Weed grasses bring a lot of trouble to farmers and gardeners. But this one is leading in its vitality, it is extremely difficult to get rid of it. Grows everywhere where cereal plants are sown. It is adjacent to spring wheat, barley, cultivated oats and other crops. The name of the weed is common oats. Read more about this plant in the article.
Morphology
Oats (another name - empty oats) is an annual plant, grows to a height of 80-120 cm. Its stems are erect, bare, the root system is fibrous, very well developed.
The leaves are flat, up to 30 cm long, arranged linearly on the stem. The shape is straight or slightly twisted counterclockwise. They have interesting ciliated edges, decorated with rare and long hairs (cilia) in a row.
Inflorescence is a long (up to 30 cm) spreading panicle. The oatmeal plant has large spikelets with 2 or 3 flowers, blooms from early June to late August. One copy gives up to 500-600 seeds - spindle-shaped kernels. 1000 fruits of wild oats weigh 15-25 grams. They retain their germination on average 3-4 years, and under favorable conditions up to 7-9 years.
Spread
The range of its distribution is extremely wide. Oatmeal, like many other weeds, perfectly adapts to adverse climatic conditions. It tolerates heat and frost equally well, is “friendly” with pests that do not touch it, competes well with other plants, both cultivated and weedy, most often winning the battle for territory.
Common oatmeal is found everywhere in Eurasia. For example, in Kazakhstan, the area of crops littered with empty oats is approximately 4-4.5 million hectares! It also grows in every corner of North America, often found in North Africa. Today, oats are moving deeper south, adapting to new conditions and conquering the southern hemisphere of the planet.
What conditions are suitable for the growth of wild oats
Grains germinate already at a soil temperature of 3-4 ° C, but the most suitable temperature for germination is 15-18 ° C. The most viable seedlings are obtained from grains that are at a depth of 10-15 cm, but they can grow from a depth of 20-25 cm, even 30-40 cm in the presence of sufficient moisture and clear warm weather.
The seeds retain their viability under any conditions for up to three years, and under favorable conditions, even up to nine years.
According to the national calendar, mass shoots of oatmeal will appear a few days after the buds open on birch trees.
Common oats is an unpretentious plant. It is fun to spike, turn green and bloom even in the hottest summers. Does not die during prolonged droughts. Clogging cultural crops remains unharmed after the invasion of pests or epidemics. Belongs to the category of hardly eradicated plants. Defeating him is very difficult.
Interesting fact about the survival of wild oats
If you take the fruit of wild oats, drop a couple of drops of water on it, then the grain will miraculously come to life! She begins to move - at first slowly, then spinning faster and faster around her axis. This mechanism allows the grains to dig themselves into the soil to the desired depth. A little rain is enough for the crumbling seeds of common oats to come to life and quickly plunge into the ground. Now the seeds will calmly lie until next spring to give new shoots.
Malware
Nevertheless, they constantly struggle with oats because it clogs cereal plants and causes a lot of damage to crops:
- drains the soil very much, leaving no moisture to the cultivated grain. The oatmeal takes 700 liters of water for the formation of 1 kg of fruit, for comparison, wheat - up to 500 liters;
- very depletes the soil. For 100 kg of grain, empty oats use nitrogen 50 kg, phosphorus - 10-15 kg, potassium - 30 kg. Wheat for 100 kg of grain requires nitrogen 30 kg, phosphorus 10 kg, potassium 20 kg;
- spreads root rot;
- promotes the reproduction of Swedish flies, nematodes, smut;
- greatly reduces the yield of cash crops (for example, if wheat crops are clogged with oatmeal, then its yield steadily falls by 10 kg per hectare);
- easily crosses with cultivated oats, reducing its breeding qualities.
Methods of struggle
To defeat common oats, use herbicides. High efficiency showed "Horizon 080 ke" and "Topic Super 240 ke". It is recommended to use the Axial 045 herbicide in barley crops.
With severe clogging by empty oats, fallow fields are used, and conditional seed is used.
Gardeners often use them to sprout seedlings to combat this malicious weed, trying to destroy the common oatmeal before the phase of ripening and shedding of seeds on the ground. But this method is ineffective, because in this amazing plant the ripening of seeds in a panicle is stretched over time. What does it mean? The panicle consists of three tiers, in each of which the seeds ripen in due time. At the bottom, the grains are still completely green, and on top they have already crumbled. Full shedding takes a whole month! Another wonderful survival mechanism that Mother Nature gave to common oatmeal.
But that is not all. In each tier panicles grains differ in appearance and biological characteristics, have their purpose:
- large grains are located in the lower tier. They clog the grain;
- on the middle tier, the fruits are slightly smaller. Their main task is to ensure the annual renewal of seedlings of empty oats;
- the smallest seeds are in the upper tier of the panicle. They are the most insidious and viable. They lie in the soil until they are 7–9 years old, and when the farmer was completely happy that he had defeated the common oats in his field, they suddenly sprouted.
