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 Post subject: nut grass
PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:10 am 
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Location: Lorena,TEXAS
Being overrun by nut grass in flower beds and Tif Bermuda lawn. Have read all the old posts. Does anyone have any breaking news on how to control this stuff!! :x


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:12 pm 
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If you pile up mulch, the nuts will root in the mulch and allow you to pull it out much more easily. Not much help, but it might work for some folks.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:33 am 
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I have almost no nutgrass problem this year. I also didn't water much this year, despite the drought this summer. Howard has talked about watering (or natural rainfall) contributing to the growth of the stuff. I see before my eyes one answer. If you can get away from watering as much, you might cut down signficantly on the nut sedge growth.



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PostPosted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 9:17 am 
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That is absolutely correct. I went canoeing this summer and found nutgrass growing out in the middle of the rapids. So I guess you can't flood it out.

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 10:44 am 
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I did some research on nutgrass/nutsedge last year, and was fascinated to find what a huge problem it is around the world. In agricultural settings it can be devastating when it completes with commercial cotton and various grain-growing operations. I've just reproduced that search, and here are a few examples:

Manitoba, Canada: http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/ ... 62s00.html

British Columbia, Canada: http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/cropprot/nutsedge.htm

Arizona: http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az1101/az1101_10.html

California: The University of California calls this ozone-hardy plant "the botanical equivalent of the cockroach": http://ucanr.org/spotlight/nutsedge.shtml

American Vegetable Grower (through some intermediate search site, I don't know if this is a durable link) http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_n9343662

Indiana, Florida, et al: It's chemical warfare out there. Purdue in Indiana, the University of Florida, all of these agriculture departments are talking big guns and nasty stuff to try to control it, even though they all admit it is not completely effective. For example: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FW015

Australia has a Cyperus that arrived from Africa: http://www.weeds.crc.org.au/documents/wmg_cyperus.pdf

In the midst of this I found a rather bizarre page from Mississippi State U that in a quick first reading apparently considers almost anything to be a "weed." http://msucares.com/crops/weeds/ This one is kind of scary, as if Dr. Strangelove took up farming. :(

I'll conclude my enumeration of nutsedge sites with this link to an interesting article: http://www.fftc.agnet.org/library/article/bc45017.html I have skimmed this so far, but it sounds very interesting. This work is coming out of something called the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center. What caught my eye in particular was this line:

Strategies include minimum use of chemical pesticides to maintain pests below economic thresholds, use of biological control agents for specific pests, use of resistant crop cultivars, modification of cultural practices to prevent or reduce pest infestations, and the use of any input to prevent the deleterious impact of pests on crops. (my emphasis)

and the following paragraph:

Integrated weed management is a viable component of integrated pest management (Shaw 1982, 1984; Smith 1982). The weed management system combines use of multiple-pest-resistant, high-yield, well-adapted crop cultivars, that also resist weed competition, with precise placement and timing of fertilizers to give the crop a competitive advantage. Optimum crop plant population, the use of crop cultivars that form a canopy for shading early-season weed growth, and seedbed tillage and seeding methods that enhance crop growth while minimizing weed growth, are viable components of the system. Such systems also include the use of judicious irrigation practices; timely and appropriate cultivation; carefully planned crop rotations; field sanitation; harvesting methods that do not spread weed seeds; use of biological control agents and strategies, such as pathogens, insects, nematodes, animals, and allelopathy; and employment of effective chemical weed control methods. Also, preventive weed control practices to reduce the number of weed seeds and other propagules in the soil are a component of the system.

Further down in the same article it says:

The rust fungus Puccinia canaliculata (Schw.) Lagerh. has the potential of controlling yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus L.). Release of the pathogen early in the spring on seedling yellow nutsedge reduced plant populations, tuber formation, and flowering (Phatak et al. 1987). This mycoherbicide is being developed and commercialized in the United States for control of yellow nutsedge (Phatak 1992). Research is needed to determine the potential of P. canaliculata as a mycoherbicide in rice. A valid approach would be to integrate P. canaliculata with registered chemical herbicides, including bentazon and bensulfuron methyl.

It would be nice if they'd consider the biological control without the chemical cocktail, but at least it appears progress is being made. After all of this, though, I think I'll just live with the nutsedge and keep up the mechanical removal and low watering.

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 2:28 pm 
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Oops. When I put that last link in bold it cancelled out the hot link. Here it is again, to the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center:

http://www.fftc.agnet.org/library/article/bc45017.html

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:59 pm 
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Well, this is a little far out there, but...
I've heard several times that dogs like to eat Umbrella Plant (Cyperus involucratus), and it is also a sedge. So if we could train our dogs to eat the Nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus), we'd really have something! :D


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 4:09 pm 
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I wish! Can you see your dogs, instead of tearing up something when they're bored, going into your garden and yanking out the nutsedge?

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:31 am 
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I just remembered something. Some citrus farmers down in the valley decided to let the nut grass grow between the rows. They said their fruit yields were the same but profits were way up because they stopped spending anything to fight the weeds.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 9:35 am 
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If you're growing trees, that makes sense. Ignoring it when possible is probably best in a lot of circumstances. This might not work in regions where a second crop is put in the ground under the trees.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:31 am 
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Nutsedge likes water. It will die very soon in this heat and full sun if you don't water for a while. Cross your fingers with the bermuda not dieing off if you currently keep it moist. I've heard of a product called Dimension, but it's not organic.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 10:04 am 
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If I could find some way to kill the bermuda I would be so happy! I prefer nutsedge to bermuda, the worst weed in the garden, by far. When I moved into this house I had some questions about appliances and such so I tracked down the folks who had rented it for years before it was sold. She said she "worked really hard to get that bermuda established." Too bad she wasn't like most renters and let benign neglect dictate her gardening habits.

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