Common chicory, a perennial herbaceous plant, possesses some benefits under managed growing conditions. However, with unrestrained growth, it has the ability to become invasive in fields and pastures, especially when soil health or desirable ground cover becomes compromised by extremely dry weather, undue grazing pressure or adverse growing conditions. Such is the case in Butte Vista Farm’s region – to the extent that the local county invasive weed and pest officials have declared chicory to be a noxious weed, making control of the plant mandatory. Various methods have been used to manage chicory. Not all attempts have been successful and, in some cases, have exasperated the problem. The need to determine a cost-effective, environmentally friendly, reasonably achievable solution is paramount.
Funded by the North Central Region--Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, Butte Vista Farm is conducting a two-year Integrated Weed Management project. We are testing weed control results on intensively-grazed (with goats) and non-grazed test plots--some receiving applications of varied rates and classes of herbicides and some plots grazed only with no chemicals applied. We reached out to South Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Weed Science to determine which chemicals to use, and Mr. Paul O. Johnson, South Dakota State University Extension Weed Science Coordinator, volunteered to help coordinate those tests.
Through these efforts, we hope to be able to definitively identify those recurrently achievable weed management practices that are cost-effective, environmentally responsible and which can be used by other conventional and organic producers without having to resort to specialty materials, tools and machines, or employing expensive expert services and labor. We hope that what we learn and are able to demonstrate will assist others in improving their profitability, soil health and quality, crop production efficiency and, overall, contribute to a sustainable agriculture model.
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