Join the On-Farm Trials podcast to hear from guests Dr. Mark Thorne from the Weed Science program at Washington State University, and Grower-Cooperator Mark Hall of Steptoe, Washington. Listen as Mark Hall describes his experience farming in Steptoe, and the research collaboration with Dr. Mark Thorne on investigating the management of the pernicious perennial weed – Smooth Scouring Rush. In the conversation we hear how the collaboration got started, how the research questions for the management of Smooth Scouring Rush are being asked, what the findings from the research has been, and how it is being used across the farm.
Carol McFarland
Today, we’re with Mark Hall and Dr. Mark Thorne, weed scientist at WSU, on Mark Hall’s farm outside of Steptoe, Washington. And we are looking forward to talking more about on-farm trials as research collaborations in answering questions important to innovations in our region’s cropping system. Welcome to the podcast, you two.
Mark Thorne
Thank you.
Mark Hall
Thank you.
Carol McFarland
We have two Marks here today. We should have you guys introduce yourself individually. So Mark Hall, would you tell us a little bit about yourself, your farm, who you farm with?
Mark Hall
So I’m the fourth generation farmer, a group of people that came out from Tennessee in the early nineteen hundreds, and been farming in the Steptoe area for quite some time now. I guess if you do the math, it’s one hundred and twenty-five years. I was fortunate to be able to have the wherewithal to do this. And I graduated from Washington State University— a fine educational institution—in agricultural mechanization. And I was fortunate to work at the University of Idaho doing ag research for eleven years and had an opportunity to farm at that time. And so I phased out of research and started using that knowledge to help me get started into farming, and I’ve been doing that ever since.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. Would you—let’s circle back after we hear from Mark a little bit more about your farming conditions and your cropping system here outside of Steptoe. Mark Thorne, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your research interests.
Mark Thorne
Yeah, so I originally came, my family had a farm in northeast Oregon, north of Pendleton. Farmed there until I was twenty-eight. And then financial situations because of the eighties farm crisis wasn’t so great, so I went back to school and got a degree and then came back and actually got a job at Washington State University in the nineties and was at Washington State University in various capacities through the nineties. Moved east to Ohio for fourteen years and ended up getting a doctorate in environmental science there looking at coal mine land restoration or revegetation, and then moved back to the Palouse in twenty-fifteen. And I’ve been working in the weed science program there since then. And, you know, overall, my research interest has been in, you know, land management and making, you know, trying to help situations improve quality of land has been a, has been a real, and use of land and management practices has been, has been kind of at the forefront of my focus.
Carol McFarland
Great. Thanks for that. Let’s circle back here a little bit more about what it’s like to farm here outside of Steptoe.
Mark Hall
Well, Steptoe, Washington is in the center of Whitman County, Washington. And I’m not sure if it was a more ideal place to farm in terms of soil, water, climate, people. It’s rolling hills of the Palouse, very unusual farmland compared to the rest of the world. Deep soils, very moderate weather, ample rainfall, very high organic matter soils. So, we pretty much grow three times the yield with dryland situations than most people do in the world with crops. And so, very ideal place. So, fortunate to be born here and have an opportunity to do this. And we raise soft white winter wheat, hard red spring wheat. We raise malt barley. We raise feed barley. We can raise canola. We can raise garbanzo beans, peas, lentils. So, and we grow them in rotation with each other to maximize the benefits. So it’s been a lot of fun and I’m continuing to do it.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. So again, soil scientist, want to kind of suggest, do you have mostly that prominent Palouse silt loam texture soil and kind of the typical, like what’s your average rainfall here?
Mark Hall
Well, I would say that, I mean, I’m sure that the weather service has a statistical number, but I would say we’re in the sixteen to twenty inch rainfall region, but it changes quickly from east to west. So if you go ten miles west of here, it’s probably more like twelve. And if you go ten miles east of here, it’s more like over twenty. But rainfall is a thing that, you know, it’s not the amount of rain you get. It’s when it comes is the primary. So you can have forty inches of rain, but if you get it all at one time and it all runs down in the river, well, it doesn’t benefit the crop as much. But we usually get pretty good rain in the winter time, and then we have a pretty good shot of rain in June, usually to help sustain our growing crops. And so, and very dry in the harvest time. So
it’s actually pretty good.
Carol McFarland
Wait, I’d like to note on record that we just had a farmer say that their weather was pretty good.
Mark Hall
Absolutely.
Carol McFarland
I appreciate it. That’s, that’s a very.
Mark Hall
Well, you know, it’s, you know, there’s, there are swings of, you know, dry to wet, but primarily, I mean, we don’t, you listen to stories in the Midwest, and they have floods and typhoons and tornadoes and forty below zero for a month and high winds. This is a very moderate place to live. We don’t get those extremes. We get some extremes, but nothing like the rest of the world gets.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Well, I mean, you can talk to some of the folks out in Lind about some of those extremes.
Mark Hall
Well, like I say, it changes geographically to the west quite drastically here. But, you know, Steptoe is pretty good.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. Well, I’m excited to hear more about those, because you clearly still have some questions to answer. So let’s dive into that. I hear you two have been collaborating around some on-farm trials. Would you give an overview of what you’ve been working on? Do you want to start?
Mark Thorne
Sure. The focus that I’ve been working on with Mark has been smooth scouring rush, which is the genus, the scientific name is Equisetum laevigatum. The genus itself dates back somewhere around three-hundred and fifty million years. It’s a dinosaur plant here on the Palouse, but it’s a perennial deep-rooted plant that spreads basically by rhizomes in the soil. It does have a way to reproduce sexually but that’s not typically— we don’t really have the climate most of the time if the if the little spores dry out then then they don’t survive, and so basically it’s spreading by rhizomes. And one of the reasons that it’s it’s become an issue in a lot of cropping areas here in the Palouse and in eastern Washington is the adoption of direct seed no-till farming practices. Probably thirty, thirty some years ago, maybe when that got going. But so that kind of helped open up a window for the plant to spread a little, a little more into the back into the cropping. It’s actually a native species. It’s endemic to this, to this, to the Pacific Northwest. So it’s, it’s been here for a lot of years in different, you know, different situations. It likes moisture. You won’t find it on a dry south-facing slope very often. You can find it in a flood plain or near probably what is perched water on hillsides. And we don’t really know how far it roots here. Some of the research, previous research on it back a number of years ago, I think they went down eight feet. And the only reason they didn’t go any deeper was because they couldn’t, their backhoe wouldn’t go any deeper. So, so it can go at least that deep and probably, it probably just goes as far as it needs to go to get the moisture that it needs to survive. I’ve heard reports about what it can do as far as interfering with crop yields. And it’s different in different areas. So, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Do you have any of those stories, Mark?
Mark Hall
Well, you know, I was a college graduate, so I understood what it was. And I could see it around, and so I knew that it existed. And I guess I was fortunate enough to have Mark Thorne notice that I had a few outbreaks. And so he came and set up some trials. And I have since learned some of the treatments that he has been using and the success of those. And I’ve been employing them on some of the other areas where he hasn’t been working, and seems to be working quite well. It’s like anything, you have any system, you’re going to have some interferences and some predators and some pathogens if you go uncontrolled, it’ll pretty much take over. So anyway, I appreciate Mark’s work and he’s been very forthcoming with his information to me. It’s been a good experience.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. What did you see in the field or what have you seen in the fields before you met Mark? So we’re calling it smooth scouring rush, there’s other names for it, right? Horsetail.
Mark Thorne
Yeah. So if you go to USDA plants database, they’ll call it smooth horsetail. If you go to the Hitchcock and Cronquist plants manual that goes back to the seventies, actually, Hitchcock was well before that. He refers to it as scouring rush, smooth scouring rush. I think for consistency, the plant itself, the above ground part is just a stem. There’s really no leaves on it. Whereas what we call horsetail looks like a little Christmas tree. So to avoid that confusion, I think the scouring rush name is more helpful in you know keeping the thing kind of identified.
Carol McFarland
Okay we’ll go with that. Thanks for the nomenclature help there. So what what were you seeing Mark? What were you dealing with before your conversations with Mark if you want to describe a little bit.
Mark Hall
It’s a weed that grows in patches, and you know, it’s like I say it’s limited to some of the re- you know the areas that it can survive in, but these patches will spread. And so I was just noticing that it was spreading and I was trying different things to try to control it, so Mark educated me about what I could do, and so I noticed that. He’ll set up some flags and a square patch and he’ll have within that, within that area, he’ll have a grid set up of different treatments of herbicides, you know, try to control it. And so you’ll see a patchwork of successes. And so, after he left an area I could see where pretty much what worked and what didn’t. I have since been using employing his methods to control the patches in other areas, and it’s not it’s not widespread but it is definitely here and there around so it shows itself in fallow ground
More. It doesn’t— you know it’ll grow up through crops, but we our crops here are pretty competitive so anyway it’s it isn’t really— it’ll compete, but it doesn’t compete well. But anyway, it’s not really, I wouldn’t even say that it’s an economic threat. It’s more of a stewardship problem, you know. So try to keep things under control, you know, and not let it go crazy.
Carol McFarland
I’m excited to hear a little bit more about some of those, what’s coming up in the patchwork of successes and how you’ve expanded that across the farm. Are you willing to share a little bit about what you did try before that you didn’t find to work that well?
Mark Hall
So, being a past researcher and you know, and research. So it wasn’t so much an agronomy, but it was in more like machinery. But anyway, so you had to be kind of innovative to come up with solutions to problems. And so, so I tried mowing it and exposing the stem. Opening in the stem, you know, instead of instead of trying to get the herbicide to enter through the stem wall. Just cutting the stem off and having a hole in the top and maybe just go directly in there so I tried that, mowed it, and tried spraying it with you know various broadleaf sprays or maybe some Roundup even. But not super high rates or anything, just within normal rates, you know, and, uh, notice that didn’t work very good. And so it has to get into the vascular system.
Carol McFarland
Well, that makes sense. Cause I know with, with the equisetums they have, or the scouring rushes, they have that silica in them, characteristic of what makes them scouring.
Mark Hall
That’s why they call it scouring rush because it’s a, it’s a scouring pad. I mean, if you watered it up and you could shine up your chrome wheels on your car, you know, yeah.
Carol McFarland
You brush your teeth.
Mark Hall
Yeah. But so he has since educated me, the fact that a silicone based surfactant will help create the environment to allow pesticides to reach the goal, you know, get into the vascular system. So, and that’s the challenge of it is getting it, getting it inside the plant so we can get into the root system. So it’ll use some control..
Carol McFarland
Okay. Well, so, I mean, I think we’ve gotten a little bit to, you know— I kind of joke about this, like, there’s not an app where researchers and farmers can meet each other to do these on-farm trial collaborations. Were you just driving around, Mark, looking for farmers that had scouring rush in their fields? Or how did you come together?
Mark Thorne
Well, there’s the driving around part was a part of trying to find research sites. I mean, that’s, that’s it’s a, you know, there’s some areas where the patches are smaller and then, and then there’s some areas where, you know, a patch might be twenty acres. So it’s, you know, you kind of have to, to cruise the landscape a little bit to, to find it. But also I had communication with one of the field people at Four Star Farm Co-op in, in Colfax, and I said, who do you know out here in this area? I’m looking, I kind of described the area that I needed for, for a trial. And he gave me Mark’s name and contact. And that’s how, that’s how that got started. And that was, that was six years ago in twenty-nineteen.
Carol McFarland
And you haven’t chased him off your farm yet.
Mark Hall
No, he’s welcome anytime. He can even come back without doing research.
Mark Thorne
Wow.
Mark Hall
Just to visit. I’d like that.
Carol McFarland
Well, I think it’s kind of what we’re doing today And thank you for that, by the way, for letting him bring a friend. So, yeah, I guess your interest, it was more of a Mark came to you with a question and, you know, you said, sure, yeah, go play out there in my scouring rush patch. That’s no problem. Did you help influence the research questions at all, Mark? Or how did that process go?
Mark Hall
No, I let him do his thing. And so I was doing my best to comply with his wishes, which are, you know, don’t spray other things on top of his trials and recognize the corners and that sort of thing. So it’s you know it was I wasn’t. I didn’t have any bias in this and so I was open to whatever he did, wanted to do, and was anxious to learn from what he found out.
Carol McFarland
That’s great that answers a little bit about this. One of my questions is, how do you distribute the farming operations around the trial? It sounds like, do you farm over top of it and then Mark comes in and does the treatments?
Mark Hall
Well, he primarily, I mean, in the fallow ground, he is taking care of that. But then he informs me that, you know, if it’s in a cropping part of the rotation, he just tells me just pretty much just don’t, don’t double seed through it, but just treat it as normal, you know? And so anyway, and so I try to follow that guideline, but yeah, yeah, I’m following his lead.
Carol McFarland
Well, so in this case, I’m hearing that you’re, you’re planting the crop as normal and then Mark’s kind of coming in and managing some of the herbicide.
Mark Hall
Yeah. So the part of the goal of this thing is how you make this, his control system fit within a cropping rotation, you know? And so, because there’s obviously crops that like broadleaf crops, for instance, that don’t particularly care for persistent, soil persistent, some herbicides. And so that’s part of the learning is you learn how other crops tolerate the treatment,
Carol McFarland
So what is the rotation that’s been seen on these plots in the last six years, the crop rotation?
Mark Hall
It’s been primarily a winter wheat crop followed by a spring grain, either spring wheat or spring barley, and then a fallow. I haven’t subjected him to garbanzo beans or peas in the rotation, but usually I don’t plant garbanzo beans or peas in areas where scouring rush thrives because it’s, you know, scouring rush likes water and garbanzo beans and peas won’t get ripe in water. So, kind of have to keep them away from it a little bit, like the excessive water. There’s actually a gradient of wet to dry, but you know, you have to kind of, I put it in places where it’ll do the best. And so, and that scouring rush has its own little area, and peas and garbs and legumes have their own area.
Carol McFarland
You also, Mark, you mentioned that the scouring rush tends to do better in no-till systems. I don’t think we really talked about your approach to tillage.
Mark Hall
There’s no such thing as no-till unless you actually physically plant it with your finger. Even the most sophisticated no -till drills, quote unquote, are doing tillage. You know, they, you know, they, they have disc openers or hole openers or something, and it’s a one pass system, but it does tillage. You know, if you, if you, if you see where it went, there’s actually some soil disturbance. And so, so anyway, but I do do, and no-till drills are one pass systems. I’ve, I’ve tried that, but in this particular area at Steptoe, where we farm on steep hillsides, which are very productive, but a lot of gravity up there. And so those no-till, one-pass systems are very heavy. And so gravity pulls on them pretty hard. And so it isn’t a matter of horsepower, it’s a matter of gravity. And so the heavier it is, more gravity pulls on it and it pulls it. So a no-till drill that pulls sideways across a hillside is not doing a very good job. It’s made to go straight. It’s made to go flat and at least soil disturbance. So therefore, I use what they call a two-pass system where I do very minimum tillage and then I fertilize with a separate machine, and then I seed with a machine that can stay on the hill properly and do a proper job of seeding. So sort of accomplishes the same thing with two passes instead of one because of the topography and the physics involved. That’s pretty much what I do. Regardless, scouring rush seems to thrive with less tillage. Nothing particularly cares for tillage because it breaks up the root system and it’s got to reorganize and start striving to survive.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it’s that underground rhizome spreading. Though I’m wondering if some of those rhizome plants really like to be broken up because then they can use that to establish new plants, like Canada thistle and bindweed.
Mark Thorne
Yeah, things that, if you break up a rhizome and there’s a reproductive, essentially bud on that piece and you move it to a different place, and as long as it doesn’t dry out, you’ve got a new plant. That’s been noted, especially with one of the other Equisetums that we have here,the horsetail. That’s been noted in the Midwest where it’s more of a problem there than scouring rush. That tillage will move it around and spread it.The key thing is moisture. The rhizome, if it dries out, that it doesn’t have a root system yet to keep the little bud alive while it’s trying to grow. So I think previous to direct seed work that’s been going on, if a field were mowed or plowed maybe every year and then those rhizomes are drug around and dried out, that might have kept it from spreading so much. The scouring are spreading so much here, but yeah they’re— you know Canada thistle, skeleton weed perennials that we have seen in eastern Washington that they like to, you know, they get they like a little help now and then getting moved around.
Carol McFarland
So Mark, we just had an article in Wheat Life about the On Farm Trials podcast where it was identified that it’s a good opportunity to share about your drill. So you mentioned, it was really interesting to hear a little bit more about some of your reasons behind what you’re doing. And you talk about your background being kind of this ag machinery innovation focus, so what are you seeding with?
Mark Hall
So I currently own a Great Plains minimum till drill.
Carol McFarland
And what kind of openers are on that?
Mark Hall
So it’s got double disc openers. It’s got ground pressure and packer wheels that sort of maintain the depth as you’re going through, you know, a resistant situation. So it’s not a conventional situation. It’s, you know, it’s a minimum till, so sometimes it can be challenging to get the seed in the ground, you know, but, but this, these drills are heavy enough and designed with ground, with, hydraulic down pressure that allows you to select a particular depth and pretty much keep it there. And double disc drills don’t do a lot of tillage really. Anyway, it works pretty good. They stay on the hill good and do a wonderful job. And you can seed into a minimum till situation quite easily with them and multiple crops. So you can seed canola, you can seed garbanzo beans, you can seed wheat, barley, peas. So, and there’s a, the book has got all kinds of crops. I mean, I don’t think there’s any limit. So anyway, there. They work good for me. And so I’ve tried various so-called no-till drills, you know, and with, with limited success and, and it’s, there’s lots of reasons. Most things are built in the Midwest for driving straight for one mile and turning around and coming back one mile on flat ground. So you notice in these looking farm magazines, you have a picture of a drill and a big bin for the, you know, the air transports it to the openers and then it’s got a cart behind it with fertilizer and another cart behind it. So it’s sixty feet long, you know? And so if you try to drag that across these hills here, we’d, you’d have, you’d be, you’d be pulling it sideways. It would pull the tractor off the hill. So, but I’ve tried various things like that and they just don’t work quite as well here because it’s not made for here. You know, it’s made for flat Midwestern ground. And a lot of areas in Eastern Washington are very, you know, the soil, the ground lay is really nice. And so, so a lot of that stuff is very applicable, but not particularly here, I guess.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, you definitely have some pretty good topography here.
Mark Hall
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carol McFarland
And the double disc opener takes on the residue okay?
Mark Hall
Absolutely, yeah. They’re offset slightly, so the physics of it allows you to slice through the residue, properly place the seed in the furrow, and then cover it then nature takes over.
Carol McFarland
Well so we talked a little bit about some of the crops that have been grown on there, some that have not strategically been grown there, and how it was seeded. So let’s talk a little bit more about the trial designs and how they’re designed to answer like what’s your research question, Mark? And how are you designing your trial to answer it?
Mark Thorne
Sure. So like I said, the work here on Mark Hall’s farm started six years ago. And we really had that particular trial was set up as a standard, you know, four replicated, randomized, complete block trials. Most of the stuff that we do, the small plot work, is designed so that we’re not comparing apples to oranges. We’re comparing plots side by side so the variability doesn’t enter into it as much. But in that particular trial, we had one particular question, and that was— so there’s one particular product or herbicide chemical name is chlorsulfuron. It used to be a standalone product for fields, but it’s now packaged with another herbicide. But so anyways this particular product has been shown in previous years. The chlorsulfuron herbicide was shown to be one of the few herbicides that was actually effective on smooth scouring rush. And that’s fine. And what does that mean? If you put it on and it burns down the stems and they’re back next year, which for a perennial crop, I wouldn’t consider that control. That’s just maybe burning down residue. But for an annual weed, that’s fine. You want to burn them down and then they’re not there anymore. So the question we had was, what what does this chlorsulfuron herbicide do long term, and do we have to reapply it, and what’s the scenario there? So we set up because Mark’s in a three-year rotation with one year being in fallow we could apply this herbicide in that fallow year and then monitor it year you know in the years following that, and then in the next fallow year or in the next rotation cycle, we could apply it to some plots a second time. So then we have this setup. Does one application in six years do it adequately or do we need to apply it two times in six years? That was a very simple research question that we wanted to answer. And like I said, this is the last year of that six -year trial. But then, as with most research, there’s always questions that come up as you’re going. One of the things that, you know, in conversation with Mark about some different work we did with glyphosate, at different rates, and it looked like, We could get some control with a high rate of glyphosate if we used a silicone-based organosilicone surfactant, which was kind of novel. That had not been shown research-wise before.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like a publication, Mark.
Mark Thorne
It’s already published.
Carol McFarland
Where can people find that?
Mark Thorne
Weed Technology. So anyway, We had some success with that. And then I had a conversation with Mark one day about, well, do we have to put this high rate down? Can we use lower rates? So we set up a whole different trial looking at combinations with this chlorsulfuron product and different rates of glyphosate. And so that actually came up with some interesting results as well. And that’s in the process of being accepted for publication. It’ll be out as soon as we make some edits to it that the editors wanted.
Carol McFarland
Also in Weed Technology?
Mark Thorne
In Weed Technology. But you know, it’s so in this six year timeframe with all these different questions that have come up, we’ve done a total of six now trials on Mark’s farm, just on scouring rush. To flesh out what nuances do we see? And, you know, can we address that somehow? So that it’s, I really appreciate the freedom that Mark has given me working here. And, you can’t, you can’t just go in and do a one shot thing. You have to, you have to really look at it and, and see if there’s other questions that come up that are important to answer as well.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. He took no credit for helping to guide the research questions, but it sounds like he did.
Mark Thorne
Oh yeah. That’s another thing too, you know, Mark’s pretty humble, but I really appreciated the, you know, we’d have conversations either on the phone or out here on his farm about, you know, what’s going on. And that kind of informs me on really what might matter, what’s making a difference, what makes something work and not work. And, no, it, it’s, it’s been a great working relationship, with Mark Hall here.
Carol McFarland
Hopefully it’s been worth it to farm around the trials
Mark Hall
Yeah, absolutely.
Carol McFarland
So, you know, we’re not going to get a plot map here on the thing and then the research report. Maybe you’ll have this in the Lind’s dryland research abstract book or something like that, that people can find it. At the end of these six years, what should people know about managing smooth scouring rush?
Mark Thirne
Well, it’s a perennial. It’s a persistent perennial. So you have to think long game with it. You can’t just do a one-time fix-all kind of approach. Ways that you can integrate you know whether, whether it’s one herbicide, whether it’s you know multiple applications over years— those kinds of things have to have to be considered. And i you know that we found that with other perennials too like skeleton weed. That’s a, that was a major— is a major problem in some areas as well. And you have to think long game. You have to think, how much reduction can I get this year? And then maybe next year in two or three years, can I further that reduction? But the problem with scouring rush that we see is there’s not much that really, as far as herbicides, that really is effective. The chlorsulfuron herbicide, which is a group two ALS inhibitor type herbicide, is effective if it’s applied to those green stems. Chlorosulfuron has a long soil residual activity. I think to plant canola following chlorsulfuron you need to be about three years out so it stays in the soil, but the scouring rush doesn’t pick it out of the soil. You actually have to put the chlorsulfuron on the stems.
Carol McFarland
That’s the worst of both worlds isn’t it?
Mark Thorne
Yeah so it’s not a, it’s not a— yeah you can’t you can’t get the the residual benefit you just have to get it on the stems, and so that’s an issue. So there’s these intricacies about, especially for perennials, that make them a challenge to control. And as Mark pointed out earlier, things differ from year to year, and those differences sometimes can make things work or cause them not to work.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like on-farm trials.
Mark Thorne
Right?
Carol McFarland
So, Mark, you mentioned that you’ve been creeping on his plots and using some of that information to manage the smooth scouring rush on other parts of your farm. Are you up for sharing a little bit about how your strategy has changed?
Mark Thorne
Yeah, so it was apparent to me before Mark showed up that there wasn’t much that worked. Then after, you know, allowing him to do the work and learning from him that, so I’ve, I’ve learned about chlorsulfuron or Finesse herbicide and how effective it is. And so I’ve since made some applications in different areas around the farm, and like I say it’s a it’s a it’s you know you don’t you don’t get instant results with these kind of things you know, so it’s a year by year thing. And so you make an application and then you observe later what regrows, and so anyway it’s— so I’m yet, I’m still yet to evaluate some of the work that I’ve that I’ve tried based on Mark’s work. But I have seen some success with it being a not widespread but patchy sort of an infester, you can get around rotational restrictions and use Finesse. I’m not applying this persistent herbicide to widespread areas, just relatively small areas. It’s easy to do. And I’m looking forward to the success that it’s going to produce.
Carol McFarland
And when you’re talking about success, I’m assuming, Mark, that you’re out there on your hands and knees with a quadrat frame and just counting stems of scouring rush. And then just watching for those numbers to reduce. Is that the right picture?
Mark Thorne
Yeah, exactly. We do counts every year and usually multiple counts in each plot. I should mention that when I first started working on this project, on the Souring Earth Project in twenty-sixteen, the person that I worked for at WSU, Drew Lyon, had done a study with some other people up at Reardon. And that trial, I got in on the last year of that trial. And in that trial they tried a multiple array of herbicides at standard, you know, annual weed control rates. And the chlorsulfuron was the the only at that— I think they used a product called Glean, but the chlorsulfuron that was a standalone product was the only thing that that really showed any efficacy and it it kind of just verified what we knew from research that had been done twenty years earlier that it was effective. In that trial, they had set it up to where they did the actual mowing treatment that Mark just talked about. And they discovered the same thing Mark did that it doesn’t do anything, but.
Carol McFarland
But when you put the glyphosate as well, the mowing doesn’t seem to matter, but what I’m hearing too, is that if you add the, forgive me, was it an adjuvant?
Mark Thorne
Organosilicone surfactant, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Okay. Surfactant to the glyphosate, that also offers more control?
Mark Thorne
Right. And other people’s research has shown that an organosilicone surfactant reduces droplet surface tension. So when the droplet hits a surface, instead of sitting there, for a normal herbicide, you want the droplet to sit there on the leaf and absorb through the cuticle. But the organosilicones cause the droplet to spread and just run like water. And other research has shown that when that happens, that droplet will flow until it finds an open stomate and flow into the plant that way. Now, I’ll have to quantify this and say that we have not been able to do the research to see if that’s actually occurring on scouring rash. I don’t know what you see to watch a droplet flow into an open stomate, but it’s got to be pretty magical microscopy. But what we did find is that, and this was a totally different study that I wanted to see what a rope wick application would do with glyphosate on scouring rush stems. And so the comparison treatment to that was the highest single application rate I could apply with glyphosate broadcast. And I applied that with and without an organosilicone surfactant. And what I found was that three quarts of Roundup with an organosilicone surfactant applied at the right time when the stem’s growing, not dried out or not in heat stress, actually gave you a couple years of control. Because that’s not an herbicide that’s going to affect your next year’s garbanzo beans or canola, right? So that was a different question. But the organosilicone surfactant appears to be quite important if you’re going to try to use Roundup to get any control on smooth scouring rush. It’s not that important for Finesse. For whatever reason, Finesse seems to get through the cuticle or does whatever more effectively than Roundup or a glyphosate product. So those are two very different approaches. But with glyphosate, and we did this study here on Mark’s farm where we applied with and without the organosilicone, and without it the Roundup product or the glyphosate product did some. You could see some reduction, but nowhere near the reduction with the organosilicone.
Carol McFarland
Great. Well, I mean, it’s really fun to be having this conversation around this relatively mature research project and you’ve been doing other parts of your research portfolio, I think, like complement this research. You’ve been thinking about smooth scouring rush for a while, I believe, Mark, as part of Drew’s program, it’s interesting that you actually have some actionables kind of coming out of the research at this point. Sometimes on the on the podcast we’re a little bit at earlier stages or kind of still discovering some of the questions but it sounds like you actually have found some things .
Mark Thorne
So, you know, in this past, what, nine years of research that I and Drew Lyon have been working on for smooth scouring rush, it’s, you know, the reality is from an herbicide standpoint, there’s really only two products or two chemicals that are actually effective that we’ve found so far, and that you could use in a crop situation. There’s other herbicides that have shown to be effective for controlling smooth scouring rush, but they’re not something you want to put in your field because it’s unlikely you’d be growing anything there for some time and because they’re so persistent for everything else. So that’s, I mean, it’s a good thing that we found some possibilities. It’s unfortunate that they’re limited. So we’ve got to, you know, this one six-year trial that we have here on Mark’s farm, there’s a sister study to it up near Edwall in the same kind of situation. And they’re both coming to an end this year. They’ll be wrapped up. And from there, I’m not sure where this is all going to go, but there’s a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Every once in a while we’ll get a question from somebody about, you know, what do we do with this? And so getting some of these reports out, the WSU Small Grains website has a weed control report composite. And all of our work with smooth scouring rush is in a report there somewhere for the past nine years or eight years of recording, actually reporting them. So that’s, that’s, you know, that the message needs to get out about some of this stuff and, and, and what people can use to, to work with it.
Carol McFarland
Great. I’m so glad to have you on, on the podcast. Maybe, maybe some folks will hear a little bit more about it and maybe they’ll go check out the WSU Small Grains website as well. So switching gears a little bit, Mark, I’m sure— so we heard a little bit about Mark’s other research sites, probably some other research projects as well. Mark Hall, do you have other research trials on your farm?
Mark Hall
Yeah, I’m cooperating with Bayer Crop Science in their wheat breeding department and they’re comparing their different genetic material for various traits that they’re that are desirable for growing winter wheat so so anyway I’m cooperating with them on some wheat variety trials and both winter and spring wheat trials and then that’s currently— they’re out there right now. That’s all the inquiries I’ve had.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like you’re open for collaboration.
Mark Hall
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, I mean, the whole thing’s an experiment, you know, it’s a two way thing. So they’re, they, they need, they need field size. Real world situations to conduct research in and I’m very curious, and so I pump them for information, and so I benefit too. So it’s great.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. Well you have, do you have some of these fields here right along the highway so all the neighbors can see.
Mark Hall
Well you know.
Carol McFarland
I think these plots are kind of tucked out back aren’t they?
Mark Hall
Most researchers are interested in having things that are close to the road. It can be a long walk. The wheat breeders, they particularly like flat ground because their plot combines are not hillside combines. And so, and the flat ground’s a little hard to find here. And so, but they seem to be able to get along pretty good. Yeah, I’m open to pretty much anything. I mean, I suppose there’s something I would draw the line on, but I haven’t figured out what that is yet.
Carol McFarland
So are you doing very many trials where you ask your own questions and try something on the farm?
Mark Hall
Well, I’ve done that the whole time. I mean, I’ve tried to be innovative and I’ve, you know, since my background is in ag research and so solutions to problems, that sort of thing. So I— this has been years ago, but probably in the nineteen eighties, early nineties, I participated in a trial with the University of Idaho on variable fertilization, essentially fertilizing different rates and different grid points in the field, you know? And so, using modeling to predict what rate would be associated with a yield goal in that particular cell, you know, a hundred by a hundred grid point. So I have since employed my own variable fertilizer methodology, and since since farming in Steptoe it’s obvious where the hills are and where the flats are. You don’t need a computer to tell you where that is and so I know where the good ground is and the bad ground. So I’ve employed some variable fertilizer strategies and I don’t treat everywhere the same which is— cause it’s not the same, you know? And so anyway, I’ve used some of those things and fertilizing and even spraying, you know, there’s different weeds in different areas. You can buy a lot of equipment and a lot of electronics to do this for you, but you know, it’s kind of an intuitive thing here because like we can see, we know where the problems are, you know, just topographically. And so, in the midwest where you have a big square flat field the differences are more subtle, you know, maybe under the underground. And so yet you got to use infrared cameras and so forth to see where the differences are, but here it’s pretty obvious so. And then within your ability to pull things and afford the equipment and that kind of thing. So you kind of have to make it all work. And so it’s got to come out. You got to do the math and it’s got to come out right. But one thing I was thinking when Mark was talking is that, having a background in ag research, I know that doing ag experiments, it’s difficult to find statistical differences between treatments. And so if you do find statistical differences, then it’s quite, it’s quite a finding. And so, and people should take notice of that kind of thing. And so a lot of things about like differences in varieties of weed or fertilizer treatments and so forth are, it’s pretty difficult to find differences statistically. And so I particularly appreciate, so when something is discovered that is actually statistical, it’s significant. They’ve done the math and they’ve eliminated the error and they know these differences actually, there are differences. That’s a good thing that he’s done.
Carol McFarland
Well, and I think that is a really great opportunity. Mark, you’re an amazing and admirable statistician in my book anyway. And when you were talking about the role of small plot research, and that’s one of the things when we think about on-farm trials is there’s different questions that have different approaches to answering them. And so then experimental design and layout, it’s appropriate to have different methods to ask and answer questions. And so, yeah, with statistics, it’s, you know, if you have a finding, that’s like, it’s very probable that this thing will happen
Mark Thorne
That’s a really good point that Mark just brought up is the difference between small plot research and large strip trial or big field-sized plots is when we’re doing small plot research, we’re trying to contain the variability as much as we can so that we can actually compare, did one treatment actually give a different result than a different treatment? And it’s amazing how— I’ve had trials that from one side of the trial to the other, maybe that’s only eighty feet. There can be enough variability in the soil to create a different outcome. And it’s really important to look for those areas where you can place a set of treatments that you’re, that you for the best of your ability you’re controlling. You know that each treatment is going to have a similar situation so that you can compare the results. And that, you know, and I’ve done research too where I’ve put the same trial out, you know, up on a ridge top and and then down on a on a flat and I know very well that the yield differences can be great between the top of that ridge and the bottom of the slope. So small plot research doesn’t tell you how something is going to work over the entire field of variabilities, but it can give you an insight into actual differences between how something works in that situation that it’s in. And I think we have to keep that in mind, that as Mark said, the hills around here are pretty easy to see. You don’t have to get out an altimeter or whatever to find them. And I think if we had a little unlimited resources or even more resources, we could make some of those comparisons between what’s going to work up there on that slope versus down here. Which would be important information, but as a researcher in setting up a trial it’s incredibly important to try to make, you know, to try to contain the variability as much as you can so that you can get, you can get answers that actually mean something.
Carol McFarland
Like this product is causing this result. It happens year after year. And consistently across different conditions.
Mark Thorne
Right.
Carol McFarland
This thing works.
Mark Thorne
Right.
Carol McFarland
And I can say that with certainty.
Mark Thorne
Yeah. It’s called cause and effect, as opposed to correlation. And with cause and effect, you’ve done something experimentally that you can say, yep, this causes this difference. If you’re doing a correlation, well, yeah, you can see differences, but what was the cause? And sometimes correlation work is all we can do at the time or afford, or maybe the scale of the situation is such that we need some preliminary information. And that’s perfectly appropriate to try to do some correlated work. But if you’re actually trying to get cause and effect, then you have to set it up so that it gives you that answer.
Carol McFarland
Well, especially something when it’s a product that kind of like lends itself a bit to that. Like did this product do that thing?
Mark Thorne
Right.
Carol McFarland
I always like to ask about the unintended, any unintended consequences that have happened over the duration of this trial, or anything that you’ve seen that provided a learning opportunity as well.
Mark Hall
Well, for me, the unintended consequences have been good because I’ve seen the, you know, and so, you know, Mark’s measured the results, counted stems and everything. And I can observe what has happened and so make inferences from that. And so, you know, if you start applying what he has learned to large scale situations, then you might learn some more things about like how different soil types affect the uptake or the ability of Finesse to enter the stem and so forth and so, but anyway it’s all part of the learning. And, you know it’s— ag experiments are tough because any experiments, scientific experiments, are tough because there’s a lot of error in the world and a lot of other influences, and so you’re trying to partition that air out of the of the result and see, see if you actually are looking at what, what you’re trying to solve. And so it’s a shame that when you see a lot of advertisements for products that might be solving another problem and they don’t include the statistics in their results. And so, so they’re misleading us into sometimes a difference. Numerically is not the difference, is not an actual difference. It’s just the error is just, you’re looking at error. And so, I’m sensitive to that since I had the opportunity to conduct my own research a long time ago. And so, I appreciate Mark’s work. And so, like I say, anytime you get an actual statistical difference, it’s something in agriculture. So you should pay attention.
Carol McFarland
There’s a lot of variables in the system, as you say. Those error bars can get pretty big and then just wash out any potential findings too. So it’s good to have good experimental designs for things like this as well. As we wrap up, if you each want to speak to some of the potential benefits and even challenges that you see in doing collaborations like this between researchers and farmers.
Mark Thorne
Well, the benefits are huge. I think being able to get, as I’m doing the research I’m working on, to actually get the input from the person that’s doing the farming, right? So I get a better understanding of what’s going on, but I can use that information to better inform how I view those results and get other ideas on, well, maybe we should try that approach somehow, you know, you know, there’s that. We can’t just come in from an academic setting and say, here’s what we’re going to test and here’s the answer and not know anything about the system that we’re researching. That’s just a recipe for disaster. So I think it’s working together with the people that are doing the work on the issues that they’re having is pretty important.
Carol McFarland
Well, Mark already says like many times, he just knows, right? He knows where the good spots are, where the weeds are. He just knows. So being able to really allow that to help complement the research can be really helpful in making the research more useful and usable. Do you want to speak to maybe some benefits or challenges around these kinds of partnerships?
Mark Hall
So, as long as the researchers are of an attitude like Mark Thorne has, he should publish that, it’s like, this is how you should be. Because, I mean, he’s very polite. He just approaches it good. So, he’s honest. He’s genuine in his intentions. You work with people in all sorts of ways. Some people just have an attitude. He’s not coming in here with all the answers and get out of my way. He’s very, very, very honest and open about everything and very approachable. It’s been great. I haven’t had any trouble that way. Most people who actually want to do this kind of work are pretty genuine in their efforts, you know, and they appreciate so much having opportunity to come out here and, you know, and not just do it in a greenhouse, but, you know, actually get out here in the real world and have actual heat and cold and other things, you know. So anyway, I don’t see any downside to it. I mean, they don’t, he doesn’t cause any damage or anything. He’s very thoughtful and he cleans up his messes and all that kind of thing. So it’s great. He’s done a good job. And I haven’t had any trouble with anyone. They’ve all been that way.
Carol McFarland
It’s a little bit muddy down. You haven’t had to pull them out or anything down by that side?
Mark Hall
I’d be willing to do that. I’ve done that before. I had a guy come, a Bayer Crop Science guy came out, and he was going to do some observations of his newly emerged wheat plants in the spring. And he drove out in this area and just buried his brand new Bayer Crop Science pickup in the mud and what a mess. I pulled him out and I didn’t wash it for him though.
Carol McFarland
Well, I’m sure he really appreciated the help.
Mark Hall
Yeah, absolutely.
Carol McFarland
Well that’s actually a perfect segue. Part of my mandatory question list here though is, what’s, what’s the most fun part about working with a researcher?
Mark Hall
Well, it’s, for me, it’s— so I was one and, you know, it’s, so you get to participate in something bigger than yourself, you know, it’s helping maybe inform others about solving problems of ag problems, you know? And so, so it’s, you know, like any kind of philanthropic thing you do is, is benefits you, you know, it’s like, it’s good for your heart and soul and everything. So, so yeah, it’s an opportunity to be able to do that and share and help the advancement of science, you know? So, yeah, I’m all for it.
Carol McFarland
Well, thanks for being on the podcast, too. Mark, what’s the most– actually, I’m going to ask you, Mark Hall, what’s the most annoying thing about working with a researcher?
Mark Hall
The most annoying thing is if you can call– stopping and visiting with a kind and thoughtful gentleman as being annoying. Well, that’s as annoying as it gets.
Carol McFarland
Well, Mark’s pretty annoying in that case.
Mark Hall
Yeah.
Mark Thorne
I try. I work on it.
Carol McFarland
No, that’s great. Well, how about your turn? What’s the most annoying thing about working with a farmer?
Mark Thorne
Well, kind of the flip side of what Mark just represented or described is, you know, having to, having to work with people that care about what they’re doing and, you know, and, and are interested in answers and problem solving. That’s just, that’s, that’s terrible. I just can’t think of anything worse. So no, that’s.
Carol McFarland
I think that you just did the opposite of a backhanded compliment.
Mark Thorne
No, there’s, you know, doing long -term field research on farm trials on the same plot, I mean, plot area, work area, is a challenge. I mean, things can happen from one year to the next that can change the trajectory a little bit or whatever. And that, you know, I had a few years ago, I had a skillet weed trial out by LaCrosse. It was a long -term trial as well. And we were getting toward the last year. The wheat was up. It was in the boot stage. It was ready to come out. And a crop duster spraying a field about a quarter of a mile away was spraying on a really windy day and drifted glyphosate across the farm that I was working on, took out about a hundred acres of this guy’s wheat, and along with my research trial. That kind of stuff can happen. And so I’m very fortunate, like with Mark Hall, that, you know, I was able to do six years worth of research on the same exact spot and not have any of those kinds of disasters. I mean, that’s just, that’s incredible. And so, I greatly appreciate that as well. To have somebody actually acknowledge that you’re there and this is, you know, a useful thing is important.
Carol McFarland
He didn’t even say that the most annoying thing was trying to farm around your plots either. So that’s pretty good.
Mark Hall
You know, it’s anything you do, if you don’t make a little sacrifice for the advancement of good, well, you know, what are you doing, you know? So I appreciate the opportunity to make a little sacrifice in order to advance this work.
Carol McFarland
Great. What’s the most fun thing about working with a farmer?
Mark Thorne
Well, probably just what I described the other way around. I’m getting to work with people that have issues and I can help mitigate or solve or come to some solution, management solution to those problems. That’s what’s really rewarding for me.
Carol McFarland
Great. Thank you both. Do either of you have any last kind of thoughts you’d like to share about the project or working together or farming on the Palouse in general?
Mark Hall
So I appreciate your eagerness to spread the word. And so your, your enthusiasm is good. It’s infectious. It’s helped spur us along and not fall asleep. And so.
Carol McFarland
I haven’t had anyone fall asleep in this effort yet. So I’m, I’m glad we’re, we’re holding true to that.
Mark Hall
Farming and farming in the Palouse country is a great opportunity. And so if you look over time from where it started to where it is now, it’s all this stuff has added up into a lot of success. And different farmers will have different opinions about what that is, but still, it’s generally been good.
Mark Thorne
Again, you know, it takes these kind of collaborations to really solve the issues we have. And we need to encourage more of this kind of grower-researcher work because if we’re interested in sustainability, and I mean that keep, you know farming can continue and being a profitable viable way of life and supporting all the stuff that it supports then that’s that’s really important. And as far as the Palouse, I mean the Palouse is like this, you know, gem, right, on the mountaintop kind of thing. You know, the area that I grew up farming in, you know, it ranged anywhere from seven to twelve inches of rainfall. You could do stuff that would tank your yield pretty easily. Just having to reseed in November meant that you are now not going to make a profit. So the Palouse, it’s the place that everybody is inspired by, you know, looks like this is the, this is the gem, or this is where we, you know, the gold standard. It’s just a wonderful environment. I really, I, I very enjoyed being here and doing work on the Palouse.
Carol McFarland
Well, I mean, they put it in calendars because it’s pretty nice. Well, I just really want to thank you both for not only doing the work, but being willing to share it in the space. And yeah, it’s been really great to hear about the collaborative effort that you guys have been working toward in trying to help solve some of these challenges in the area. So thanks again for being willing to participate today, having us out to the farm. Really appreciate it.
Mark Hall
You’re welcome.
Mark Thorne
Thanks, Carol.