Thank you, Michael. I will order this publication. Today, we spread our rye, oat, barley/vetch, red and white clover seed and dug up some young tansy, knapweed and hawkweed on Rapid Lightning on a bare ditching area that was never reseeded. I also gathered 2/3rds of a quart ziplock full of knapweed seedheads up on our hill, a mile and a half off the road to get the seeds to make pepper. I did not get much seed and stopped trying. I found 11 larvae or pupae and got an average of 1 seed per seedhead opened. A lot of the seedheads were empty of seeds altogether. Just a couple had their full contingent of seed.
I had the same experience when I gathered knapweed seedheads at the end of the road about five miles down the road from our hill. Agapeta sp. are all over this area, it seems. We have a friend who lives off the road on Sunnyside who has lots of knapweed in his yard. I will try there next. It is gratifying to know that an 8-year-old deployment of Agapeta is now all over the area. There has been so much turn-over in county weed supervisors and loss of records in a misguided attempt at fiscal responsibility by previous commissioners that no one had checked on the biological controls for knapweed until last year when I opened a seedhead in front of the Weed Supervisor and found a larva. I don't even know if future county commissioners would understand the significance of the widespread presence of Agapeta larvae and pupae on Rapid Lightning Road. Just this in itself seems like a good reason to me to keep the herbicide off this road. However, we will control spotted knapweed and the other weeds promised in our grant application on the right-of-way as we have understaken to do. Merla mroboz wrote: > Dear Idaho lady and others who are interested, Some time ago, there > was much discussion on knapweed management and one woman was appearing > before before very scarry panels. :Here is some info. that might be of > use that just came today in the mail: "Integrated Management of > Knapweed", Isa Woo, Tanya Drlik, Laurie Swiadon and William Quarles, > in the IPM Practitioner, vol; XXIV, #4, Apr. 2002. Most of this issue > is about monitoring, treatment thresholds, prevention physcial > controls, mowing and cultivation, grazing with sheep and goats, and > biological control with larva of certain moths and beetles. I know > the the BWC, Biological Weed Control, a commercial enterprise in > Bozeman, MT. was working on biological controls of knapweed and other > obnoxious weeds. To obtain this publication, write to:BIRCPO Box > 7414, Berkeley, CA, 94707510-524-2567,/ 510-524-1758 fax Hope this > helps some,Cheers, MichaelN. Vanc., BC, Canada
