There is a great opportunity for current and those of you who aspire to be pumpkin growers to learn about disease diagnosis this week. The South Centers at Piketon will be hosting a Pumpkin Disease Diagnosis Field Night on Thursday, Oct. 5. This field night will be focused on various types of diseases and part of it will be held in their pumpkin research field.

This program will run 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. and will include the following topics: pumpkin crop management, evaluations of 30 different pumpkin cultivars, disease control and management, and how to screen for powdery mildew, downy mildew, anthracnose, and white speck. The cost is $10 which includes a light supper. Register by Wednesday, Oct. 4, by contacting Charissa Gardner at 740-289-2071, ext. 132.

Milkweed is the sole host plant for the Monarch Butterfly for egg laying and caterpillar rearing. It also serves as a food source for Monarchs as well as many other pollinator species, but this plant has been declining which has had a direct effect on the Monarch populations. The Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative is calling for participation in their Milkweed Pod Collections Program.

Milkweed Pods can be collected through October 31st and dropped off at our local SWCD office. Some things to keep in mind: Pick the pods when they are dry (grey or brown); if the center seam pops with gentle pressure, they can be picked. Make sure that before you collect seed, you become familiar with the *common* milkweed to avoid harvesting pods from similar plants such as hemp dogbane and swamp milkweed. Store the pods in paper bags; plastic bags collect unwanted moisture. And, put the date and county where they were collected on the bag when you turn them in at the SWCD office at 820 Fair Road in Sidney.

I did get my annual Weed Survey done this week! (We do this in the fall and drive the county to check about 100 soybean fields for types of weeds and infestation levels.) There are lots of weeds out there this year!! A lot of this increased population is because of all that rain we had early in the season, slow-growing soybeans that allowed more sunlight for germination and growth, and the fact that windy days postponed herbicides could be sprayed. I saw lots of marestail, giant ragweed, and waterhemp in the 110 fields I surveyed. Of course, there was also some velvet leaf, foxtail, redroot pigweed, and others, but not to the same extreme!!

I did have one field that made me a bit concerned … I even did a GPS reading so I could find it again. Then, I coerced Jeff Stachler (“Weed Guru”) to go with me to that field the next day to verify whether the weed was, indeed, waterhemp or if I’d stumbled upon Palmer amaranth … It *was* waterhemp (my first guess, based on the leaf shape and size of the petioles), but it had an extremely *long* seed head at the top. However, it wasn’t as *rough* as Palmer’s is …

Trust Me: We really do not want Palmer amaranth! For more information on this “monster weed,” visit http://u.osu.edu/osuweeds/super-weeds/palmer-amaranth/ for fact sheets, videos, etc.

I do have to point out, though, that on our drive through Shelby County on Tuesday morning, Jeff was jealous! He said we have more weeds than he does! Yep, there are a lot! But, they are everywhere: Down and back to Marysville on Friday, I saw plenty of fields heavily infested. Like I said, it’s been a “weedy year.” Let’s hope for better weed-control conditions next!