- Posted by: Gale Perez
The IPM Hour is a monthly online seminar covering a variety of IPM-related topics and research. It's held the second Wednesday of each month at 12 noon Pacific Time and features two 20-minute presentations followed by 10 minutes of discussion each. You can tune in live or check out the recordings on the Western IPM Center YouTube channel.
November's guests included Jane Mangold, Professor and Extension Invasive Plant...
- Author: C. Scott Stoddard
- Posted by: Gale Perez
Last summer, I transplanted a tomato variety trial into a field not far from Dos Palos, an area where annual crops such as cotton, corn, tomatoes, and melons have historically dominated the agricultural landscape. The soils in this area typically are clay loams with elevated pH (> 7) as well as salinity (EC > 2). In particular, the soil at this specific location was classified as an Alros clay loam with a pH of 8 and an EC of 3.2. And this was the good part of the field!
The trial was long enough that it extended across the entire length of the field. At the south end, it terminated in an obvious alkali spot: the soil was much lighter, and the structure was that of powdered chalk. I briefly considered moving the remaining...
- Author: Clyde Elmore
- Posted by: Gale Perez
Do weed populations change during a drought? Does drought favor certain species? Does annual or perennial species matter? During this four year period of drought in California, have they changed? What are the populations of annual and perennial weeds? With a limiting growth factor, in this case water, weeds become more prominent and which of them will or could disappear?
In urban landscapes, where turf grass areas are being renovated, or in non-irrigated land that has been farmed, but furloughed, or in non-cropped roadsides or wasteland, are we seeing life-cycle species shifts? Or is it that we see a loss or decreased competitiveness of annual species, thus perennial species can be observed?
I will give the example of...
- Author: Carl Bell
- Posted by: Gale Perez
From the Invasive Plants in Sourthern California blog (http://ucanr.edu/blogs/socalinvasives/index.cfm)
This blog should be filed under, “They'll try anything, especially if they think there is lots of money in it and they don't know the business.”
Since I moved from an agricultural assignment 14 years ago in the low desert to do invasive plant extension work I have seen a whole bunch of strange ideas and practices floated out there that are sexy, but don't make sense. These have included steaming with a sugar-enhanced foam, tons of sugar dumped on the soil to fool...
- Author: Clyde Elmore, Extension Weed Specialist (Emeritus)
- Posted By: Gale Perez
We have all heard that turf grass is competitive to weeds and other plants in the landscape. There are several turf grass types grown in California. In southern California, Bermuda grass is the more common planting though Turf-type tall fesc ue is also used as well as other species to a lesser extent. Smooth and large crabgrass are the most prevalent summer annual grass weeds found in turfgrass in California. Can we devise systems using turf type, renovation (planting) time to establish a competitive, cool season, tall fescue turf and control crabgrass?
Several years ago with graduate student J. Graham Davis, and current farm advisor in Napa County, John Roncoroni, we developed experiments to study this concept. We chose...