No matter the weather conditions, weeds always seem to thrive. Custer County weed superintendent Tim Conover was a recent guest on KCNI’s Public Affairs and provided an update on what he has been seeing this summer.
“Well as far as the musk thistles go, you know earlier on I don’t think it was even in people’s minds because you weren’t really seeing them and they didn’t seem like they were out there and then once we got the rain and then the heat and the sun they went from like rosettes to seaman like the next day they had blooms on them and it was almost too late to take care of them I think they kind of snuck up on people this year, At this point, the musk thistles are probably pretty much, for the most part, done growing but I mean if you haven’t gotten to them you still need to either pick the heads off of them or chop them down or shred them just to knock them down and try to keep the seeds from spreading any more than they can. As far as the leafy spurge goes, I think there’s leafy spurge out there at all stages right now. There’s that leafy spurge out there that well, it’s already matured and seeded and If that’s the case I’d probably wait until fall to spray that at this point, but then there’s also leafy spurge that was maybe sprayed last fall and so it made it come up later this year or not as fast. So, there’s leafy spurge out there that is just starting to flower and hasn’t seeded yet or there’s just sprigs coming up and bolting and if that’s the case then I would still go ahead and spray that right now.”
Conover talked about the role of the landowner when it comes to controlling noxious weeds.
“Yeah, I mean state statute. I mean, it’s not against the law to have noxious weeds on your property I mean everybody has weeds but the state statute says that if you have noxious weeds on your land then the landowners required to control them or to keep them from spreading and so that’s what they’re required to do.”
Conover also provided some clarification as to responsibility for controlling noxious weeds on right of ways.
“As far as the right-of-ways go in Custer County, how things work in Custer County is if there’s noxious weeds on the highway right-of-ways, the Nebraska Department of Transportation is required to take care of them. If it’s a county road, the county is required to take care of the noxious weeds. And then if it ends up being a township road, the landowners are responsible to the middle of the road to take care of the noxious weeds. So that’s how that works in Custer County.”
