We are a little over a month into the processing tomato season. I have received a couple of farm calls regarding herbicide damage or symptoms originally thought to be diseases. The first was trifluralin injury to young tomato plants.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, called a weed a plant whose virtues that have not yet been discovered. I disagree, and yet generally speaking he is correct, what we call a weed is in the eye of the beholder, a plant that it is not helpful, useful or wanted.
Automated lettuce thinners that use a spray mechanism to remove unwanted lettuce plants and weeds have been widely adopted in the Salinas Valley and desert production districts.
This is only somewhat weed-related... just an excuse to post some photos of fossil tomatillos, from the days when Africa and South America formed the single continent Gondwanaland.
Was happy to hear a Cap Public Radio story this morning about poison hemlock (Conium maculatum). I had some thoughts on the report. 1) Poison hemlock is not native to Nevada, as the story suggested... it's a European weed (think Socrates). Maybe the writers heard "naturalized".
