A Desperate Plea
05/19/2024
Team Blue,
Have you ever heard of quackgrass?
I sure have. Not originally, of course, not out of the womb in Santa Cruz. Almost certainly not as a child in Bermuda, nor as an adolescent in Los Angeles. It is as a young man moved to Wisconsin that I must have first heard the word, one noun among many that bubbled up in several years working at Midwestern BioAg, driving around the countryside with Uncle Gary and others, visiting farms and conferences and meetings. I was immersed in a whole panoply of particularities - like Pat Lozier out in Idaho with the rock phosphate, or the heavy muck soils they have up in Minnesota, or corn being the tall one. Yes, I heard the word then, “quackgrass”, likely said with the spit of derision or the sorrow of condolence. I knew that quackgrass existed, that it was on the naughty list, and that it could be found in Wisconsin. But really, I didn’t know quackgrass.
Myself, today, knows exactly what quackgrass is.
Purdue’s Turfgrass Science program describes Quackgrass, known to nerds as Elymus repens, italics and all, as follows:
Quackgrass ( Elymus repens) is a cool-season perennial that vigorously spreads by rhizomes. It is a sod-forming grass that can crowd out desirable grasses and even other weeds.
I don’t consider blueberries to be a weed, myself, but I will forgive Purdue’s Turfgrass Scientists for the omission. I can report that quackgrass will crowd out desirable blueberries as well.
Insofar as I am able to contribute a novel piece of information to the ever expanding and recomplexifying corpus of human noticings that is Science, I am pleased. Insofar as I am merely the latest in a long and illustrious line of humans who have been brought low in their spirits by quackgrass, I weep.
And through these tears comes a desperate plea: help me battle the quackgrass in the blueberries.
Step one of the battle plan is as follows: Hand pull quackgrass around each blueberry plant. There’s a rain coming this week - Wednesday will be the best day to do this. Remove all of the pulled quackgrass and rhizomes from the field to dry and burn.
The battle is not over at this point; not by a long shot. The balance of the year will contain some combination of more hand pulling, repeated attacks with a tiller and drag harrow in the grass lanes for much of the late summer and fall, laying out black plastic along the blueberry rows, and the eventual application of six or more inches of mulch within the blueberry rows. And did I mention more hand pulling?
This is the type of work made light by many hands.
As an enticement, as a gesture of good will and recognition of value transmitted, as a grateful gift from each and every blueberry plant to you, I offer to you a pound of pick your own blueberries (to be pick your owned later) if you lend a hand on Wednesday evening, 4-7pm.
Help,
Twin Crix
