Winter Annuals « MSU Weeds.com Blog

Archive for the ‘Winter Annuals’ Category

Windgrass control in wheat

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

-E. Taylor

PRE treatment application for windgrass control in wheat

Yesterday Christy Sprague and I traveled up into the thumb to Minden City, MI. Here we have a plot with a grower cooperator looking at windgrass (Apera spica-venti) control in winter wheat. Windgrass is a winter annual grass, so its growing season corresponds well to the wheat season. Today we applied four preemergence treatments and we will return to the sight when the windgrass is ~1″ tall to apply several post-emergence treatments. This will be the second year of this study. The results from the 2011-2012 season can be found on here on MSUweeds.com

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Rating windgrass control in wheat (Minden City, MI)

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

-E. Taylor

Yesterday I headed up to Minden City, MI with Christy Sprague and our newest master’s student, Amanda Harden. We were there to rate an on-farm research plot, looking at windgrass control in wheat using fall and spring applied herbicides. Windgrass is a winter annual weed, meaning it germinates in the fall, overwinters, and produces seed in the spring, putting it in direct competition with wheat. Windgrass could be confused with annual bluegrass, another winter annual, however the membranous ligule of windgrass is more jagged at the top, whereas the ligule of annual bluegrass is smooth. Additionally, the sheath of windgrass is rounded, whereas the sheath of annual bluegrass is more flattened. Look for the results this windgrass control study during the winter extension meetings and on MSUweeds.com.

Rating the 20 different weed control treatments

Collecting annual bluegrass (left) and windgrass (right) for photographing back on campus

Sheath profile of windgrass (left) and annual bluegrass (right)

Posted in Herbicides, Wheat, Winter Annuals | No Comments »

Oilseed radish in February

Friday, February 17th, 2012

-E. Taylor

I do not usually get a chance to look at my cover crops in the winter months, but yesterday I was out by my garden looking and my oilseed radish cover crop. Since oilseed radish is “winter kills” in Michigan I was surprised to find that there were still some green leaves. I still do not expect these plants to survive the remainder of the winter, but I thought I would share the photo. Fortunately the ground cover provided by the radishes in the fall has suppressed most of the winter annual weeds, with only a few purple deadnettle plants poking through near the edges of the raised bed.

Oilseed radish in Michigan in February

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Winter Adventure

Monday, January 17th, 2011

-E. Taylor

Collecting weed seeds in MI in December

One might think that the cold weather and falling snow would keep weed science research confined to the greenhouse and lab, but we do venture out into the cold once in a while. In the middle of December I took two students out with me to collect winter annual weed samples. The samples were buried back in July and one set of bags is retrieved every three months for a year to look at seed decay over time. Large cages protect the samples from predation and also make them easier to find in the snow. The ground was partially frozen, making it difficult to dig, but we were successful in collecting 47 of the 48 samples. Our next collection date is in March, which should be a little easier.

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Cover crops and on-farm trials

Monday, November 15th, 2010

-E. Taylor

Soil and cover crop sampling supplies

Last week I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and visited all of 9 of our on-farm trial sites for the 2010-2011 organic dry bean project. I needed to visit take baseline soil samples and collect cover crop biomass samples from the oilseed radish and medium red clover sites. I will run a nitrogen content analysis on the oilseed radish dry matter to see how much nitrogen they have scavanged. With the help of Dan Rossman (MSU Extension), Christy Sprague, and Karen Renner I was able to get all of the sampling done. We traveled around 650 miles all together! Here are a few observations on the cover crops:

Clover
- 1 of 3 sites was frost seeded- this farmer was able to harvest the seed and there was still substantial biomass remaining
- 2 of 3 sites were planted during the summer- the plants at these sites were much smaller, but they should take off in the spring before being tilled
Frost seeded clover

Summer seeded clover
Oilseed radish
- Great biomass on the sites planted following a small grain/hay though we did see some volunteer wheat which we will keep track of also
- At the site planted following seed corn there was a good stand, but they have not had enough time to put on much biomass
- Some of the radish plants were starting to show signs of frost damage, as the over night temperatures grow colder the radishes will winter-kill
Oilseed radish planted in early September following hay

Oilseed radish planted in late September following seed corn

Rye
- At all of the sites the rye has been planted within the last couple of weeks following corn harvest
- No biomass was sampled at this time. It will be sampled in the spring prior to tillage

Last week I also took samples at the MSU Student Organic Farm with the help of Ryan Holmes (graduate student) and Dave Reif (undergrad student). At this site the oilseed radish and the rye plants are large. These cover crops were planted at a timing consistent with following a small grain crop (radish planted mid-July, rye planted in September). The radish had taproots so large that they had to be chopped to ensure they will dry in the dryer. The clover crop is small, similar to the on-farm trials, as it had to be replanted in August. Next year all sites with clover will be frost-seeded into a small grain. In addition to sampling the cover crop treatments, we also took weed biomass samples from the no cover treatments. Field pennycress was the dominant weed species present and could also be scavenging excess nitrogen. This week I plan to travel to the Kellogg Biological Station to do our final sampling for the year.