Ecological management

On this site

• Weed profiles - Continuously updated digital profile from the USDA-SARE book, Manage Weeds on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies. The guide identifies the best tactics and timing for how to outsmart 63 particularly pernicious weed species, while reducing labor and ensuring weed competition doesn’t reduce yields. 
• Organic weed management - Presents a variety of strategies for controlling weeds without herbicides. While written primarily as advice to gardeners, the same principals apply to larger plantings.
• Weed ecology - Defines ecological terms used to describe various weed species characteristics.
• Weed seed movement and equipment clean out - Prevent spread of herbicide-resistant and other noxious weeds from field to field.

Manage Weeds on Your Farm Video Series

In this series, a companion to Manage Weeds on Your Farm, experienced farmers from around the country talk about how they have found success controlling weeds by following ecological principles, and without resorting to the use of herbicides. To do so, they rely on a range of cultural and mechanical practices, including diverse crop rotations, well-timed cultivation and targeting weeds when they're at vulnerable growth stages. See especially: The Martens Farm, Penn Yan, N.Y. (grains and legumes)

View videos.

• Manage Weeds with Tarping - For vegetable production, compiled by Cornell Small Farms program.
• Weed-Crop competition - Reseach projects in the Sustainable Cropping Systems Lab.
• Keys to Cover Crop Success - From Thomas Björkman's Cover Crop Guide for NY Growers.
• Crop Rotation on Organic Farms - In-depth review of the applications of crop rotation-including improving soil quality and health, and managing pests, diseases, and weeds. The late Cornell researcher Charles Mohler was one of the primary authors. See also Chuck's book Ecological Management of Agricultural Weeds.

Mechanical weed control

Compiled by Bryan Brown, NYSIPM program weed management specialist:

• Analysis of Slow-Motion Cultivation Footage - NYSIPM video.
• Summary of Stacked Cultivation Trials in New York - Think IPM Blog
• Stacked Cultivation Trials - NYSIPM video.
• Integrating Cultivation into Weed Management video - NYSIPM video.
• Weed Zapper Demo - NYSIPM video. 
• Highlights from the Northeast Mechanical Weed Control Expo - Think IPM Blog

More mechanical weed control videos from Cornell Field Crops YouTube channel:

• Weed between the lines: Inter-row mowing for weed control in row crops
• To zap or not to zap: Weed control via electrocution in soybean systems

See also:

• Steel in the Field: A Farmer's Guide to Weed Management Tools - USDA  Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education outreach publication

Gardens and landscapes

• Pesticide-free Management - Control options such as cultural practices, mechanical control, thermal weeding and weed barriers targeted for hard-to-manage landscape situations such as playgrounds, playing fields, mulch, hardscapes and fencelines.
• Alternative Weed Management Techniques for Greenhouse and Nursery Production - NYSIPM report on use of parboiled rice hull mulch and solarization.
• Lawn Care: The Easiest Steps to an Attractive Environmental Asset - Strategies to help homeowners care for their lawn without herbicides.
• Top 3 Weeding Tips for Organic Gardens and Small Farms - NYSIPM video.