New noxious weed may threaten the area

Cheyenne County may soon be in the weeds.

The board of commissioners and Weed Superintendent Brian Hiett discussed whether or not a new weed in the amaranth family should be put on the County’s Noxious Weed List at their meeting yesterday.

Commissioner Harold Winkelman said that this weed was particularly a problem found in corn crops and soybeans, and that the “glorified pig weed” puts out thousands of seeds.

“If you see one of those suckers growing out there you better go pull it because it became Roundup resistant and it also became T40 resistant,” he said.

“This kind of thing has been a problem for awhile,” said Hiett. “It’s not something that just came on the scene. It’s been addressed at Purdue University and they have had a heck of a problem. They’ve had a heck of a problem with it in Indiana for years and years, I guess.”

Hiett said that the question is whether the infiltration of this new strain of amaranth weed is a county problem or the growers’ problem.

“This is an introduced broad leaf in a broad leaf crop,” he said. “You know beans, if the chemicals are getting resistant to it you’re going to have a heck of a problem.”

He said that he had heard of the weed creating such chaos that it caused the destruction of whole plots of crops.

“I don’t know if this would be considered a county noxious problem like Scots Thistle or Canada Thistle or Vine Weed,” he said.

“You can chop it and it’s dead,” said Commissioner Steven Olson. “It’s not like Vine Weed or Canadian Thistle in those respects.”

“The thing is, they’d have to kill it out,” said Hiett. “My thought and what they have been doing in a lot of places, is to rotate the corn where they have been doing corn year after year.”

The weed superintendent said that there was a chemical to combat the problem but that it isn’t allowed to be used on the crops.

Hiett said that he had heard of the weed spreading primarily in Morrill County and not so much yet in Cheyenne County.

Winkelman said that he had heard of it east of Sidney in a bean and corn field, and that one of the bean fields had to be abandoned and couldn’t be harvested due to the problem.

“I’m not sure people know exactly what could happen if this stuff takes over,” said Hiett.

“I’ve seen it along the edge of the road when it’s leaked out of the truck,” he continued. “With irrigation and getting nutrients like it does and stuff like that, the stuff can grow seven or eight feet tall.”

“Isn’t the state of Nebraska going to make it a noxious weed?” asked Commissioner Ken McMillen.

“I thought it was on the weed watch list but I can’t find it anywhere,” said Hiett. “The way I look at it is they need to be educating the growers and telling them what could happen.”

Winkelman said that the best thing to do would be to contact the state to see if the weed encroachment is even being addressed and to get the process started.

“But I really don’t know how you could patrol it to start with,” he said. “The thing is when you see it in the corn is when it is too late - it’s already went to seed. But you can probably get it in a bean field.”

“If you went into the corn field and chopped it out, by the time you drug it out it will have seeded all the way all over the place,” said McMillen.

“They use to have people walk through corn and bean fields with a hoe knocking down and thinning weeds,” said Olson.

Hiett said that he found in his research that if worse comes to worse that is exactly the approach farmers would have to take to rid themselves of the weed.

“If we do have to speak of it here in the county, if there is one small area of it, pretty soon everything would be on the noxious weed list,” said McMillen. “Where do we stop with this? Cheat grass can also takeover and cheat grass is 10 times worse than this – it’s everywhere.”

The commissioners compared the weed to not only cheat grass, but also wild oats.

“Contact the Secretary of Ag. and see if other counties have been concerned with it,” said Winkelman. “I can see it being in the southeast part of the state down there.”

The commissioner said that he doubts it will make the noxious weed list however.

They also questioned whether an annual plant belonged on the list.

Hiett said that the plant has an inch long taproot and is a native plant that is supposed to harbor good insects.

The commissioners also asked Hiett to check into the weed list in Morrill County because if the county lists weren’t the same “it wouldn’t do any good.”