There are two methods you can go for. Whitelist and Blacklist.
Whitelist means you know everything about the plants you are trying to grow and the soil you are using and anything that is not that is a abnormal so to be exterminated.
Blacklist is attempt having a database of everything weed. I would recommend against this as you do get generic mutations in weeds. It is simple to be sure you know the crop plants.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/weeds/lists/ There is 38 weeds in Australia that you can be fined for having growing and 28 on the control list. Plants have to get to a fairly decent size before you can perform a full formal identification other than by DNA.
Spectrometry is something that is useful to a point but you have to remember some of plants Spectrometry matches to plant health and conditions. Spectrometry is something the camera should be used on good plants to show issues with soil and the like. Yes some plants have different colors in leaves based on soil PH and other things like that. Spectrometry is very useful once you have a ideal what you are looking at to give you extra information about the health of garden. Even so an individual plant type will have a range of Spectrometry that all it leaves will fall inside. Again this is knowing what plant should be growing were and if you see something that does not match that plants information you have something else there might be weed might be something like bird droppings.
Heavy parasitic weeds do not have chlorophyll so have colours more like a mushroom. If you are not expecting go grow any mushrooms seeing something growing above surface without chlorophyll is most likely a sign of big trouble.
Like being able to identify first leaves(Cotyledon) shape would allow allow a lot of sorting. So even a weed coming up where the seed was planted that happens to have a different Cotyledon leave shape to the expect plant would give it self away as a weed. Remember you have to get to the first true leaf to be able to identify species of plant and you need flowers/fruit/seeds to exactly identify the plant and it possible to have weed and wanted plant from the same species so no matter what there is going to be a percentage of failure to kill weeds.
The problem I have at the point you are wanting to exterminating weeds a large database of plants will mostly be pointless because the weeds will not be big enough to use it. Ideal point to bash a weed for max kill is while it still only in the Cotyledon leaf stage. Now if you cannot id weed at Cotyledon stage because it has Cotyledon leaves like the plants you are wanting then you want to get it at the first two true leaves stage. If you cannot identify something as weed at the first true leaves you most likely will not identify it until it has grown big enough that it is hard to kill and bashing you will most likely having it get to hard to kill size over and over again reason for needing something like hot water.
A crop plant database with Cotyledon and first leaf shape database used with a some from of image processing system that can check plants against that database for the plants that farmbot put there would most likely meet farmbot need. You might add a small database of this is nightmare weed do not bash it. And a little bit of brains if looking at a weed plant without chlorophyll do not bash hot water required it is most likely a vampire plant.
What you say knife to push weed into soil I normally say bash it for a reason you want to break the leafs up as much as can and push it into soil. Basically you are attempting to give plant stacks of outer skin breakages so those hopefully become stack of infections from soil to increase kill rate. So bash it and knife it are slightly different.
Current farmbot weed head is a bash it style https://farmbot-genesis.readme.io/docs/weeder to be exact 4 Four Spike Weeder were in larger plants you are aiming to do at least 4 complete breakages. as you push the weed in. Knife method might only do 1 area of plant breakage this why it slightly be hind in kill rate.
In order of least effective to most from the different studies you can find…
The ones with fairly equal kill rates. knife to push weed into ground, Flame the top and scissors to clip it off. As all three for what you do to the plant are effectively dong exactly the same thing taking the top off and hopefully killing it. Yes the key world is hopefully it will kill at worst of these methods is nothing.
bash it methods slightly better but not much.
Pull it up with pincher done carefully. Some weeds like nut grass have evolved to break off under ground if you attempt to pull them up. Other issue not done carefully you disrupt under 2 inchs down bring up a weed seed that would have remained dominate in the process.
Use hot water to douse the weed Kills the target weed and most weed seeds in it flow path in two ways. Method one completely cooks the seed. Method two tricks deeper down weed seeds into germinating while they are too deep in.
Most heat spiked ones I know are variation on flame.
Anyone who has in fact read the rules on using flame touches put them in possible the same camp as poison. If you burn the a toxic weed you have make it toxins go air born in a lot of cases. Some weed plants contain neurotoxins and other really horrible things that make using possible cancer causing poisons look like a minor problem as enough neurotoxin will kill you straight away where cancer agents will take years not effect everyone exposed and these days if you do get cancer its better than 50/50 that you will make it. Some of the plant neurotoxins from burnt plants even with straight way treatment is less than a 10 percent chance to live. So a plant can take revenge for being burnt so you must ID what you burn this is a issue with the current computer system and the physical size you must let a plant get to so you can in fact ID it.
Next I live in Australia lot of our native plants seeds see chemicals from plants burning as clue to germinate. So for where I am flame torches is not a highly effective thing at all unless you want to trigger nature attempting to take over everything if nature is still alive in the area.
Heat spike to do effective plant damage need moisture in soil to conduct the heat and to get effect plant damage you have to use higher temperatures than injecting hot water. Hot water get to the plant in two ways one it going to damage the surface of the roots same way heat spike does. Two that is very simple to forget something the plant is attempt to take up is hot water so the surface of the root lets hot water enter and damage the internal parts.
My problem is if we are using more than 1 weed tool we better have a good reason. To safely use flame methods you must be able to ID the weed and be sure it not a toxic one or will be safer to use poison I know that suxs right. Computer controlling a flame system in my mind is a no go.
Computer controlling bash it, pull it and boil(hot water) it is not going to cause major releases of toxins no matter the plant so safe for computer and can be used no mater the fire status.
The problem with using the word “bash, or bashing” is that it is not referring to a knife or something sharp to do it with… If you were using a hammer or one of these…
You would be using the right term…in English at least.
Bash refers to a high velocity blunt hit… Not the relatively low velocity sharp thing we are talking about! And a knife is a sharp bladed instrument like like we are using… It slices the weed into pieces. Chop? Would be better, but it still gives the image of a fast moving ax or knife to cut it with.
Hope this helps
I still like the current tool. It may not be as effective as some other but its main equalizing point would be that the farmbot stays on top of the situation until the weed has died from lack of resources.
Also as far as the bash versus cut thing go I see the tool as being more of a semi blunt edge tool. Like with axes where if you are using a splinting axe you might have a convex edge versus the other types so that it stay usable without sharpening for much longer. (I would prefer not to get into a long discussion over axe shapes and why the example I chose is wrong, everyone please just take my underlining meaning )
But if you wanted to get more of both smash and chop into the mix you could go with even more of a blunt edge or just have a blunt section about an inch behind the cutting edge.
Another way would be a 2mm flat blunt edge would allow you to mash them up and then puch through and chop them while pushing them underground.
Yeah torches can’t be used here for 6-8 months of the year! Home Depot doesn’t even sell them anymore!!!
Hot water is much better… If the water were microwaved, there would no fire hazard!
I like this idea… Richard
a large corkscrew on a motor…sounds like it would be very effective… Wouldn’t disturbe the soil much. Would till the soil a little too!
I’m gonna build one to try… A drill and a piece of coat hanger!!!
Lol
Tom
After some thought and a bit more reading, perhaps bashing a weed is a good idea… Create a two part tool… An actuator with a small meat tenderizer head on it to hit the weed right in the middle, and a corkscrew looking thing to uncompact the soil, loosen the root and aerate the soil…
There would be a disconnection of the weed from the mycorrhizal fungi, but we don’t want it assisting weeds anyway… Only the good stuff…unless it helped our plants somehow! At this point I don’t see how it can!
10mm round bar hitting weed into ground has been found effective.
Stupid enough they started with a bladed like tool. Why bash breaks more of the plants cells so large infection area for items in soil to infect plant and make it critical sick. Yes using a meat hammer on weed plants is surprising effective other than the soil compaction issue.
Issue with chop is clean cut areas plant can heal off better.
Basically you don’t want a sharp knife edge. You want something nice and dull to do the worst cutting job possible. I use bash because you are after either pure bash like boschs tool or you want something fairly blunt. Knife edge is basically totally wrong as it cuts way too cleanly. To put it in prospective wood cutting tools you are after a block splitter blade or back not a cutting axe.
bagginsdada 2-10mm totally blunt is known to work as long as weed is driven deep enough. There is a reason for 3cm in so you bring the broken bits of plant into contact with the higher area of bacteria and other things to make it life miserable and hopefully kill it in case happens to be some resistant plant to being broken up.
Do note the bosch machine does not mess around 1.75 weeds per second bashing rate. One thing about bash if it like a solenoid it can retract through a cleaning plate, Lot more resistant go being blocked up due to soil type.
Yes Palomineo you understood exactly what I meant by bash. Chop/knife is less effective than bash against weeds by all field trials. Its funny the things that turn out to be effective.
Even when cutting weeds tops off a blunt tool does a better job than a nicely sharp tool. You use nice sharp tools when cutting plants you want you use blunt horible tools when handling the plants you don’t want. Its all about how well will this cause infection. Yes you clean tools when cutting plants you want and you don’t clean weeding tools that much because you are hoping to introduce infection. If you have weed tea dipping your weeding tools in that also helps kill rate. Nice coating of organisms plant does not want. Bash/cutting weeds is not just about running them out of steam its also about attempting to allow infection to attack them.
Ahh there you go…
Use the meat tenderizer (cut off 6 of its points so it is about 1 cm x 1.5 cm), 2 or 3 quick hits (driven by an actuator) then use the corkscrew method(drill and coat hanger corkscrew) for a few turns to loosen the roots and uncompact the soil! If it comes back green Over the next 2 weeks use the boiling water on it!
Sorry, … the implication was knife, but you said bash! They are mutually exclusive terms. You cut with a knife, you bash with a pipe, meat tenderizer… Mallet, Or even with a $280 titanium hammer(available at the local homedepot, lol)
I did not make the connection of what you were saying until I saw that bosh weeder video and we started talking about meat tenderizers. Lol
I’d like to suggest that we split this thread into the different tools we have come up with.
This will allow us to focus on each one separately. Easy quick builds will move relatively speedy… slower ones, not so speedy this thread will still be here for general discussions
Thanks
Tom
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