[compost_tea] RE: Want to start a new thread? Biology as weed control?

From: Herb and Merla Barberie <herbnmerla_at_supersat2.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:33:15 -0800
This discussion made me think of the kind of root system a plant has and
its rhizosphere.  I do amateur "research" with non-herbicide methods of
weed control.  2004 was an unusually wet year for us here in aridland.
We have a test plot from several years ago that we have handweeded every
year to which we had introduced micro and macronutrients--Biogenesis I
and Pepzyme G from Bruce Tainio which was touted as a surefire weed
control measure.  The weed we were fighting was spotted knapweed which
has a long taproot with supporting roots coming from it.  In this plot,
it was competing with orchard grass, vetch, some other grasses.  In 2004
we handweeded half of the plot and left the other half and the knapweed
grew to an enormous size with the abundant rain that towered over the
grass.  Evidently, the only thing that was missing on the roadside site
was moisture.  The same thing happened on a fallow, humus-filled growing
bed on the peripherery of an untended wild area a mile and a half up the
hill from the county road.  It had been fertilized with compost and
compost tea in the the past years, but in 2004, it grew huge knapweeds,
huge, that I was able to pull up easily, but the root system on those
plants was so deep.  There was nothing else in the bed.  There weren't a
lot of individual knapweed plants, but bed looked full because the
plants had so many branches with seedheads on them. I wonder if knapweed
has a certain set of microorganisms that it likes that is different from
other plants?  It is touted as allelopathic, i.e. the exudate that it
gives off offends other plants.  Could you do weed control by putting in
a controlled set of microorganisms that were sympatico with the plants
that like a different set of organisms from the ones knapweed likes and
which don't like its exudate?  Or is that an impossible task? Is there
any way to get other plants to outcompete knapweed when you have
knapweed seeds blowing in from adjacent areas?  Are we stuck just with
handdigging here as long as there is a seedbank? (I'm aware of
Bio-Dynamic weed peppers and radionic methods with a field broadcaster,
but I'm looking for methods that I can recommend to the county whose
bureaucrats don't know about quantum physics and would never go for
Bio-Dynamics because it will never be sold at Cenex or registered with
the state as a soil amendment. We're trying BD methods too with homemade
preparations, but haven't put it into our reports lately since someone
on the Weed Committee raised the issue of using non-registered soil
amendments in a county project.)



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Received on Thu Feb 03 2005 - 14:33:18 EST

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