I just learned yesterday in a conversation with Dr. Donald Penner that one of our favorite holiday plants, the mistletoe, can be considered a weed. After a quick Wikipedia search it seems that these weeds are actually hemi-parasites, meaning they are not totally dependent on their host. In the case of mistletoe the plant can produce some carbohydrates via photosynthesis but they need the host plant for water and mineral nutrients. In the U.S., mistletoe can be found on trees and shrubs everywhere except around the central and southeast regions…now I’ll be on the lookout around Michigan. The mistletoe can reduce the growth of the trees, which at high densities is a concern in timber production, but the rate of spread is very slow. Mistletoe seeds are spread mostly by birds. The sticky juices of the berries or the bird feces are what allows the seeds to stick to woody branches where they can enter the plant.
In an effort to see if the cover crop present before dry bean planting affects bean maturity I rated maturity of the 4 different bean varieties under the 4 different cover crop treatments yesterday at the Student Organic Farm. I’ll know more after I do the official analysis, but it does appear that at this site rye may have caused the beans to mature faster. I will be presenting this information along with affects on yield, population, and weed density at the North Central Weed Science Society meeting in December.
Sept. 28- #5 rating (least mature)
Sept. 28- #1 rating (most mature, ready for harvest)
*Note that these two photos are of different variety beans.
As the field season is winding down we are moving back into the greenhouses. These Weed Wonder of the Week photos come from undergraduate student David Reif who is studying the host specificity and control of the parasitic weed dodder (Cuscuta spp.). He is having much better luck getting the dodder to attach to his sugarbeets and weeds this fall, likely because we have a new seed source. David will be presenting his research findings this December at the North Central Weed Science Society meeting in Milwaukee, WI.
Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of sharing my research progress with a group of organic farmers from mid-Michigan. After visiting the soybean variety plots of Dr. Dechun Wang’s group at the Agronomy Farm the group headed over to our Organic Dry Bean Systems plot at the Student Organic Farm, part of the Horticulture Teaching and Research Center. The beans are starting to dry down, so this was an excellent stage to look at maturity differences among varieties and among cover crop treatments. We were also able to discuss the level of weed control we were able to achieve with our practices and get feedback from the growers on their own weed management strategies. Over the next two years of the study we hope to hold larger field days both at the MSU locations (SOF, and the Kellogg Biological Station) and at the grower sites to share what we have learned.
