20 Aug 2024. Paul McIntosh, Pulse Australia and WeedSmart.
Last week’s very successful Australian Cotton Conference at the Gold Coast highlighted many subjects in our cotton farming systems and weeds.
Needless to say, the above photo of fence line weeds of Feather Top Rhodes (or FTR) and Fleabane are a couple of problematic plants out of place in many areas of Queensland and NSW. To put it colloquially they are both big pains in the backside of many cropping country across the entire Northern Region of Australia.
Speakers and the audience contributed their own herbicide solutions for yearly control of these weeds. From myself I went down another line of thought in this Area Wide Management of Weeds (AWM weeds), by introducing the subject of continuous slashing the boundaries of paddocks and fence lines. I also brought in that major Weedsmart Big 6 tactic of crop competition and in fence line or paddock boundaries, this means having a less incursive plant such as good old Pioneer Rhodes Grass beating the weeds. Lucerne could also play a part of crop competition in these paddock edge situations. Lucerne is not particularly invasive and is a fierce competitor to other plants or weeds, so can be a great option in those non slashing or unsuitable herbicide application areas.
With more and more issues of Environmental Social Governance being part of our Aussie Agriculture landscape, these non-herbicide options are very much in the future plans of several landholders.
Attendees left this valuable weed session at the Cotton Conference, considering a few other non-herbicide options of getting on top of weeds and controlling these plants out of place early in their life cycle.
That’s all folks.
Paul McIntosh (JP Qual)
Photo: Fence line weeds in the Darling Downs.