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| What is this weed? |
On Friday at the Master Gardener Conference we were walking around the Wetlands Discovery Point on the UBC (Utah Botanical Center) campus when we noticed a great weed. Yes, weeds can be great and even cool at times! I decided to snap a few shots and bring back "Name That Weed?"
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| An up close and personal look |
So, here you go! Tell me the name of this weed, how to control it, what makes it unique, and maybe to some even cool. Leave me a comment and the winner will get a niffy prize from our prize closet. Ready, set, go!
This was too easy. When I was a youngster we use to have this in our alfalfa fields all the time. It is Dodder, a parasitic annual, spread by seed. Since the seeds are viable for over 20 years it is difficult to control. And may require multiple persist tactics, season-long, each year.
ReplyDeleteThe extended viability is because only a small portion of the total seed population germinates during a single season.
Prevention requires eradication of patches of dodder before they can spread, cultivating, burning or clipping and removing infested plants.
Fields heavily infested with dodder, which can be spread from field to field by equipment or grazing animals, may require rotation to non-host crops.
Another approach is pre-emergence control, provide very effective control. Dodder seed can germinate when the soil is moist and temperatures are higher than 60 degrees.