University Place

How Do I Manage Weeds?

[Carol Shirk, Dodge County Master Gardener Association]

Thank you for coming to our meeting tonight, the Dodge County Master Gardener Association. We have tonight with us George Koepp. He is the U.W. Ag Educator for U.W.-Extension, Ag Educator for Columbia County. He grew up on a farm near Cascade Mountain in Portage. He taught high school at Baraboo High School for 26 years before he moved to U.W.-Extension in Columbia County in 2011.

Tonight, he’s going to discuss and share tips on dealing with weeds in your lawn, in your flower beds, in your vegetable gardens. And he – he likes to teach about integrated pets management – pet – my G – integrated pest management, I.P.M. He wants you to start with mechanical, biological, cultural methods like mulch, and if all else fails, then you go to chemical methods. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce George Koepp.

[applause]

[George Koepp, Agriculture Educator, Columbia County U.W.-Extension]

Thank you, and it’s a pleasure to be here. I hope that as we go through the – the presentation that you get a feel for maybe what we can do and what we maybe think we ought to try something new along the way. I guess we’ll get right started. And what is my weed tolerance? Kind of a great question for –

[slide titled – What is my weed tolerance? – with Georges info]

– each of us as we look at, you know, what is a weed?, and we’re going to talk about that a little bit. And – and what’s your tolerance for that. I think you’ll find that sometimes each of us has a different level of tolerance for weeds.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

Some of our neighbors maybe seem to have a lot of tolerance because they don’t do anything about them at all. And ultimately as we get back to this were going to look at it were going to say, Well, maybe it’s not a weed to them. So, we’ll talk about that this evening – what’s my weed tolerance? And then really, I want you to kind of help learn yourself is to –

[slide with the question – How do I live with and manage weeds in my spaces?]

– How do you live with and manage weeds in what we consider my spaces? The property I own, the community I – I live in, and those kinds of things. So, you know, how do we tie these things all together and how –

[new slide with the question – What is a weed?]

– do we come together?

So – what is a weed?

[female audience member, off-camera]

A plant thats out of place.

[George Koepp, off-camera]

A plant that is out of place. A great definition. But it might be out of place to you –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– and it might not be out of place to me. And so, we’ll take a look at that here.

A couple of things. Typically, it’s a plant –

[return to the – What is a weed? – slide now with this bulleted list – A plant growing where it is not wanted; up to interpretation; Examples – tree in corn field versus tree in back yard; dandelion in lawn versus in vegetable garden; white clover in a lawn, weed or N source]

– growing where it’s not wanted. And it is obviously up to interpretation by each individual. And so, as we look at it, I talk about maybe is a tree in a cornfield a weed? It could be. A tree in a hayfield could be a weed. And yet maybe somebody likes having that tree out there in their field. Just for something different. I’ve seen that in many locations. Is a tree in the backyard a weed? Well, it might be is blocking my view of something I want to see from my back patio area or deck area. It’s possible. It may or may not be. A dandelion in a lawn. Is that a weed? For many of us, yes. I would fit into that group. But for my two-year-old grandchildren, if they are visiting and they see some dandelions in the weed, and they go pick up some beautiful –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– yellow dandelions, what do they do? They, Here, Mommy! They take it to Mommy or Grandma. To them that’s not a weed. And so, what’s your tolerance for those weeds, as I mentioned earlier? My tolerance for dandelions is not very high. Some people it might be just fine. Okay? Again, a dandelion in a vegetable garden. It may or on just how close it is to your vegetables. In most cases, we would consider them to be weeds.

White clover in a lawn. To some people, it’s a weed. They want turf grass growing. To other people it might be a nitrogen source, and white clover in their lawn is just fine. So, again, it’s – its kind of that definition. Where do you fit into the – the continuum of being weed or maybe a nice plant? And we’ll give you some more example of those a little later as we go.

I have to tell you too that weeds do have some –

[slide titled – Weeds have redeeming qualities!]

– very redeeming qualities, and I can show you. We’ll – well –

[the slide animates on the following list – produce oxygen; prevent soil erosion; produce pretty flowers; food source for wildlife; produce habitat for wildlife; increase soil organic matter; produce medicines]

– look at some of those things even a little bit later on, but any green plant that’s growing out there is carrying on photosynthesis, therefore producing oxygen that we need for our bodies to live. All animals need that oxygen that these plants are producing. So, they have that available to us.

They prevent soil erosion. One plant that I hear people don’t like an awful lot and I don’t care for it in a vegetable garden or in my flower gardens – my wife and I work on that a lot – is pulling out quack grass. I live in an area where there’s a lot of quack grass. Well, yes, in certain places it’s a weed, but other places it does just an incredible job of soil erosion. I can remember in 2008, we had a monster storm that summer. About –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– 6 to 8 inches of rain came down in just a very short period of time. Roads were flooded. Stream banks were overflowing. I took a ride down the hill towards a little stream near my house. You could just hear this poor thing just roaring down – downhill. Came upon a little small country bridge over a town road that had just a small metal railing on the side. I thought, Oh, my goodness! That bridge will be gone by morning. I came back the next day, that bridge was standing. Went a little further down the road that had just been replaced was washed out. What was the difference? Quack grass. In the little bridge that had the quack grass at it, the water came and just knocked that quack grass flat and made a carpet for it to go up on the road. It went across the road, it hit the other side, the quack grass laid down, and again it was a mat for the water to roll over. Where they had just replaced the brand-new bridge, they didn’t have the grass growing along the side of it, came in and wash that thing out and tore it right out. So again, some of these plants can be pretty – pretty useful.

Some plants, weeds, produce pretty flowers. Again, it’s a – its a matter of opinion: where you want it, and whatnot? They can be food for wildlife. Or they can also produce habitat for wildlife –

[return to the – Weeds have redeeming qualities! – slide with the bulleted list]

– providing a place for them to use or parts of the plant to use for – for making nests, for making homes, and those sorts of things.

Any plant that’s growing and has a root mass also, then, produces soil organic matter. So, it can help increase the organic matter that we are trying to get increased in our soils all the time. And aren’t there an awful lot of plants out there that many of us would consider weeds that have been used for medicinal purposes?

[George Koepp, on-camera]

or food for humans? Sometimes we eat what are considered weeds. So, some great, great different kinds of things out there.

Methods of – of weed control. Typically, consider about four different methods of controlling weeds – four basic areas and then we have all kinds of things that fit into those as we go.

[slide titled – Methods of Weed Control – featuring the bullet point – Mechanical and the sub-point – Digging, pulling, mowing]

We’ll talk really quickly about the mechanical. I’ll show you a few slides later on some of these a little more than others. But digging, pulling, mowing. Mechanical methods of removing weeds typically are a lot of work even if we use machines to help us with that, you know. We can use a rototiller, we can use a regular hoe, we can use all sorts of other contraptions to try and get rid of these weeds. It might be even a hand scythe or a weed whacker of some sort. So, lots of different things that can be used –

[the slide animates on the next bullet point – Cultural with the sub-point – Mulching, burning, plant spacing]

– that way for the mechanical removal of those weeds.

Cultural. I have several sides that will show you this a little bit later. But mulching, burning is one way to remove some of those weeds, and that one, that burning, kind of flies between mechanical and – and cultural. But plant spacing too. We’ll talk about that a little bit more even as we get into lawns. What does plant spacing have to do with weed control? So, we’ll –

[the slide animates on the next bullet point – Biological with the sub-points – Geese, sheep, goats, viruses, bacteria, insects, fungi]

– well talk about that.

Biological. Lots of different options here. Really, when you stop and think about it. Weve – I’ve had calls where people want to know: can I – can I rent some sheep or goats to control some weeds, to control some brush? Well, we have to understand these biologies a little bit. Geese have been used for years are for plucking weeds out of garden areas, to help clean up– as long as you train them which plants to –

[laughter]

– to pull out. That makes quite a difference. And typically, it’s a really easy to know the difference between a weed in your vegetable garden and a vegetable, right?

If you grab hold of it and pull it out and it comes out real easy, it was a vegetable.

[laughter]

And if it comes out hard, that was a weed. So, again, it’s just real easy to – to understand that. But weve sometimes looked at using viruses –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– bacteria, insects, fungi – can all help us control weeds in certain situations. Sometimes some of those diseases might be okay if they attack the right plants. And so, we need to know and understand how we can do that and use that.

And then as was said earlier –

[return to the – Methods of Weed Control – slide now with the last bullet point – Chemical – animated on with the sub-points – organic, inorganic]

– using integrating pest management, if all else fails that’s when we get out the chemicals. And chemicals can either be organic or inorganic. Inorganic typically are the ones that –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– have been manufactured. But there are many, many types of, or several types at least of – of organic chemicals that people use, okay? So, we need to know and understand that a little bit.

So, let’s take a look at this just a little bit. As mentioned, Integrated Pest Management –

[slide titled – Use IPM – Integrated Pest Management – featuring the following bulleted list – one size does not fit all; Identification of the offender is key to control; Need to understand the life cycle of the weed – dandelions versus quack grass; Consider the options; Devise a plan; Follow the plan; Evaluate the plan and results; Develop a revised plan]

– IPM, one size does not fit all. But I would at least like us to get thinking about how this can fit together and work together. And what can we do to make our job easier?

Really, identification is the first thing; we have to identify this plant – this weed, if you will – so that we know how best to take care of it. Part of that, then, helps us to know – what is the lifecycle of the weed? And I have up here dandelion versus quack grass. If you can think of right now in your mind the – the type of root that we find with a dandelion, that long, big taproot. Sometimes they get pretty big around, so if you chop the –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– top of that off have you killed the weed?

[audience murmuring]

No. It’s a perennial, so it has a huge root storage structure. It’s just going to come right back up – maybe take a few days, but it – it can come back. It can survive that. Likewise, with quack – quack grass, if you got hold of some of that stuff. And I said it was a good thing for that little bridge, but it’s not a good thing in my garden when I find it. But if I pull up one piece of quack grass, what am I likely to bring up with it? A bunch of long roots or underground horizontal stems, which we call rhizomes. And from those rhizomes it sends up more shoots. So, it’s almost like a zipper – I can grab that and pull that up and end up with several pieces. And unless I get it all, what did I do? I made it mad, and it wants to produce more. It’s going to send up more shoots. So, I have to look at that. What’s my best way of controlling that and managing it, okay?

So, at that point, once we understand what the plant is, what the lifecycle is of that weed, then we can start putting together what some of our options might be to control that. Once I understand my options, then I have to put together a plan.

[return to the – Use IPM – slide with the bulleted list above]

What am I going to do to control this plant in my garden, whether it’s vegetable or flower garden or in my lawn? I want to follow that plan. And then you need to evaluate. Did what you do, did whatever action you took, did that help, and did it make it better for you? Did it get inside your weed tolerance? Or do we need to develop a revised plan? Do I need to get madder yet –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– at that weed, and try something else a little bit different? Okay?

So, just to review very quickly. Some of these –

[slide titled – Weed life cycles – with the following list – Annuals; Biennials; Perennials – Seed reproduction, Vegetative reproduction, Rhizomes, Stolons]

– weed life cycles.

Annuals: completes its entire lifecycle in one year. Goes from seed to seed all in one growing season. We have some things that are winter annuals that we can start in the fall, they grow a while and they produce their seed the next year, such as winter wheat, winter barley. Those are some agronomic crops that we use, but there are a few other plants that will do that as well. But it’s still a one-year, twelve-month, lifecycle or less.

Biennials typically take two years to go through their lifecycle. They will start from a seed, they will grow, and just have kind of a rosette form, very small and low to the ground. And so, you don’t see em very much the first year, but it’s that second-year that they put up their flower head and start to produce some seed to reproduce themselves.

And finally, we’ve got the perennials, and those are the ones that – that really do a job of producing seed. They can actually produce seed in that first year. And then they go into vegetative production after that, producing rhizomes and stolons. Rhizomes are the underground –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– horizontal stems that send up new shoots. Stolons would be the above-ground horizontal stems, much like we find with strawberries. Would be a great example of that kind of plant that has that above-ground horizontal stem that sends up some new plants and new shoots. So, we have to kind of understand the enemy, if you will, here in order to put together our plan of how we’re going to control these and take care of that.

It’s also good to understand whether they’re a monocot –

[slide titled – Monocots vs. Dicots – with the following list – Monocots=Grasses; Dicots=Broadleaves]

– or a dicot. And the general kind of categories, monocots typically are our grass plants. Most all of those are monocots – they send up a single seed leaf when they first germinate and come up out of the ground – versus the dicots, which typically are broadleaves, and they typically send –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– up two leaves up out of the soil when they germinate and grow. So, if we understand that we can also – that helps us many times in our chemical choices if we get to that point as to how we’re going to deal with these plants.

Alright, so let’s back up and let’s talk about this mechanical weed control –

[slide titled – Mechanical Weed Control – featuring the following list – Digging – hoeing, rototilling – Negative aspects – soil is bare; water is lost; organic matter is lost; Pulling; Mowing; Fire – flame thrower!]

– just a little bit.

I’m going to encourage you a little bit that sometimes all this digging and hoeing and rototilling and whatnot may not always be the best answer. Yes, it will take care of the weeds, but something that we are really working on hard in agronomic agriculture and throughout in the farming area is getting people to stop trying to beat their soil into submission. Let’s work with the soil. And, yes, I know, we grew up in a day where – and I grew up in that time on the farm where we plowed, and then –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– we disked, and then we disked, and then we dragged, and then we finally planted, and then we dragged that field again. My goodness! Now we have no-till methods to use in the agronomic industry. We can use some of those in our horticulture industry, somewhat in our gardening to help us not beat that soil up so much.

And Ill talk about it because the negative aspects of all this digging, hoeing, and rototilling – if I rototill every couple days or at least once a week, my soil is bare.

[return to the – Mechanical Weed Control – slide with the list above]

What happens when it rains? You have erosion challenges that can take place, plus it can form quite a crust there. We ruin what’s called the soil structure along the way. We also lose water because we’ve stirred that soil up and the sun comes out and dries it up and it takes valuable water for us. So, now we’ve got to get the sprinklers out, the hose out. We’ve got to water more. Well, maybe if I did a little less of this business – rototilling or hoeing all the time – that might help out.

The other thing that I didn’t realize until I got into Extension – and I learned this – is that every time that we stir the soil, we lose organic matter. And it took me a while to understand what was going on until somebody explained it, kind of like –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– and us guys, we understand the next concept; where there is fire, there typically is a boy with a stick or a poker. If we have a campfire, can guys leave it alone?

[laughter]

Not very well. We always got to be poking at that thing just to make it roar and get going a little faster. What are we doing when we poke that stick in the fire? We’re adding oxygen to the soil, causing that fire to burn faster. What eats up the organic matter in the soil? Oxygen. We get bacteria going, we get fungi going. What they do is they break down and they eat up organic matter. That’s one of their food sources. So, every time we go up there and we till we’re adding oxygen to the soil and allowing those bacteria to work faster and faster and eat up all that organic matter that we work so hard to get into the soil in the first place.

Now there’s a place for rototilling and digging, mixing in nutrients and sometimes that’s where we need to start. But I’m going to challenge you to try to do less of that in your gardening. Save yourself some back pain. Save yourself some gasoline and some shaking arms from that rototiller. Okay? Try some things a little bit differently.

Pulling weeds –

[inadvertently advances to the next slide]

Whoops!

[return to the – Mechanical Weed Control – slide with the bulleted list]

– as we pull weeds sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes that may not be the best way to get rid of that weed. I’ll show you some pictures a little later about where pulling might not be your best method. It might be mowing or cutting that weed off would be better. And, yes, I’ve seen some weed control with fire – flame throwers. Some organic farmers had these contraptions. LP gas hooked out on em – on the –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– back of their tractor, driving down through the roads and just WHOOSH! throwing flames down at the ground to burn weeds. It works, but again it’s just a little different method, and that may not be the safest method in the world to use as you go through this, okay?

So, cultural methods. Some different things that we can do that can save us some – some work along the way. Use paper and cardboard –

[slide titled – Cultural/Mulching – with the following list – Newspaper and cardboard; Bark; Stone; Landscape cloth; Billboard plastic signs; Hay, straw, leaves, grass clipping mulches; Blacktop, concrete, pavers]

– putting that down provides a nice mat which does several things, and we’ll – well take some pictures – look at some pictures in a little bit about that. Bark mulch. Stone mulch. All different kinds of things. Landscape cloth – good and bad things about that. I’m going to show you a picture of some billboard plastic signs that are used as a mulch. Fourteen feet wide, 48 feet long. How does that cover up an area!

[laughter]

Okay? Some good stuff and some maybe not so good stuff about that. For years we’ve used hay, straw, leaves, grass clippings, and such. And blacktop, concrete, pavers – those work pretty well –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– but they don’t always work that well. How many of you have weeds growing up through your – through your driveway? Catching in the cracks of a concrete driveway? Or popping up through blacktop? Those dandelions are powerful, okay? So, again, those may not be the total answer along the way.

So, let’s take a look at a few pictures here. Just kind of some garden area. There was –

[slide titled – Grass clippings and wood chips – featuring two photos, one of grass clippings piled on a garden and a second of wood chips scattered on the edge of a garden]

– grass clippings. A person put grass clippings around a tomato plant to help control those weeds. It does several things. Also holds in moisture, keeps some of the weeds away. But along whenever we use these kinds of organic mulches, we can also have issues with insects and other disease sometimes. So, it’s a balancing act that we have to work with. Some red bark mulch was used. Not always the best thing to use –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– in a garden area for – for that sort of thing but can be used. Again, everybody has something that they like to do or like to try. I am a little concerned about both of these because they, excuse me, they do steal some nitrogen from the soil. Cause as they break down something’s got to break that down and bacteria do that job, but they still – and use some nitrogen to break those down which is then not available for our plants to use. So, again, it’s a balancing act.

Straw and leaf mulch.

[slide titled – Straw and leaf mulch – featuring two photos, one of straw mulch in-between rows of strawberry plants and a second of leaf mulch on top of a garden]

A person had taken their strawberry plants and they put a nice thick layer of straw in between the rows. Did just a great job. Helped to hold down the weeds, held in the moisture, also helped to hold the soil temperature or the temperature around those plans when we had that little sneaky frost that came through late this spring. There was enough heat in that kept those strawberry plants from freezing those couple of cold nights that we had. So, again, it worked very, very well in this situation, but don’t think that they didn’t do any weeding to make it look like that either. There was still plenty of hand weeding that took place there. But it was a lot less than if they had just let it go.

Leaf mulch. You put a nice thick layer of – of chopped up leaves. Works very, very well to –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– help control some weeds. So, that works nicely.

Here again I – I show you another bit of straw.

[slide titled – Straw and cardboard – featuring two photos, one of straw covering a garden and a second with several sheets of cardboard covering a garden with soil on top of the cardboard to hold it down]

This is a little bit thin; you can see an awful lot of soil sneaking through. But I also see a few little dark spots around and in – in amongst the straw, whereas where there is no straw that soil is extremely dry. So, the mulch helps to hold moisture in the ground and keep the moisture where our plants can get at it and use.

On this picture over here, you’ve got some cardboard that was laid down. And they actually threw some soil on top just to hold the cardboard down in place. Now that works pretty good for a while –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– but what do you suppose is going to happen there? We’re going to get some weeds growing back again, aren’t we? Yeah, thats – they are going to come in. And you can see in between the – the pieces of cardboard – just kind of an experiment to see, okay, will this work? Do they come in now and plant in those places? Slide the cardboard to the side, plant where there are no weeds and smother out the weeds that are growing? That would be one strategy that we could be using this. But, again, people are trying some new and different things. And – and what can you do? Can you take newspaper and do a similar kind of effect? and overlap them and make them several layers thick? Absolutely. And now that we are using soy-based inks in all the newspapers it safe for the soil, safe for the microbes and everything else in the ground, and can be a good addition, can help put some organic matter back into that soil if you would mix that in later on. So, a neat – neat way to look at that.

Most of us have seen this sort of situation, right?

[slide titled – Red mulch and landscape cloth – featuring two photos, one of a garden with red mulch in-between the plants and a second with landscape fabric around a large cluster of female dandelions with mulch on top of the fabric]

Somebody did landscape fabric and then they put mulch over the top of it. And after maybe five years, here’s what we get if we don’t keep after it. Yeah, it gets cut, it gets scuffed, and – and lots of reasons for some of that happening. So, weeds start coming up through it or they start growing right on the top there, don’t they? Same thing happens if we use stone mulch.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

Stone mulch looks nice, and we can use different color stones, but typically we find that that doesn’t last real long. And the fact that the stones are fine, but how about if you have trees in your yard and all those tree leaves land on there? How do you get those leaves out of the stones? We typically don’t get them all out of there, do we? And then that breaks down and it becomes wonderful organic matter right down in the stones. And then seeds fall in there and pretty soon you got a nice green crop growing right on top of your – your stone mulch. At least with bark mulch we can add another layer and kind of cover them up and try that. That is one of our strategies for controlling the weeds.

And then right near this spot here the person that actually pulled out a bunch of weeds from right in here –

[return to the – Red mulch and landscape cloth – slide with the two photos]

– and this is where they ended up. Well, they made a little organic matter pile of all dandelions that were there, okay. Are there any weeds growing under that pile? Yeah, there were a couple, but not doing too well, But what’s going to happen with all these seeds? Yeah, look out next year! The dandelions said, Thank you. We will be back!

[laughter]

We’ll come back and – and get you again.

So –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– again, some things to look at and think about – how do you want to manage it? If you’re gonna pull your weeds, let’s put them in a compost pile. Let’s get them out of the way. Let’s handle them so we don’t cause ourselves more trouble later on, okay?

Okay, here is this billboard –

[slide titled – Used billboard banner material – featuring two photos, one of a large billboard lying flat in a rowed garden with holes for the plants to grow through, and a second with a close-up of one of the plants popping through the billboard material]

– banner material. You see all the billboards that are out there? There only up for a short time. They’re not made of paper anymore. Most of them are made of a – a canvas-type material, a plastic canvas spray-painted in color. They put them up and then they take them down. So, you flip em over and they’re typically black on the other side. So, the printed side is down here. And so, this – this person had gotten these, and they liked it really well because they – they laid it out and put bricks on the side to hold it in place. They went and cut little slots where they wanted their plants. It controls the weeds in their garden very, very well.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

There are some disadvantages along the way because as you can see over here, I did a – a close-up. Now I’ve got a weed growing right here –

[return to the – Used billboard banner material – slide with the photos]

– in next to the plant they had put in. How do I get that out of there? Pull it out? That’s one of the options. Sometimes we need to be careful about that, though, because as we pull that plant out –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– and we pull its roots out, we’re also affecting the roots of the plant that we wanted to have in there. Well, so look at that and I’m looking at it I am thinking, Okay, so how does the water get back in the soil to water these plants? It’s done manually where you have to run drip tapes, or some sort of an irrigation system up for each one of those. Or you have to come by with a bucket and water each plant individually. So again, you’ve got to think all of this through. There’s no one magic, easy way to do it. I think this can work kind of nice. Here’s another spot –

[slide titled – Still need to deal with some weeds and can create runoff/infiltration issues – featuring two more photos of gardens that have used the billboard material, the first shows weeds growing next to the slits that have been made for the plants and the second shows a garden using the billboard material that slopes off of the left and right of the material so that the rain flows to the sides]

– another picture. S-a-a-a-me place. And as you look at the garlic that’s – thats been planted in here, I see ragweed, and I see some other nice weeds that are in there. I asked the guy. I said, How do you plan to take care of those? He says, Well, we’re just coming along, we’re going to pull them all out. I said, You might want to re-think that a little bit. Because as you pull those out again – when you get a weed this big that root system is going to be very large, and as you pull that out it starts –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– affecting the root of your other plants. I would seriously consider cutting them off and just pulling the top off and try to control them that way. You’ve let em get too big. If we were back at that other slide with the smaller weed, you could probably get away with that.

Again, here’s another picture. He was starting another area.

[return to the – Still need to deal with some weeds and can create runoff/infiltration issues – slide with the two photos described above]

I think this was going to be musk melons and watermelons, but you see water tanks out here? Yeah, there’s a lot of backbreaking work going to go on there. They used a hose to fill those out and then they have to use buckets to go around and water each one of these little spots because when it rains what happens to all the water that would have hit and infiltrate right there?

[George Koepp, on-camera]

It runs off and it’s not available for our plants. So, again, it’s not a failsafe. Yes, it makes weeding easier but create some other issues. I’m also a little concerned, and I don’t know what happens here, that when you’ve got that black plastic and you’ve got musk melons or watermelon growing on their, and it gets July and August and get 90, 95 degrees out there, whats the soil temperature going to be underneath? What does that do to some of those roots? And what does that do to hold all that heat and almost cook your melons? I did have an instance in 2012 when we had the – the drought and the real hot weather. Had a farmer that was using black mulch to grow their melons and they hadn’t pulled it off and they didn’t cover it up. His – his musk melons were exploding. I mean they were growing; they were cracking. As he would water them, they would take in the water, and they’d take it in so fast because they had been thirsty that they would get large. And then it was so hot, they actually cracked right open. I had temperatures on the plastic about 110 degrees inside that melon. It couldn’t handle it. So, again, this black business. Sometimes you need to cover that up a little bit with maybe some straw mulch or do something a little different to help cool that temperature down when we get into the – the winter – or into the hot summer there, okay?

Chemical –

[slide titled – Chemical Organic vs. Inorganic – featuring the following lists – under Chemical Herbicide Options – Selective; Non-selective; Pre-emergent; Post-emergent, and under Organic Herbicide Options – Vinegar, Black Walnut trees; Citric Acid; Corn gluten meal – pre-emergent herbicide 20lbs/1000 square feet; Clove oil – 50%]

– organic vs. inorganic. A couple of options there for you to think about. If we do get to that chemical option, know and understand your options along the way.

The – the chemical herbicide option, is it selective? Does it kill only broadleaf? Does it kill only certain grasses? There are a lot of different choices, so you need to do your homework and your research on that. Is it non-selective like the glyphosate? Or the Roundup-type products that kill any green plant pretty much unless it happens to be glyphosate-resistant. We’ve got some weeds and some other plants out there that have developed some resistance – resistance. And that’s just natural selection. Glyphosate’s not the first chemical –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– that we’ve had plants become resistant to.

If we think back, most of us can remember back in the ’70s when some of the first chemicals came out for farmers to use. And the – the one I’m thinking about is atrazine. Great chemical, but by 1978 we already had some plants that were resistant to atrazine. It didn’t take us long. So, we didn’t learn our lesson because we used it. We used a lot of it. And all you need is one or two plants to escape and all of a sudden, now they’re producing seeds because they are resistant and now we’ve got a resistant population. The same thing can happen with the glyphosate products, so we have to watch out for that.

Is it a pre-emergent herbicide? In other words, do we spray it before the weeds come up and it controls them and manages those? Or is it like some of the crabgrass preventers that you have to get that on the ground before the weed germinates and grows because that is what it stops? It stops the germination of those seeds. Or is it a post-emergent, where it comes up and grows and then we apply the chemical to it?

Some of the organic herbicide options.

[return to the – Chemical – Organic vs. Inorganic – slide]

And just a couple of things you’ve sometimes heard. And – and we as master gardeners, we typically do not recommend using vinegar. We can recommend a whole bunch of organic kinds of things. But how much vinegar do you use? How concentrated? We don’t have the answers to those. That’s why we don’t rec – make those kinds of recommendations as master gardeners. Black walnut trees could do a nice job of managing other plants and weeds.

[laughter]

They are pretty selective, aren’t they? They don’t like much growing around them. So again, those are some natural things, but do you want to plant black walnuts to control the weeds? Cause it will control most of the rest of your plants, too, won’t it? So, not a great option. Citric acid? Works as an herbicide. How much do you use? Can you control it very well? Maybe yes, maybe no. Corn gluten meal. I’ve heard this one too. Corn gluten meal is a pre-emergent pesticide. Yes, it is. That’s a natural product.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

And it’s used for crabgrass control. However, notice you have to use 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? If we think about that – and let’s do just a little quick mental math here – if I had a football field, which is about 1 acre, you can imagine that size, 43,560 square feet. So, if we took that 4320 – 860 – 860 pounds of corn gluten meal on a field the size of a football field. That would turn that field kind of yellow. Is that something you want out there? Do you want that much on your lawn to control crabgrass? Probably not. So, again there are some – yes, it’ll work, but you’ve got to put an awful lot of that out there.

And then clove oil –

[return to the – Chemical – Organic vs. Inorganic – slide]

– 50% solution. What would your lawn or your area smell like? Would you be able to be near it and work – work that at all –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– if you use something like that? It’ll work, but again, we’ve got kind of the – the balancing act that we have to look at, okay?

They’ve asked me to talk about lawns a little bit. One of my favorite topics, but I only gave one slide because I want to keep it short and sweet here. I’m going to suggest that for your lawn if you want to have pretty good weed control that you – you keep it simple. It works much better that way. We typically –

[slide titled – Lawn Weed Control – with the following bulleted list – Fertilize three times per year – Use Holiday Schedule; Water – 1 per application, only when necessary; Mow at least 3 inches high; Treat for crabgrass in spring; Treat for broadleaves in fall]

– recommend that you fertilize three times per year for your lawn. That turf needs some nutrients to grow. And use the holiday schedule. I typically fertilize just a little bit before Memorial Day, right about the Fourth of July, and come back again Labor Day. If I want to mow a whole lot more the following year, I’ll fertilize again once more maybe in the fall just a little bit using – and depending upon our year because sometimes we get pretty good growing season all the way up into December. So, again, that’s a long time for that grass to be growing, not that you want to necessarily mow that much. But at least three times a year to get a good healthy turf.

Water? I avoid watering my lawn at almost all cost. I started the lawn in 2007, the year after I built the house.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

I’ve watered it a couple of times in 2012. And that was only because it was so dry that I was concerned that the crowns of the grass were going to get burned up and die. Bluegrass goes dormant, turns brown in the fall when it gets hot and dry. That’s okay, it will come back. But in 2012 it got extremely dry, so I did – did water a couple of times. Most times I don’t. If you’re going to water and if you’re have a lot in town and you want nice green grass year-round and – or at least during our growing season, then you may need to water a little bit to keep that going. But if you’re going to water, water 1 inch per application. That 1 inch of water will go down in the ground about 6 inches. You want to push the roots down. Don’t give it just that little sprinkly water. Likewise, when you water your garden, when you water your flowers, water big or go home. Don’t do it. You don’t want to turn those roots up, and when you water so shallow that’s exactly what you do. You want to drive the roots down, so water big. Water at least 1 inch per application so it goes down.

The other thing that’s very hard for many people to do is to raise that mower deck. My mower deck runs at 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 inches tall. People say, How do you – how can you do that? Then they come and they walk on my lawn, and they say, Wow, this is nice! It is squishy and nice. But you’ve got to get that mower deck up. Don’t scalp it off. One of the things that helps is by keeping the grass taller, it keeps your roots longer. When you chop off the top of the plant, there is nothing left to provide nutrients for the roots of your plant. And so, roots are going to die because they will starve until the top of that plant starts producing photosynthesis again, sending sugars down to build roots. So, we’ve got to get it – get you to raise that mower. I’ve had a hard time getting my dad to do it, but finally we’re getting there. Raising his deck. He liked that low-mowed lawn, but it dried out and he had weed problems. So, we’re working on that.

Treat –

[return to the – Lawn weed control – slide above]

– crabgrass in the spring if you have a problem. Okay? It’s an annual, you have to stop it before it germinates. And for the most part I found that treating for broadleaves in the fall is about the most effective thing to do there too. If all else fails, you come in with –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– spray to spray those dandelions, mullein, plantain, those kinds of things. The broadleaves. Get them out of there so that your grass and your – your turf will fill in. You really don’t have to do a whole lot of inner-seeding or re-seeding after that either. If you kill it in the fall, they’re not back in the spring. To spread – and try and control broadleaves in the spring like dandelions? How many days are dandelions really a problem in your lawn in the spring? Not many. A couple of weeks and then they kind of go away. And if you have your turf taller, they will out-compete a lot of those dandelions. Once you get em under control you may only have a few to go pop out once in a while due to whatever kind of an issue. But I don’t treat the broadleaves every year. You don’t have to. For that taller turf grass. It does pretty well. Okay.

So, weed ID tools. Sometimes people want to know, What do I – what weed is this? And sometimes you’d just like to know, and sometimes it’s extremely helpful for us to develop a plan. I’ve got with me –

[slide titled – Weed ID tools – Identify the enemy! – and featuring the following list – Weed books – Weeds of Nebraska and the Great Plains, Weeds of the North Central States, Weeds of the Northeast, Ontario Weeds, Weeds of the West; Online resources – Weed Identification and Management (http://weedid.wisc.edu), Illinois Wildflowers (www.illinoiswildflowers.info), University of Missouri ID Weeds app – Apple and Android]

– today several books that you can take a look at. I find these to be really helpful; Weeds of Nebraska and the Great Plains; Weeds of the North Central States or the Northeast; or Ontario Weeds; Weeds of the West, very similar book – books. Nice color photos. You can either find them at the library or maybe you want to purchase one of those. I’ll let you take a look at what I’ve got here. Some of these are really, really kind of helpful. So, take a look at that.

We’ve got some great online resources. If you are pretty good with the computer, U.W.-Madison – weedID.wisc.edu has a great weed identification tool. You go on there, you tell them whether it’s a – a – a – grass type plant or a broadleaf. And then its asks some questions about the leaves, about the flowers. And this is one test, or one set of questions that you want to fill in the fewest number of possible answers. Because otherwise –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– it lays you down the wrong road. And it will give you a whole bunch of choices afterwards and some good pictures to look at. So, use that, but you don’t have to fill everything out. Ive found that the fewer things I answer, using that tool, the better off I am in most cases. Gets me closer cause if I answer something wrong then I’m way off-target with the thing.

Illinois wildflowers is another pretty good –

[return to the – Weed ID tools – Identify the enemy! – slide above]

– website that has a lot of great pictures that you can use. And there are many others too. University of Missouri has an ID weed weeds app for either Apple or your Android phones.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

So, some different tools that we can use to help find out what is our weed challenge.

Some publications. I hope most of you are – are familiar with “The Learning Store” –

[slide titled – Weed management publications – and the following list – Learning store pubs – http://learningstore.uwex.edu; Plant Doc pubs – http://pddc.wisc.edu; Internet folklore – be carefull]

– U.W.-Extension. Great publications there to help you and to help you help others. As Master Gardeners, part of our job is to take that university knowledge and share it with our neighbors and friends. This is one of the places that I hope you look at first. The other one is the Plant Documents Pub – publications from the University source. Plant Disease and Diagnostic Clinic. Great source of publications and fact sheets there too. So, please check those out. If you haven’t seen those yet, get online either at home or at the library or come in the Extension office and have them show you how to get at that. Work with each other so you learn to use those.

This one, the Internet folklore. Whenever you plug something into the Internet –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– everything you find on the Internet is true, right?

[laughter]

Yeah. There are some – some great ideas and sometimes something to think about, but I want you to be real careful with how you use some of those sources.

So, we kind of wind down. I was thinking about one weed that I want you to be on the lookout for. It is all over the ditches. I saw it all the way from Portage to Juneau. That’s our – our new friend wild parsnip.

[slide titled – Weeds to watch out for! – with the following list – Wild Parsnip – Use extreme caution near this weed, Sap causes phytophotodermatitis; Invasive Plants – Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin – http://ipaw.org]

That’s really come on heavy for the last three or four years. Be careful with that as you work around it. The sap does cause phytophotodermatitis. “Phyto” meaning plant. “Photo” meaning light. “Dermatitis” meaning skin. You get that on your bare skin and then you get into sunlight – look out! Now everybody’s a little bit more or less sensitive to it than others, okay? If you have pretty sensitive skin make sure you are wearing long sleeves, use rubber gloves, and get somebody else to deal with it for you if you need to –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– okay? Warn them. You don’t want to be mean, but, you know, I’d much rather I deal with it than my wife. Red hair, fair skin, you know, if she gets near that stuff she starts to break out. So, we don’t – we dont need that kind of thing happening. So, again, be very, very careful with it. And you’ve got a fact sheet that I gave you tonight to take a look at that.

Another thing, and I – I heard you talking about invasive plants.

[return to the – Weeds to watch out for! – slide above]

Notice it says invasive plants – not weeds – because sometimes they may not really be a weed. Somebody wanted them, somebody liked them, but IPAW, the Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin has a great website and there’s some protocols and there’s some more training that you can take to become a member there that helps identify some of these and – and identify some locations. And some of you may already be certified –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– in that way.

So, really, it’s all about choices. Is it a weed or not?

[slide titled – It is all about Choices? – featuring the following bulleted list – Is it a weed or not? – Goldenrod? Tansy?; Mechanical; Cultural; Biological; Herbicides, organic vs. manufactured, they are both still chemicals]

Goldenrod, is that a weed? To me it is. I tried to wipe it out of my ditch all the time. Try to get rid of that stuff. And yet I see different varieties of it sold at garden centers as wildflowers. Is it a wildflower? Is a wildflower a weed? If it’s in a cornfield, or a hayfield, a soybean field it might be.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

But in other cases, sometimes we like them when we grow them. In a prairie, they are just fine, okay?

How about Tansy? Is that a plant or a weed? Where is it growing? My wife bought some is a groundcover, or to fill in a planting area it worked very, very nicely there. All of a sudden, it’s in almost every one of our flowerbeds.

[laughter]

In those beds it’s a weed, and I fight it a lot. So, again, we have to look at where is it? Where do we want it? What should be doing?

Again, we talked about mechanical controls, cultural controls –

[return to the – It is all about choices? – slide above]

– biological. And again herbicides, organic versus manufactured. They’re both still chemicals so that you know and understand. The organics come from a living plant and whatnot –

[George Koepp, on-camera]

– but they are still chemicals and some of them even that we use as insecticides, organic insecticides, are toxic to bees as well. So, please be careful of those kinds of things.

Please, please, please, read the labels on any type of pesticide you use. And especially take a look at some of the – the “caution” areas so that – that you understand what the toxicities are, to water, to fish, to bees, and many of our other pollinators. So, use them, but use them responsibly and follow the labels.

So, what is my weed tolerance?

[slide titled – What is my weed tolerance? – and featuring the answer that – only you can answer that question!]

I don’t know what yours is. Mine fluctuates. You know, only each individual can answer that and decide how you want to attack those weeds.

[George Koepp, on-camera]

And – and are they weeds or are they plants? I don’t know. It’s different in every situation. But again, I hope you’ve got a little better idea how to – to go about some of these things and – and make your job as a manager of these plants a little bit easier. Okay?

Thank you.

[applause]