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Integrated weed management education update from MSU
Erin C. Hill, Karen Renner, Dale Mutch and Christy Sprague
Michigan State University
Crop and Soil Sciences

Bulletin reprint out now
In February 2005, the 112-page, all-color bulletin “Integrated Weed Management ‘One Year’s Seeding…’” E-2931 (IWM) was released. The bulletin discusses the use of multiple tactics to manage weeds throughout the weed’s entire lifecycle, looking specifically at soil properties, soil organic amendments, tillage, integrated crop and weed management, crop rotation, physical weed management, herbicide management and biological weed management. Since its release, the IWM bulletin has sold out of all of the 2,000 original copies. We have reprinted the bulletin and copies are now available. To find out how you can get a copy please visit the MSU Extension Bulletin office Web site at http://www.emdc.msue.msu.edu/.

Supplemental bulletin in the works
Grower evaluations of the IWM bulletin were conducted in spring 2006 through an extensive 21-page questionnaire. We received many positive comments on the bulletin’s layout and information. Growers requested more information and further resources on certain areas of weed management. These topics included: 

• Manure/compost. Effects on weed seed fate, the potential spread of new weeds, weed species shifts, and the potential for increased weed competitiveness.
• Cover crops. Positive and negative attributes on weed management, cost/benefit analysis, positive and negative attributes of various covers, seeding rates, planting dates, potential options for no-till production, nitrogen availability for crops and weeds, and implementation into various crop rotations.
• Economic thresholds. Individual weeds, weed complexes, weed seed rain, and the weed seedbank.
• Crop rotations. Profiles of various crop rotations and effects on weed management, inclusion of more complex crop rotations for organic growers, rotations that manage nitrogen and carbon, and effects on weeds.
• Intercropping/living mulches. How they work, in what situations they work, planting dates, costs versus benefits, harvesting issues.
• Thermal weed management. Flaming (how and when), cost effectiveness, what weeds are controlled at what stages, best conditions, plastic mulches.
• Grazing. Types of animals (chickens, sheep, cattle, goats, swine), weed preferences, effects on the weed seedbank, overall impacts.
• Weed profiles. Twelve weeds were highlighted in the original IWM bulletin (“The Dirty Dozen”), inclusion of an additional 12 to 14 troublesome weeds.

Trials to occur in several Midwest states
We have recently received funding to create a new bulletin that will provide supplemental information to the original IWM bulletin. This IWM supplement will include chapters in these topic areas. In addition to these chapters, the supplement will also contain the results of the 2006 and 2007 IWM on-farm trials, results of new research since the IWM was published in 2005, and more organic farm profiles. Last summer the grower-designed IWM trials were conducted on organic farms in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. This summer we will also be adding a trial in Wisconsin.

The trials are looking at weed management using flaming, intercropping and cultivating, etc. Based on feedback from organic meetings, we will gather further information on flaming (pressure, humidity and ground speed), cover crop crimping, and cultivating based on growing degree days and hydrothermal time. For the organic farm profiles, we will be visiting farms in Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania throughout this summer to interview growers and take lots of pictures. The supplement is expected to be published in late 2008. A portion of the information will also be available on the web through the New Ag Network and MSUWeeds.com in the winter months of 2008.

The new funding will also allow us the opportunity to present the supplement materials to educators at the North Central Weed Science Society’s annual meeting and to support meetings for growers throughout the region.

How you can help
If you have information to contribute on any of the proposed topics for the IWM supplement or if you are interested in having an area of your organic farm profiled in the IWM supplement, please contact Erin Hill (hiller12@msu.edu).

Response to weed questions
John Masiunas
University of Illinois

Editor’s note: Several growers included questions in their reports last week about various weed concerns. Weed scientist John Masiunas kindly provided these responses.

Questions from Anne Petterson
Does mulching with straw bring in chickweed? Yes, mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium fontanum) is a common weed of cereals and can contaminate straw mulch.

Why do I have so much more chickweed now than in the past years?  Chickweed seed has probably built-up in the soils of your farm. Chickweed can produce as many as 6,500 seeds per plant.  Chickweed seed can remain viable in soils for over 40 years.  Modeling studies indicate that it may take 6 to 9 years of complete chickweed control to deplete 95 percent of the chickweed seed bank.  Chickweed seed can found in cow and horse manure, bird droppings and flood water.

Are warmer winters and low hoops just bringing it out more?  Yes, chickweed in the Midwestern United States is generally a winter annual, but can in warmer climates – or in hoops, tunnels and greenhouses – be a short-lived perennial (living three to four years).  Chickweed emergence generally occurs in mid to late September through early November with a smaller emergence peak in March.  Warmer winters will extend emergence into December and increase the emergence in March.

Questions from Beverly Ruesink
Does anyone have a good organic method for combating quackgrass?  There are two good articles on control of quackgrass (Elytrigia repens in the United Kingdom called common couch).  Jean Durval, an Agriculturist with the Bio-Action Agro-Environment Club has posted an excellent article http://www.organicagcentre.ca/Docs/Quackgrass_final_rev_JD.pdf on the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada websitehttp://www.organicagcentre.ca.  Another good review on quackgrass control in organic crops is titled “The biology and non-chemical control of common couch [Elytrigia repens (L.) Nevski]” <http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicweeds/downloads/elytrigia%20repens.pdf> by W. Bond, G. Davis, and R. J. Turner of Henry Doubleday Research Association at the Ryton Organic Gardens in Coventry, UK.  

Both articles indicate there is no “one method” for quackgrass control in organic crops and that control strategies depend on the farm. Durval discusses a short clean fallow with intensive tillage during July and August followed by a green manure crop and perseverance as keys for quackgrass control in field crops.

NAN readers, the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada website http://www.organicagcentre.ca and the HDRA Organic Weed Management website http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicweeds/index.php have a lot of information on weed management in organic cropping systems.  Also HDRA Organic Weed Management website “aims to act as a focal point for [United Kingdom organic] farmers, growers, advisors, and researchers to share their experiences with weeds”.  If using either website, recommended times will be earlier and products and cropping systems might differ in the Midwestern United States.   Also U.K. common names for weeds are often different from those in the United States.

Reports from organic growers

Indiana
West Central Indiana, Tippecanoe County—Kevin Cooley
The weather has been favorable, things are drying out and I have been able to kill weeds as well as transplant and plant direct seeded crops. We will need some rain later in the week, but hopefully not before I get all the tomatoes transplanted.
 
We have been planting first edible soy, second peas and beans as well as other small seeded crops. We have also been hand hoeing lettuce, carrots and spinach. We harvested asparagus and produce from the high tunnels, which we sold at four days of local farmers markets. We also started our first flats of melons for transplanting later this spring. We finished the temporary green house and filled it the same day.
 
We plan to transplant tomatoes, brassicas, lettuce and herbs this week. We will start cultivation of the first potato and onion crop. Our high tunnels need some attention—areas that have been harvested need to be cleaned up, other areas need to be weeded and the tomatoes need to be staked. We will hold off on these tasks in hopes of a rainy day later in the week and concentrate on field work first.
 
Questions
What practices have had the best results for reducing early blight in tomatoes?

South Central Indiana, Brown County—Dale Rhoads
Temperatures have been in the 50 to 80 degree range with a typical pattern of dry weather early in the week, moderate rain mid-week and dry on weekends—perfect!  We are overall running two to three weeks late this year due to a prior cold snap, wet conditions that made ground preparation difficult and some mistakes made in growing transplants.

We are in full salad greens production with weekly routine plantings, harvests and setting up sterile seedbeds. We are still transplanting kale, lettuce and leeks. We have started transplanting outside basil. The greenhouse has been transplanted to tomatoes and basil. First sweet corn has been planted. Pie cherries and apples are our only fruit this year.

We have a new hand transplanting tool that is speeding up transplanting time. It is based on an old tobacco transplanting device. It seems as if every old tobacco farmer in the county has seen us out using it and stopped by to chat up the old days. Over the past several years we have played around with different mulches for the long season transplants like kale and basil. This transplanter works best with the rotten sawdust mulch we get locally. The mulch can be applied first and we transplant right through the mulch speeding up transplanting and mulch application nicely.

The big push right now is to get all the transplants in the ground. Having had several different problems with growing plants to transplant has made this the limiting factor this year – it is always something. Problems with transplants were:
1. A heat cable in the greenhouse went bad and it took several weeks to replace.
2. A cold snap made the greenhouse cold. We were using floating row covers at night to protect from frost, even with heat cables in ground.
3. Potting soil mixture was off. Sandy put too much rotted sawdust in the mix and it was robbing nitrogen from immature plants. After we figured that out, foliar feedings of fish emulsion has taken care of it.

Our farming season is sort of divided up into these categories:
1. Feb/March—working the ground and dong plantings under row covers.
2. April/May—transplanting, mulching, bed preparation. These are the heavy labor months of the year!
3. May—the battle of the weeds is won or lost in this month. Each year the battle gets easier as we do April/May better.
4. June through November—harvesting, cleaning, packing and delivery. From records kept last year, we saw that each worker on the farms spends about 10 hours of their 50 hours a week on typical farm activities of planting or weeding etc… and the rest of the time is harvesting.

Illinois
Southwest Central Illinois, Montgomery County—Floyd Johnson of Shoal Creek Farm
We got some field work done last week and then some rain set in on Wednesday (May 2) or Thursday (May 3). I traded for a new-to-me corn planter and have been working every spare moment trying to get it up to our standards. We got back in the fields yesterday afternoon spreading manure. I am planning on hoeing oats this afternoon. On my morning inspection route it looked like hoeing the oats would kill a lot of weeds off and that is always a good thing. I still have some oats to sow and I am wondering if it is getting too late to sow oats, but I don’t want to mess up my rotation.

We are spreading manure today, but the spreader tractor blew a hydraulic hose so they are working on that. I am getting the hoe on the tractor and getting ready to hoe the oats.

In the next two weeks I hope to get manure spread, oats sowed, and hopefully corn ground prepared and planted by the next call.

Question
What is a suitable replacement for oats in the rotation? We sow them after soybeans when we can’t get wheat planted and before clover and corn in the rotation.

West Central Illinois, Fulton County—Anne Patterson of Living Earth Farm
Rain has kept me from working three-quarters of my market garden since the beginning of this season. It is drying out today.

Currently I’m transplanting in what area I can get into, i.e. very late setting out cole crops and head lettuce. I’m direct seeding spring lettuce mix, spinach and beets.

I have spent more time on weeding and mulching asparagus than should be necessary.
Cleared out hoophouse of winter spinach and put in new compost along with tomatoes.

In the next two weeks, I’ll plant spring cover crops, set out leeks transplants, plant more flowers, head lettuce and put tomato plants in the field, along with cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, beans, corn, tomatillos and more beets. I will also work on planting more herbs in herb gardens.

I will complete a new raised bed area; I’d be really behind if it were not for the few raised beds I have built over the years.

Question
I rely so much on mulching; however, I now have so many voles. Any ideas beyond trapping for voles?

West Suburban Chicago, Lake County—Steve Tiwald of Green Earth Institute
The dry weather has been useful to get planting and transplanting done, but we now can use a good rain. With the warm weather trend now and in the forecast, I think our area has seen its last frost, so we are preparing to transplant our warm season crops of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and basil into the field within the next few days.

This is our most intense time. In the greenhouse we are seeding lettuce, kohlrabi and winter squash into soil blocks. In the field we are mowing some of the strips with cover crop (rye), tilling selected strips using our Falk spader and prepping them for either direct seeding or transplants. The sugar snap peas have grown enough that we are now trellising them.

We will soon be transplanting tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, so in advance we are tilling and laying down the black plastic mulch. Then we will transplant. Also, we are cultivating current crops using hoes and straw mulch.

I want advice about cover crop planting. I have 22 acres that are in fifth year alfalfa, and the alfalfa is quite thin allowing weeds and grass to grow. I want to continue this acreage in cover crops next year, but I want a strong stand. I want to re-seed it sometime between now and next spring—probably in red clover, alfalfa or hairy vetch—with a small grain as a nurse crop. My question regards tillage and seeding. I do not want to plow or rototill because I am opposed to those methods and I do not own the equipment. My primary tillage device is a Falk spader, but it is narrow—only 53 inches wide—and I do not want to spade the field with it. Question: is it alright to simply overseed (either by seed drill this year, or by frost seeding early next spring) or is there an allelopathy problem?

Iowa
Northwest Iowa, O’Brien County—Paul Mugge
We had a good week until last Thursday (May 3) when it started raining with a ridiculous east wind. It was capped off with 3.5 inches on Saturday night. There is some low-land flooding and a lot of erosion. My organic fields seem much less prone to erosion, even where they have been disked and field cultivated. I think the higher soil organic matter helps, both for storage and higher infiltration rates. Most of the conventional corn in my area is now planted and some is up. Those very early planted fields look really pretty.

As soon as it dries up I will get back to spreading compost. I hope to begin planting corn by the end of the week after field cultivation. I have a lot of overwintering red clover that I hope one trip will get. Immediately after the corn I will start on soybeans. I will probably do some pre-cultivating to get the winter annuals in my ridge tillage system where they are becoming a problem, and then plant as soon as I can get to it. Then weed control trips start on a schedule.

Michigan
Southeast Michigan, Lenawee County—Beverly Ruesink
After a big planting push in the field around the week of the April 18, we had a nice couple of inches of rain over three days. It finally dried out enough to get back into the fields on Saturday, May 5. It has been real nice lately with high temperatures in the 60s and lows in the 40s. There have been a few days of high winds.

Currently, we have been lightly tilling fields to knock down sprouted weeds to help clean them up before the warm season crops go in later this month. We finished planting the potatoes yesterday, and will continue planting spring crops in the next few days before the next rain system. We have been cultivating the vegetables that we planted on April 18 with our one-row cultivating tractor and by hand with wheel hoes.

We are now starting to seed squash in soil blocks in the greenhouse. And we have been transplanting tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and flowers from plug trays into larger sized cells to get some more growth before they get transplanted into the field. Harvest continues from the hoophouse, with spinach, lettuce, arugula, chives, parsley, radishes and turnips being harvested for sale.

We plan to transplant the second round of onions, brassicas and peas in the next couple of days. We will have some major cultivation to do with the crops that have already been planted. We will continue to weed, seed and transplant. The peas will need to be trellised. We will likely direct seed the first of our beans, corn and edamame in the next couple of weeks, and start transplanting peppers, eggplants and tomatoes in the field on black plastic under remay.

Minnesota
Western Minnesota, Lac qui Parle County—Carmen Fernholz
Weather conditions over the past two weeks have been improving until this weekend when it became wet and windy. Corn planting is just beginning to approach 50 percent completion. All of the small grains are planted and much of it is already emerged.

I am presently not involved in any direct field work as all of my cover crops are seeded with small grains in the spring. I was hoping to do an initial corn and soybean seed bed preparation pass in late April or very early May, but the weather has not cooperated so I may have to do two passes within days of planting the corn and soybeans, which will not be until about May 20.

There will probably not be any direct field practices in the next two weeks except to pick a few stones in the small grain fields. Work will mostly be planter preparation and deciding specific areas for specific maturities and varieties of corn.