EP: 453 | Into The Weeds

This week, we are joined by John Byrd of Mississippi State University to discuss the highly invasive cogongrass and other troublesome weeds that create challenges for farmers, landowners, and gamekeepers alike. John is a true weed scientist who dedicates his time to helping farmers and gamekeepers combat these issues to protect crops, wildlife habitat, and the land they manage.

We all learned a lot from this conversation, and we believe it's a must-listen for anyone looking to improve their land management practices and habitat.

Listen, Learn, and Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, then buddy, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Austria Land Enhancement Studios. They discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices. And of course, funny. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm going to tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

We're live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Elaine, I in preparation for this one. Yeah. I started, I got my computer taxi. I typed in what's the worst weeds. And every time I typed in weeds, it brought me to marijuana. Oh. I couldn't get away from it. Well.

SPEAKER_05 0:42

Marijuana's not a bad weed. It must be your algorithm. Yeah, Elaine. I mean, what else do you think?

SPEAKER_02 0:49

I was at the house just then enough to tell me all about, and look what I just got off my neck.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

Oh, it's a tick. Oh, get that thing away from me. For real. It's not a lone star.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

It is a lone star.

SPEAKER_05 1:03

Well, today we're going to talk about weeds.

SPEAKER_06 1:06

He's a dead lone star.

SPEAKER_04 1:07

And there's a lot of noxious weeds. Invasive. Non-native. And when you talk about weeds, it just naturally opens up the door to It's noxious. Dudley was bringing up fish.

SPEAKER_06 1:19

Obnoxious. Obnoxious. Yeah, I think it's noxious.

SPEAKER_04 1:22

Let's let's get it a clue start. Yeah, he would know. Yeah. So we're going to turn it on.

SPEAKER_06 1:30

Hey, Hail State.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

And none of us need to act like we know what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_06 1:35

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Ours is all uh anecdotal. Well, we learn everything.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

That's right. We learn it all from people like Dr.

SPEAKER_04 1:44

Yes. Dr. John, what do you do at Mississippi State?

SPEAKER_03 1:47

So for the past 35 plus years, I have been trying to help people figure out weed problems and how to control them or manage them in a wide variety of settings, including food plots, soybeans, home gardens, lawns, landscapes, natural areas, uh cotton fields back when we grew over a million acres of cotton, etc. So a little bit of everything.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

This might have to be a series, Bobby, instead of just round. It could be.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

I mean, there's a there's a lot to talk about. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

He he just touched them all.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

Well, you know, or before we got started, he he really showed his expertise in talking about uh trees as well. So he's a pretty diverse guy over there. Uh I've dealt with a lot. Landy had coon dogs at one time.

SPEAKER_06 2:42

Hey, I got one. Picked him up off the highway. What were the names of these coon dogs?

SPEAKER_03 2:47

Uh I had a black and tan named Lady and one named Drive. And I coon hunted with a guy. Um he had so many coon dogs, a semi brought food to his house once a month.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

He had some dogs. He had a lot of coon dogs and foxhounds. Son. Yeah. Wow. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

That has to be a Guinness Book of World Records number there.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

I when I I and I told Bobby when I started dating, I quickly figured out I couldn't afford both.

SPEAKER_06 3:23

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

A girlfriend and coon dogs.

SPEAKER_06 3:26

Something had to go.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

So something had to go. And she won.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

They eat a lot, but well, the coon dogs.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

They do.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Well, look, weage, when we when you think about them, like it seems like we're in ground zero.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

We are ground zero right here in the prairie, I swear. It feels like it anyway.

SPEAKER_06 3:46

And we were talking, you know, earlier too. The more you become aware of the species and and really what's going out there, you you're seeing you know, stuff that's not supposed to be here everywhere now.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Uh no, that has always happened. With the European settlers coming to North America, and you think about them bringing livestock with them and food because they didn't know what they were gonna find in this new world that they could eat. So they're bringing food with them and think about the potential for there being weed contaminants in the hay and grain. Uh uh I think well, I I spend too much time on the road, and and those are the kinds of things I think about. So, so really that appears to be a Bible laying there on the table. If you go back and reread Genesis chapter three, thorns and thistles, or Cogan grass, or taller trees, or crabgrass, or palmer pig weed, which most of our Delta farmers and farmers all across the US, southern U.S. are dealing with, any number of weedy plants, and by the sweat of your brow, food plots included.

SPEAKER_04 5:19

So can you ride for three or four hours and not just get aggravated at what you see on the side of the road?

SPEAKER_03 5:25

Uh I will tell you this on many occasions. My wife or my daughters would say, How many times have we had to turn around and go back for you to take a picture of something that you saw on the side of the road that you thought you needed for a slide presentation at some point in the future? So quite frequently.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

We've got some really dangerously noxious, expanding, you know, invasive stuff. But the other thing, kind of the magic part of this discussion, which you'll know a lot about, is that every plant you see that you didn't plant yourself is not a bad plant. In fact, some of them are the best things, probably as good or better than what you did plant. How do you know the difference? That's gonna be fascinating. And you know, you really get a book on your phone with apps and study, but listening to him to start with will help a lot.

SPEAKER_05 6:24

Yeah, it's funny. Um, you know, like we were talking about you driving around, it it seems like the more you learn about this, the more you don't know. The more well, the more angry you get because you're you know, you're cognizant of it, and it's hard to drive around without seeing some invasive uh that makes you mad.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

All right, I I'm gonna tell y'all Cogongrass, Cogongs was what you asked me to come and talk about. Yes. So so I put together a presentation for a meeting a couple years back on the history of Roundup. And there was an individual that graduated from Mississippi, Will Carpenter, went to work for Monsanto after he did his PhD at Purdue, and he was the individual at Monsanto that was responsible for the development and marketing of glyphosate as Roundup when they discovered they actually bought that compound from another chemical company, Stolfer. And and and I bought a copy of his biography a few years back. He was in Starville, had just published this biography, and he documented the discovery and development of Roundup through that book, and he talked about going over to the Philippines and Malaysia and how Roundup was being used in the palm plantations to control this invasive grass. And they quickly found out that number one, by using Roundup, they no longer had to hire the natives to go cut this grass before they started walking through the orchard picking up these palm nuts, palm oil nuts. That also reduced the number of and so they noticed a yield increase when they started spraying this grass. Come to find out, there were rats in the grass eating the nuts, and then there were cobras chasing the rats that were biting the workers. So Roundup resolved those two problems, and I later read a book by a USDA plant explorer that went around the world in the teens and twenties shipping plant material back to the U.S. J. Russell Smith. His name was David Fairclaws. Okay, another guy. The wor uh David Fairchild, excuse me. Um The World was my garden. And in that book, he talked about going to the Philippines and Malaysia and climbing up to the top of this mountain in the palm orchards, but he was crawling through Cogan grass to get to the top of the mountain to collect this material. So those people were actually using Cogan grass as an agroforestry system. They would burn it, and then when they got new growth on the Cogan grass, they were putting cattle in there to graze the floors of these palm orchards. And it it seemed like an odd coincidence to me to read about Roundup being used to control this in the palm orchards in the Philippines, and him being in the Philippines decades, at least three or four decades before Will Carpenter was there when they were spraying Roundup on the same Cogan grass. That's interesting stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Yeah, so well, so Roundup, also known as glyphosate, seemed like I'm told it won't kill Cogan grass today.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

It won't kill it. Uh it's as good as it's, in my opinion, and we did a lot of work trying to use Roundup in the uh early 2000s, looking at arsenal applications, looking at Roundup, looking at basically I had students looking at every herbicide that was registered to be sold in the U.S. that had activity, post-emergence activity on grasses, on Cogan grass. Arsenal, the most effective, amazapir, glyphosate, second most active. Nothing else, the graminocides, the fuselade, the select, the post type products, you can get some temporary suppression, but you're typically spraying multiple times per year. What we learned with Roundup, if you spray it in the spring of the year with Roundup, which I think you need to do before it ever flowers so that you can eliminate that seed production component, but you're gonna have to spray again before frost. If you spray arsenal or a mazepir as an alternative treatment, you're probably gonna have to come back the next year or maybe the year after. But you know, the downside is a lot of this occurs in woodlands, and you can't spray arsenal in those woodlands without causing damage to perhaps non-target plants. You can round up.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

So why don't we do this? Let's turn it over to Dudley. Let him, we've got some rapid-fire questions. We'll get to learn a little bit more about you. When we come back, let's start with what is Cogan grass? How did it get here? Let's just kind of start at the beginning and go from there. But I tell you what, you he mentioned cobras. Goodness great.

SPEAKER_06 12:26

I know you picked up on that one. Yeah, I bet somebody was real appreciative of them figuring that one out. Like you'd rather the mice bite you, or you got to step over a cobra. The mice wouldn't even figure out that out. Seriously. Rough out there the palm tree, palm what palm nut oil water.

SPEAKER_05 12:42

Cogan grass in a silva pastoral setting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_06 12:46

All right, Dudley, uh, we'll we'll turn it over to him. Lanny. These guys, they were just here this week. Our guys' buddies from Nutrion were here, uh, and we were glad to have them. And the rapid fire is brought to you by Nutrion.

SPEAKER_05 12:57

All right, so uh John, I'm gonna ask you about 10 or so questions in in rapid succession. Just need a quick answer trying to get to know you better. So are you ready? Yes. What is your favorite hack tool for hacking squirt? I would say a machete. Okay. I'm a hatchet guy. I'm a machete. But I like the new handheld mini chainsaws, too. You're getting so fancy. Anyway, uh bow tie or regular tie?

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Uh I have some made out of bowdock and some made out of walnut. And I prefer the wooden bow ties, and having worn those to DC a few weeks ago, believe you me, that is a conversation starter.

SPEAKER_06 13:43

That's a good way to get a conversation with a with your senator. How do you not have a bow tie made out of wood?

SPEAKER_02 13:49

You know, we've got turkey turkey feather bow tie, which you didn't uh, a bow tie bow tie? That's it.

SPEAKER_05 13:57

Next, what is your favorite flavor of Mississippi State ice cream from the Maifa store? I like the the muscadine ripple. I'm a ripple guy myself.

SPEAKER_07 14:06

Never had that.

SPEAKER_05 14:07

They have a new one, uh they have a new sweet potato flavor. They have the coolest one.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

Ripple. That sounds like something Fred Sanford.

SPEAKER_05 14:20

If Clemson and Mississippi State both made it to Omaha, who would you root for? Wait a minute, man.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

30 years you've been here. I mean, that's undergrad stuff, you know. I was at Clemson when Danny Ford won the first championship in football.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

That was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_05 14:37

Uh, what is your go-to steak to grill or cook at home? Uh flat iron. Okay. Name a favorite restaurant in your travels. I know you travel a lot. Your favorite steak restaurant you've ever been to.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

I don't eat steak out that often. You don't? No. Because you like cooking it at home. But I did at one time entertain the idea of creating an extension publication of gizzard eateries around the Magnolia State. Oh my god. This man loves gizzards. Okay. Chevron, man, you got the spot. Yeah, we do have a gizzard time. I've had them many a time.

SPEAKER_05 15:20

North side of town. Uh, what invasive plant have you worked with most recently?

SPEAKER_03 15:29

That's a loaded question. You do stuff all day, every day. Well, we're we're working on Coven grass now. Okay. Using some Clearfield sunflowers as a potential suppression crop on roadside rights of way.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Wow. How about that?

SPEAKER_05 15:50

Man, the doves will be back. Yeah. I'd love to see sunflowers anywhere. Name an invasive plant that, although is indeed non-native, strikes you with its beauty. Kudzu? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

The flowers, I don't know if you've ever paid attention to it. They're beautiful. But it is beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

I like mimosa. Um, what is your favorite time of year to work in the field? I like the hot summer. Okay. Where's the further?

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Are you joking? No, I am not.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Cold is better for me.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Monday, I was walking polypipe for my son-in-law.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Wow. Out in the farm, huh? I think you're a Marvel Comics superhero personality or something.

SPEAKER_05 16:34

Where is the furthest location you've traveled while working with cattle, weeds, etc.? Uh Sonora, Mexico. Okay. And last but not least, what is smarter? Follow the label in Extension Weed Control Guideline Pub or do what someone says on a Facebook group.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

You got to read the label and follow the instructions on the label, which may differ from those in an extension publication. The label is the law. Good answer.

SPEAKER_07 17:08

You gotta have it.

SPEAKER_04 17:10

You heard it here first.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

But you do a lot of the Facebook comments, so you give good information to pub people. Right, but I mean you always say, read, and follow the label, no matter what you tell somebody to do.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Extension stuff, you you guys have got to know a lot about so much to be able to give people advice. Chemistry. You've obviously got to know about these weeds. The extension services, the greatest value.

SPEAKER_06 17:37

We get so much from it. Do other states and universities have extension services like Mississippi State?

SPEAKER_03 17:43

So most land grant institutions, Mississippi State is a land grant, Clemson is a land grant, Arkansas, University of Florida, all have Auburn, yes, um, do have equal responsibility for research, teaching, and extension. Now you get up into some of the northern states, Illinois, um, Minnesota, they don't always have the strong extension presence that does occur in the South.

SPEAKER_06 18:19

Well, I tell you what, it's an unbelievable tool. We've been, you know.

SPEAKER_04 18:22

So if you've got a question about your property, there's a guy you can call.

SPEAKER_05 18:26

You know, the beauty of that is John has other people that are experts in other fields and they pull their resources together. That's kind of what extension is all about.

SPEAKER_06 18:37

I mean And there's a ton of written information. You can go to the websites and and research yourself, too. Yeah, super cool.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Trivia, did y'all know the kinship between Mississippi State University and Clemson? Have we talked about that before?

SPEAKER_04 18:51

Um we haven't, but you mentioned it the other day. It might be a good question for So you just google it and you see.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Um Clemson, Clemson University was explicitly modeled after Mississippi State University. Oh. In his 1886 last will and testament, founder Thomas Green Clemson bequeathed his Fort Hill estate and fortune to the state of South Carolina with specific instructions that the new agricultural college be modeled after the Agriculture College of Mississippi as far as practicable.

SPEAKER_04 19:23

Were you aware of that?

SPEAKER_06 19:23

There you go.

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Is Jason Park aware of that? I think he's who sent it to Dr.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Yeah, he's he actually just said, Did you know that one day? And I looked it up, and you can just Google it and it'll say right there on the face of it. It's very cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Was it Oxford? Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_05 19:45

Oh that's they did all the kudzu, the the gully, the uh the my understanding is they didn't want it.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

So then it came to Mississippi State.

SPEAKER_05 19:56

I think a lot of the the soil survey stuff was done out of Ole Miss.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Well, they've they've got a USDA sedimentation lab up there and a lot of yeah, so still a strong USDA presence there. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

The more you know, that's some good stuff. Let's get on to Cogan grass. All right. How in the world did it get here? How bad is it? I looked up on the when I finally got away from the other weed that kept popping. It looked like it's in 11 states, but it's moving north pretty rapidly.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

I've actually seen Cogan grass in uh Crystal City, Virginia. Now it this was in a a landscape planting, and it was several years ago, and when I went back a few years after that initial finding, it was gone. And I don't know if they excavated the soil and re-landscaped around the hotel um or what. But back to your original question. So so what I have read in other publications is that it came into the Portomobile as a contaminant in some packing material, um, and and and you think back to the teens, how they were shipping stuff, it was a contaminant in some rootstock citrus that was shipped to the Gulf Coast. I mentioned uh David Faircloth, the Explorer, a while ago. All right. So so in USDA, he created this plant introduction division, and after that initial shipment into Mobile, seed or plant material one, I don't remember which, was collected from some different locations around the world and shipped to point. Points of entry in the United States as a potential forage because again it was being used as an agroforestry forage in the Philippines. What in the world could eat it? Well, I've had county agents tell me and that that have cattle in South Mississippi, if their observations over the years, if it grows from the right of way into the pasture, cows will keep eating that new growth. Wow. All right. So so I have contended if it's in a forage production system, if you will either keep it burned or mowed or dense enough grazing pressure, or chemically sprayed periodically so that it puts up new growth, your livestock will graze that new new foliage. Now, is it gonna put the same weight on calves that bahia grass or Bermuda grass does? No, probably not. So um and with cattle prices where they are now, which is nobody has ever seen before.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Um are people interested in keeping it? No.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

It does it have it has I'm I'm I'm asking. I think I know the answer. Does it have any benefit to wildlife?

SPEAKER_03 23:29

I I did have a landowner in George County tell me one time that it was planted on his granddaddy's property as cover for quail. Now, so is that of any value? I mean, you know, you you've seen stands of it, you know how dense the population is. Maybe an adult, but certainly.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Not even then, they can't get through it. Nothing can get through it.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

So that was that was what you know what I was told by a landowner.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

So is it true that the roots have a toxin that they put out and to kill maybe kill other or suppress other plants?

SPEAKER_03 24:16

I don't we did some work with some guys at USDA some years back, and they did find some allelopathic properties in the rhizomes, but not sufficient that it could ever be turned into a organic type herbicide. Oh, okay. I I I think most of what you see, because you never see any other plants, or rarely see large populations of other plants growing in Cogan grass, but I think that's more a function of stem density than it is allel toss.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah, it's definitely got stem density for sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

Why does it grow in a circle? The only speculation I can make is those rhizomes are going in all directions.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Well, they can't go back in towards the middle because it's so dense already. The only way they can go is out.

SPEAKER_04 25:15

So tell someone listening, uh, if they're riding down the road, how how would they identify this?

SPEAKER_03 25:21

You know, to me, Bobby, I've always felt like cognass was easiest to identify in the dead of winter. The the color, the straw color that it has in the winter is different than anything else in our landscape. And then, of course, you get in the spring when it's putting out the little fluffy seed heads, very easy to identify then, but also easily confused with silver beard grass, which you see blooming on the roadside right now. We've got a little bit of it in our mailbox prairie right now, I need to get. So, so so the big difference is Cogan grass, like Zorzia grass, blooms immediately after it turns green in the spring. And I and I think that's kind of a a unique identifying feature. But really, the truth, the true test is to take a shovel and stick it in the ground and see if you get that rhizome when you pull up that shovel full of dirt, that spade full of soil. And the and the rhizomes are typically about the same diameter as a 12-penny nail. If you, you know, if you go buy nails at the hardware store and you know what a 12-penny nail is, or a fence staple, is what I tell the livestock producers, about the same diameter as a fence staple. Johnson grass is going to have a rhizome, but it's much larger. Bahia grass has got some rhizomes. So, so they're all pretty easily differentiated. You know, I've read a lot, and and and and it is true that Cogan grass has an offset mid-rib, but that in and of itself, there are a number of other grasses that also have offset mid-rib. So I discourage people from using that sole identification feature to say this is a patch of Cogan grass. Whoops.

SPEAKER_05 27:29

Um But it it seems to me uh like once you've seen it, you know, you drive by in the winter, you see that miscolored circle, or you know, around at least around here, like mid to late May, you see it. Fluffies blue, those little fluffies, and they're still in a circle, and then you just make a mental note of where it is. Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

So if one of our listeners, let's just say they're they're in a in a leased uh hunting club, leased it from a paper company land, all of a sudden they start seeing this, or they're sitting on the opposite end of the table from you, or you know, on the side of the table from you. We're all listening to this one. It's everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 28:07

Yeah, so uh, you know, what if a guy has this show up somewhere, uh what does he need to do?

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Well, I think it depends on, you know, you mentioned that it's paper paper company land, he's got a lease, or maybe it's on a utility right-of-way. You know, if there's no vegetation around that will not tolerate arsenal, arsenal is my number one go-to as a treatment. Either using a 1% solution of the two pound, uh, the two-pound material, half percent solution of the four-pound material with surfactant.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

What surfactant would you use? Does it matter?

SPEAKER_03 28:46

I really don't think it does. I just think you need to make sure that you're using the surfactant. It's not crop oil. I think with crop oil, it will work if you're spraying at a time of the year when it's cool. Right. I think some things, and and I heard y'all talking about triclopeer, garlawn earlier, those ester herbicides, which arsenal is not, but you get a crop oil, you spray in in Mississippi and it's 93 degrees outside, you get too much flash burn from the surfact.

SPEAKER_05 29:26

So it isn't able to soak up the herbicide as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

You need it absorbed by that foliage and absorbed by those roots. And I think surfactant allows you to make that application and not get that immediate phyto. Now, you know, if it's 70 degrees outside, you're okay. But if you're up in the 90s, you're getting that flash burn. If you're using something like Remedy, which is the extra formulation of triclopeer, you won't get that flash burn. You're using the garlon um garlon four, and at 90 degrees outside, you're gonna get that flash burn and not get the absorption and translocation in the plant that you need.

SPEAKER_05 30:10

That's right. You know, a lot of labels for crop oil says not to spray above 90 Fahrenheit.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Yeah, there are a lot of instructions that people fail to read on the label.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

So we I use a um surfactant AMS combination in the jug already. Is there any merit to that?

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Ammonium sulfate. There has been I've seen some data that there's an advantage to have an AMS in the tank. I've seen an equal amount of data that says there's no advantage. I think in our climate, all right, let's think back six weeks ago when we were so dry, adverse environment. You got to remember for a herbicide to work like it's supposed to, you've got to have active growth in that plant. A happy plant. If that plant ain't happy, that herbicide isn't gonna get to the places that it needs to get as quickly to work. And so if you're drought stressed or you've got cold weather or you're flooded, and that plant is under stress, the herbicide translocation is through the floor. And and so look at your think about your environment and what the conditions are like when you're making that application.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

I've seen someone spray arsenal before to kill hardwoods and a pine reforestation situation, but they did it in the freaking summertime during a drought, and it literally almost didn't ding up anything. Well, but it's crazy how it didn't work. But the plants weren't taking anything in.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Back to your AMS question, they see up north spraying early in the spring when it's really cold, because you think about we're planting beans a lot earlier than we used to, uh, and other crops. When you're in that really cold environment, again, stress adding the ammonium sulfate does help improve activity.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Sounds kind of like the same thing as you were talking about earlier, just above 80 or so degrees, just stick with just a surfactant.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

So going back to that scenario, if a guy finds a little small patch on his place, if he doesn't do anything, what's what's he looking like in a few years? What what what happens?

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Um I forget. There was a a young gal that did a master's degree down in Louisiana. She was from Louisiana, she did the work in Mississippi, down on the coast, and and she tried to document how much these patches expand on a per year basis. What I remember from that research is if you're spraying some Cogan grass, you need to remember those rhizomes have all where you see foliage above ground. Let's just say this table is a patch of Cogan grass. When you spray it, you need to spray at least three feet beyond the perimeter where you see foliage if you're using a product like a maze pier, which has soil activity. If you're using something like Roundup, what you're gonna have next year, you're just gonna spray the foliage because there's no soil activity, you're gonna have a doughnut. Because that rhizome has already grown out three feet beyond the perimeter. No activity there, you don't get translocation throughout that entire rhizome, and and so that's what you'll see if you treat it. If you do nothing, then it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it then disperses seeds. And I had a student um working on a PhD some years back. We collected seed heads, he counted seeds and looked at the viability. Now there was some research out of Florida saying there's not a lot of viable seeds produced on these plants. His research showed that there are a lot of viable seeds produced. And so if you let it go, then wherever that seed is dispersed and that seed falls on bare ground, and if it if it's in an area that hadn't been controlled burned, so it's falling on litter, pine straw, not making contact with bare soil, probably no big deal. But if it does fall on bare soil, the likelihood of you new population recruitment is what the ecologists, pentecologists like to call it, you're gonna have a new patch started. Fire ant mounds, for example.

SPEAKER_05 35:08

Do you know if each patch is more than one individual? Is that like a clonal patch? It's all one. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

And Cogengrass isn't unique from that standpoint. Think about Trumpet Creeper, one of our native plants. I suspect, or horse nettle, another of our native plants. I hate that one. That's Toxie's favorite. I hate that one. I suspect all of those are connected underground unless there's been some type of deep tillage to sever those roots.

unknown 35:40

Well.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

Does deep tillage work with Kogong grass? Frequent tillage does. I I would say not it doesn't have to be deep tillage. Um I had a student um where we looked at discing, mole board plow, and rotor till PTO rotor till behind a tractor. And then no-tillage. And then planting roundup ready soybeans into this. It was a huge field down in George County, Cogan grass, um, where we just no-till burned it off and then planted no-tilled soybeans. And we were planting roundup ready soybeans, so then we could come back and either apply Roundup or we could use a graminocide like select as an alternative, but just the competition from the drilled soybeans where we got a good stand, we were getting like 60% cognate suppression just from the competition of the soybeans. And you had mentioned earlier shade, it does not tolerate shade. And so you think about drilling soybeans into an area, and you've got competition there from the shade. If they're Roundup Ready soybeans, then you can spray Roundup a few times during the year. I went back to that site um early last year, and and this would have been 10 years after doing this tillage project and and Roundup Ready soybeans, they were growing wheat on that field. So by starting, starting that continual tillage and using the herbicides in soybeans, we had reduced the population enough that then they could reclaim that site for agricultural purposes. So I think you can manage it, but you have to be intensive. And I think if that landowner ever stopped, it'll be back. Whether it's 10 years from now or you know, 20 years from now, it'll still come back.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

It's amazing it can lay dormant that long. Well, the the other thing I was gonna say, um I think we spread it with a bush hog quite frequently. Oh, yeah, and forest holes, no doubt. In the right place. I mean, the the tires off a truck uh harvest, you know, loading a load of wood somewhere, but uh even the the the the tillage you just talked about, I'm gonna be sure, and you can tell them for sure, you better be careful where you go run that drill at, I mean that disc after you disc all that.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

You need to clean it. I mean, the sanitation has to be part. If you're certainly disking through an area or tilling an area that has Cogan grass, you certainly need to sanitize that machinery before you go somewhere else so that you're not spreading it onto another side.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

So I've got a higher degree of difficulty, and I want to be sure I ask this before I forget why you're here. So I've got this situation um newly planted pines. You know, that's pretty common.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

And they're like long leaf or or loblolly. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

They are now a year and a half, and it is so infested. I've guessed probably almost a hundred acres in one open spot. But Kogon grass has popped up everywhere through there.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

So so loblolly pine that's established that long would tolerate arsenal. Okay. Now, long leaf will not, short leaf won't. Right, but long loblolly, you'd be safe to go ahead and spray arsenal.

SPEAKER_05 39:39

So you could just do like a herbaceous weed control.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

So you wouldn't have to just spot spray, you could go ahead and just do the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

You know, if if if coging grass is your main target, I'd spot spray, yes. And and save the money because you're gonna have to come back and spray it again at some point.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Yeah, until it canopies. Yes. Sounds like that'd be perfect for like a drone application. So they can really see those. I guess that if it's a a crew with a backpack sprayer, either one, but or an ATV sprayer, a skitter. It'd be hard to get across some of this. It wouldn't roll up real smooth.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Lenny, it looked like a light bulb went off in your head when he was describing the day.

SPEAKER_06 40:20

Yeah, well, that's exactly what I've been battling. Um for sure. I've been using using glyphosate. And um actually the this is in my yard. Now I live in a in an in the in the river bottom. Uh, and uh I I I think I know how this got here. A guy was in the neighborhood with a forestry mulcher, and I had an old stump. And I said, Hey, while you're here, you know, will you set that thing down and grind it down? Uh and he did, and that's the exact place where my cogon grass started. But I was just my eyes lit up because that's exactly what I've been finding. I had this circle and I had been treating it twice a year uh with glyphosate, and then I'm now I am it's out of the middle and I'm treating these little perimeter edges. So it just uh that's why the light bulb went off me. I'm like, well, I wasn't going wide enough. You got that donut effect. Yeah, and I wasn't using anything that's soil active too, so I probably didn't need to um hit that. And you mentioned something earlier, too. You said round up, oh, excuse me, glyphosate works really well if you spray it in the spring, and then you're gonna have to come back and spray it in the fall.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

All right, all right. The reason I said that is round up, if you will, if if coking grass is in the boot stage, and you know what the boot stage is on grass development?

SPEAKER_06 41:31

No, sir.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

All right, so so a grass plant, this as the seed comes up that comes up that stem, you typically get a little swollen area that you can actually feel. Think about a wheat plant, for example, where that seed head is migrating up before it emerges and goes into anthesis, you can actually feel it. It's kind of like a swollen area, like an enlarged, if your knuckle was that long instead of just one little joint there, you can feel that that boot stage. If you spray Roundup, then it will translocate into that seed head so that you reduce the number of viable seeds that plant is capable of producing. Okay. Arsenal is really slow. You think about those of you that have sprayed arsenal or a mazepier, you spray it in June, you really can't tell what you sprayed until a month later. It is slow. That whole group of chemistry, that all the emidaslinone herbicides, the sulfanyl urea herbicides have the same mode of action as the emmys. They're all very slow-acting products. Okay? Roundup is fast. And it's fast in the summertime, but it's a little bit slower in the winter when plants are growing slower. The likelihood of getting translocation into that seed head with Roundup in the spring is much better than with arsenal.

SPEAKER_08 43:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

And so I suggest an application in the spring at like a quart per acre to eliminate viable or reduce the amount of viable seed that plant could produce so that you're not contaminating other areas. A quart per acre is not going to give you long-term control. So then you need to come back and spray again. And I really like an application four to six weeks before killing frost. Because you think about the way Roundup works, if you think about the way Roundup works on a perennial plant, that perennial plant is sending photosynthate down to those rhizomes and tubers. If you're talking about a broadleaf plant, it's translocating. Those photosynthates in the fall, building up those reserves to carry it through the winter for starting growth next spring. So, in order to maximize the amount of Roundup that gets translocated in that rhizome, you need to make that application late in the year on a warm season like Cogan grass. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

How about that? Gonna spray in the fall next. That's a good uh explanation. That's a great explanation.

SPEAKER_06 44:27

So once the the once the little poofy head comes up, it's too late. I mean to kill the viable seed. Yes. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Now, if you watch it closely, you can see anthesis when the anthers are out and it's shedding pollen before it's actually got viable seed. And we have had good luck using the gramatocides just as that seed head, you know, when it first comes out, it's it's compressed, and you can spray it then, and you can get pretty good seed suppression with the graminocides like post and select and fuselate.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

Well I didn't know that. So it would you say Coke and grass is like the number one thing that you're battling these days, or uh could you list like the first the top five?

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Well uh uh you you you have to back that up now. That's not a fair question.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

That's like the my cousin Vinny. Now, what's the worst that's a depending on that's a question, Bobby.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

It depends on your situation, really. Well, wait a minute. Maybe y'all need to understand how the university works. Please. Go ahead. This may need to be edited before Rich can handle it.

SPEAKER_06 45:46

I think so.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

So so at the university, you know, they want to know how much money you're gonna bring in every year. So I'm looking for chemical companies to send me protocols of stuff that they won't evaluated. Right. No. So is it the top thing I'm looking at right now? No. Because there ain't no money coming in for that.

SPEAKER_06 46:10

Follow the money, Bobby.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Let me reach it. Economics, I was gonna say when you What's the worst for the ecosystem?

SPEAKER_04 46:16

Yeah, let me let's rephrase that the way that's the right. But now the right round.

SPEAKER_03 46:20

Wait a minute, I do want to expand on and say that one of the things, you know, we did that work back in the 90s, Roundup and Arsenal, the most effective herbicides. Well, what y'all need to think about too is the whole field of weed control or weed management and new herbicide discovery has basically been dead since the 1980s in terms of finding new actives or new mode of action sites for herbicides to control plants. And so, from a development standpoint, there just hadn't been a lot of new materials coming along for us to evaluate on Cogan grass. So, one of the things I've done is DOT has started spraying. I mean, they've gone through some phases, and it all depends, and you think about the roadsides now, because I do have some, I do have a big grant with the Department of Transportation for roadside vegetation management. They spray and roundup or they spray an arsenal out on a on a right-of-way, you got nothing there but bare dirt that's gonna start to erode. That's an undesirable effect of these herbicides. So I started thinking a few years back about well, we're not gonna plant soybeans, roundup ready soybeans, which I've seen work, because then you're gonna bring those two, three deer y'all got on the wall or on the right-of-way where M Dot don't want them.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

It'd be a crash course in that one.

SPEAKER_03 48:03

Exactly. So we started looking at the Clearfield sunflowers. Now, the Clearfield sunflowers, and I'm sure y'all have had people to talk about them, are are some varieties of sunflowers that tolerate some of the emidaslinone chemistry.

SPEAKER_05 48:22

The mazumox the masopic, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

So I started thinking perhaps there is enough tolerance to the Emmys that we could apply lower rates of arsenal on the roadside and plant these Clearfield sunflowers so you don't end up with a bare spot on the right away. And you've got beautiful sunflowers out there for people to see as they drive up and down. Any of y'all been to North Carolina and seen the sunflowers that they plant on their rights away?

SPEAKER_05 49:08

Wow. I've seen flowers, but I've I've never seen the sunflowers.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

Well, they do sunflowers in some pla and and they do sunflowers in some places, California poppies, they do all kinds of different flowers. I was thinking about Cogan grass and thinking about the Clearfield sunflowers and thought this might work to use some low rates which wouldn't completely kill the Cogan grass, but would keep it suppressed and allow us to have beauty on the roadside, pollinator habitat on the roadside, and also not have those big erodible circles.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

So would the would the you know we spray amazumox with magras, you know, herbicide clethan on the clear field sunflowers here. I mean, there's other other recipes. Would that suppress the Kogong grass?

SPEAKER_03 50:07

We have not seen very good activity out of a Masumox or a Mazapig. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

I didn't think so. That's why.

SPEAKER_03 50:15

We've looked at a masaquin too, we've looked at EmmaZethopeer, we've looked at we've looked at all them Emmys.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

So the main suppression from sunflowers would be shade because they do canopy. But that would be part of it too.

SPEAKER_03 50:26

Yeah, they do can get the benefit of shade and the herbicide.

SPEAKER_06 50:29

So are you planting the sunflowers in rows or just broadcast? Broadcast. So there might be on real tight spacing or I got you. That makes sense. Is that going on somewhere right now we could see? I saw some on the way to Starville on the side of the road. Is that you?

SPEAKER_03 50:42

We had some small plots. Those are not in Cogan grass, but we got some around Waynesboro that are in Kogan grass.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Very cool. You've seen them on the way to Starval? Yes. Yeah. And Bobby, it's not legal to shoot a shotgun on the road. You can't dove hunt on the right.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

Well, it's in my Onyx, drop me a pin. Have you done any research on this new um Japan grass? Um Japanese stilt grass.

SPEAKER_03 51:11

Stilt grass. We have done a little bit of that on roadsides. Yes. That stuff seems to have exploded a little bit. Stilt grass is one of those that really likes shaded environments more so than open sun.

SPEAKER_06 51:27

That's where we're seeing it's in pine plantations, I think, more than anything. I keep hearing about problems with vasygrass.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

Vasy is one that I deal with in pastures quite frequently. Uh hayfields too. Um rope wicking roundup is an option a lot of people don't want to do, but it does work.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Oh, the old-fashioned wick bar, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

Well, I mean, it if if it were as susceptible to glyphosate as Johnson grass, that system would work beautifully, but it's not that the horse nettle doesn't, I mean, you gotta have like a strong 2-4D is about all that'll get it, won't it? Uh I'm a bigger fan of pickle ram. I don't think I've ever heard of that one. It's the soil active stuff. Uh yeah. But graze on P S D, graze on PD3, how long after application could you plant something else? Is it sterilized soil or uh it it it's grasses only. Okay. So probably not something you're gonna plant in a food plot.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Yeah, I've just my problems with clover. And um I had read where the Masumox doesn't even ding it up much. Now it's funny how it will my Masmimox will kill some things, Roundup won't. But yeah, it's the big problem in the prairie dirt that I have here. And I was reading where the 24 dB, if you catch it young and with a heavy dose, will suppress it some. But I don't know. I hadn't tried it yet.

SPEAKER_03 52:54

Maybe you're not reading the label anymore because 24 dB is not labeled for clover like it used to be. Well, it is labeled for seedling, red clover, and all site clover, but people assume that means any clover. Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

Because I mean, back in the way long time ago, when I first started reading stuff, it would that was the recommended, it was uh post and 24 dB.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

You know, Corteva has now come out with um Nova Graze, which go let's go back to the clover. So so Corteva had discovered the had had put together the Nova Grays, which is a choline form of 2-4D. You know, we talked a little bit about trichloper gester. So 2-4D is available as a destrinamine, a salt, and a choline form. And the nova graze has the choline form of 2-4D in it, and fluoropyroxifen benzyl. So they're two actives in that jug, but what we have seen in our research in in forage systems is you get less injury from 2-4D by itself than you get from Nova Graze, but then you control more weeds with Nova Graze than you do with 2-4D by itself. So there's a trade-off there. Um if you will keep your 2-4D rate no higher than a quart per acre. Oh, yeah. Then white clover, established white clover, it may keep it from blooming for a few weeks, but it will not kill it.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Wow. I'm only gonna try it on the spot first, though.

SPEAKER_07 54:56

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_03 54:57

Well, I don't know, are you calibrating your sprayer now? Because that's something I get into with a lot of people, is they don't properly calibrate their sprayers. And I've done a lot of work looking at boomless tips and applications from boomless tips, and you almost need slides to be able to show that. Not something you can easily do on a podcast, but to use a boomless sprayer effectively, I think you need to spray an area and figure out what your effective kill swath width is, so that you know how far to make your next pass so that you're not overlapping five feet and spray them with two quarts of clove of 2,4D rather than one.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

What you see on mine typically it'll be a strip from six inches to two or two and a half feet wide that I miss, but I'm just for that reason I didn't want to kill it. So you know, I can you can go back with I've I hadn't got one yet, but I'm on a like a four-wheeler sprayer, just a little narrow band spray behind the four-wheeler, so I can go back and spray those strips.

SPEAKER_03 56:06

So, so so I know food plot size varies and the equipment size varies from one to another. I've got a uh my current research associate has been looking at some of these new electric backpacks.

SPEAKER_06 56:21

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

You know, this is something I've dealt with over the years. Homeowners don't have the type equipment to apply liquid products according to label instructions, but we've been looking at these uh new electric backpacks, and can you equip them with a four-nozzle boom so that you're now spraying a six-foot wide swath and uniformly applying your herbicide across that entire six-foot wide swath? So something I think that would have a lot of value for people that are doing small, you know, small food plots the size of this room, or even twice the size of this room that doesn't require a tractor or an ATV sprayer.

SPEAKER_05 57:06

What um what is the the range of Kogan grass currently, roughly?

SPEAKER_03 57:14

Well, I told you I'd seen it in Virginia, Northern Virginia, right outside of DC. So does it get into Arkansas yet or Tennessee? Yeah. Dr. Charles Bryson, who was a taxonomist with USDA over at Stonville. Are y'all familiar with the Southeastern Flora web page?

SPEAKER_06 57:38

I'm going to find it.

SPEAKER_03 57:39

You you you you know who Forestry Suppliers is.

SPEAKER_05 57:42

Yeah, he he did it. He he started that.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

John Guatney, John Guatney at Forestry Suppliers, and Charles Bryson, who was a plant taxonomist over at Stonville, have built this website to help identify plants. They cross the river by river, I mean the Mississippi River in West Helena, and he found a patch of coging grass in Arkansas. I have seen it in northern Georgia, and in fact, was driving back from Charlotte early May and had to make a pet stop at a convenience store on the north side of Atlanta and found it growing around the landscaping of a convenience store north of Atlanta. Just happened to be there when it was blooming. And so I know I know some people with Georgia TOT, took some pictures of it, sent it to them. Forestry Commission's helping them do some spraying, apparently in uh in Georgia.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

So I did read, we had that cold snap. I had burned some off when I burned that clear cut, and I was reading it, said that I think it was 10 degrees, an extended period of 10 degrees will kill those rhizomes if they're exposed. But I mean, so there's some point further north, it's not gonna be able to go at some point, I would think.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

So so when I when I was doing a lot of Cogan grass research, I was getting some money through uh USDA, and somebody reached out to me and they had created a map of where it could potentially survive in North America based on where it occurs worldwide. And and you would draw a line from DC across south of Chicago. Wow, and then you get out west, you get a dry environment, and it won't it won't grow in the dry environment either. So so they were saying or at least estimating that it could survive as far north as DC Chicago.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

And then it could survive a little bit further north as an annual plant, not as a perennial, even a little bit further north.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

Yeah, the annual part never would really be a big problem. Correct. The perennial is the problem. Correct. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:22

But now don't forget, the northerners have quack grass that they're dealing with that we don't.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:27

Yeah, they got all kinds of stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

So I mean, but one thing is great educating me today. I've seen where we sprayed, I just actually had some I had a pure glyphosate tank, and I was going back and I still had some left, and I just backed it up on the lake bank there where we've got some and just soaked it, and you know, maybe it'll help, you know. I thought, and it absolutely smoked it. And I've tried it again or had someone work for me try it again, and it was marginal. So today you explain why glyphosate works better so far. Fall of the year. Yep. Not the thing to spray in the middle of summer.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

Well, I mean, you got to start at some point. Oh, yeah. And and and like I've told a lot of these at these cattlemen's meetings, and and even the forester group I talked to a couple weeks ago down in Stone and Pearl River counties. If you got it, your grandkids gonna be fighting it. Oh wow. There ain't no eradication. We've looked at synthetic mulches, you know, some of this geotech like they put down on the edge of a ditch and then pile rock on a riprap, it bust right through.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:37

Yeah, we we had some in the nursery growing a long time ago, you know, where the kennel is now, and it was growing up through the weed mat.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

Yeah. And we had sprayed um we sprayed it several times. What's it uh Sahara or whatever underneath all that. I think that's a masapir.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

That's got the diuron and masapir combination. That's good pro that's good bare ground.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

I mean, it's like we were trying to like put rock down. That's right. And that's the one thing survived it pretty much, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:08

Well, you know, you put a herbicide in the environment, it's it's not gonna stay there forever. It's gonna degrade over time, it's gonna break down the microbes. You know, the microbes see those little herbicide molecules as food sources and they go to feeding on them. So they're gonna break down over time, and and and the rhizomes, they still there.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:32

They're there. Yeah, yet another reason not to not to deal with non-natives. I was you never know.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

I was always told it's been a long time that um like Johnson grass is introduced. Bad one here, but it's they said that a root fragment, just a root fragment left in the soil, even if you killed it all, disturbed, you know, up to what, eight or ten years later, can still like germinate. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:58

Uh I would not doubt it. You know, there was a guy that buried weed seed, and I use this for my right-of-way certification training, certification training, 1872 buried weed seeds on the Michigan State University campus, and 142 luck years later, some of those seeds still germinated.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:21

Yep. That's amazing. That's the weed for you. Plants are amazing. So trying to circle this back around to wildlife, this is just something you don't want on your place at all. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

And so if we regret it, when I first saw some, it's been 15 years I first saw some. I regret so much I didn't get right on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:43

But you think about biofuel crops, Miscanthus. Have any of y'all seen any of Miscanthus? Perennial grass that we've planted as a biofuel crop in some areas, like down in Winston County. Wind dispersed seed, potentially just like Kogan grass.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:03

Yeah, and people are planting it all over their land now for making look at all the landscaping they've done around Starving, Mission State University.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:11

And you go to the mountains of North Carolina and it's spread all the time.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:14

It's all over the side of the Blue Ridge Highway.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:16

Yes, it is. What are they thinking?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:18

And they're saying it's a sterile version. But you know, they've said that about the Bradford pear.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Uh yeah. There's another good one.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:27

There's always a native alternative that you can use instead of a non-native one. I I can imagine riding down the road with this guy and him.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:37

Oh, but being stuck, getting aggravated about something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

I can see being like two, three hours late on the drive somewhere. Yeah. Because you had to stop so many times.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:47

Well, I mean, but once you get to noticing it, I mean it it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:49

There's lots of stuff everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:51

Yeah. So the horse nettle toxic, you've been talking about it. Is that the biggest problem you have? Or it's a native plant, right? It is. Somebody called the other day and was talking about having mare's tail in their own.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

Well, there's very few, help me out here to step in, but to me, there's very few herbicides that affect it. So over the years of trying to grow clovers, especially, um, and you, you know, you wipe out just about everything else competing with it, it actually, it's just like you've been trying to grow it, you know, unless you get a super thick solid mat, and even then it'll it'll come up through the clover and still be there. Um, the only thing at all you can do is, you know, if if it gets bad enough and it's up above the top of your clover, you can clip it and it'll help. And it'll let you know, it you can let the clover breathe a little bit and spread it out. I mean, there's worse things as far as how it chokes out your crop. It does. But it is, it is, it is like very little if I've gotten rid of it. I mean, where I've just gone in and smoked it with a hot, hot 2, 4 D. Yeah, I've knocked it back.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:05

It doesn't form the dense colonies that cograss does. So it doesn't completely choke your clover out. I've got it in my pastures. All right. And you get clover coming up around it. Yes, the cows. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:20

But it doesn't wipe out.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:22

Graze around it and and and eat it. And you know, I even occasionally see the donkeys, which any of y'all need any donkeys, I'll be glad to bring some. They will occasionally clip it and eat it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

Well, that'd be great. I'll take one. Richard. And you know, some of these I tell you there's another one that does that. And it and it and it's it's a problem, but it doesn't form the dense canopy is the sneeze weed. Oh, yeah. Amazemox won't kill it either. And it gets pretty tall. It actually has a pretty yellow flower on it, but but it doesn't, you know, it it it makes you worry about it that this kind of infested your clover patch, but it doesn't like crowd it all out either.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:02

So I'm not nearly as mad at weeds and clover as I used to be. You know, depends on what they are. A lot of these plants, uh, I mean, just because a deer doesn't eat it, I mean, doesn't make it a bad plant. No, you know, a lot of uh lot of uh pollinators and things utilize, you know. He just mentioned mare's tail, you know. Some of that when it's in bloom is covered with butterflies and stuff that birds eat and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

So I've told cattle producers for a number of years you can either have weedy clover or you can have clover-free, but you can't have both.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

Right. Well, I I'm fine with weedy clover, but when something's like taking the whole thing over. And and even like I don't that sneezeweed I talked about, it grows up, you know, it's kind of pretty with a yellow flower and everything, but it doesn't seem to me to I mean clover will grow with a little bit of shade competition anyway. Yeah, but the the the horse nettle is the worst one.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:08

Uh you may just have to swap over to growing something in the grass family. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:13

Um I I have been told that Don Ball, who was the now retired extension forage specialist at Auburn, is working with a group trying to select. You know, clover, white clover's got a little bit of tolerance to Roundup. And they are trying to screen as much clover as possible to see if they can find a fairly Roundup tolerant clover without doing any genetically modifying other than natural selection from survivors.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:54

Yeah, there's a there's a variety of red clover that is tolerant advertised as tolerant of 2,4D.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

And you do have uh, you know, the Roundup Radial Alfalfa, which could have a fit in some food plot systems.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:08

But the the in my experience, the horse nettle just kind of laughs at Roundup.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

It doesn't, I mean I think it just drinks it like a cocktail or something, but it doesn't even think it does it might yellow it just a little bit, but it you know I would think about a fall application again on on a perennial like horse nettle.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:28

Yeah. So true or false, I was told that by Dudley that the dandelion is thought to have been brought over on the Mayflower.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:39

Dandelion is an introduced plant. Now, when it came here, I couldn't tell you.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:45

Yeah, they used to make wine out of it and all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:49

In fact, I will tell you this. We used to have a weed science, Mississippi Weed Science Society. Okay. For our meeting one year, I got my wife, who when I was in graduate school, did a little bit of catering on the side. She had a recipe for spinach balls. And I had her, I got some graduate students to go collect enough dandelion foliage that she made a batch of balls made with spinach and a batch made with dandelion foliage. And it was a blind taste test. And guess what was preferred.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:35

Dandelions. Got that right. Well, if they can eat them, the deer can eat them. There's a lot of invasives that are good to eat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:42

Oh, Dudley Dudley tries everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:44

I've eaten some thistles.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

All right. You know, some somebody said, oh, somebody wrote on Facebook, this guy down at LSU. So we were spraying some food plots for a guy over here in Startville. And I told my graduate student, I keep a machete in the truck. We got an old thistle that had bolted. Took the machete and chopped the leaves off of it. Tastes like celery. Now, I'm not a big celery fan. So, you know, you fill it up with pimento cheese or you fill it up with celery, it's worth eating. But plain celery, plain thistle, not much difference. You could probably even substitute in cooking.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:24

Dudley said it out this afternoon to find some.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:27

Oh, yeah. Well, what else should we be asking you about? What else is interesting in your job that you'll fight baby?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:36

Well, know that there is no such thing as eradication. Um one of the things that has got me concerned is public sentiment against Roundup and glyphosate. And I don't know if y'all have been keeping up with all this. The Supreme Court heard those cases earlier this year. I still contend, I believe, and I'm not I'm not a toxicologist, uh, I do believe that glyphosate or roundup is a very safe product to use. In fact, one of the safest. From my standpoint, if if they win this battle, they being the anti-pesticide contingency across this country, we're fixing to lose a whole lot of herbicides and other pesticides too. And that concerns me greatly because we can't produce the amount of food and fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:38

Yeah, we can't feed the world. We had this discussion with our buddies at Nutrin. I mean, they are they are they are in a position where they're trying so hard, and I'm talking about nutrient, they're trying so hard to preach sustainability and you know, farmers, you know, increase your habitat and doing those things at the same time. They're tasked with feeding the world. And where do you compromise? Because job one is feeding the world. And so we have to listen to each other on this stuff. You can't just go off the deep end as an activist one way or the other. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:10

Well, you know, my my argument to that, and and I learned it from my buddy Kyle Liebarger over at Native Habitat Project. Um, you know, uh the the food thing, it may be arguable. You know, we're there's people growing growing substantial crops without using those things. And if God bless them, you know, if we had started a hundred years ago uh following some of these more organic principles, we may be further along now, but we're not. But as far as invasives are concerned, um you have to fight fire with fire. Um, uh a lot of these herbicides, you know, that that's what their main use should be is to get rid of things that aren't supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:56

And to your point, I mean, there's there's a difference in using a herbicide that might be fairly toxic and whatever, but a spot here, a spot here, a spot here to reduce something that's harmful. Right. As opposed to widespread use across, you know, millions of people.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:10

I totally understand people's concerns. Uh, you know, I know folks that instead of spraying, if they want to start a little wildflower garden, they'll put a tarp over an area and you know, solarize the soil, leave it there for a year, but you can't do that across a landscape.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:27

No, you know, and not practical to do that. It's not practical agriculture. For sure. And so even even I've had some some some vegetable producers in the state. Can they do that? And and if you have enough land, yes, but what else is in short supply is land in many cases.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:53

Especially I've seen those, I'm not a a student of it, but you see a documentary or you watch something or film, and all your these massive vegetable growers, especially in California, and they're laying down mats, just miles of these, whatever looks like they're maybe a foot wide or 18 inches wide, just straight strips, and poke holes in it and put a plant in there. You know.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:16

But they're not dealing with nut sedge as much out there, although they do have it in some areas, but uh uh I deal with watermelon growers in South Mississippi, and that plastic don't stop nutgrass. Nut seed.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:31

So that I'd written it does, it does. You're right. I've had it the the shade cloth, it just comes right up to it. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:37

In in preparation, I'd made a note to ask you, are there are there three types of weeds? Are there grass, broadleaf, and sedge? Is it that simple?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:52

Not in my mind, it isn't quite that simple. The grass and broadleaf part, yes, but then the sedges would also have to include the rushes.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:06

Yeah, you've done some work with a invasive rush, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:10

Well, I've done a lot of work, you know. This year certainly not was not one of them. Last year was when we're getting flooded through the winter and spring, and these rushes come up in in pastures and hay fields, and of course the soils that we have here in Mississippi hold a lot of moisture, and that creates kind of an ideal environment for junkus and and scarpus and these other genera of rushes to invade those areas, and and they look like grasses, but they're not true grasses. And oftentimes they're confused. You know, nutgras is a common name used for nut sedge, and and even here in in Clay County, I think about all the Cherokee sedge that I've seen in pastures and hayfields over the years on this prairie soil that native plant, but I can't figure out what good is it because well a lot of native landscapers are using it uh now in in shady areas. Places where grass won't grow. My wife would not want in her landscape.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Sure, I can't tell you, I bet. Here's a here's a food plotters out there question for you. So um someone that is in it, and of course, with onset of hogs, it doesn't have as much as I like for it too, is chufas. And um if someone's been planting chufas for years, um, you know, they're they're probably spraying for managing the chufas. Well, they're also probably propagating more and more native nutgrass. And a lot of times looking at it when it first comes up, you can't really tell the difference. I couldn't necessarily. So, I mean, I know one of the the the most famous herbicide I know of is like Image. And I know there's one uh Sedge Hammer, maybe. But that's a great name. But it it um, you know, so you could probably spray and wipe out the whole food plot from any kind of nutgrass with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:24

If you were using that, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:26

So but how long after that before you could plant your chupus?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:31

Umage has probably got an 18-month rotation restriction.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:38

That's what I'm saying. So you're done for that year. Yeah. What what could you spray in the year?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:43

I'm not saying image, I'm saying the the old ag product scepter, which was the same product, image being a turf product. And I think back in the day when we were using quite a bit on soybeans, there was an 18-month rotation restriction.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:00

So is there anything you could kill your nutgrass with and then come back behind it and you know a month later?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:06

I if I were planting chufas, number one, I don't think there'd be anything label specifically for chufas. Right. But if I were a turkey hunter that wanted a plot of chufas, all ears are up, I would probably use something like atrazine or simizine and then use some 2-4D, and you could probably keep most of the broadleaf weeds and many of the grasses out.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:39

Well, what about other nut grass? You're really not gonna be able to deal with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

Well, the other sedges, no.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:44

They're gonna be now yellow nut sedge and chufa are the exact same gene.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:48

Yeah, but there's so many sedges. There are. It is a huge group of plants. It is amazing. I've got them behind the house where I've till up to try to plant the zinia patches like we do, and um till it, let it come to life, till it again, till it again, till it again. Okay, I've got it prepared for next year.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:09

If it rains, they it's cupping uh yet a fourth.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:12

Correct, and it'll be absolutely a carpet of teeny little nutgrass. Because all you're doing is making it more and more and more and more.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:20

It may be an annual because there are lots of annual and perennial sedges. Yellow and purple are the only two that produce tubers. Right. And you know, the tubers of yellow nut sedge, the uh apparently the early settlers here roasted and ate.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:40

Still can. So is purple, is that I've heard people talk about in in aquatic environments that red root sedge was uh beneficial for ducks. Don't know that. And so I don't know, maybe that's purple.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

No, purple does not grow in the water, right? But all the sedges tend to gravitate towards hydric soils, wet soils.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:05

So you're what you're saying is if I was going to sterilize a food plot from nut from sedges and able to get a pure stand of chifas, I probably need to wait a year after I do image, right? Possibly. He said 18 months. Well I mean months is what the label is. He was going back to the old days of Scepter.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:26

I would say if you put out enough to keep nut sedge out for a year, I'd be surprised if you got chifas there the next.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:35

Uh uh and and and let me say, you know, there are a lot of factors that influence degradation and the rates of degradation.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:43

Different time of year stuff. So but Roundup won't even bother them, will it? Not really.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

It's pretty active on them, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:49

I guess maybe make Roundup really hot.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:51

All right, why don't we uh let's let's let's turn this over to Richie. Richie, uh who who is our trivia brought to us by the trivia today is brought to us by our buddies at the Peanut Pad. Peanut Pad that's right. They make some good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:04

Uh before we get to the trivia question, we have a listener who left a review. Ooh, somebody's listening. The opportunity to win something here.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:10

So yeah, we got some great prizes. You know, are we doing the Illusion Skullmaster? Now we've got uh so we give those away. We've got you hadn't shipped that one out yet?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:18

No, it's it's about to be. Okay, yeah. So uh the guys from Marstupial. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so for the next month, we're gonna be giving away some Martupial gear. From Marsupial Gear. And the bottom line, I would say. It makes some fantastic little jobs.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:34

Yep, so we had a listener or uh who left a review on YouTube. Watch one of our latest episodes with uh KVD. All right. Uh so uh Baker Fullerton 8253 left a review, great podcast. First time watching the podcast podcast on YouTube. Love everything y'all do and stand for it.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:54

Golly, love it. We on YouTube, Baker. Are we on YouTube? I think so.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:57

Yeah, okay, go. We're on the tube. On the tube. Subscribe, like, follow, whatever they say. Yep. Please.

unknown 1:23:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:04

All right, Dr. Bird. So we're gonna this question, uh, we're gonna give you a 10-year span. Okay, don't have to be an exact year, but a 10-year span. So, in what decade were county agents created?

SPEAKER_06 1:23:17

What decade were county agents? That's a pretty tough one. Did Bobby write that one?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:24

You know, county or or there's two other aspects of it he might could get. What are those?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:29

There was an act that was uh signed by a certain president uh when they when the county agencies was created. So what president signed that act and or what was the name of that act?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:43

So you got three three.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:44

There was the Morrill Act, and there was the Smith Lever Act. There you go. And now the extension. There you go.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:56

That's a tough one. That's a 1914.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:59

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. He probably had to answer that for his dissertation or something, but still retained that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:05

So, yeah, Woodrow Wilson signed the Smith Lever Act in 1914.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:08

Woodrow. Woodrow. All right. Thank you. You've got so much information. I feel like we just scratched the surface there.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:15

I'm telling you, this was not just about Kogong grass. Don't just title this Kogon grass. Yeah, we've got a ton of information here. Probably more about herbicides and into the weeds. Yeah, into the end of the weed.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:31

We might have the weeds. And we didn't get even get into treats. He has so much knowledge on trees. Well, have him back. I think we've got to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

You need to come on Friday and we'll take you out to the golf club. They have the best fried chicken in the sixth state. And turnip greens. Come on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:45

Might get them to do some dandelions if we call them. Dudley's gonna have some for lunch tomorrow, ain't he?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:51

I expect they done sprayed them dandelions several months ago.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:54

Dr. John Byrd, I think you've got several publications out. How can a guy go listen or read something you've got out there? Dudley was saying you literally wrote the book on a lot of this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:06

Well, Extension did uh we did put together a number of publications on invasive plants, non-native plants, that's on the Extension webpage. Now you have to search for them by name, like Cogengrass or Torpedograss or Privet or Bushkiller or or Kudzu, for example, that we did uh did put together. You mentioned the hack and squirt a while ago. I put one together on using a hydration backpack to carry your undiluted herbicide and then using a um veterinary dose gun like you used to inject wormer in cattle or uh antibiotics in cattle, because you then you're getting an exact measurement that goes into each incision. Put that together a few years back. Um and so, yes, there are a number of publications out there on the extension webpage, some on calibrating sprayers, some on controlling green ash, which I know y'all have plenty of over here in the prairie, uh, white indigo and a number of plants that that we've had to deal with over the years.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:27

So you the easy way to do it is just Google the person's name and Mississippi State, and you it'll it'll pull them up.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:37

You know, I think you're one of those treasures over there. We everybody we've had come over here has been it has impressed us. Doxie, wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_05 1:26:44

Yes. Well, I mean it's the the greatest university in all the land.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:48

So Lanny, let us know what the they say about your x-ray on your foot. So there's Lanny exiting the room. We're worried about Lanny. He got stung by a stingray over the well. Stepped on it, evidently. So well, we've enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:01

Well, I had too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:03

And uh I would expect Bowen to do this again. So yeah. Be glad to. Get into the weeds. Yeah. Anybody you want to say hey to before we get off?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:13

I may bring my technician, Chris Gregory, next time. He was so disappointed he didn't know I was coming to do this, and he was leaving to go work on some food plots in Missouri on his parents' place. And he said, What? You're going to do Gamekeepers podcast, and you didn't invite me to go with you?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:37

Yeah. Well, I tell you what, it's been this is there's been a lot, I've made a lot of notes here. Yeah. Dudley, I know you enjoyed it. Toxie, you've been on the ball with the questions, so it's just right up your alley, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:48

So why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:53

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine and don't miss the Moscow property fit full of dirt podcasts with my good buddy Ron Gold.