 So welcome everyone. This is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm happy to see all of you joining us. This is our sixth or seventh in the series of 11 webinars. I'd have to go and check. But you can always watch any that you missed by going to the Field to Fork website. So next slide. Just something coming up. Next week we'll be hearing a little bit more about the North Dakota Cottage Ood Law. And after that will be Pesticide Safety with Andrew Thaustensen. Next slide. For those of you who might be in the commercial growing business, we do have a Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Grower Training coming up April 5th. And we're still accepting registrations. We're bringing someone from Cornell University, Connie Landis-Fisk, and she along with Holly Mabe and I will be leading this eight hour training. It's $25 and you can register online. And this is especially important for people who are not exempt according to those regulations. But I would encourage anybody who would like to really get into selling produce to consider coming to this because we're going to cover a lot of food safety issues. And no one wants people to get sick. So please consider that. Next slide. I think you've all figured out how to use your Zoom controls. If not, there's a chat box and we'll have all of you in listening mode throughout this seminar. But feel free to type in any questions you have and we'll all keep our eyes open so that we don't miss those. So please go ahead and interact. Next slide. For me, because this was all sponsored by a grant, I do ask that you complete the survey. It will come directly into your email box. Very short, it'll take you just a couple minutes. And to sweeten the deal, we do have an opportunity to win prizes. At the end of the series, I will award those prizes. You could win more than one prize if you submit your name and email or phone more than once. So please each week that you attend, go ahead and fill out this online survey. The project was supported by the USDA and through a North Dakota Department of Agriculture grant. Next slide. And now I'm really happy to introduce Greta Grammig. Greta is an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at North Dakota State University. She teaches courses about weed identification and weed biology and ecology. Dr. Grammig's current research interests include nonchemical weed control, weed ecology, and weed management in organic production systems. She also has over 30 years of experience growing organic vegetables in various climates and soils. And her talk today is based both on her research experiences as a weed scientist and also her experiences as a home gardener. So thank you very much and I'm turning it over to you. Okay, thanks for the introduction, Julie. And just as a little bit of a help for me, if I'm missing questions, sometimes I might get absorbed in what I'm talking about. If you see questions, you could always chime in and tell me I've got some questions if I'm missing them, okay? Absolutely. All right, great. Well, thanks everyone for joining us today. And as Julie said, I'm going to talk about weed management and a little bit about soil fertility for growing vegetables in a home garden setting mostly without chemicals, so organic production. And a lot of these tips would probably also relate to commercial growers, but the talk is really geared more toward home gardeners. So a little bit of background on me. I am, as Julie mentioned, I'm a weed scientist. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, and I'm also a gardener. And this is a picture of me sitting in one of my gardens when I was a grad student at UW Madison. So I've had about 30 plus years gardening in a lot of different climates and soil types with a lot of different pest problems. But the one thing that's always remained constant for sure is problems with weeds. And so the first thing I want to talk about is what causes weeds and what are they really? So weeds are really just plants. And there's lots of different definitions of weeds. One that everyone likes to offer is a weed is a plant how to place, but who decides if it's how to place? Well, humans do. So one thing that causes weeds is human perspectives. But moreover, weeds are just species that have evolved to perform certain functions in our ecosystems. And one of those functions is that they provide rapid cover on disturbed soils and help to hold nutrients in those soils until some of the longer-lived perennial plants have a chance to get started. Also, they can be caused by immigration weeds coming in from other places. This relates more to noxious weeds. Something that's kind of interesting as a cause for noxious weeds is a phenomenon called enemy release. So weeds from other places often aren't weeds in those places because they are eaten on by lots of different insect herbivores, other kinds of herbivores that are attacked by diseases. And all of those organisms co-evolved together in their home range. But when they're dislocated from their home range and they integrate, they're released from those enemies and they grow really well. So enemy release is another cause for weeds. Low diversity ecosystems can be a cause sometimes. If you have high diversity, chances are that lots of your resource niches are occupied. And then another final cause of weeds is co-evolution, as I mentioned earlier with respect to enemy release. So those are just some things to think about in terms of how scientists think about weeds. And so, again, weeds are plants that evolve to occupy particular niches, generally disturbed areas, and a garden is a very disturbed area. We till it up every year, it's disturbed. So we have the weeds. They are a symptom of that imbalance, that disturbance. And so to correct the symptom, we need to correct the system. Meaning we need to correct that disturbance. And oftentimes in my mind, that involves covering the soil so it's no longer disturbed and then the weeds don't have their niche to occupy. It's also important to realize that sometimes weeds might have positive functions. So for instance, I'm thinking of a weed called common mallow. It's an annual weed that has a very long taproot. And I have heard about gardeners sometimes allowing it to grow for a while and it mines the deeper strata of soil for nutrients. And then if you terminate it before it goes to seed, you've added all those nutrients to the top layer of soil where your crop plants can use them. And I'll talk about some other positive functions of weeds later on in this talk. So when we use holistic approaches to manage weeds, we might need to realize that we might have some weeds present, but we still are protecting our yields to a great extent. And what we're accomplishing is we're reducing inputs that we have to buy. We rely more on ecosystem services to achieve fertility and pest management. And we're focusing on remedying the underlying causes of weeds rather than just thinking about killing them. And moreover, we're trying to recognize that in spite of our goals, weeds may have a valuable place in many agroecosystems. So with that being said, weeds are always a challenge. And most gardeners will probably tell you that weeds are one of the biggest problems they encounter. So organic gardeners obviously have weed problems because they can't use herbicides. But for the most part, most vegetable gardeners, whether they're strictly organic or not, probably rely mostly on nonchemical weed management techniques simply because most herbicides are not going to be selective to the weeds only. They're going to harm your crops as well. And so for the most part, I don't think that people are using herbicides that much. Oh, I see a question about how do weeds migrate? And that's a pretty good question. Weeds migrate all different ways. There's weeds that have been bought over from Europe in ship ballast so people would fill their ships with ballast to keep the weight. And those materials, maybe it was rocks or soil, would contain weed seeds. Weeds have been transported in all kinds of agricultural products in foods. A lot of weeds were brought over here intentionally by the people who came over here. I'm thinking about maybe dandelions is an example. People value that as a medicinal plant and a food plant. So they brought it with them, but then it became a weed. So there's lots of different vectors for weeds to immigrate. Okay, so we're always going to be facing these challenges from weeds. And I've got some pictures coming up that relate to some experiences I had in the gardens, especially when I gardened in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, I was gardening at a community garden on the university campus. And I got to see lots of different things. And one of the things that I saw most often was first thing in the spring, people would get out there and they would till their soil black and they'd plant their garden. And then they'd leave and go to the lake for the summer. And then when they got back in July, this is what they found. And this is pretty disheartening when you've done all that work to till and you planted your crops. But unless you do something to control those weeds, they're pretty much going to take over. And so I'm going to go through some suggestions that you might try to reduce the amount of weeds that you have growing in your garden, by overtaking your crops like that, and also reduce the amount of time that you have to spend removing these weeds. And the first thing that I want to talk about is the difference between perennial and annual weeds. This is really critical to realize that these two different classes of weeds behave very differently and you need different tactics to control them. And so the first thing is obviously you need to know how to identify your weeds, or you're not going to know if you're dealing with an annual perennial. One good thing to check for though is if you dig that plant up and it's got roots that extend horizontally, connecting a bunch of different shoots, that's almost certainly a perennial. And weeds like perennial south thistle, candidate thistle, they behave like this. Get a good weed ID manual. And also I love to help people identify their weeds so you can get my email address off the NDSU Plant Sciences webpage and send me some pictures and I'll give it a shot. Okay, so annual weeds generally instead of having complex root systems, they usually just have long, simple tap roots and they can be fairly easily killed by hoeing or hand pulling. They won't reproduce vegetatively and so that's good. But perennial weeds are a little bit harder to kill and they have those complex root systems and they can't be as easily removed via tillage hoeing and hand pulling. And oftentimes if you chop those weeds roots up, they'll grow new weeds. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how to deal with those perennial weeds and then we'll talk about how to cope with annual weeds after that. Alright, so first, here's some pictures of some fairly common perennial weed species that you would see in your garden at the top left is candidate thistle. The top right shows a bunch of perennial south thistles connected via those horizontal underground roots. And then at the bottom left we have quatgrass. That's one that's really hard to get rid of in gardens. It can be fairly easily dug up though. But the one that's the worst, I call this the cancer of the garden is on the bottom right and this is field bindweed. And the problem with field bindweed is the roots are really fragile. And so if you try to dig it up, they shatter and each little piece will make a new plant and it makes it really difficult to control. So what are some tips for managing these perennial weeds? They're really a problem. One thing that I always stress is that prevention is the key. So start clean, do not plant crops into established perennial weeds. You're already at a disadvantage. And in particular, if you're establishing perennial crops like strawberries or asparagus, last week I gave a similar talk and someone asked what they could do for quatgrass in an asparagus bed. And unless you want to spray a grass herbicide to kill that grass, you're going to have to start over again. That's my best advice is just start over again, dig that quatgrass out. You could even consider putting some kind of a physical barrier like some boards in the soil around the edges of your asparagus bed to keep things from creeping into it. So start clean. And then another thing that people often hate to hear is that it's worth the time to dig to remove these plants carefully, roots and all. I have used a garden fork to remove heavy infestations of Canada thistle and perennial south thistle from an entire acre of plot land. It took me two years, but I was able to do that with a garden fork. Now that is kind of dependent on the soil types that you happen to have. If you have a really heavy clay, it's going to be much more difficult to use this approach because you won't be able to remove those roots so well without them breaking off in the heavy clay. So if you have a heavier clay soil, you might want to try a different approach using smothering. So the idea here is we want to prevent these weeds from photosynthesizing as long as there are leaves seeing the sun. They are photosynthesizing and they are sending carbon down into the roots and they're strengthening that plant. So if you can cover these plants with a heavy mulch, a weed barrier, or something along those lines, and then every time you see a little shoot poking through, remove it and remove as much of it as possible. Eventually you'll starve those roots and really weaken the plant. So if you can get rid of, for instance, perennial south thistle and also field bind weed in a garden using this approach, just using really heavy mulch and removing the emerging shoots as soon as I saw them. Another thing that you might consider for really bad and extensive weed patches is to cover the soil with either clear or black plastic and allow it to solarize over a summer season. So that does mean taking a patch out of production and covering it with soil. But it can be helpful. So this is a picture of my attempt to remove a bunch of perennial weeds from one of my research plots. That's a garden fork sitting next to that wheelbarrow. I think that's a really valuable tool to have to remove these perennial weeds and things like candethysyl, quackgrass, perennial south thistle are relatively easy to remove. There's some perennial weeds like dandelion that do not reproduce vegetatively so it's not as critical to remove the whole root. Things like field bind weed, you're probably going to be better off using a smothering approach such as solarizing. So here's a picture of someone who's solarizing a pretty extensive looking patch and there's some pros and cons to using either black or clear plastic. So with clear plastic, ironically, or maybe counterintuitively, the soil heats up more so you might kill more of the roots, but it does allow light to transmit. So if you're not killing the plants very well, they're still able to photosynthesize underneath that plastic whereas the black plastic doesn't heat up the soil as much, but it does prevent any light from getting through. So it kind of depends on how hot your summer is. I think if your summer is really hot, then you might go with the black plastic. If it's not very hot and you need to bump that heat up a little bit, use the clear but realize that plants could still be photosynthesizing underneath that plastic. Another idea that's commonly used by organic producers is to set aside an area of fallow each year and grow a competitive cover crop. And sometimes you might even want to consider growing a perennial crop like alfalfa or clover, some kind of perennial legume maybe mixed with a grass. And what this does is it improves your soil. And then if you can mow it a few times during the season, you are depleting those perennial weeds of the ability to send carbon down into the roots. You're weakening them progressively each time you mow them. And so out in my research, I've got an area that I planted to alfalfa a couple years ago, and it used to be just completely full of perennial south thistle and Canada thistle. And now we don't see any of those plants because the mowing and the competition from the alfalfa has really helped to knock back the perennial weed species. So that's a little bit about perennial weeds, but annual weeds are completely different story. I have been able to largely get rid of some of these perennial weeds on my plots via removing plants as often as possible. But with annuals that is never going to work because the soil is loaded with seeds and these seeds live forever in the soil. There are seeds, certain species like common mallow I mentioned earlier that has a very hard impenetrable seed coat could live for 30 years in the soil. And so basically you're going to have annual weeds and what you are going to have to do is either remove them via tillage mowing or hand pulling or suppress them. And we all know that removing weeds by hand or mowing or tilling is a lot of work. So my best advice is to try to use mulching and cover crops and also think about how to make your crops more competitive to help suppress these annual weeds. So what are we talking about with annual weeds? Here's some examples at the top left common lambs quarters. That's a really common weed that you'll find in a lot of gardens. It's a summer annual at the top right is Field Penny Crest. This is a winter annual that emerges in the fall. And it's one of the first things that you might see emerging in the spring and it goes to seed fairly early. So you might be removing this before you even plant on the bottom left is common purslane. And this is something that is very typically seen in gardens that can form sort of a dense mat on the top of the soil surface. And then finally on the bottom right is yellow fox tail. And that's a grass weed species that can often be a problem as well. So those are just a few examples of annual weeds that you might be contending with in your garden. So what can you do to suppress these weeds? Try a cover crop. Fall planted winter rye, for example, is a great thing for a number of different reasons. One is in this organic system when you're not using commercial synthetic fertilizers, you really want to hold the end in the soil, the nitrogen and the fibrous root systems of the ryegrass are really good for that. They're also really good for breaking up those heavy clay soils. So if you have a heavy clay soil, this is a great idea and it also helps to suppress the weeds. So you plant this in the fall and then in the spring you let it get to about what it looks like in that picture. About six to eight inches tall and then flip it over with a shovel and let it decompose and then plant into it. Another idea is to grow legumes like sweet clover or other clovers. They're great for adding nitrogen. Cover crops in the mustard family, aside from out competing weeds, can also help mitigate soil pests. These plants, when they grow in the soil, they exude compounds called glucosinolates that are toxic to a lot of pests that live in the soil. Annual buckwheat is another nice cover crop. It suppresses weeds, but it also helps to make phosphorus more available in the soil. I talked earlier about weeds potentially having positive uses and this is one of them that I've thought about a lot. Could we use weeds as a cover crop or maybe even a mulch? And so I had a garden in Wisconsin once where it was growing on the edge of a cornfield and there was a dense stand of giant ragweed. And we would let the giant ragweed get about two or three feet tall before it went to seed, well before it went to seed. And we would sloth it and just plant our garden, mulch the garden heavily with the ragweed, walk away. We would do this on Memorial Day weekend and then we literally would come back on Labor Day and harvest. We never did a thing. We never pulled one weed. It worked great and it was free. And so weeds can be a really nice mulch. And another thing that I've thought about is maybe they could be used as a cover crop too out of this research site. This is my research site out near Absurac in North Dakota. And there's a really heavy field penny crest population. As I explained, that's a winter annual. It will emerge in the fall and then in the spring it will look like this. So to me, that looks like a pretty good cover crop. And what I did is I would just pull it and lay it on top of the soil before it went to seed and it helped to suppress the weeds. Some more talk about mulches. So mulches are just a physical barrier against weed emergence again. And I think that's really important. They're covering the soil so that the soil isn't disturbed anymore. And then those weeds are not able to find their niche. And so there's a couple of different options. You can use plastic mulches. Also, they work for annual weeds as well. Some of the benefits are they're relatively inexpensive. They do suppress most annual weeds quite well. But unfortunately, plastic does not improve the soil. Sometimes it heats up the soil more than you would want. And it also contributes to plastic waste. And I think that plastic mulch usually works the best for crops that you plant as fairly large seedlings that are warm season crops like tomatoes or eggplants or peppers, things in that category that like it hotter. Plastic mulch might be good for those at times. I usually use more organic mulches in my garden, meaning biodegradable mulches like hay straw or leaves. And one of the drawbacks is that there usually is some cost involved, particularly for things like hay. Leaves are often free. We'll talk about some of the pros and cons with leaves in a minute. There's a lot of variability in the weed suppression you'll achieve with these mulches. And it varies with the type of the mulch, how small the particles are and how tightly they pack together, and then how deeply you apply that mulch. So sometimes with looser mulches like hay or straw, you really need a good four or five inches to really suppress a lot of the annual weeds well. And because these mulches are biodegradable, the CN ratio is important to understand. So carbon nitrogen ratio, and if that carbon is too high relative to the nitrogen, as the material decomposes, the bacteria that decompose the material, rob in from your soil to accomplish the decomposition. So if you're using a material like wood chips, for instance, that has a really high CN ratio, you can rob some nitrogen from your soil. And another problem is sometimes these types of mulches might harbor pests like slugs or rodents. I'm going to talk a little bit about some particular types of mulches and add a little bit more detail here. So straw or hay needs to be pretty thick. It does decompose relatively quickly, but it adds nutrients, especially the straw. In my research, and this is a picture of some research I did growing onions with a heavy hay alfalfa hay mulch. The hay mulch added quite a bit of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to the soils. But a caveat is both these types of materials can contain weed seeds. They can harbor pests and you do have to pay for them sometimes. So you need to be really careful with the source and make sure that especially if you're using hay, straw is usually a little cleaner. If you're using hay, sometimes it might be full of things like canvassal seeds, which you do not want. Wood chips are another option. A good thing about wood chips is they can be free. They suppress weeds at a little bit shallower or depth, two to three inches. But one of the problems with wood chips is they may increase fungal dominance among the soil microorganisms. So they're converting the soil microbiological community from a grassland type of community, which is what we prefer to grow crops into more of a woodland microbiological community. And that is not beneficial for most crop plants. Also, wood chips may acidify the soil. And again, they have a pretty high carbon nitrogen ratio. So they can rob in from the soil. And finally, some tree species, especially black walnut, contain toxic compounds that you don't want in your soil. What about tree leaves? This is something I've used a lot because they're free and they work really well. They suppress annual weeds. You might need a layer about two or three inches deep. They can be easily moved around and managed in the garden, unlike wood chips, for instance. But they do form thick mats that can hold in too much moisture, maybe causing a mold problem at times. You can shred leaves to alleviate this problem. Another idea would be to compost them for a little while before applying them. Another issue with tree leaves is that slugs really love them. And I've noticed a little bit of a slug problem in my garden from using tree leaves. I'm actually trying to get away from using them, even though they're free and I like them for that reason. And again, they have a high carbon nitrogen ratio, just like wood. So you may need to add a little extra nitrogen to your soil when you're using tree leaves. Newspaper and cardboard form effective barriers to weed emergence. One problem with them is that they need to be anchored down. So normally these would be good to use in conjunction with some other type of mulching material. So you might put down a few layers of newspaper or a layer of cardboard and then pile some compost or some straw on top of that. And what that might accomplish is it will allow you to have that sort of impenetrable barrier that the paper gives. And you won't need to use quite as much of the straw or the compost to get good weed suppression. Some unusual materials that I've tried include cocoa bean holes. This is a byproduct of the chocolate industry. They are a little more expensive but they're really beautiful. They smell great and you don't need to apply them so thickly. About an inch deep is all you really need to suppress most annual weeds. They do tend to get moldy sometimes, especially in damper climates. And then with the hemp herd it also forms a really nice impenetrable barrier against weed emergence because the particles are really fine. And they tend to knit together. The fibers knit together in an interesting way to make a cohesive mat. And you don't need to apply them very deeply. This material isn't commonly available yet but it may be someday as the laws about hemp production are changing in our country. And so that's why I did some research using this material. But one of the things that draw back with it is it does have a high carbon nitrogen ratio. And I did notice some nitrogen problems in the soil when we were using this. So what I'm going to try next with this is I'm going to mix it with compost and manure to see if that will be a better combination. Another completely different idea and this has to do with establishing a competitive crop canopy. So the sooner you have a lot of crop foliage, the better you can outcompete the weeds. You're giving your crop plants a head start on the weeds if you plant from starts instead of seeds. So a lot of times even things that I can grow direct seeded like kale is I really like kale and I grow a lot of it. And a lot of times I plant it ahead of time and I start it from starts not seeds. And that way I have a head start on the weeds. And you can use a little, this is a little tiny cold frame that I built and put outside. And it really helps with producing your own seedlings more economically than buying them from a greenhouse. And then another idea is a technique that organic farmers use. They delay their planting as long as possible and they allow their weeds to emerge first and remove them and then plant. And so that's another tactic that you could combine with using starts. So instead of direct seeding earlier, just plant your seeds in a flat, control the weeds in your garden and then stick the starts in later after you've gotten rid of some of those weeds. A couple other ideas are if you really have a terrible weed problem and you want to just bypass the problems that are living in the soil. This could also work for soil pests. So for instance, I have root knot nematodes in my garden and I can't grow carrots anymore. So I've considered using these two techniques to maybe be a way to grow carrots. But you have to have a real reason for it because it's a lot of trouble and you have to assemble all these materials. But I'll go through it just real briefly. Lasagna gardening is a no-till gardening approach and I'm going to talk about the benefits of no-till in a minute. But basically you're just laying down a layer of cardboard on your soil and then a brown layer of leaves, straw, that kind of thing. A green layer of grass clippings, vegetable clippings and then another brown layer, another green layer and maybe some compost on top of that and you plant into it. And this is something that you can start even on established grass in a yard. You could just layer this stuff up, plant into it and it'll all decompose and eventually turn into a garden. Another approach which I have not tried is straw bale gardening. I think you'd have to have a real motivation for trying this. I've heard some mixed reviews on it. The idea very quickly is you get a straw bale, you fertilize it and water it a little bit to get it to decompose slightly. And then you pile some compost on top and plant into that. And the idea is that you're just bypassing the weeds all together. So for instance, if you had a terrible patch of bindweed, you could put these straw bales on top and plant this way for a while. And it would, in the two or three years you were using the straw bales, it might completely smother out that bindweed and then you could go back to gardening normally. Some of the problems with this method are that number one, those bales dry out very quickly. So you're using a lot of water and there's a lot of watering involved. Another problem is that it requires a fair amount of fertilizer because you're growing your plants in straw. And straw doesn't have any fertility unlike real soil, so you have to add your nutrients. And I think unless you have a real reason for wanting to try this, or if you're just curious about it, then it might be worth a shot too. There are some definite drawbacks to the method. So with that, this kind of leads into a secondary topic I wanted to cover, which is soil fertility in home gardens. So just to refresh your memory, plants need a lot of different nutrients. They need macronutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Secondary nutrients that are also very important are calcium, sulfur and magnesium. Also there are a number of micronutrients. They're called micronutrients because they're needed in much smaller quantities, but they still are critical for plant growth and these include iron, copper, manganese, boron, chlorine, zinc, molybdenum and nickel. So the only way you're going to know if you need these nutrients in your soil is to get a soil test. And here I've published a link that you can go to to find out how to send your soil samples to the NDSU soil testing lab. And they will do some tests for you and tell you what nutrients you need to add. And as far as organic gardening, so in organic gardening, if you're trying to garden organically, you don't use synthetic sources of nutrients. Some organic sources of nutrients include compost, manure, fish emulsion, kelp mill, rock dust. Rock dust are also called azomite. Azomite is mined from a volcanic ash deposit and includes a lot of different micronutrients. Epsom salt can be added to soil to provide magnesium and sulfur. There are many different commercial organic fertilizers available. KMS is an example. KMS provides potassium, magnesium and sulfur. Gypsum is a mined product. It contains calcium and sulfur. Dolomite is another mined product, calcium and magnesium. And there are many others that you could research online. And below at the bottom of the slide is a link to a chart that shows a very comprehensive list of a lot of different fertilizer sources for organic gardens. I mentioned compost and this is something that you can do at home. And I have a compost pile in my backyard. I can't imagine living life without them. It is so nice to not throw all of that wet food waste into the garbage. It really cuts down on the garbage. And how you can do this, one of the best methods, there's all kinds of different ideas about this. One of the best approaches that I've found and the cheapest is to go get four pallets, wire them together at the corners and then start at the bottom with a layer of straw or twigs. And this helps to increase the airflow because composting is an aerobic process, not anaerobic. The microbes that decompose the material need oxygen. And then you start layering and you layer about one third green materials, meaning grass clippings, yard waste, flower clippings, food waste. And then two thirds brown materials, meaning straw or leaves and things of that nature. And then the moss would be another one potentially. Now there's a long list and I researched this pretty thoroughly to find out what you do not want to put in your compost pile. And so you can find a bunch of different lists with a lot of conflicting ideas, but these were some of the central themes that were always mentioned. Don't use meat bones. And the reason for this is these decompose the people think that they attract pests. And to be perfectly honest with you, I make a lot of stock from chicken bones and by the time I'm done with those chicken bones, there's not much left of them. And I do put them in my compost and I don't think it hurts a thing and it doesn't attract pests, but you can experiment around with that. Most people say not to use meat and bones. For sure you don't want to put pet or other human waste in a compost pile and that's because of pathogens. You don't want pathogens in your compost pile. Another thing you might think about when you're digging up those perennial weeds or you have a group of teenagers that you've enlisted to dig up those perennial weeds is what I recommend. You might not want to put those roots for those perennial weeds in the compost pile. I often do and if the compost gets hot enough, they decompose, but just be aware that if you don't get through decomposition, you might still be able to spread those perennial weeds. A disease plants is another no-no. Say you have a squash patch that's all full of powdery mildew, put it in the garbage. You don't want pathogens in plant pathogens in your compost pile either. And finally, if you have weeds that have gone to seed, you might think twice about putting those in your compost pile as well. Again, if your compost pile is being constructed properly and termed properly, it should reach a temperature that will destroy those weed seeds, but why take a chance? So a lot of this is up to your best judgment. You have to decide what you're willing to risk for the benefit. Another thing you want to do with a compost pile is you need to keep it moist. And in this picture, you'll see that they put a little cover on top of it. If it's really rainy, you might want to consider covering your pile and then watering it occasionally because if it gets too wet, you're going to be leaching all of those nutrients out of the compost, particularly the nitrogen. Nitrogen is very mobile in water. And then finally, as I mentioned, composting is an aerobic process. It requires oxygen. So if you turn that pile with a pitchfork occasionally, it's going to decompose faster, but I am lazy and I have to work really hard in the summer because I'm an ag research scientist. So I don't bother with this and it works just fine. Every spring when the compost pile first thaws out, I pull everything off the top that hasn't decomposed yet. And at the bottom, there's this stuff that they call black gold. And I did that compost out, screen it and put it in my garden. It's one of the best things you can add to your soil. I'm running out of time a little bit. I think I might go through this really fast. There's fungi that live in your soil that plants benefit from. And to encourage these fungi, you need to reduce tillage and synthetic fertilizers because these fungi are harmed by tillage. And that leads into my final point, which is try please to stop tilling your soil, be nice to your soil. Nothing is more detrimental to soil health and tillage. It kills all the megafauna in the soil. It kills these fungi that are so important for plant health. It causes loss of organic matter. It destroys the soil structure. And so I know people like to get out there with their tillers and they like to till everything. And they like to see that black soil, but we need to change our paradigm. Black soil should be ugly soil. That means disturbed soil again, where weeds are just looking for an opportunity to get in. So keep your soil covered. Dig only as you need to to plant your crops and pull your weeds. Otherwise, try to retrain your eye. Black soil isn't good. Covered soil is good. Cover it with crops. Cover it with cover crops. Cover it with mulch. Cover it with compost. Cover it with something and you'll have healthier soil and you'll have fewer weeds. And finally, I wanted to talk just a little bit about another good thing about weeds. They can be indicators of soil conditions. So every weed needs a different type of nutrient and weeds, for instance, can indicate soil deficiencies. So just for instance, field bindweed can indicate really compacted or crusted soil structure. So if you have a bad field bindweed problem, you should try to get more organic matter in your soil. Quit tilling. And that will help the bindweed go away naturally. Lagoon, such as black medic or clover, because these fix their own nitrogen, they can indicate soil that's low in nitrogen. So weeds can be really good indicators of soil conditions, and they also can improve soil nutrition by mining the soils deeply for nutrients. Many weed species are highly adapted to high soil end. A lot of our weed species use end very efficiently. So if you're using synthetic sources of nitrogen, you're probably going to be benefiting the weeds more than the crops in many instances. So be careful with synthetic forms of nitrogen. They can really benefit your weeds a lot. And then finally, this is just a research theory that I think is kind of interesting. Some people have hypothesized that in organic systems, weeds and crops can coexist more. So the weeds cause less of a yield loss because they're using all these different forms of nitrogen that are available when we use things like compost and manure and cover crops for our nitrogen instead of synthetic nitrogen. And so just to recap really quickly, perennial weeds, remove them completely or starve the roots. Annual weeds, suppress them, use cover crops, mulches. They do a great job of suppressing weeds and they can add valuable soil nutrients. Do a soil test so you know what nutrients you need to add. Try out home composting. It will be a great source for free nutrients that you can add to your soil. And finally, please stop tilling so much. Try some of the no-till methods that I have presented here. And with that, I have some time for questions and comments. Any questions for Greta? You can type them in your search box or you can actually unmute yourself and ask them. Thanks for the compliments. I appreciate it. We've got, I think we have 10 minutes. So please, if you have a question, I would be happy to try to answer it. Here's a question. Okay, this is a great question. And my answer to this is you do not have to. And the reason is if you stop tilling your soil and you just put the organic matter on the top of the soil surface, there are these wonderful little creatures that live in the soil called earthworms. And they will come up and take little bites of those leaves or compost or whatever it is that you put on top of your soil, and they will bring it down into the soil. So the earthworms do the tilling for you and it saves work. So that is something I never bothered tilling stuff into the soil. I just lay it on top and let nature do the work. I'm all about in my research and in my garden is working with nature instead of against nature. Nature wants to do a lot of things for us if we'll just let it. So just let the earthworms do that tilling. That's a great question. Does it matter if you put your compost pile in a sunny area or a shady area? No, I don't think it really matters that much. It kind of depends on if you look if you're in a really hot dry area and it's in a shady spot or a sunny spot rather. And it's really hot and dry and you don't get a lot of water. You'll have to water it more because it'll dry out more. But I don't think as long as you're getting enough rain to keep it wet and generally or at least around Fargo, I don't usually have to water my compost pile. I don't think it really matters. I would just put it someplace in the yard where it's not going to upset the neighbors, I guess. That might be a more important consideration. Although, you know, I put this compost pile in my yard, made it out of those pallets and I thought maybe my neighbor would get upset about it. But you know what they did? They went out and got some pallets and made one for themselves. So that was kind of neat. Oh, a binary problem. I'm so sorry. This person said they covered their soil with cardboard and then wood chips and then they haven't had the bindweed come back. That is great. That's a great idea, completely no till. And I'm glad to hear that you were able to get rid of your bindweed. That's the weed that scares me the most. Benefits of comfrey. Oh, I, you know, I was just reading about this, that comfrey makes an excellent mulch and it is very high in nutrients and I grow comfrey. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice. I go comfrey in my yard and I'm going to try that this year. I'm wondering the problems with comfrey is it's a pretty aggressive spreader and you have to be careful where you plant that. But that will make a really great mulch. I don't know about a soil loosener. Once you plant that, you will never get rid of it. The roots go way deep down in the soil. The only way I've ever gotten rid of it is to break down and use herbicides. So I'd be careful about where you plant it. Plant it someplace where you want to keep it and then cut the shoots and use them for mulch. And by the way, it's also a very valuable medicinal plant. You can cut the leaves, dry them, put them in olive oil, and it makes this great healing oil. So that's a really interesting question. Go back. There's the recap. With the summary, how can you plant tiny carrot seeds? Oh, you have to. So if you're keeping your soil covered, a lot of times in the spring what you want to do, this is a great question. You want to pull that mulch back away from the row that you're going to plant in and just pile it up along the sides and let the sun warm the soil up and then just scratch a little line, plant into it. Let the carrots emerge and let them grow until they're a couple inches tall and then replace the mulch because otherwise they won't be able to grow in that mulch. I'm glad that people don't feel guilty about not tilling their perennial garden. I'm all for no till. Mulching raised beds. You know, it might not be as necessary, but yes, I think that mulching is still a valuable technique for raised beds and I have several raised beds and I do use mulch depending on the crop. It's a crop that say tomatoes that are planted, you plant them pretty big and they get going pretty fast. You might not need it, but I do use mulch and raised beds. Cardboard mulch, would that work with quack grass? Maybe. If it works for bindweed, it's probably going to work for quack. You just have to be patient. So put some cardboard and then something heavy on top of it. A previous comment said they used wood chips on top of it. Another idea might be to use some compost or something like that. But I think you'd need a fairly thick layer and with compost, I mean with quack grass rather, this is going to sound kind of funny, but I really like digging up quack grass. The roots are very unlike bindweed. They're very tough and you can really yank on them and just pull them right out of the soil. If you have a really large area, that's not going to be feasible, but that's one that oftentimes I'll just dig up by hand. Prostrate knotweed from a lawn? Oh boy. If anyone knows the answer to this question, they can tell me I'm not as big of an expert on lawns. I definitely had prostrate knotweed around the edges of my lawn and I think the best thing is to work on the condition of your turf, fertilize it well in the fall and in the spring, and don't cut it so high. Don't cut the grass so high. If you have a competitive lawn that is well fertilized, then a lot of those weeds won't be able to out-compete the grass. It's really just an indication of a lot of times that it happens along the edges of the turf grass where it's more compacted or maybe it's getting some salt runoff from the sidewalks. And so you need to work on the condition of your soil and your grass and you might be able to get rid of some of that knotweed. Thanks to Eaton Gardening Great Book and I think that's the end of all the questions that I see so far. So thanks everyone for all those great comments and questions. And I appreciate it. And this is Julie again. I think I'll bring us to a close and I want to thank everyone for attending and special thanks to Dr. Greta Grammig for delivering a great presentation. I think we all learned a lot. So thank you very much. You're welcome.