Weeds

This week is going to be all about weeds. If you want to grow a productive crop, you should try to minimize weed growth as much as possible. Weeds will eventually compete with your crop about water, sunlight, nutrients, and space. They will eventually decrease the quantity of harvested lavender as well as the quantity in essential oil.

There are different ways of weed control. To prevent weeds from growing, mulch and green manure can be used. Also, cover crops will help to inhibit weed growth.

Drip irrigation is advisable to only water the lavender and suppresses weed growth. Many farms use a black soil cover to prevent the weeds from growing. In case that weeds could not have been prevented from growing, it might be useful to exclude them from sunlight. The lavender should be grown quite close together and with a large canopy.

Figure 1 Lavender weed control (Farm, 2017)

Weeds which are already present can be removed non-chemically by hand-hoeing and mechanical weeding, like a tractor-drawn cultivator (Department of Agriculture, 2009).

There is not sufficient information on herbicides which could be used, to recommend a specific one. In general, Roundup can be used. It is one of the most used herbicides in agriculture and has compared to many other herbicides a low toxicity.  

In general, if you grow lavender you should check your field regularly and record all weeds which are present. This will give you the option to analyses the weed growth and take necessary measures.

References

Department of Agriculture, F. a. (2009, November). Lavender Production. Retrieved from Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: http://www.nda.agric.za/docs/brochures/essoilslavender.pdf

Farm, P. A. (2017). Growing Commercial Lavender in the Midwest . Retrieved from Peaceful Acres Lavender Farm: https://peacefulacreslavenderfarm.com/commercial-lavender-planting