Kitchen Garden Forum

I was having an interesting chat the other day with somebody who sprays crops for a living with weedkiller.

He mentioned black grass as being a particular problom in many fields of cereals; unchecked it could reduce yields by up to 50% and therefore has to be controlled.

I was not familar with the name, so looked the weed up on line. Although I have seen it, I don't remember it being an ever present in either Bedfordshire or at any of my three allotment sites in Kent.

Does this weed infest any areas where you live? If so, how do you control it?

Ok, I'm also interest in this black grass

Fortunately I don't have that, but had to look it up as I do have an unusual blackish grass here & there on the plot which is a new import. It isn't tall though but is a bit of a brute & hard to remove without a dig with the fork. Seed head is black but only about 6 inches tall & doesn't stand proud but flops to the side.

Thank you I will keep this guy & be grateful!

Only a problem where "farmers"(read industrial crop growers) don't practice proper crop rotation, but keep growing the same crop in the same field year after year and expect weedkillers to do their job for them, proper farmers don't need to flood the land with poisons.

Barry wrote:I was not familar with the name, so looked the weed up on line. Although I have seen it, I don't remember it being an ever present in either Bedfordshire or at any of my three allotment sites in Kent.

Does this weed infest any areas where you live? If so, how do you control it?

It definitely exists in Bedfordshire ! It's a problem weed in cereal crops because it is also a grass; selective herbicides to kill broad leaved weeds in cereal is easy, selecting one grass and not another rather harder. In a garden or allotment, no more of a problem than any other grass weed.

It's a much studied weed for precision agriculture because it's hard to control, but grows in patches which tend to occur in the same places year on year, so can be mapped and pre-empted.

In slight defence of farmers - yes, sometimes a "rotation" means growing something different for one year in every 10. But remember that the different crops might require a lot of work changing setup of machinery, or even another set of specialist machinery - harvesters, drills, planters etc. Not as easy for them to grow potatoes as a clearing crop, for example.

They manage it round me Tony, as you may have guessed I was harangued by a farmer in a pub not long ago.