Spring is underway and with the warm weather starts the work on yards, fields and golf courses to grow grass and manage weeds. New Mexico State University (NMSU) Extension weed specialist and assistant professor Leslie Beck and research associate Matteo Serena are conducting a research project to find a better timeline for pre-emergence herbicide applications to help prevent weeds.
Beck and Serena focused their research specifically on prostrate spurge (Euphorbia maculata), a summer annual weed that begins showing up earlier in the spring season compared to previous historical information recorded.
“One of the big downfalls of prostrate spurge is that you really don’t want it to successfully germinate because, once it does, that’s the beginning of a hard management process. Within a few weeks after germinating, it has already put thousands of viable seed back into the soil to germinate over the next few years, making management much more difficult in the future,” Beck said.
Serena and Beck began this project in March 2017 at NMSU’s golf course. The majority of the pre-emergence herbicide treatments that their research focuses on can be found in garden centers and hardware stores, and can be applied by homeowners. For comparison purposes, their project also included active ingredients available only to licensed applicators and golf course superintendents.
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