- Posted by: Gale Perez
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Sahara mustard, a resilient weed native to North Africa and the Mediterranean, is invading desert landscapes in the American Southwest, squeezing out beautiful wildflower displays that attract tourists and maintain the local ecology, reported the San Diego Union Tribune.
UC Cooperative Extension is testing methods of removing Sahara mustard, including hand weeding, hoes and herbicide. But these are only stopgap measures meant to keep the plant at bay in select spots.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to spray the herbicide across the entire Southwest,” said
- Author: Guy B Kyser
This is part of a talk I gave last week in Marin County. These three annual thistles turn up everywhere in northern California, so it's nice to know them by name. They're mostly on disturbed sites, roadsides, and waste ground, but they can also establish on rangeland, pasture, and natural areas.They germinate and grow into rosettes during winter, then in spring they bolt and produce purple flowers.
Like a lot of our weeds, these species originated in southern Europe, southwestern Asia, and the Middle East. They 'learned' how to survive alongside human agriculture early on. |
Italian...
- Author: Lynn M. Sosnoskie
- Author: Brad Hanson
Herbicides are defined as a chemical substance that is used to eliminate unwanted plants. This is a very general description and it is important to remember that herbicides differ with respect to when they are used (for example, pre-emergence or post-emergence), their activity (for example, contact or systemic), their selectivity (for example, grasses or broadleaves), and their mechanism of action (also known as: mode of action, site of action). (See this blog post about basic herbicide terminology:http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=5973)
What is a mechanism of action? The...
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
In the United States, only species listed on state or federal noxious weed lists are regulated. According to our analysis, these regulatory lists poorly represent invasive plants in unmanaged (i.e., nonagricultural) systems. To improve the representation of invasive plants on state regulatory lists, we recommend allocating listing authority to invasive species councils and provide guidance for the science-based reform of noxious weed lists. We also recommend commercial best practices to test for invasiveness prior to intentional introduction of new plant products. Finally, we introduce a negligence liability scheme to discourage the introduction of potential invaders. If adopted, our recommendations could benefit nonagricultural...
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
[USDA 04 Feb 2013 by Ann Perry] -- Farmers can fine-tune their use of cover crops to help manage costs and maximize benefits in commercial organic production systems, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Production expenses for high-value organic crops like lettuce and broccoli can exceed $7,000 per acre, so producers often try to streamline costs with an annual two- to three-crop rotation. Agricultural Research Service...