(inspiring music) - They say the only things certain in life are death and taxes.

Well, I think we should add one more and that is weeds.

If you grow a garden or a lawn, you can count on having some weeds in your life, too.

Today, we're going to meet a fellow who has spent his whole career growing crops and trying to control weeds.

I'm Mary Holm, host of "Prairie Yard and Garden", and join me as we learn about the wild weeds of the West.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company.

Providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting, near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden.

A community of supporters like you, who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden", visit pioneer.org/PYG.

(wholesome music) - Lots of people may think I'm crazy, but I kind of like to hoe and pull weeds, if it is not too hot, and if the mosquitoes are not too bad.

No one else in the family really liked to pull weeds, so that was a me time of peace and quiet.

And the garden and flower beds always look so nice when the job is done, and everything is nice and clean.

Today, we are visiting with Frank Forcella, who has spent his career keeping weeds at bay in the field and in the garden.

Welcome, Frank.

- Thank you, Mary, it's a pleasure to be with you.

- Tell us about your background.

- Well, when I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a famous television program in those days, called "Sea Hunt".

And the actor was Lloyd Bridges and he used to fight sharks.

And I thought, "That's what I wanna do for the rest of my life."

(dramatic music) And the university I went to had what was called a cooperative study program, where you would work three months, and then go to school for three months, and you would pay your way through college by working for those three months.

And the first job I had was at a marine biology lab, but I didn't have to fight any sharks.

What I had to do is clean the shells of oysters, eight hours a day, five days a week, and that cured me of my desire to be a marine biologist.

And I met a professor of botany, who told me about his explorations around the world, especially in the tropics in Brazil, finding interesting plants, and that sold me on becoming a botanist.

So then I graduated from university, I went out to Montana State University, 'cause I loved mountains and I was studying alpine plants, plants that grow in the very highest parts of the mountains.

But then, when I needed to get a job eventually, nobody really pays you to study alpine plants, but they do pay you to study weeds.

And the very first job I had was to look for new invasive weeds in the Pacific Northwest, and that's what got me started on weeds, and it's been a love affair ever since.

- What are some of the major differences between some of the weeds?

- There are several differences.

Some of them are native plants, others are introduced.

And so, it's easier to get, for example, noxious weed legislation for the introduced weeds, as opposed to the native weeds, but all of them are troublesome for homeowners, for farmers.

The other issues with weeds are whether they're perennial or whether they're annual, and some weeds have poisonous qualities, others you can eat if you want to.

- Why is it important to know what kind of weed you have in your yard to deal with them?

- Well, probably the most important part is how to control them.

For example, if you're using a herbicide, different weeds react differently to different herbicides.

And so, it's important to know the species of weed that you're working with.

- Is there a difference in controlling annual weeds, versus perennial weeds?

- Yeah, that's a very good question, and there's different answers for it.

So typically, it's easier to control an annual weed, than it is a perennial weed, because annual weeds only grow for one year, as soon as you control it, it's dead.

Whereas a perennial weed, typically they have a deep root system or an extensive root system, they're gonna live for many years, even though you can control the top part of the plant, the roots or rhizomes are still going to survive, and new shoots will be coming up and plaguing you for the rest of the year and for years in the future.

But annual weeds tend to produce lots and lots of seeds, and those seeds then will germinate next year and the year after and the year after that, and they will continue to plague you for years into the future as well.

- I've also heard the terms grassy weeds and broadleaf weeds, what does that mean?

- Well, a grass weed is going to be related to, say, a bluegrass, your lawn grass, and it can be a perennial or an annual, but one of the issues with any grassy weed, is that once that seed germinates in the soil and starts growing, the growing point of the plant is still below the soil surface.

So even though you see the leaves starting to come up through the soil and you try to control them either by cutting them or spraying them with common herbicides, it's only killing the top growth.

The growing point of that small grass seedling is still down below the soil surface.

They use leaf stages as an indication of the size of grasses, many weeds, and it's only when it gets to be about the six, eight leaf stage, is that growing point now getting above the soil surface.

Now, if you kill it at that point, it's gone, but until you reach that point, that grass plant is still gonna be growing, even though you clipped off the top part of the plant.

In contrast, a typical broadleaf weed, at least an annual broadleaf weed, once it germinates, the growing point is above the soil surface, and as soon as you clip that weed, it's dead.

(country music) - While, the winters in Minnesota are famous, we do have our fair share of 90 plus days in the summer.

Yard work and baseball games leave us looking for relief.

Sometimes a cool drink is all we need.

Of all the delicious summer drinks, lemonade is at the top of my list.

That cold blend of sweet and sour, helps fight the summer heat.

Summer is also a time of vegetable and herb gardens, and basil is one of my favorite flavors.

I can add it to salads, pasta sauce and many other dishes.

But today, we're going to learn a unique place for basil in your lemonade.

That's why I'm in the kitchen today with our favorite chef, Carole Johnson, who's going to show us a new twist on classic lemonade that your friends and family will love.

- I have a special lemonade.

Today, I'm going to put basil and honey, not just any honey, but local honey in our lemonade.

- [Mary] So why is local honey so much better?

- [Carole] Because it has antiviral, antibacterial, and promotes good digestive health.

- [Mary] Well, and I think that I've heard that it also contains pollen, which can strengthen our immune system against allergies here in Minnesota.

- That's right.

This lemonade will not only taste good, but will have some health benefits to boot.

Today, we need fresh lemon juice from 10 to 12 lemons, honey, basil leaves, cold water, ice and a pinch of salt.

Blend your concoction on high for about a minute or until smooth.

Filter your mix into a fine mesh strainer over your pitcher.

Discard all the solids.

Add cold water and whisk to combine.

Add ice and garnish with fresh basil, for a refreshing hot weather drink.

- And if you'd like to try this recipe and lots of other delicious recipes, visit minnesotagrown.com.

Carole, I think I'm gonna have another glass.

Well, I collected some weeds at our place this morning.

Can you tell me what these things are that I got and maybe some of the ways that I can help control 'em?

- Sure.

The first weed that we have here, that I see here, is a foxtail.

There are many different species of foxtails, and it is probably one of the most common grassy weeds in the state of Minnesota and adjacent states as well.

Many of the foxtails that are in your garden will have a kind of a sticky seed head, they'll stick to your socks, stick to your trousers, if you've got hairy legs, it's gonna stick to your hairy legs.

But it's a very common weed, it's an annual, there are some perennial foxtails too, but this happens to be an annual and it can be a nuisance.

And as you can possibly see from these seed heads, there's a lot of seeds there, and if you did not pull this plant up, you would have several hundred seeds plaguing you for next year.

The next plant that we see here is crabgrass.

Crabgrass is a very common weed in lawns.

It usually doesn't affect vegetable gardens to any great extent, but it's a very, very common, and very problematic weed in lawns.

Unlike the foxtail, it tends to germinate much later.

So foxtails tend to germinate early May.

Typically, crabgrass will germinate much later, like the 1st of June or so.

So if you're going to apply a herbicide, for example, some of the herbicides that stop seed germination, you have to make sure you apply that herbicide about the time just before it's going to germinate.

If you apply that herbicide too early, it dissipates by the time the crabgrass is germinating.

And if you apply it too late, after the crabgrass has germinated, then you don't get any control.

The other grass that we see here...

I might add, Mary, you have a lot of weeds at your place.

This particular plant is a perennial and it is quackgrass.

And one of the ways you can tell it's a perennial, is that it has a rhizome.

So typically, this part of the plant where my hand is, would be below the soil surface, and you can see a new shoot arising from the rhizome, right here, where my finger is pointing.

The quackgrass can grow quite tall, maybe two feet tall or so.

It's very hardy in Minnesota.

It is our worst perennial grass weed in the entire state, in all of the adjacent states as well.

It's a very difficult plant to control.

You know, you can use a hoe and so forth, to hoe it and try to get rid of those rhizomes in the springtime, well, throughout the growing season, and you will be successful to an extent, but you will have to be very persistent.

Now, there are some herbicides, of course, that will kill this plant, but to get good control, even with a herbicide, it has to be what's called a systemic herbicide.

So you apply the herbicide to the leaves and that herbicide then has to go down through the stem to the rhizomes, to kill the rhizomes.

If the herbicide doesn't do that, you might get a little bit of top growth control, but you're not gonna control the entire plan.

(inspiring music) - Frank, I brought a whole bunch more of weeds, and I think these are broadleafs, but can you tell me for sure?

- Mary, you're absolutely right.

Every weed I see on this table is a broadleaf weed, well done.

- But tell me what I brought.

- This one is purslane.

It's a very common weed in my own garden, my own vegetable garden.

It's very thick leaves, but very prostrate as well, so it never grows very tall, maybe less than a foot tall, never more than that.

It will have yellow flowers.

One of the interesting things about purslane, is that you can actually eat it, you can use it as a salad green and it actually tastes okay, it doesn't taste great, but it tastes okay.

But it is annoying, the flowers will produce so many seeds, very, very tiny seeds, and so many of them that it will come back in your vegetable garden and plague you for many years into the future.

Unlike some weeds that germinate only in the early spring or late spring or early summer, this weed will germinate all summer long, and so you have to be very persistent in it's control.

Now, there are some chemicals that you can use to control it.

For myself, I prefer to simply use a hoe or my hands to control purslane in my vegetable garden.

Here's one that is typically not a problem in your vegetable garden, but it can be a problem if you have a tree line around your house, or if you have a natural area or a semi-natural area nearby, this is called buckthorn, and it will grow into a small tree.

It can be a very tall shrub or a short tree, probably up to 20 feet tall.

It produces dark purple berries, almost blackberries that the birds will eventually eat.

They don't eat 'em immediately in the autumn when they're ripe, but they will eventually consume the fruit, and of course the fruit contains seeds, and then the birds will sit in another tree, on a fence line someplace, defecate, and those seeds then will get down into the soil and grow some new buckthorn plants.

Almost anywhere in Minnesota now, in natural areas, semi-natural areas or tree lines, you will see buckthorn, and sometimes it is so dense, you can't walk through that natural area or semi-natural area anymore.

It's a very, very bad weed.

The next one that we have over here is one that most people will recognize.

This is dandelion.

It's related to sunflowers.

You know, try to imagine when that dandelion is flowering, you can see the yellow pedals and so forth, try to just use your imagination and you see a sunflower there.

So they are in the same plant family, sunflowers and dandelions.

And, of course, this is a problem weed in lawns.

There are a number of control solutions for dandelion, and it depends on how much work and how much effort you want to spend controlling it.

Some people simply don't want to control a dandelion, they think it's too much work, too much effort, and if you're using herbicides to do it, some people simply don't wanna use those herbicides in their lawn.

But what I do, rather than spraying the entire lawn with a herbicide, I spot spray, or I hand dig the plants.

If you are using a hand tool to get the plants, you need to get the root system, it has a very deep root system, even small dandelions have a very deep root system and you have to go after those deep roots, 'cause otherwise new plants can emerge from that old taproot that the dandelion has.

Some other weeds here.

This is an interesting one, There's actually several small weeds here.

This is called prostrate knotweed.

It grows very low to the ground, and it's typically an indication of compacted soil.

Now, where do you get compacted soil?

Well, in a farm field, you can get compacted soil where a tractor tire is driving over the soil, but you can also get it in your yard, for example, where you are walking back and forth continuously.

If you have a sidewalk in your yard or your neighborhood, the soil that's within the cracks of that sidewalk will be very compacted.

This plant typically grows in sidewalk cracks, but this particular plant comes from my own yard, and that's because many years ago, a farmer friend that we have was delivering a large rock to my wife's a flower garden, and he used a large tractor to bring that rock from his farm to our yard, and had to drive through the yard to do that.

I can still see the tire track marks, well, I can't see the marks of the tires, the prostrate knotweed is an indication of the tire track marks, because of the compacted soil.

Next plant we have over here, one name is oxalis, that's the genus name, the botanical name is oxalis.

The common name is woodsorrel, and it can be quite a problem in vegetable gardens, in my own vegetable garden.

And it's, again, one of these weeds that germinates all summer long.

It also has yellow flowers, and they will produce many small seeds if those flowers are allowed to produce fruit with the seeds inside, those seeds will disperse in your vegetable garden and you will be pulling this weed for many years to come.

Again, like many of the broadleaf weeds, it's susceptible to broadly herbicides, common broadleaf herbicides, like 240.

Another plant we have here is called trefoil, birdsfoot trefoil.

And I don't know if you can see very well here, but the reason it's called birdsfoot trefoil, is because if you look at the seed pods, that looks like the foot of a bird.

So hence birdsfoot trefoil.

This plant tends to grow on road signs, adjacent to sidewalks and so forth.

Particularly this year, 2021, with the drought situation, this plant will continue to grow if it's growing next to a sidewalk or roadside, where there has been runoff from very few rain storms that have occurred this year, and it continues to grow and actually grows very, very well.

It's a legume, so it actually will fix nitrogen, and so it can be considered a beneficial plant in that regard.

And in fact, this plant originally was used in the US as a forage plant for cattle, for livestock.

I might add in terms of benefits, the honey bees absolutely love this plant, and right now, in July, if you find a patch of a birdsfoot trefoil during the daytime, you will almost certainly see honey bees getting the nectar from the flowers of this plant.

(relaxing music) - I have a question.

We are really enjoying the Itasca grape-based wines.

What can we expect in future red grape breeding?

- We do have a lot of interesting reds coming along.

The program has been focusing on red wine grapes for quite a long time already.

We're getting closer and closer to something that could be releasable in the near future.

We've been really working hard on developing something that can be very layered in it's flavors, not just like a single tone, kind of a red flavor note, but we're looking things that have a little bit more tannin and structure to the wine, as well as some really cool, interesting flavors, such as cedar or tobacco notes.

You might've seen marquette in the marketplace.

Marquette is a red wine grape that the university released back in 2006, and it's been performing really well for growers and wine makers.

Although, in the last few seasons, there's been some hiccups as far as it's survivability, due to the excess of rains that we've been having.

So there's been some trouble with the marquette in that regard, and we're looking to improve upon that going forward with something that's a little bit more bulletproof as far as the weather goes, and looking for something that is also really, really hardy at the same time, that can still produce one of those nice red wines, because marquette, if you haven't had the wine, it's one of the best things that you can get in the northern cold climate wine making regions.

We definitely have some other interesting reds that are coming up, such as this vine in the background here.

So we're always working toward, you know, looking for next best thing that's right around the corner and hoping that it hits sooner than later.

- [Announcer] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska.

Dedicated to enriching lives through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

- Frank, there's a lot of people that don't like to use sprays in their yards.

And so, what are organic or other methods they can use to control weeds?

- Mary, there's many different methods that can be used that do not involve synthetic herbicides.

For example, corn gluten meal has been used basically as a herbicide, but it's not a synthetic herbicide, it's a natural product.

And it works to some extent, but it's not the final solution for weed control for sure.

And there are many other techniques.

One of the things that I do in my own garden is try to mulch.

All the leaves that we rake from the trees in the fall, we save and use those in the garden in the summertime as a mulch, to control weeds.

Does it work perfectly?

No, of course not, but it works reasonably well.

The other thing we do when we are pruning the fruit trees and so forth, and we have lots of small branches, I shred them, and I use that material as a mulch as well.

Again, it works reasonably well, it's never perfect, but it's one way to use that those types of materials.

But typically, it's mechanical control.

And for the home gardener, there are many implements that one can use, but the trustee hoe is probably the most typical one that's used.

And so, I use a hoe frequently.

However, my favorite hoe doesn't look like this one, it's a little bit different, and I probably spend more time with this particular implement than any other implement in my shed.

It's a small hoe that can work around the small crop plants, vegetable plants, and so forth, and it works extremely well.

A hoe that looks like this, that has a kind of a dual purpose hoe that can go after the smaller weeds, with the tines at this end, and then the normal hoe blade at the other end.

If I'm getting down and dirty with the weeds, if there's lots of them and I'm on my hands and knees, I use an implement that looks like this, a hand hoe.

I like this one, because we can slice through the soil at a very shallow depth, to slice the roots of the weeds, and it works reasonably well.

And the last implement I'll show you, is this one that it has several tines on it that can be used to get small weeds, it doesn't work on larger weeds, it has to be very small weeds, just as they're germinating in the beds.

You can take some of these tines out of here.

If there's a crop coming up in the middle, then you can save the crop, and go and get the weeds that are growing adjacent to the crop.

- Well, this has been so wonderful.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and for all of the great information.

- You're welcome, Mary.

Pleasure to do it.

(inspiring music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years, in the heart of truck country.

Hartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm.

A nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting, near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you, who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/PYG.

(inspiring music)