Caltrop is a shocking weed, I found some in my parents' back paddock (it went right through my crocs) and am terrified that some will come to my place stuck on tyres.

It's not bindies, it's tons worse than bindies!

There was a big scare about it in Bungendore, a lot of the public areas had it and the council had a war against it.

I can't get any grass to take over, Malleeman, although Serrated Tussock would like the chance. I've got poa tussock up high, and then assorted wallaby-style grass and spear grass down lower, but there's big bare patches in between and the weeds are winning.

I've tried Phalaris (australia) and given ideal conditions (eg my veggie garden) it will grow but I can't get it to take anywhere else. I'm going to try this Cocks-something next.

Ah ha, ALLY is Metsulferon, I've got a pile of that (not teh du pont version though) and used it on the verbascum, it's good on mustard weed and stuff too, but it's not rated for Horehound; I wish it was. Have you found it effective on Horehound?

Could it be spiney burr grass your talking about if not need more info.. trust me ya dont want that..

No, it was Caltrop, with the big thorny spikey seeds.

cant say ive used it on horehound ant i save that stuff more for the broardleaf control, horehound only seems to grow around here along fence lines or ground that hasnt or doesnt get cultivated,
one can only try or if theres not much of it-better sharpen the old hoe up and get stuck into them. mcpa or 24d esters seems to be the go but also try some ally in the mix also with heavy wetter rate

yes thats the ones ,well ive been controling them for over 40 years here an still going hard at it ya learn to live with them but at the same time keeping them under control.
there a pita kids come home with flat tyres they get draged inside then one only has to step on them and ya sore for a few days,the dogs wont work in paddocks that are bad with them and so on

That Caltrop scares me, it's worse than thistles.

I've got a lot of yellow thistles coming on now, with yellow flowers.I haven't noticed them before. I get one weed under control, and more pop up.

St Johns and Verbascum are on the run, but i've got terrible mustard weed, terrible pattos and now the thistles are coming back. Not to mention the Horehound although I've made inroads on that, but you have to keep up to it.

There is a biological control for Horehound called the Horehound Plume Moth [ horehound plume moth. Wheeleria spilodactylus ]
This is a small moth and is a very weak flyer.
It lays it's eggs on the plant in spring after hatching from the pupae and the hatched grubs from the eggs make their way down into the roots of the horehound where they eat the roots out.
The result is a very weak plant or a dead plant.
The original release site was in the Wyperfield National Park north of Rainbow in the Vic Southern Mallee where the Horehound was to say the least, rampant.
The spread of the moth is very, very slow partly due to the 13 year long drought conditions in the region and the lack of good horehound growth.
Where this Plume Moth has been operating the results are quite spectacular as the horehound infestation that you could nearly walk over a decade ago consists now of just a few scattered weak plants across the same area.

I have gone to Wyperfield some years ago and with permission, collected some plants with the Plume Moth's root borer grubs in them and planted these horehound plants in our own infestation.
Unfortunately it seems that due to the repeated drought conditions and low number of infected plants that I planted the root borers and moths seemed to have died out and the exercise will have to be repeated in the next year or two depending on whether the season is wet enough to make it worth while.

One of the original researchers, a lady, use to collect the eggs for redistribution into other areas but her funding was cut off to her great distress as she was very dedicated to this biological control program, so the program ceased.

There was also a second horehound biological control insect released but this insect found Australian conditions just too harsh and it seems that it has vanished from the scene.

There is also a native bud worm that eats the seed out of the bindii but unfortunately it's appearance is spasmodic although when really operating in the right conditions, this budworm will eat the seeds from within the bindii burr on 75% to 80% of the burrs.
That unfortunately still leaves the burrs o create havoc and enough seed to cover the next 20 years that the bindii seed can survive.
Sometime soon after the burr is full blown carefully open up the bindii seed pod to find the grub or look for the minute hole that the grub has bored in the burr to get at the seed.

Ecological controls are the best, of course. But the thing with them is that they don't, as a rule, wipe out the host. Which is OK if they really control the weed.

I'm suspecting that wingless grasshoppers are building again. We had 2 summers of shocking infestations about 5 years ago, they ruined the garden and some of my young birches never recovered. When I was out checking what's going a few evenings ago, I noticed a lot jumping around and any "lush" bunches of weeds full of holes.

Rom and Malleeman hows the harvest
Here in mid mallee SA dissapointing without being disasterous about 25% below average
Was just to dry for too long in june/july/august we were on decile 1.5 at august 25th and had a wt last week of aug and sept to first week of oct then rain vanished again. Last 4 weeks since mid november weve had another 70mm so we actually depending on rest of dec we could end up with average rainfall.
Yield of wheat have gone from 1.8 to .7 t/ha and barley 1.2 to 2.4 have about 10 "good days" left The heavy shallow soils didnt respond to late rain wereas sandier type soils did as they could get there roots down and thats were the yeilds are this year, despite time of sowing anything on heavy ground is poor

ps there a new chemical called pyresta when mixed with roudup is meant to do wondeful things to alot of weeds.
malleeman do you use hot up spray oil with your cooch spraying and spray the day after the rain so no dust is on the leaves?

hi farm weather ive finished harvest much to me disgust it was a very poor harvest i averaged 7 bags all over plus the low grain prices stuffed things even more- its funny ya know we seem to be the only buggers out there that cant put a price on our on produce,there are other farmers over the fence still going and soon to rap it up due to the 4 inches we had many of them have left hundreds of acres due to shot grain,would of been nice to get it during mid -late tiller stage but yet again we missed out.

dont use oil farm weather mite try that,ive had good success killing it with heavy rates of roundup and double rates of wetter then follow up later on but its like bindies once ya got em cant get rid of them but keeping them under control which can be quite expensive as we all know

pyresta lv herbicide hmmmmm looks to be ester based chemical no residuel only a knockdown helps break down the cycle of roundup,one wonders if its as cheap as r-up. good for mashmellow so they say i spose i could try a few acres with about a 1/ha with r-up and wetter to see how good affect it does on marshes as there hard to kill

http://www.sipcam.com.au/default.asp?V_D...31091&Details=Y

the trouble with roundup is, it kills everything, weeds and grasses. I've been using it for years in a backpack, spot-spraying, but this year I hit the St Johns with Grazon and it was great to see how it only burnt the St Johns, not the grass around it. I don't have much grass.

It was the same with Sprayseed, basically a chemical flame-thrower.

This is why I'm branching out and using metsulfron, kamba, Grazon and MCPA, they are more selective although you have the disadvantage of that, they don't kill all the weeds you want to kill.

Evening FW.
Decided I had better check here just to see if much was happening.
Yeh! Crops looked good around here, in fact probably the best since 1998 when we got wiped out totally with that late frost.
That was until October and half of November this year when it just stopped raining.
September and October are our money months.
The crops can look pretty ordinary up until then but if we get really decent rains, particularly from mid September through all of October then some pretty handy yields can appear from some very mediocre looking crops.
And on our heavy cracking grey clays of the Wimmera Plains north of Horsham we need that water as the plants can't extract as much water from the clays as they can from the lighter loamier and sandier soils which is why a lot of guys on so called shit country, ie; light sandy soils have been doing a lot better than we have right through the 2000's.
We were still in pretty good shape with the wheat and Lentils up until that run of 4 or 5 stinking hot days in Oct with the temps in the late 30's and into the early 40's and this just when the Lentils and wheat were grain filling.
There is a resulting huge variation in quality of the lentils and the yields went to hell in a bread basket.
Yields looked like maybe 2 tonnes to 2.6 tonnes / Ha and at about $800 plus a tonne and 500 ha's there was a bit of salivating going on at the prospects and a fair bit of calculator battery useage.
The heat fixed that!
Yields are now about a tonne / Ha for us with most reporting a lot less due mainly to the loses at the cutter bar.
Rolf and I have done a lot of mods on the flex front and we do a pretty good shaving job with the R62 Gleaner and 30 ft flex front and can get most of those lay down plants.
The Lentils literally cooked on the stem.
The plants looked green but when you touched them they just shattered, they were so brittle.
A lot of the samples of Lentils are green inside like up to 40 or 50% green instead of that standard orange coloured seed inside of the seed coat.
They never ripened so nobody is sure if they are saleable and for how much.
A big variation in quality as early sown lentils almost got there as in ripe and some samples are reasonable.
Later sown lentils ; ie; early June sowing [ ie; Rolf's,] and on have been cooked.
They also went flat as in about the height of a coke can but that turned out to be about the equivalent of the height of Mt Lofty compared to where they are now after some 80mms of rain in the last 4 weeks.
We harvested 300 ha's but then figured the wheat might be quicker and better money so left the other 200 ha's for some meandering over after the wheat is off.

Wheat is going close to 3 t/ ha even though it was also fairly well knocked around by the heat and we were a bit astonished to find that it was not shot and sprung by the falling numbers and screenings and etc are within limits although only ASW so it is just go for the wheat at the moment between rains to try and get the wheat off.
The wheat stubble would normally be good for about 4 to 5 tonnes / ha but again the heat and lack of those finishing rains fixed that and brought yields back to around the 3 tonne mark which is what the first 180 ha' paddock made.

We are harvesting at 13% as it is all going into our aerated silos [ 2500 tonnes in total ] and dries down in them.
Rolf is not bad at the selling side and he wheels and deals after harvest around Feb and March when the prices climb a fair bit after the big harvest flush is over.

A hell of a lot of barley was around here and some is still not harvested yet as they have gone onto other crops and left the barley although some is almost abandoned due to shooting in the head and near worthless.
Very good yields up around the 4 tonnes plus as it was matured enough to get through the heat period.

Canola, small areas and the usual disaster with no yields.
Beans are around but are not harvested although a couple of guys were going today in the beans as the wheat moisture was still up 12.5 % plus until around 2 pm after the rain on Friday.

And malleeman , ask Rolf if he knows a bit more about hydraulic circuits when you catch up with him when you are playing with the your heli's.

LOL LOL didnt think it would take you to long to figure out who i was rom ,say gidday to rolf for me and all the best for harvest..

Couch Grass
• Herbicide is best applied when growth is freshest. This
is usually 3-4 days after a summer rain and no more
than 2 weeks after rain.
• Double knock approach - 1.5L SpraySeed® around
December to remove aerial growth, then a heavy
application of glyphosate (450g/L) up to 4L/ha when
fresh young growth reappears (usually around
February). Control needs to take place while
temperatures are still warm , therefore the end of
March is too late to spray.
• When choosing a summer spray mix, it may be worth
adding an extra 1L/ha of glyphosate for couch control
where required
• Cultivation prior to spraying couch will limit the
uptake of the herbicide through the plant and increase
it’s spread. Spraying should occur prior to cultivation.
• Burning, cultivation and heavy grazing without the use
of herbicide is generally ineffective in controlling couch.

thanks FW for the info on couch ill print this out and add to me bookwork,as what you explained ive been doing for the past three years going with followup's but the dam stuff keeps coming back and it does get quite expensive.
Cant think off hand who told me but was told that deep ripping at the right time did thin the stuff out.
cheers and merry xmas to all

I sprayed from 6pm to 9pm (dark!) last night, 17 litres of Metsulferon for the Verbascum (aaron's rod) which got out of control last year, but it's responding well to being murdered.

Unfortunately what I also found was, now the grass is all brown and crisp, I could see how much horehound there is, everywhere. Apparently MCPA is the stuff for Horehound and I've got some, and I think it'll work on the plants that are pushing up leaves, but the big ones are all seeds now so I'm doubtful that they'll be affected.

Found a bit of St John's that I missed with my Grazon run, it's in flower now so easy to spot. I just tore that up.

Hi. New here but do a lot of spraying. Goal, a Dow thing, is deadly to couch here in the Hunter Valley in NSW. We have a fenceline mix in a 70lt (via a consulting agronomist) quad bike tank of 500ml Roundup Powermax, 300ml of Lontrel & 50ml of Goal. Nothing survives & dies a slow, to the roots death. PPE is required with Goal a bit smelly. Hope this helps.