FAT HEN

Fat Hen (Chenopodium album). Other Common Names: Lambsquarters, Lambs Quarter, Mutton Tops, Pigweed, Bacon Weed, White Goosefoot, Wild Spinach, Allgood. Introduced to Australia from Europe and eastern Asia. An erect, almost odourless, annual, herb growing to 1.5-2.5 m high with angular stems. Lower leaves rhombic to ovate and 3-5 cm long but up to 10 cm and upper leaves elliptic to linear. Mainly a weed of waste places, roadsides, stock yards, and horticultural cropping soils but can be found in or on the edges of saline sites.

Fat hen is considered one of the most important weeds for the Australian vegetable industry, due to its impacts on production and the amount of effort required to manage it effectively on-farm. Across the world, it is considered one of the most important weeds of a number of vegetable crops, including potatoes, beets, corn, and asparagus.
Some particular impacts of this weed in row crops include:
• crop nutrition deficiency;
• competition for light and water;
• harvesting interference; and
• crop contamination, particularly in leafy vegetable crops.
Early emergence and rapid growth rate gives fat hen a competitive advantage over crop plants. Contamination can result in significant removal costs during processing, or lower
prices at sale.

Fat hen hosts a range of vegetable crop diseases in Australia
and elsewhere around the world. These include: cucumber
mosaic virus, bean yellow mosaic virus, potato virus, tobacco
etch virus, turnip mosaic virus, and watermelon mosaic virus. In
Australian vegetable production, fat hen has also been noted
as a host of aphids.

It is widespread in eastern Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and south-western Western Australia. Also naturalised in other parts of Western Australia and Queensland, in the southern parts of the Northern Territory, and on Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island.

Spray FireHawk Bioherbicide Concentrate: 50 mL/L of water. Respray if required