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)
Ecological weed management at Cornell
Lasers match common herbicides at zapping East Coast weeds
A new study found that commercial laser weeders worked as well as common herbicides in test plots of East Coast peas, beets and spinach. “We wanted to know if laser weeders are going to perform as well as business as usual here on the East Coast, and it turns out, they can,” said Lynn Sosnoskie, assistant professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, Horticulture Section at Cornell AgriTech in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The laser weeders offered other benefits in addition to controlling weeds. The herbicides evaluated in the study delayed crop emergence and/or stunted the crops, but with the lasers crop stunting was less than 1% and crop biomass increased by up to 30% when laser weeding replaced herbicide use.
Next steps will include optimizing laser weeding across different environments and weed species, and evaluating commercial units with improved lasers and faster processing speeds.
More ecological weed control resources
- 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.