Simazine for Controlling Weeds in Fruit Tree and Grape Plantings

Abstract

DRACTICAL and economical weed control measures are a necessary r part of tree fruit and grape production. Weeds and grasses are serious competitors of fruit plants for moisture and nutrients; they provide cover for destructive mice, and interfere with harvest of the crop. Mechanical methods of weed control are labor consuming, expensive and sometimes injurious to the roots and trunks of the fruit plants. The fruit grower looks to chemical control methods as the ultimate answer to his weed control problems. In recent years, monuron, diuron, and dalapon have shown promise as herbicides for fruit trees and grapes, (1,2,3,4,8). Dalapon is used for the control of grasses in apple and pear orchards (9), and diuron is used in grape vineyards (8). Simazine has, likewise, shown considerable promise with a number of ornamental genera, including Malus (5,6,7). Ries et al. (7) found it to be the most promising of several materials tried because of its excellent weed killing properties, long residual action and the number of tolerant nursery species. The purpose of these experiments was to evaluate 2-chloro-4,6bis(ethylamino)-s-triazine (simazine) as a weed killer for fruit trees and grapes.