Fields in Manitoba may still be a little wet for field work, but with seeding mostly complete, farmers are starting to focus on spraying.
When it comes to tackling weed issues, Manitoba Agriculture farm production extension Ingrid Kristjanson says it's important for producers to correctly identify weeds in their fields in order to gain control of the stray plants.
"The other things is we want to identify weeds to be able to identify potential new problems," Kristjanson says, "if there's something new to the province that could cause us a lot of problems, we want to catch it as soon as possible, and that's where weed ID is very important, certainly for invasive species that we don't have in Manitoba and want to prevent from establishing here."
Kristjanson says there are two types of weeds: grass weeds and broadleaf weeds, which can be further narrowed down by leaf shape and arrangement, as well as the flower or head. However, she adds it's not always a good idea to ID weeds by colour.
"There are lots of people that have a certain amount of issues with green colours because of colour blindness," she explains, "so where I might see a very gray green plant, and to me that's a terrific identifier, somebody else that I'm talking to may not distinguish that colour at all."
Source : Portageonline