The Big 4: Weed management in organic horticulture

Join OGA for a webinar about weed management with guest speaker Charles ‘Merf’ Merfield from New Zealand.

Dr Charles ‘Merf’ Merfield will talk us through his research on the ‘Big 4’ in weed management: minimising weed seed rain, (proper) false seed beds, flame weeding, and row hoes (covering both interow and intrarow tools). He will also cover some aspects of ecological weed management.

This should be a really useful webinar for new entrants and experienced growers alike. There will be plenty of time for questions at the end of the session too.

About the speaker

Dr Charles ‘Merf’ Merfield did an HND Comm. Hort at Writtle in the late 80s and was the field manager for Sunnyfields in Southampton and Weleda in New Zealand where his weed management journey was born of necessity. In the mid ‘90s he wandered back into academia completing a M.Sc and PhD, at Lincoln University NZ including developing the direct-fired steam weeder. A post doc at Teagasc in Ireland as their ‘organic guy’ included soil health, nutrient and weed management. He then returned to New Zealand and set up the Future Farming Centre at the BHU Organics Trust
https://www.bhu.org.nz/future-farming-centre/ as well as his own business https://merfield.com/merfield-agronomy-ltd/index.htm and undertakes research, extension and consulting on all aspects of sustainable agriculture. His speciality is being a generalist covering all aspects of production from soils, crop protection, crops, machinery and whole farm systems, but his happy place is organic weed management including flame and steam weeding.