Transcript

COUCH GRASS! · Cereal Killers

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Hi and welcome back to serial killers the podcast that
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covers all the arable weeds pests diseases problems
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that you might encounter on a farm so today's
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subject josie is cooch grass and onion
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grass coochie coochie coo absolutely who
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used to say that i have no idea i hope it's not
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rude no it was a person from
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years ago also known as twitch grass which i
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like i think i feel like all the young farmers under
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25 we will say twitch grass because it's like you know twitch
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grass streamers quack grass quack grass quicks
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scutch squidge squidge squidge
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grass squidge twitch wickens and wicks wickens and which there you go so you
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got enough common names then lots of common names and what is the scientific
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name for the common common cooch is elemus repens Sounds like you're doing another
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Harry Potter spell there.
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Elemos repens, and it turns you into a creeping grass weed. Creeping,
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yes. The repens bit means creeping.
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Right. So it creeps, it produces rhizomes. Does it produce seeds as well?
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Yes, it does. But they're not really that important, are they?
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No. So this one, it can be a weed in arable crops.
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It's a big weed in horticulture, gardens, things like that.
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It's a bugger to control, isn't it, really? well once the roots get intertwined
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with your plants the only thing you can do is actually take your plants out
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wash the roots and carefully yeah pick the roots out of there.
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The reason seeds are not important so much in an arable field is because you
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need pollination from another different genetically distinct couch grass plant
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to produce viable seeds.
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And so most of the plants in an area will be the same clone.
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And so it can't produce, if a clone, same clone pollinates another clone,
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it won't produce viable seeds.
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But if they do produce seeds, they're viable for four to five years.
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And the seeds will survive in manure as well
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yeah all right yeah i know so yeah
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so yeah horticulture quite often when you do put manure
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down you do get all sorts of delights popping up out of
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it don't you yeah so for arable crops this is this is
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not a yield destroyer like black grass
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or rye grass but it
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is a pain a bit like when we talked about
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annual medigrass and it's going to increase lodging
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if you've got it in your crop so it's going to pull it down those
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stolons because it's more than one plant joined
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together cultivation of the
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ground especially breaking that cultivation
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up and then going in again two to three weeks later will
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virtually completely control it won't it so yeah it's not
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one we need to put massive amounts of weed killer on for no but
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those rhizomes can get wrapped around equipment and
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things like that so depending on how dense that
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mat of weeds are yeah so the roots yeah yeah i suppose if you're in with a direct
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driller then you could could be in issues any natural pests or no but really
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concerning it can act as an alternative alternative host to the take all fungus
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yep which is really worrying because that.
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Is a bad fungus yep it's a it's a major problem major disease of arable crops
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it is a host though to the speckled wood butterfly caterpillar and the ringlet
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butterfly caterpillar and fruit flies,
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oh right they're not so beautiful though no but
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it's an alternative host for it as well so it's may
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it could be an issue if it's in the margins and it'll go
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in there and provide another of the source of food for frit flies
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it's moderately related to cereals so
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you things like biological
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control would be probably unlikely so a eutrema would do a lot of work on biological
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control of black grass and we're looking at rye grass and things like that but
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these things these weeds that are closely related to cereals like couch grass and wild Wild oats,
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they're last on our hit list because we don't want to produce a biological that
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also affects arable crops. That would be the worst case scenario.
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I don't have the money to compensate farmers if I destroy their arable crops. So that's an issue.
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Glyphosate's really good with this weed. Well, that's more than enough then,
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yeah. So get on with glyphosate or another weed killer.
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In 1910, thinking back to when you were a mere boy, yes it was reported to be
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the most problematic weed of arable crops yep then in 1974,
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mr glyphosate comes along and there
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you go it made a huge impact and it's
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one of the few weeds that everyone says you know
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oh if we could still burn stubble then
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all our weed problems would be solved no that's proves
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that really because before glyphosate it was a
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massive problem them and it burning stubble
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does nothing for couch grass so it this is
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because those rhizomes are fire resistant basically yeah
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and they're into the ground and when if you dig them up you
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could literally have what looks like a bucket of spaghetti because
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that's what they look like typical italian always thinking
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of pasta oh yeah lunchtime is
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it lunchtime what's your favorite pasta josie come over your favorite
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chocolate bar last week oh my favorite pasta it has to be pasta chitane roomy
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yeah and tenerumi is like a squash you know those like meter long squashes yeah
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it's one of those but you eat the leaves all right and they're lovely they're sweet and fragrant.
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Fantastic mine's cannelloni with soya
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chunks rather than meat with what soya chunks rather
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than meat no yeah oh my god
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i bet you put pineapple on your pizza as well man no i'm not that bad there
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you go what's wrong with pineapple oh i have dinner with your pudding i know
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i'm saying it went for like raisins in our apple apples apples in a savory oh
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my word hate it there you Okay.
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Right. And there is another plant that is referred to as couch grass,
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but it's completely unrelated.
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And that is? Onion grass, but I can't say that word. It's something elatus.
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This spell, you need to work on this spell, Josie.
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Aranathurum alartius. And this is the onion grass, which is even less of a problem
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than normal couch grass.
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And don't know why it's called cuticrass because it doesn't
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produce rhizomes it produces swollen bulbous
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nodules that look like onions yeah they're
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not actually related though are they glad your brain went there there you go
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they look like onions and hence the common name and but they don't they're not
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actually related are they no i don't know why they're put together and even
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like on when they're in books about controlling weeds they're put together but
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but they're just completely unrelated. They don't look similar, really.
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So onion grass is actually a variant of false oak grass.
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Yeah. So very tall, looks very similar.
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I think the flower heads, one's compact, one's not.
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Off the top of my head, I can't tell you which one is more compact.
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Probably wild oats is more flowing, hence the name.
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And it grows everywhere except northern Scotland, this onion couch grass.
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It loves alkaline soils.
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So chalky land, this might be a weed more on the chalky land,
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but it will tolerate acidic soils as well. It's just one of these ones that
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will also tolerate very alkaline conditions.
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And I think just smashing up those bulbous nodules with a plough or a tiller
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or something to destroy them is probably the best way of control at all.
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Going back to one of our standard weed killers, like I say. So yeah,
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don't like, you know, don't like when we do the weeds and we just say,
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throw glyphosate on every time. Yeah.
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That's one that you would, if you're having an issue, that could be an issue.
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And it can produce up to 15 tons of those swollen nodules per hectare.
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Oh my goodness. So if you wanted to commercialize them somehow,
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you've got a use for swollen bulbous onion couch grass nodules.
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It's pretty heavy yielding.
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So there you go. Anything else? Any good jokes?
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No. No. if you love this amazingly hilarious
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and informative podcast about couch grass
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then please share it with your fellow fellow
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humans not just farmers anyone who's interested in agriculture horticulture
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then with your people yeah take me to your leaders there you go so couch grass
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lovely done right i've got nothing to sell on that one either you treatment
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don't produce anything that can be used for couch grass so it's completely yeah
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i could give you a few students to dig out the roots.
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There you go. If you need students to pull up couch grass or black grass,
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probably, and you're in the Northamptonshire area, speak to Josie.
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We've got some good work experience students begging for work. There you go.
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I was speaking to a nine-year-old yesterday and he works on a farm and he gets paid £15 a month.
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An hour? No. Yeah. Nine-year-old? Yeah.
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I shouldn't say that. No, I didn't speak to anyone who was nine years old that gets paid.
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It was not for farm work. It was for something else. But yeah, it was like a hobby.
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I'm in the wrong trade. Yeah, there you go.
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But yeah, it wasn't a full-time position, put it that way, for a nine-year-old.
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It was one or two hours a week.
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Okay. So, Josie, until next time. Until next time. What are we going to do next
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time? I think we either do ryegrass or flea beetle.
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Let's do flea beetle. I like flea beetle.
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It's quite a bit more interesting than the grasses.
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Let's split it into two podcasts and we'll do flea beetle and all the different
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types of flea beetle and then we'll do cabbage stem flea beetle as a whole separate podcast.
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Oh. How about that? Because that is such a big issue. Exciting. There you go.
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And if that doesn't keep you listening to this podcast, then nothing,
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literally nothing will.
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And tell us your favorite pasta tell us
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your favorite pasta and your favorite chocolate yeah absolutely send those messages
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in chocolate pasta yeah oh no yeah what about chocolate pizza oh no i had chocolate
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pizza once for my birthday did you yeah it's great really yeah not amused okay
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all right thanks very much jesse thank you bye.