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Know Your Noxious Weeds for Fall Removal

Some of the Prettiest Flowers Are Invasive Weeds

by maryanne simpson

                            
 

Fall is a good time to get moving on ridding your garden and open spaces of noxious weeds. There is a two fold reason get Autumn weeding. First you can get the stalks and seeds before they go into the ground and wait out the Winter getting nourished by soil and a snow cover. The other advantage is that it is cool outdoors and you can see them in bloom.

The noxious weed is a funny plant. Some are quite showy in color. Many people mistake some noxious weeds for flowers. In fact several years ago my neighbor gave me a daisy plant. It was in fact not a daisy, but a noxious weed. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that Andy and I had spent many hours trying to get rid of the obnoxious Oxeye Daisy from the garden. Many people are confused even some Native Montanans about the Oxeye Daisy.

Some other Category One noxious weeds found in Montana and in the West are the Whitetop Complex, Diffuse Knapweed, Spotted Knapweed, Russian Knapweed, Field Bindweed, Houndstongue, St. Johnswort, Yellow Toadflax and Tall Buttercup.

Each of the above weeds have a sweet flower and appear benign. The easiest to pick out is the dreaded Spotted Knapweed. It has a showy purple pink flower that looks pretty along the river beds and in the fields. It looks like two other noxious weeds, the Russian Knapweed and Canadian Thistle.
All of the above noxious weeds came from parts of Eurasia as an unwanted addition to crop seed. The dense colonies of noxious weeds can choke out other vegetation.

According to the University of Montana at Bozeman nearly 8.4 million acres of Montana is covered in weeds. This factor creates a significant problem to agriculture and the value of land. The costs in weed eradication is in the millions of dollars. The cost of various local and state agencies to monitor and enforce laws concerning the noxious weed is another cost.

Another flower like noxious weed is the Yellowflag Iris. It looks like a sweet little yellow Iris in the fields. The plants grow up to four feet high. The way to distinguish the weed from the flower is the shape of the flower and the fruit which is a cylinder shape about an inch to four inches in length. They have the same fan like appearance as the Iris flower, but a closer inspection will reveal it is the Yellowflag Iris weed.

There are various professional weed eradicator services in Montana and elsewhere in the West. The prices range in the area of reasonable to pricey. The reason to hire a professional weed terminator is that they have protective clothing and have expertise in the right kinds of mixtures to use. In some locals large land owners can apply for weed grants offered through local and state government. The grants will generally cover at least 50 percent of the cost of weed eradication for noxious weeds.

The Agriculture Department in most states administer funds allocated for noxious weed abatement. These grants are are available to conservation districts, county weed programs and other local associations. The Weed Grant in Montana is administered by the Agriculture Department. The cap in funds for each grant is $75,000. There is no restriction listed for private owners to request funds under the grant. The application is lengthy and can be accessed on the State of Montana web site in the sub category Agriculture. The grant application is due December 7, 2007 for funding fiscal year 2008. The grant is for one year.

Likewise, the United State Department of Agriculture has an entire section devoted to weed eradication. The U. S. Forest Service and other large stewards of the land provide funds and guidance about noxious weeds. There is also a federal web site devoted to invasive exotic weeds. The web site has pictures and names of the various weeds that pose the greatest threat to the economy and agriculture. You can find it at invasive dot org slash weeds.

The other method is to hack down the weeds and gather up the stalks, flowers and seed pods and cart them away in a sealable plastic bag. If you decide to do it yourself remember to double bag the weeds because the seeds and flowers will break loose and end up somewhere near your dumb site as a whole new crop of weeds in the Spring.

Published by maryanne simpson