- Author: Richard Smith
- Posted by: Gale Perez
Weed control in cool-season vegetables can be quite challenging. However, there are a number of practices that provide growers with certain advantages:
- Short-season crops such as lettuce and spinach that allow for rapid turnover of the crops (e.g. 30 to 65 days), frequent cultivation (lettuce) and/or complete hand removal of weeds prior to mechanical harvest (clipped spinach and baby lettuce)
- High value of the crops allows for the use of intensive hand-removal of weeds, often prior to seed set
- Small production blocks that allow for careful observation and intensive management
All of these strategies have basically made some of the most troublesome weeds such as field bindweed and yellow...
- 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
- Posted By: Gale Perez
- Written by: Vonny Barlow, Entomology Advisor, UCCE Riverside County
Weeds are often the most problematic to manage in and around agricultural fields. Yellow and purple nutsedge are difficult to manage and it seems brings an additional pest of concern. Nematodes! From Weed Science; Greenhouse experiments showed that yellow nutsedge established from root-knot nematode-infected tubers produced more tubers than noninfected tubers. Root-knot nematode populations became established on yellow nutsedge root systems when plants were established from tubers previously cultured with root-knot nematodes. When root-knot nematodes are present, yellow nutsedge tuber germination is not affected by metolachlor herbicide... the pests do not exist independently and that their management may be interrelated.
- Posted By: Oleg Daugovish
- Written by: Oleg Daugovish
Yellow nutsedge found a good home in warmer areas of California and purple nutsedge is sometimes present as well. In bare-ground soils the depth of roots and tubers varies from few inches to two feet, but we wanted to know how does yellow nutsedge grow and produce tubers in beds covered with plastic mulch. Plasticulture in increasingly common and almost all strawberries, fresh market peppers, tomatoes and some other crops on the coast are grown on mulched beds. In previous studies we have identified barriers that are dense enough to resist sharp tips of nutsedge shoots and are either water resistant or protected from wetness with low density mulch. The barriers were more economical than hand-weeding, gave nearly 100% control of nutsedge...