February 2024 - 6

PERSPECTIVES | BY JOSEPH FAUST
Keeping fields cleaner
When one of my friends asked me
what I did for fun in winter, my wife
quickly chimed in and said: " He reads
seed catalogs. " I had to pause for a
moment, but then realized she was
right. I have at least two dozen seed
and plant catalogs addressed to my
house in any given winter.
I grew up poring over the pictures
and descriptions of Wisconsin's
own Jung Seed Catalog. One of the
highlights of my middle and high
school years was making the hourlong
trip each spring from New
Holstein to Randolph to buy my Jung
seeds. So, when offered the container
nursery and field manager role in
2015, I was honored to accept the
position. During my interview, the
owners stressed the need for two
things: keeping the fields cleaner and
reducing labor. My first thought was,
how do you do both?
KEEPING IT CLEANER
My initial approach to keep the
fields cleaner was mechanical.
Whenever possible, I had someone
on the cultivator knocking the weeds
back between the rows. We also used
a wiggle hoe to knock the weeds
down between plants within the row.
A hand-hoe crew followed to get the
weeds the equipment left behind.
This approach worked, until I
needed my crew for planting or
potting, or we had two weeks of rain
and the weeds got taller than our
equipment could handle. I later added
a multivator, a PTO-driven multi-head
tiller, to our equipment line to help
with weed control. The multivator
chops and kills the weeds rather than
dragging them and leaving them in
6 FEBRUARY 2024 GPNMAG.COM
Jung Seed Co. grows a large selection of daylily varieties. Photos courtesy of Joseph Faust.
the field to regrow the next time it
rains. The combination of multivator
and wiggle hoe offered exceptional
weed control. The problem was,
we had to repeat the process after
every rainfall because weed seeds
kept germinating all summer. All of
those passes over the soil compacted
it even more, making our clay soil
structure even worse.
My next approach was chemical
control. I sprayed the open fields
at the beginning of summer to kill
the early germinating weeds, then I
sprayed again with glyphosate and a
pre-emergent to kill the weeds before
planting. After planting, I sprayed
a third time. This also worked, for a
while. I saw some big weeds growing
but just left them. If I pulled a big
weed, 1,000 other weeds would grow
in its place.
Pretty soon, those few big weeds
took over and blocked our equipment
at harvest time. It also created
a plant selection process that
benefited tough-to-control weeds
such as Canada thistle (Cirsium
arvense), Yellow nutsedge (Cyperus
esculentus) and Marestail (Conyza
canadensis). Plus, nobody wants to
spray that often, especially in the heat
of summer. This " scorched earth "
approach would also do nothing to
help our soil structure and soil health.
Our clay soil continues to bring
challenges. I have not yet found an
effective cover crop to plant between
the rows that does not block up our
digging equipment. I now put a cover
crop in when a field plot is open. Doing
so builds up the soil and helps with
weed control. Nature hates a void.
I had five goals for my cover crop.
I was looking for something that
would hold the soil in place, keep
nutrients on the field in the form of
plant material, break up the clay with
a combination of long roots and the
added organic matter, smother weeds

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February 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of February 2024