, calculating spacing and determining which plants to keep and remove, and 3) the kill...

Here's the latest from the UC ANR Topics in Subtropics blog written by Ben Faber, Farm Advisor, UCCE Ventura County.

It really has gotten out of hand--Hairy Fleabane and Horseweed which are both Conyza weed species that have run rampant this year because of the extra rain. It's also because they have become resistant to glyphosate herbicide. The problem has shown up all over the US and other parts of the world. Gradually as resistance has grown and their resistant fairy seeds have floated wherever the winds go, the weed is having a field day everywhere in...