- Author: Richard Smith
- Posted by: Gale Perez
Richard Smith is the UC Cooperative Extension Vegetable Crop Production and Weed Science Farm Advisor in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
Automated weeders remove weeds inside the three- to five-inch-wide uncultivated band left around the seedline by standard cultivation. Automated weeder technology has improved significantly over the past decade. All automated weeders use 1) cameras to detect plants, 2) a computer to process the image and make decisions about which plants to keep and which to remove and 3) a kill mechanism. Kill mechanism that operates in the seedline used by currently available machines are either a split blade that opens around keeper...
- Author: Todd Fitchette
- Posted by: Gale Perez
From Western FarmPress
The UC is suggesting practices that could help control spread of the wild rice type.
Written by Todd Fitchette | Apr 20, 2021
California rice growers with troublesome patches of weedy rice, or red rice, may want to...
- Posted by: Ann King Filmer
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
Processing tomato growers are struggling to contain a potentially devastating parasitic weed that had not been seen since growers waged a successful eradication campaign four decades ago.
Branched broomrape is so...
- Author: Scott Stoddard
- Posted by: Gale Perez
The cantaloupe industry in California is in the middle of a huge paradigm shift, transitioning from classic western shipper varieties that require multiple harvests, to new Harper varieties, also known as LSL (Long Shelf Life) melons. Purported benefits include less labor at harvest and prolonged superior quality at the grocery store. Examples of Harper-type melons are the Infinite Gold, Fiji, Caribbean King and Caribbean Gold. Due to grower and buyer interest, seed companies are rapidly expanding the number of varieties with this trait.
However, LSL varieties are expensive hybrids relative to older, open pollinated cultivars, and seed costs can become a significant portion of the total cost of production, with some estimates...
- Author: Travis M Bean
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
From the Topics in Subtropics blog (Oct. 15, 2018)
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Although the main objective of herbicide use in avocado orchards (and all crops) is to manage weed populations, sometimes unintentional injury of the crop itself can occur when herbicides are incorrectly applied. Herbicide injury in avocado can reduce yield, decrease fruit, reduce plant vigor, increase susceptibility to diseases and pests, and sometimes result in plant death. Common situations resulting in injury include spray drift, tank contamination, application of the...
