Date: June 3, 2014 A Busy Woman s Composting My friend Tamara recently shared her unusual composting method with me. It surprised me, because she uses kiddie pools to store her kitchen scraps and some yard clippings. She puts two 3- to 4-foot wide pools together and then fills them with her compostables. She usually has three sets of pools going at once, one with fresh compost materials, one slightly aged and one ready to use. Why I find this surprising is because it doesn t follow the traditional recipe for successful composting, which includes adding green materials like kitchen scraps for nitrogen, plus dry materials such as brown leaves, shredded paper and the like for carbon, and some soil to supply the microorganisms that break everything down into useable humus. She simply dumps her kitchen scraps into the pool with no dry materials other than coffee filters. She doesn t turn the stuff, just waits for it to break down. Tamara occasionally waters the pools to keep the piles slightly moist so they will decompose. Another fact I found very interesting is that she doesn t drill holes in the bottom of the pools for drainage. I would have thought the pools would get rotten and smelly, if water collected in them. However, she lives in Virginia City Highlands and says it is too dry for that to happen and she doesn t overwater the pools. This easy method doesn t produce the temperatures needed to sterilize the materials, so it wouldn t kill disease organisms or weed seeds. It takes a long time to break down, because of not mixing the right amounts of carbon to nitrogen, not turning the pile and not creating a pile big enough to get hot. However, Tamara just waits the many months needed for the materials to decompose. She then uses the decomposed material around her plants. She says her plants thrive. I asked her about critters, flies and other problems with having an open container of decomposing materials. She says, occasionally her chickens get in, but she doesn t have problems with rodents, raccoons or other animals. She also says the pools don t stink and there aren t flies. She did mention she sometimes covers the pools with black plastic with a few holes in it to help heat the materials up a bit. She suggested crushing eggshells up before you adding them. Add coffee grounds and filters. Don t add any oils or animal products or you will have critters. I am going to try this!
Date: June 10, 2014 Russian Knapweed Nobody likes weeds, especially when they can kill horses or other animals, destroy a land s economic or recreational value, or devastate the environment. I m talking particularly about noxious weeds. The term noxious weed is defined in Nevada state law as any species of plant, which is, or is likely to be, detrimental or destructive and difficult to control or eradicate. Russian knapweed (RKW) is noxious weed that can kill horses, outgrow native or beneficial vegetation, reduce property values and destroy valuable habitat. Although RKW has pretty flowers, it can overrun a home landscape or pasture within a year if left unchecked. This problem plants emerge in early spring. They are gray-green in color with hairy surfaces and wavy edges. The stems elongate from May to June and then flower buds develop blooming from late June to October with pink to purple flowers about ¼ inches to ½ inches in diameter. When a mature plant is pulled out of the soil, the roots are black in color. RKW can take several years to control because of its extensive root system. Keys to controlling RKW include stressing the plant to deplete the stored energy in the roots, preventing new seed production, controlling plant spread via root pieces or root bud growth, and establishing and maintaining competing vegetation. No single control method works. Hand pulling, mowing and tilling may successfully control RKW if they are done frequently and consistently over several years. Herbicide application also requires vigilance and persistence. Ultimately, long-term success is dependent upon establishing competitive vegetation. The effectiveness of mowing, tilling, reseeding or planting new desirable plants increases after vegetative suppression of knapweed with herbicides.
Before spraying, remove last year s dead foliage to allow chemicals to reach the underlying new growth of the weed. Bag the dead parts to eliminate any remaining seed and to avoid scattering seed to un-infested areas. When selecting an herbicide, make sure it will not prevent establishment of desirable vegetation. After spraying, do not remove sprayed plants until the plants wither and turn brown. This may take weeks to become evident. It is essential to reseed or transplant desirable plants into the area once the infestation has been reduced. It is then important to maintain seedling vigor with proper fertilization and irrigation. By law, it is a property owner s responsibility to cut, destroy or eradicate all weeds declared noxious before such weeds propagate and spread (Nevada Revised Statute 555.150). For more information on managing RKW, see http://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/files/ho/2005/fs0551.pdf.
Date: June 17, 2014 Another Noxious Weed - Medusahead Medusahead is an aggressive winter annual grass that is a noxious weed listed in Nevada Revised Statutes. This means a property owner has to control it. It has no forage or habitat value and can destroy an area for desirable plants. Medusahead looks similar to so many grasses commonly called foxtails. It can range from six to 24 inches tall. The leaves are four to 12 inches long and are bright green after other annual weeds have turned brown, making it relatively easy to identify in spring. Its seed heads, covered with spiny barbs, give it the foxtail look. Medusahead germinates primarily in the fall. Its roots then grow throughout the winter and early spring. In the late spring, it develops very quickly, reducing available soil moisture to desired plants. Once it matures, it can produce hundreds of seeds per plant. The density of medusahead stands varies from several hundred plants per square foot to 2,000 plants per square foot. This depends on annual precipitation, soil type and adjacent vegetation. After medusahead dies back, a thick mat of litter often develops to depths of five inches or more, preventing good plants from growing on the site. This litter is an extreme fire hazard and increases the risk of large catastrophic wildfires. This noxious annual weed can be reduced by persistent tilling, hoeing or hand pulling. However, eradication generally requires treatment with an appropriate herbicide in addition to tilling, etc. Revegetation with desirable plants is another essential component of any medusahead or other noxious weed management plan. Parks and open space land managers, federal land agencies, ranchers, farmers, recreationists, fire prevention agencies, homeowners and other land managers are all impacted by the high environmental and economic costs of noxious weed infestations. Indirect costs include decreased recreational use; loss of productive grazing acreage; reduced value of crops; increased fire hazard and lost wildlife and plant diversity. Direct costs are labor, equipment and chemicals.
Medusahead and other noxious weeds are spread by seeds that attach to shoes, clothes, animals or vehicles and travel to new sites. It is important when you go places to make sure you are not bringing any hitchhiking weed seeds out of the area when you leave. Inspect your shoes, clothes, animals and vehicles for seeds and plant debris. Please report any possible sightings of medusahead or other noxious weeds, so that they can be mapped, controlled and monitored to protect Nevada s lands. Call 887-2252 in Carson City and 782-9960 in Douglas County. For fact sheets on weeds see www.unce.unr.edu.
Date: June 24, 2014 Perennial Pepperweed I have been writing lately on noxious weeds because weed season is going strong and timely action makes all the difference. Weeds, especially noxious ones seem to be growing and blooming earlier than I remember. Yesterday, when I was out walking, I saw perennial pepperweed, more commonly called tall whitetop, already in bloom. Perennial pepperweed (PPW) is a noxious weed introduced from southeastern Europe and Asia. It is a tall dark-green plant with white flowers. The flowers look like baby s breath, the fluffy white filler in florist bouquets. PPW forms large dense stands that dominate open space, fields and wetlands. It grows on dry or wet sites. Its roots range in size from the diameter of a pencil to the size of a person s wrist and may extend three to 10 feet. These rapidly spreading roots readily propagate more plants. In addition, a stand of PPW can produce more than six billion seeds per acre. PPW pieces and seeds can be spread in fill dirt, hay or straw or top soil moved during construction. It can also spread on eroded soil or on equipment moving from an infested area. Most animals will not eat it, so it can destroy a field for forage. It can pull salts up from deep in the soil and deposit them on the surface, ruining the site for native plants or other salt-intolerant species. Loss of native plant habitats means fewer areas for birds and animals. Native trees cannot establish in dense stands of PPW. And, although PPW has invasive roots, they do not hold soil, which results in increased erosion during rain or flood events.
PPW is quite difficult to control, particularly in sensitive wetland or stream areas. In general, hand pulling produces more plants, so it is only a viable management technique when there are just a few plants that are dug out repeatedly week after week. Mowing or tilling simply produces more plants. Generally, PPW has to be controlled with herbicides applied at bud to early bloom stage. This prevents seed set. A second application to any regrowth in the fall appears to give the best control. In order to get good chemical coverage, it is important to remove the dead previous year s growth. Herbicides must be applied at the right time of year for multiple years for good control. Only certain chemicals work on PPW, so read the herbicide label to see if it includes it. Revegetation with desirable plants is essential to long-term control. For more information, contact me at 887-2252 or skellyj@unce.unr.edu.