Landscape Weeds to Know and Not to Grow

Most of us have said unpleasant things about weeds as we pull them from our gardens, and I'm sure that most of us have wished that the desirable plants flourished as well as the weeds.  Brent Sellers UF Extension Weed Specialist, is the weed expert in our area. He is an Associate Professor at the UF Range Cattle Research and Education Center in Ona.  Here is a link to his UF web page:  Brent Sellers.   He brought along a selection of weeds for us to examine and gave a good grounding in weed control and why it's important.  Some weeds are toxic to cattle and humans, and most of the residents of Highlands County live near agriculture or pasture land.  Since weeds tend to be prolific seed bearers and can spread rapidly all of us share a responsibility to manage them. 

Herbicides are one of the ways to manage weeds, but the right herbicide must be used, and it must be applied correctly.  The question of herbicide safety was almost immediately raised.  Brent laid that question to rest rather quickly, and here is quote from the paper:  Herbicides: How Toxic are They by Fishel, Farrel, MacDonald and Sellers.  

     Although there have been pesticides that were toxic and dangerous to handle, most of these products are no longer used and have been replaced by newer chemistry. Pesticides now must go through rigorous testing by EPA before they can be sold. This has led to many herbicides that possess little or no mammalian toxicity and are less harmful than many everyday household products. Surprisingly, household chemicals that many of us store under the kitchen sink pose more risk to the handler than herbicides.  Herbicide Toxicity

As always, caution should be used when applying chemicals and care should be take that only the weeds to be destroyed are treated.  Some plants are extremely sensitive to herbicides.  For instance, tomatoes and certain other vegetable crops are very sensitive to 2, 4-D.  Be careful with sprays so that they don't drift on to desirable plants.   Here is a link to Brent's weed identification chart.  Weed Identification  Some plants such as Beauty Berry are desirable plants frequently used to attract birds in the garden, but they are considered undesirable weeds in pasture and agriculture lands.  In this instance it's true that a weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place.