Total Landscape Care Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/183921
chemical care 5 TIPS FOR APPLICATORS Dealing with weeds in and around water may seem like it throws a whole new degree of difficulty into the process of weed control, but whether on land or lurking deep, the concepts are the same. Here, Dean Mosdell, western technical manager for Syngenta, breaks it down into five simple steps. 1 Weed ID is key. Just as it is with turfgrass, keeping the desirable plants in the water while ridding unwanted weeds means you need a good handle on which are which. There are many searchable options online, especially from universities, with photos that will help guide your identification efforts. 2 Pick the product. Once you have a positive ID on your plants and weeds, you'll select an aquatic herbicide that targets the plants you want gone. "Whether the weed is submerged and where it's growing will dictate your options for herbicides," Mosdell says. Look to the label to let you know if an herbicide can be used for weeds in and around water. 3 Application technique. How you get the herbicide material to the plant depends largely on the size of the body of water you're treating. Equipment options range from a backpack sprayer for smaller ponds to a boat for larger ones, Mosdell says. "Applying 4 0 To ta l L a n d s cap eCare.c om TLC1013_ChemCare.indd 40 the product in a large body of water could mean using a hose behind a boat with the nozzle below the surface of the pond," he says. "The propeller actually helps disperse the herbicide." Getting enough movement under water to help with dispersal is an important part of the process whether you're using a boat or backpack sprayer. You also may need to consider breaking up your application into sections, and time them so you're not stripping the water of too much vegetation at one time. "Sometimes, you don't want to treat everything at once because you would lose oxygen in the water," Mosdell says. "In that instance, you would treat only one area at a time, leaving enough vegetation for fish cover." will keep trying. We are committed as an industry to getting this right. In the meantime, we're looking to make compliance make sense," she says. While RISE and the green industry as a whole support measures to ensure public and environmental safety, the need for pesticide application to be regulated under two acts is unnecessary, Reardon says. Some states are also recognizing the redundancy that may exist with two regulatory processes for aquatic herbicides and are trying to make the permit process easier for applicators. "They are looking at making the permit process more accommodating for the time being," Reardon says. "This permit process is, after all, a burden 4 Additives. Some product labels call for adjuvants or surfactants to be added to herbicides for improved performance, especially when treating larger weeds. "Make sure those adjuvants are labeled for aquatic use because not all of them are," Mosdell says. 5 Fear not. "Many people are scared of it, but dealing with weeds in and around water is really not that different than managing weeds in turf," Mosdell says. "The same principles apply: Identify the weed, select the right herbicide and apply it correctly." O C T O B E R 2 013 9/25/13 1:25 PM