 Let's wrap up tonight with a talk about weeds in gardens. And to fight the battle against weeds, we first need to identify them properly and then use the most effective control measures. And here to share his expertise with us tonight is Jess Stackler. Jess from Acrop and Livestock Farm in West Central Ohio. And he received his PhD in weed science from the Ohio State University. And Jeff has a long career in extension. And today he serves as the extension agent in Griggs County for agricultural and natural resources, as well as 4-H. Jeff, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and welcome everybody. This is my first time doing Spring Fever Garden forums. So with that, I'm going to get started. I got lots to cover. We're a non-discrimination institution. So Tom mentioned about management. I'm going to spend very little time on management other than a couple of key things. But I think, as was mentioned earlier, it's important to know your pests. So I'm going to cover some plant parts of dicot species first, and then grass species. And then we'll cover my top 11 species, and then a little bit about management. So we're going to go through this quickly, because Tom says I've got to keep it to 20 minutes. And Tom knows I'll talk longer than that if he gives me the time. So below the soil surface, we start with the roots. The next thing is the cotyledon. The cotyledon is not a true leaf. That's actually just the remnants of the seed. But that can be helpful in identifying different species. So we want to make sure that we know what that is. Within that cotyledon, you do have veins, particularly the mid vein, which is most prominent. And it's more prominent in some species than others. The next thing is the stem. We're all familiar with the stem. The next thing is the node. The node is the part of the stem where the cotyledons in this place or the leaves are attached. It's a point of growth in a plant. Then I want to point to the hypochodil. This is a specialized part of the stem. It's the part of the stem from the root system up to the cotyledons. I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get through this picture. But there are ways to identify young seedlings based on hypochodil, whether it has hair or a particular color. Next, I want to cover what's called the vein. That arrow is pointing to the vein in that particular leaf. That's what we're pointing to over here, too, is a vein. But notice there's a difference. In this particular one, this venation is parallel, meaning that the veins are going right next to each other. This is very odd for a dicot to have. So when you find this in a dicot, it's very helpful in identifying. The first one that we started with is palmate. So all the veins originating from one central point where the leaf blade is attached to the petiole. The next thing is the veins at the top. And this is pinnate. This is the most common type of venation in dicots. And so it's not very helpful in identification compared to parallel and palmate. Next, we want to talk to this here. It's very important we understand the basics. And we have to call this the leaf blade because then we have the petiole. The petiole is a structure that attaches the leaf blade to the stem. This is important because some species do not have a petiole. We call that sessile. And that's important for identification, but most of them do. And so when you have the petiole and the leaf blade together, this is what we call a leaf. And for this particular leaf, because it's one leaf blade, this is a simple leaf. Most dicots have simple leaves compared to the top where that too is a leaf blade. But then we talk about the whole leaf. And in this case, it's a compound leaf because you have more than one leaf blade. Anytime you have two or more leaves, it's a compound leaf. And there's not many leaves that just have two leaflets. You're either gonna have three or more depending. The legume family has many different numbers of leaflets on them for a compound leaf. The structure that attaches each leaf blade on a compound leaf is called a petiole or if you wanna just call a secondary petiole, that's fine. But that can be important tool in identifying different species, particularly like a metacago like black medic versus the white clover that April talked about. The next thing is the leaf margin. There are many different shapes and styles of leaf margins. The next structure is a stipule. These are usually green leafy structures, two of them at the node of certain species, particularly mallows and legumes are two families. The strawberry family is another one that has stipules. This is important for identification. When those two stipules fuse together, we get this structure that's called an ocrea. You can spell it two different ways. Only the polygynase family has ocreas. That's the only one. So if my suggestion always is to look for the presence of an ocrea. If you see it, you know it's a polygynase species or a smart weed species. If you don't see it, then it's all the other many species that are out there. The last plant part here individually is a tendril. Tendril is that curly structure, usually at the node like in the cucurbit family, like when we grow watermelons. But in the case of legume species, it's actually at the leaf tip. If you think about peas that are in your garden or hairy vetch. Lastly, we've got the apical meristem at the top. This is the main part of the plant for a dicot. This is always exposed to the elements and you have the potential for plant death. Now I like to ask this question of if I draw this green line here, if I cut the plant off at this section of the plant, is the plant dead? And the answer is no, the plant is not dead. Every node below that point for most species will grow from that node and produce a done of the branch just like what we see with flowering when we cut, nip the bud to produce more branches. When a plant is dead, a dicot is dead. If you cut that off below the cotyledon, that's the very first node. That's the last node of growth. So if you cut the plant off below that line, it does not exist anymore. So let's go to grasses. What's important about grass identification? You can see many parts, but I wanna focus on these pictures here. This intercalary meristem we usually call a collar and this collar up here is notified by the back spot with the square or the front part with the square in this far left picture. Another structure that's important is the ligule in grass identification. And that's this structure right here that sticks up. It can be hairy or it can be membranous or maybe absent in the case of barnyard grass. The next structure is the oracle. The oracle is an appendage that sticks out around the sheath and it may extend very long or it may be very short. So you can have one that's clasping, you can have a stubby and most of, most grasses have no oracle at all. Lastly, just wanna reiterate that a rhizome is a stem that grows below the soil surface in this picture and a stolen is a stem that grows above the soil surface. When you're identifying grasses, ultimately you're gonna look at the inflorescence, the flowering structure and look at those individual florets for identification. One last tidbit of help is leaf arrangement or attachment for identification. Most species have what we call an alternating leaf pattern. One leaf on one side, one leaf on the other side. But the other ones here are more unique and very helpful in identification. So species that are always opposite throughout the entire life of the plant is things like milkweeds, dog bales, mint species and chickweed species. But there are species, particularly in the Aster family and some other families where the first two, three, one or four or eight nodes are opposite and then they go alternating. So some dicots change in their pattern of arrangement from opposite to alternate. I don't know of any that really go start alternate and go opposite other than maybe at the very top when they're starting to flower, but that's not helpful in identification. World are plants like bedstraw and carpetweed and basal rosettes are just a group of leaves where the stem is very short. These are your plantain species. They never produce a stem. All mustard species when they're young form a basal rosette. Many Aster species like a dandelion form a rosette and then many carrot species initially form a rosette. So let's talk about some of the different species, my 11 to talk about common purslane. Some of you may argue that it's not a weed and I would agree with that. That's fine. Common purslane is a very edible weed, very high in omega-3 fatty acids. We identify it by the cotyledon having a reddish color on the margin of the cotyledon and then you have opposite leaves. All the leaves on a purslane are opposite. There's no hair. The stem is quite fleshy. The leaf is quite thick. You've got a yellow flower and once you see these capsule, these triangular capsules and then the seeds, you're too late. You've already missed the opportunity to reduce seed production for next year. Another species that's low growing in the garden and as you can see has opposite leaves with a round cod leading is prostrate spurge. There's also a spotted spurge. They're very difficult to separate. They're both a prostrate in growth habit. The prostrate spurge tends to have more hair on it. One of the ways to identify many spurge species is to break the stem or the leaf and notice the milky sap that you see in the picture. Also, you can see the triangular capsules that are made with the seeds. Just one word of wisdom on the milky sap. Do not get that milky sap in your eyes as it can burn your eyes and cause damage. Always be careful around spurge species and getting that milky sap in your eye. Another species, Tom said, he didn't know anything. This is about this weed, harigalan saga, also called quickweed. It's an aster species, so you got this spatula type cod leading. Opposite leaves, every node on this is opposite. It's very hairy, it's very fast growing, which is why it's called quickweed. You can see it has really nice yellow disc flowers. That's the center of an aster species and the ray flowers are white. And you can see that the hair, the tufts of hair on the seeds when they're about to fall off and that's, again, too late in managing that particular species. Very prevalent in my garden and many gardens around the country that I've grown in. Red root pigweed, this is an edible species. You can see that you have a longer, narrower cod leading compared to the next pigweed species I'll mention. This one has hair on the stem and on the petio and you have a very thick seed head. The other one I wanna mention is water hemp. Water hemp has a smaller, more egg-shaped cod leading compared to the red root pigweed. Water hemp is a weed that is resistant to many different herbicides and I want people to understand that if water moves the seed, which it does very easily, you could end up with water hemp from somebody else that has created the plant to be resistant, which includes glyphosate. You can see that the leaf is longer and narrower on a water hemp than what it is on a red root pigweed. But notice this stem here in the middle bottom. No hair, that's the key difference between water hemp and red root pigweed is no hair on the leaves of the stem. The other thing is the flowering. This is a dietius plant, meaning you have male and female flowers on one plant. So if you see these thicker flowers and you see the yellow anthers like right there, you know you have a male flower. If you see the white stigmas, then you have a female plant. And you don't have to worry about getting rid of the male plants. They almost never have seeds, whereas the female plants do have seeds. Common lamb's quarters, another linear, long linear cotyledon, kind of a pinkish color on the underside. Opposite leaves for the first node and then it goes alternating a very white mealy leaf surface, a very edible species. It's related to spinach, so high in good concentrations of good nutrients. This is what the flowers look like, very similar to pigweed. And now today, most people classify lamb's quarters and pigweeds in the same family instead of separate families. Within this family is also kosher. This is a weed that we're all familiar with. You can see in the lower right hand corner, this is your tumbleweed. This or Russian this or two of the weeds that you see in Western movies where you see tumbleweeds. Kosher is very, very hairy, has a small linear cotyledon. And as it's young, you can see how much hair. As it gets older, the leaves expand and the hair is less numerous. And you can see the flowers here on the stems of the kosher plant. I wanna talk about a few perennials. This is Canada thistle, a nemesis for many of us. This is in the upper left hand corner is a seedling, very thick, a spatula cotyledons is what the aster family has. You can already see their spines and the leaves are a little opposite. At the bottom left though, notice that plant is coming from the creeping root system. Canada thistle has a creeping root system that you can see in the lower center section, not a rhizome, but a root. And this root system can go six or eight feet deep and can spread four or five feet wide in one season. You have spines on the margin and a little bit of hair on the upper leaf surface. Here's a full grown plant on the far right hand side and the nice pretty flowers that's perfect for any pollinator that loves Canada thistle. But it creeps around and gets to be very bad in gardens and flower beds. Another perennial that gets in our way is perennial south thistle. It too is an aster species. So you got a spatula cotyledons, but they're much smaller and thinner. Notice you have alternating leaf patterns. The first leaf is quite large and then it comes out to being bigger and longer and narrower as time progresses. Perennial south thistle does lax the petiole. So it's sessile, a way to identify perennial south thistle from the true thistles. South thistle is a misnomer. It's not a thistle. It's a Sankriss species and it has this milky sap. There are about five or six genuses within the aster family that have milky sap and Sankriss is one of those. A nice dandelion type flower, but not on a single stem. You can see that you got them spread out here. This too is a root system, a creeping root system like Canada thistle. So it spreads and becomes very patchy. Two grasses, I just wanna focus on one annual grass. You can see the very first leaf is somewhat pointed, but the way to tell the green fox tail is that there's no hair on the upper leaf surface. You have a hairy ligule and you can see it's like a fox's tail for the seed head. You've got these little projections called ons from the seed. Quackgrass is a huge nemesis for us in gardens and flower beds. It's a perennial, but this time we have a rhizome. This is a stem, not a root that's growing under the soil surface. You identify it because it has clasping oracles and a membranous ligule. It may have hair on the sheets, particularly in the spring, but not all sheets have hair, as you can see in the center picture on the bottom. And as the season goes on, it has less hair anyways. Another thing is this restricted area on the leaf about the upper third of the leaf. Here's what the seed head looks like. It's a spike for an inflorescence, and you can see, again, the clasping oracles at the top. Just a little bit about control. In managing perennials, it's very important to understand the nutrient flow. So this red line shows we're coming out of winter, going into the spring. Cool season perennials is represented by the red line. As that perennial starts to grow, that picture of that candida thistle I showed coming from a creeping root, it's growing and it's using the energy within the root system. And it keeps going and it keeps going down until it reaches a certain point. Certainly just before bud stage, it's gonna be producing energy and creating more root system. So if you dig up a candida thistle and you see it's producing new roots, then it's certainly time to get rid of that plant. If you don't do anything, you're gonna end up with increasing nutrient flows and it will have a higher concentration of nutrient and allow that plant clonal system to grow longer for a longer period of time. Warm season perennials, they require warmer temperatures to grow. And so they just start later in the spring candida thistle is a cool season and so is quackgrass. Common milkweed would be an example of a warm season perennial. So if we wanna use hand weeding or grubbing for perennials, what you need to know is you need to remove those plants and all perennial plant parts that you can find somewhere between four to eight inches or certainly before that vegetative structure starts to produce new shoots. So if it's a candida thistle, you don't want any new roots produced. If it's a quackgrass with rhizomes, you don't want any more rhizomes produced. That's the time when you pull it. And if you keep pulling it every four to eight inches when it comes back, you can continue to decrease that nutrient flow and potentially put that plant in enough stress that it won't grow back the next year. So when do we apply glyphosate to perennial weeds? We need the first opportunity is in the spring in the bud to early flower stage. This is not the best time of the year but it is a very good time of the year to control perennial weeds with glyphosate. The really the best time is the fall but you have to understand that you have to have some minimum plant height anywhere from four to eight inches depending upon the species. The timing is before frost or leaf dropage for warm season perennials meaning plants that die with a quick frost or after a frost for a cool season perennial. The glyphosate rate should be two to 4% so 2.6 to five fluid ounces per gallon of total spray volume. You should add an ammonium sulfate spray grade at 17 pounds per hundred gallon to soften the water and help the activity of the glyphosate. If you have winter annual and biennial species the fall is the best time to apply glyphosate. You do this anytime after a frost. You can use a little lower rate of glyphosate for biennials and perennial winter annuals for the most part because they're more susceptible than perennials. You should still add ammonium sulfate. Lastly, a little bit about summer annual weed management. Hand pulling is really the best from a soil condition and quality standpoint. I like to place a board on the soil to reduce compaction. The more times we walk with our feet on the soil the more times we compact it. So I like to put a board down. You can do tillage. Tillage is great. I prefer a garden weasel. That's a picture up here in the top right. Why do I recommend that? Because it limits the soil disturbance. We need to use that though as soon as we see the very first weed coming out of the ground because a garden weasel doesn't remove large weeds. It has to have weeds that are just coming out of the ground. And then if we use it every five to seven days life is very simple. If we would till our soils in the dark we would have better weed control. When we're always out in a daylight gardening we're actually creating more weeds when we move the soil around because most seeds need light for germination. So why not just do it at night? We got night vision goggles only $25 for some of these kid pairs. The problem is we gotta deal with mosquitoes at night. Although street lights if you live in a city may be enough to still initiate germination of seeds. And I just discourage constant tillage especially with rototillers because it destroys soil structure. It does a very good job in removing weeds but constantly tilling the soil is bad for its structure. So with that Tom I thank everyone for your time. If you have any questions you can see my contact information there like with other speakers I'm willing to answer any questions beyond tonight's presentation. Okay, thanks Jeff. And we've got some questions already coming on. There's a question what's the best way to get rid of quack grass? So the best way is with glyphosate that's the most effective way. The timing again is just before it starts to head out or when it's in the fall but you have to have at least six inches of regrowth in the fall to apply it and you don't want to apply the glyphosate until after a frost because it's a cool season perennial so it can handle the cold weather. Now, if you don't like to use glyphosate then you're gonna have to follow my recipe there about grubbing and taking out all rhizomes that you can find and making sure that you do it the first time of the season when the plants are about six or eight inches tall and then you keep doing it every time the plant reaches that size. Jeff, can you give me some trade names of glyphosate for these gardeners? Yeah, so the original trade name for glyphosate is Roundup, Buccaneer. There's many, many different glyphosate formulations out there and you want to be careful. I really despise this now. I saw a commercial the other night, Roundup for Lawns. That doesn't include glyphosate in that particular product. That's for your lawn to kill other weeds. You need to make sure that you have a Roundup brand that has just glyphosate in it and make sure you're not purchasing glyphosate formulations that have other ingredients in them that might last longer and kill other plants around there. Right, so you have to read the label carefully and there's generic glyphosate too widely available now. How about bindweed? There's a lot of questions about bindweed coming in. How can we control bindweed in the garden? Yeah, so again, glyphosate is the most effective tool. You start with the application when in that bud to early flower stage in the spring and then in the fall, in the late summer, let it grow, let it get to be, the vines get to about eight inches long and then spray glyphosate in the fall. And folks, I'm just telling you glyphosate because glyphosate is a translocating herbicide. When the nutrients are going down in the fall, the glyphosate goes with it to kill the roots or rhizomes depending upon the structure and that's the easiest way. That's not the only way that you have to do it. You can again grub, remove the bindweed by hand but you have to do it often enough to starve the plant from its nutrients in that root system and they go very deep and it gets very hard to do that. One last thing, Tom, when we're in perennial vegetation or other areas, some of the things we can do to apply glyphosate instead of spraying it on is we could take a paintbrush and use concentrated glyphosate and paint just a few leaves that aren't touching your desirable vegetation and that will get into the plant and go where it needs to get to. Yeah, what do you think about using cardboard or newspaper topped with what's a straw or grass mulch to prevent weeds? Well, it can be fairly effective. It depends on the species. Certainly all annual species will be controlled very well with that and really any biannual. It's some of the deeper rooted sturdier perennials where that will be less effective like quackgrass, like Canada thistle, like perennial south thistle, like bindweed. Those are species that that method isn't perfect. It can reduce the problem. I know that when I started gardens I would start them with newspaper and put compost over the top and the yard had quackgrass but it killed the quackgrass but a Canada thistle would come through that newspaper. So certainly putting cardboard down can be beneficial but it's not a cure-all for everything. And it is a safe approach, right? Yes. How about you have a type of garden fabric that you would suggest to handle weeds in a garden? Well, garden fabrics are tricky because if you're going to... If you have any way to let light in, a seed can still germinate underneath that. Plain black plastic or clear plastic is... Black plastic is the best because it shades everything, shades the ground, no light gets there. It prevents anything from germinating other than perennials can still poke through the plastic. But a clear plastic is better for your beds like Don Todd has last year for watermelons. It heats the soil up. Black plastic makes the soil cold at night. So it depends on what you're wanting. A landscape fabric, I'm always nervous about it. It's pretty good but you need to ideally let water flow through if it's a perennial or even in an annual garden. You need to make sure you're still getting water in there and yet preventing the weeds. I don't have a particular fabric that's better than another. Anything you can do to prevent light and yet still let water in for the plants to grow. It's going to be fairly effective. Again, it's the creeping perennials that are the problem. Yep. This gardener has grass growing within their perennial flower bed. Do you have a recommendation for control? So one of the products that we can use is the active ingredient is clethydin. I think it's graspegon is one of the trade names. You'll want to look for a product that has clethydin. As long as you have a dicot species, clethydin will only kill grasses and not dicots. And so that would be one way. Now, to get quack grass out of a grass, you're going to have to go back to what Don taught us and dig it all up again to do the divide method and as you're sorting through it, sort through and pull the rhizomes out. Otherwise, it's just going to keep growing in there. But clethydin is a very effective product and you would want to apply that when the annual grasses are about no more than four inches tall and you actually want the quack grass to be four to six inches tall to have enough growth and leaf surface to apply the clethydin. And you could apply that in the fall as well. But again, you have to have enough leaf material to get the herbicide to go down into the rhizomes. How about we talked about killing because killing weeds that have rhizomes, does that actually spread the weeds? Tilling rhizomes infrequently, actually increases the density of creeping perennial. And if you're moving, if that tillage tool is moving those roots, rhizomes along, then you're spreading it to other areas of the garden. If you do constant tilling, and you do it, like I said, so they're only getting four to six inches tall, every time you do tillage, then you're gonna do substantial harm to that population over time. But it's that timing issue and that nutrient flow in the plant. So minimum tillage, yes, Tom, certainly will increase a creeping perennial population. Aggressive tillage is what I'll call it, can reduce the population, but may not eliminate it if it's a very deep-rooted perennial. How about do you have any special tips on controlling south thistle? Yeah, so that south thistle, again, glyphosate applied when it's in that bud to early flower stage or in the fall when it has at least six to eight inches of growth. South thistle, I think can handle some frost. So you don't wanna wait too long. It's not as hardy as a candidate thistle, but it's fairly hardy. It's not like a common milkweed that's gonna die from a light frost. It can handle some frost. So you wanna find that particular time that's just right in the fall to control it. Again, I always go to glyphosate because that's the most effective tool because it kills any herbaceous or woody plant when applied at the right time at the right rate. Jeff, are you familiar with herbicide, Kreen? Yes, Kreen is trifleurilin is the common name or the chemical name, not the chemical name, but the common name of that herbicide. It is very effective on grass annual grasses and small seeded broadleaves. The key to making Kreen work is proper incorporation, either significant rainfall or tilling it into the soil. Many times we don't put enough water on without tillage to get it to work at its best. And we need to use some pretty high rates. The problem always is if you're planning to use that in the garden, as you have to think ahead to what you're planning to plant in that area next year, a red beet likely will die next year where you put treflin or Kreen this year. Right, and so with vegetables, you have to make sure you get the right type of Kreen. There's different, there's like, there's some that can not be used in a vegetable garden and that's interesting how like beets and spinach are very sensitive to Kreen. So you gotta read the label carefully as far as the type of vegetable and also the timing, whether you use transplants or seeds, whatever. Yeah, and Tom, you talked about Kreen, there is the organic Kreen, which is corn gluten meal, right? And corn gluten meal is decent at controlling annual weeds, not perennial weeds, but annual weeds, but it can suppress, you don't want to put it on at the time, you don't wanna put it on until after your crop has emerged, vegetables have emerged, or you might harm them as well. So, but you need to make sure that you get it on before, it stops emergent. So it has to be on before the weed emerges out of the ground. Once the weed emerges out of the ground, organic Kreen won't control it anymore. Okay, Jeff, I'm gonna get you just a few minutes left. So I want some rapid fire answers here, short and sweet. Give me a short tip on controlling purslane. Common purslane, either eat it or you gotta pull it out and remove it from the garden. You can't lay it down on the ground cause it reroutes. How about quackgrass in asparagus patch? Quackgrass in an asparagus patch, two options, either wait till the fall after the ferns have died and apply glyphosate or use that clathodin product that I talked about during the growing season. Will glyphosate kill your lawn? Will glyphosate kill your lawn? Yes. Okay, somebody is interested about eating purslane. What's the best stage for eating it, Jeff? Any time that it's young and succulent. You don't, once it's flowering, you don't wanna eat it then. That when it's four, six inches tall, perfect stuff. Jeff, give me a few, you mentioned warm season perennials and cool season perennials. Tell me, give me some warm season perennials, just a few of those big ones. Now, warm season perennials would be hemp dogbane and common milkweed as two examples that come to my head. A lot of our perennials are more cool season perennials like Canada's thistle and quackgrass and perennial south thistle. Those are some of the ones I can think of quickly, Tom. Okay, that's great. But again, the definition to me of a cool and warm season, if it dies from 32 degrees, it's a warm season perennial. If it survives 32 degrees or 28 degrees, it's a cool season perennial. Jeff, is there anything, is there such a thing as a beneficial weed? Yes, it's anything that you can eat and you love the flower. Remember, the positive definition of a weed is a plant whose virtues have not been determined. Okay, there you go, I liked it. I always thought a weed was an undesirable plant. You can look at a positive. But you can get hope for everything. Exactly. Got a positive spin, I like it. Okay, I think that's a good way to end this talk. And again, if anybody has, we've got to as many questions as we can, but if anybody has any more questions, you can please contact Jeff for myself. But that's gonna end it for tonight's Spring Fever Garden Farms. Really wanna thank you for all the great questions that we had tonight. Good start. Next week, we're gonna talk about fast growing trees. We're gonna learn about that dreaded emerald ash borer and we'll have some more successful, some tips to have a successful garden this year. So thank you to everybody. Have a good night, drive home safely and we'll see you next week.