What are some natural herbicides?
Gardeners are available a number of natural pesticides for insect control, but relatively few natural herbicides for eradication of weeds or other invasive plants. What they exist can do more harm than good if they are applied under incorrect conditions. However, there are plants that act as natural herbicides such as black walnut, sunflower, sage and spotted knapweed. These plants exclude chemicals that can kill other plant species growing nearby. The process of some plants acting in this way is called alleleopathy .
Scientists are very interested in the alleleopathic properties of plants, because the chemicals responsible for natural herbicides can often be isolated and improved for commercial use. For example, scientists were able to extract a herbicidal chemical called catechin from Spotted Knapweed roots, invasive weeds found in the Western United States. This chemical can be synthesized to greater degree and applied to a number of othersInvasive plants. Many such herbicides are selective, which means that their chemicals kill only specific plants, not everything they touch. Oils extracted from tree leaves are often used in commercially produced herbicides. Extracts of chemicals found in sunflowers can also use gardeners working organically.
other natural herbicides are mainly used to control weed growth in commercial lawn, such as golf courses and installed lawns. These herbicides are considered to be a pre-enter, which means that they destroy other plants in the germination phase than the plant can create roots. One of them is corn gluten, which was originally developed as a medium for mushroom growing. Scientists have also found that they also prevent germination of other plants, especially Weeds and Grass, so they usually apply to the lawn during the germination phase, weeks before the first blade of grass appearsor weeds.
Research is under way to discover more natural herbicides. Some experts in agriculture watched alleelopathic phenomena in common crops such as winter rye and wheat straw. It is known that rye plants affect, for example, the growth of certain vegetables. Some scientists believe that the cover crop of rye, or at least a cover mulch containing rye, could work to kill weeds between soy crops. Herbicides on the basis of grain could be modified to kill invasive plants while saving important crops.natural herbicides may sound more attractive than their chemical counterparts, but they are still poisonous substances that can affect people and livestock. Their application may require the same security measures as the application of commercial herbicides, so people who use them-toxic. "