Current News You Can Use

Bermuda grass is one of the most feared perennial weeds around, even in the areas where it is considered a good lawn grass.  It greens up easily in summer with good watering, but it goes dormant for the colder half of the year in our climate, so in this area it is a weed.  It can travel up to 18 inches deep and easily travel under 6 feet of sidewalk to come up on the other side.    Bermuda grass, traveling over 4 x 8 sand. But its large, strong rhizomes (traveling storage roots) are also its greatest weakness.  They are fat and shiny, 1/8 to ¼ inch thick, easy to see and sort out from loosened soil.  Their feeder roots are thin and wiry, with no food storage.     Dug Bermuda, showing its shiny rhizomes. Like crabgrass, its annual, or considering it lives until frost, tender perennial, relative, they don’t re-grow from feeder roots.  We know they are related because they have the same seed stalk, with four arm...

Foxtails in an ugly mess of laurel, 4th Street between I and J, from the alley Fox tails are beginning to ripen their seed all over town, mixed with cheat grass and other weeds, and infesting lawns.   It is a well-known sticker seed, sticking in pets’ fur and working its barbed seeds into their flesh.   Like cheat, it is a major fire hazard.   Its name describes the seed heads, looking like a fox’s brushy tail.   Foxtails in boxwood     Like nearly all annual grasses, it is easiest to see and pull when it has seed stalks.      Unlike many of them, it grows full size-heads even after being mowed.    It stands out clearly in a lawn as it starts to ripen, yellow-green and ugly against the darker green of lawn grass.       Foxtails in a Bermuda grass lawn So does annual rye, but it is a lot smaller and nicer annual grass whose seeds don’t stick and can be smo...

          It’s been a warm spring.   Goat head, AKA puncture vine, bull thorn, tack vine, and other descriptive names, is already growing all over the lot and starting to bloom and crawl over the curb on the huge vacant lot on M Street, at Milbank.   That means that they are also sprouting in front of the vacant warehouse two doors down at 1080 M, on the vacant lot on the NW corner of M and Parkway.   Within a month, they will be puncturing passing bike tires.   It is a weed of public, commercial and vacant lots; people usually don’t tolerate it around their residences once they become acquainted with the seeds. Lot full of goathead, Milbank and M Streets              Goat heads make a 5-sided seed head that falls apart when ripe into five hard, tack-shaped seeds that stick in shoes, dogs’ feet, and tires.   They have leaves divided into ...

          Heron’s Bill has been blooming for months, and is ripening its seed , poking its heron bills at the sky.   It has ¼-3/8 inch pink-purple flowers, filigree leaves, and seed pods up to 3 inches long.   Heron's bill on city property.  Two years ago, this was one plant, next to the sign, then a few; and now...     It can grow up to 18 inches high and twice as wide, creating a fire hazard as it dries out.   But its seeds are its worst problem.   As they dry out, they pop off the plant, twisting up into a corkscrew shape except for the sticker seed at one end, and a straight tail at the other.   When it gets wet, it unwinds, and the tail holds it still while the seed screws itself into the ground—or into your pet’s skin, ear, or eye. Mowed heron's bill, seeds growing beneath the mower blades, city property. It has a tap root, but it can easily be pulled from damp soil by grabb...

Commentary to the Grants Pass City Council, 3-20-2013. Honorable Council, Mayor, and Manager, The annual weeds that I brought for show and tell at the meeting this week were easy to find in your parking lot, and easy to pull.   The ground is moist, their stems are tough, and their roots are small, since their roots shrink as their flowers grow. They are not easily killed or controlled by any other means, except in light, loose gravel or soil with a hula hoe.   Spraying spring weeds with glyphosate doesn’t kill them fast enough to stop seeding; usually they are already seeding by the time they are sprayed, so other chemicals fail to stop the next generation as well.   Cutting them only keeps them making seed below the cut.   Weed control is seed control; pull them before they make seed, and they won’t return to plague us next year. Our city code forbids mature and seeding weeds.   Our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes, someth...