Field Day | Evaluation of Dismiss, Roundup & Salt for Weed Control in Seashore Paspalum

You are invited to a seminar/field day to see the results of 3-herbicide tests involving Dismiss, Roundup and salt on goosegrass, crabgrass, postrate spurge, creeping indigo, dollarweed, horseweed, nutsedge, and purslane in a seashore paspalum lawn. Although the results were inconsistent, you may still find the information useful and interesting.

Date: March 28, 2013 (Thursday)
Time: 10:45 to 12:00 pm
Place: UH-Maui College (UH-MC) Agricultural Greenhouse & Lawn. Across the Maui Arts & Cultural Center near the recycling center on Wahine Pi’o Avenue. Park in the lot next to the new science building with the vertical windmills on its roof top.

Hawaii Dept. of Agriculture Pesticide categories will be offered for categories 1a, 3, 6 & 10.

Deadline to register is March 27 (Wednesday) to reserve your handouts for this event. You can register by email (nagatan@ctahr.hawaii.edu) or by calling the Cooperative
Extension Service at 244-3242 x230. Please provide your name, company & telephone number should we need to contact you of any changes to this event.

Mahalo to: Ann Emmsley and William Jacintho of UH-MC for making this test and field day possible.

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control


To: Golf Course & Landscape Industries
From: Norman M. Nagata, Extension Agent

A test was conducted at Waiehu Municipal Golf Course to evaluate the efficacy of several herbicide combinations with Roundup, Revolver, MSMA, and Sencor to control herbicide resistant goosegrass using 2 spray applications at 2 weeks apart. You are invited to a field day to observe the results of this test.

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control

Date: April 7, 2011 (Thursday)
Time: 11:30 am to 12:30 pm
Place: Meet at Waiehu Golf Course “Service Entrance” (6th tee) next to Waiehu Beach Park & Baseball Field located at the end of “Lower Waiehu Beach Road” (MAP) at 11:15 am am. We will then car-pool to the test site at the 17th tee.

UH gardening gurus set invasive-species classes

Hawaii gardeners have the advantage of a year-round growing season that allows us to pick up plants any time of year and add them to our backyard collection. And local garden centers carry an abundance of ornamental shrubs, trees and herbs from which to choose.

The University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service wants to help home gardeners to be knowledgeable when choosing plant material. The UH Master Gardeners on Oahu have teamed up with the Hawaii Invasive Species Council to provide classes and demonstrations to the public. (See the Star-Advertiser’s Home & Garden calendar for class listings.)

What is an invasive species? Technically, according to HISC, an invasive species is an alien species — plant, animal, or microbe transported by humans to a location outside its native range — whose introduction has caused or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.

Basically, foreign plant material that propagates at warp speed and those seeds or plant parts that can travel long distances to naturally forested areas are termed invasive. These plants often demonstrate rapid and aggressive growth, production of numerous seeds that are spread easily by wind, wing or water, and the ability to grow under many different soil and climatic conditions.

What is the impact of invasive species? It’s the plants whose “keiki” reach the natural forested areas that take the largest toll on our native species and ecosystems. They threaten native plant habitats, reducing the number of native plants and affecting plant biodiversity, as well as the insect biodiversity that depends on those plants.

Get a jump on your spring planting

by Diana Duff
Special To West Hawaii Today

Spring is fast approaching. Gardeners are itching to start their summer gardens. One way to get started now, before the summer rains come pouring down, is to browse seed catalogs, order some interesting varieties and plant them soon.

Most plants will mature about 90 days after seeding, so you can start harvesting veggies and enjoying flowers by June if you plant early in March. With more than a month before we get longer days and warmer, wetter weather, it’s a good time to plant seeds.

Start by dreaming. Though we can garden year- round, we can use some dreaming downtime. Check seed catalogs online or order some to ponder in an easy chair. Several companies have seeds that do well here and come highly recommended from local gardeners.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange offers hundreds of varieties of flowers, herbs and veggie seeds. It emphasizes varieties that perform well in warmer climates like ours. Its Cosmic Purple carrot might be worth a try.

At ctahr.hawaii.edu/seed, you’ll find a list of seeds that have been perfected to grow well in Hawaii. Its Anuenue or Manoa lettuces are tried and true for great salads.

Seabury Dirt Devils winners

OLINDA – The 4-H Dirt Devils of Seabury Hall will represent Hawaii in the Conservation Awareness Program national competition May 4 to 6 in Oklahoma City. The four-member team is raising funds to attend the event.

Sixty-five high school students representing Baldwin, Kamehameha Maui, Lahainaluna, Maui High, St. Anthony and Seabury competed Oct. 19 at Maui Tropical Plantation in the Maui contest that tests students on how to classify soil, analyze the slope of land and recommend best use of lands.

The 4-H Dirt Devils advanced to, and won, the state competition Nov. 30 at Kunia, Oahu.

The Hawaii Association of Conservation Districts co-sponsors the local and state contests with the Soil and Water Conservation Districts of each island, in cooperation with the University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To help the team travel to Oklahoma, contact Maggie Kramp of the Maui Soil and Water Conservation District at 871-5500, ext. 101, or e-mail maggie.kramp@hi.nacdnet.net.

Seabury Dirt Devils winners – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control


To: Golf Course & Landscape Industries
From: Norman M. Nagata, Extension Agent

A test was conducted on November 9 at Waiehu Municipal Golf Course to evaluate the efficacy of several herbicide mixes used by superintendents and new combinations to control goosegrass. On November 22, another test was conducted to observe the effects on using Revolver and Roundup at different rates for goosegrass control. You are invited to a field day to observe the results of these two tests.

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control

Date: December 17, 2010 (Friday)
Time: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Place: Meet at Waiehu Golf Course “Service Entrance” (6th tee) next to Waiehu Beach Park & Baseball Field located at the end of “Lower Waiehu Beach Road” (MAP) at 10:45 am. We will then car-pool to the test site at the 17th tee.

Freshened frills restyle poinsettias for new year

Poinsettias can transition from Christmas into New Year’s decorations with some additional flair. Get dried, curly ting ting plant branches from a florist or craft supply shop, and place the stems into the pot and among the poinsettia foliage.

Ting ting comes in silver, gold, red, green and natural colors. Floral supply shops also carry spray glitter that is safe for plants. Simply changing the container or decorative wrap will also freshen up the plants to carry into next year.

Poinsettias are native to Central America and tropical Mexico. A botanist and diplomat named Joel Robert Poinsett, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829, is credited with making this plant known throughout the world.

Poinsettias of today look much different from those found growing in the tropics. Short, bushy types have been developed for indoor holiday decoration. Intensive hybridization has resulted in beautiful new colors, including cream, yellow, peach, pink, improved reds and marbled and speckled bracts. The modern hybrids also hold their color for many weeks, lasting through the holidays and into the new year.

The brilliant color of the poinsettia does not come from the flowers, but rather the bracts. Bracts, often mistaken for flower petals, are actually modified leaves. The true flowers are small, yellow buttons, called cyathia, in the center of the colorful bracts. In November and December, when the days grow shorter, the colorful bracts begin to form.

Autograph trees are invading Hawaii’s forests


by Diana Duff

Many gardeners in Hawaii have become native plant enthusiasts. More and more people are awakening to the beauty of our native species and learning about them and the vigilance required to save them from harm or eventual extinction. Events like Arbor Day at Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, offering free native plants and information on growing them, help folks learn ways to grow and care for native plants. Interest in these plants, which have thrived in our native forests for millennia, helps raise awareness of the threats a multitude of invasive species pose to them.

One particularly threatening species, the autograph, or signature, tree (Clusia rosea) caught the notice of Darcy Ames, who has witnessed firsthand the encroachment of this species on the ohia forests near her home.

“When I first bought property in Holualoa, I thought the autograph tree was quite lovely,” Ames said. “After a few years of experience, inspection and investigation, I began to realize this tree was capable of destroying the habitat of our ohia and other native species unless we began a proactive course against it.

“After witnessing the damage it can cause, I can honestly say that I hate what this plant is capable of doing. Autograph seeds can be dropped by birds and root as much as 20 or 30 feet in the air in the crotch of an ohia tree.

Poinsettia: It’s all about the leaves

by Russell T. Nagata
Special To West Hawaii Today

If it weren’t for the highly colored leaves, the poinsettia would be best known by some other name. Its scientific name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, literally means “most beautiful Euphorbia.” The true flowers of the poinsettia are called cyathia and are the green and white beads tipped with yellow and red in the center of the flowers. The showy parts of the plants are actually modified leaves called bracts.

The poinsettia grows wild in southern Mexico and naturally blooms under the shorter daylight hours of the fall season. The Aztec name for this plant was cuetlaxochitl and was use in many ways. A purplish dye was extracted from the colorful bracts to be used in textiles and cosmetics and the latex sap was used to treat fevers.

The plant was introduced into the United States by Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1825-29. Although trained in the medical profession, Poinsett’s real love was botany. On a trip to the Taxco area in 1828, he collected the brilliant red flowering plants and grew them at his South Carolina farm. He distributed the plants to friends, who distributed it to their friends and so on. It’s easy to see how the name originated.