- [Presenter] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(upbeat guitar music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Montana Ag Live."

Coming to you from the studios of KUSM on Montana State University campus, the vibrant Montana State University campus.

I'm your host, Tim Seipel, and we have a great panel lined up for you guys tonight.

If you have questions about horticulture, weeds, community development, diseases, and your crops, your garden or your yard, please call them in.

Send them those questions in via Facebook or call them into the studio and they'll appear on this- on this screen in front of me and we'll get them to the panel.

So tonight, we have a great panel of guests lined up.

On the far right down there or left, we have Uta McKelvy.

She's the Extension plant pathologist.

So call her in, call in and give her some really tough questions on your diseases.

Next to her, our special guest tonight is Tara Mastel.

She is the Community Development Program leader at Montana State University Extension, and she is a native of Wolf Point.

She has a master's degree in Rural and Urban Planning.

And we'll come back to you after we introduce the panel and you can tell us all about the program.

- Great.

- Next to Tara, we have Bill Curran.

He is professor emeritus, weed specialist, weed scientist, Jack would be really happy, I'm saying weed scientist tonight.

And you can call in and ask him all your really tough weed questions.

We could stomp them.

And next to Bill, we have Abi Saeed.

And Abi is the Extension horticulture specialist.

And she can answer all your questions about yards, gardens, prepping your garden for winter, pruning trees, and we'll talk diseases and weeds too.

So Tara, I'm gonna come back to you.

- Great.

- Would you tell us a little bit about the Community Development Program in Extension and what you do in Extension and across rural Montana?

- Yeah.

Great, thanks.

I'm really happy to be here.

So, community development, we're changing our name to Community Vitality.

We're the newest and the smallest of the four areas that Extension works in at Montana.

We really focus on helping communities sort of work better together.

We work, especially in rural communities across the state, we really work on helping volunteers, you know, rural Montana especially, is really run by volunteers.

So much of our essential services and also our sort of nice to have things are created and developed and managed by volunteers.

So we help volunteers gain skills that they can be more effective, help groups work better together.

We have the Reimagining Rural Program that helps programs get really inspired.

This is an awesome picture of an art alley that they created in Havre, Montana, coming out of Reimagining Rural.

So we have these two main programs that we operate- - Thank you calling- - Helping groups work better together and then helping small groups get inspired and get some fresh ideas about what's possible in rural communities.

- Yeah, I've heard a lot about, this week, I just did a tour, Wolf Point.

- Yeah.

- Glasgow, Froid, Circle.

So that was rural Montana talking about herbicide resistant weeds, and we'll come back to that in a little bit.

But, so what is the Reimagining Rural Program and what does it do within the local communities in Montana?

- Reimagining Rural has been wildly successful beyond what any of us that created it imagined it.

It really, so it's at the heart of it, it's a three night program where people gather locally in person in their small towns.

And they all at once, everybody hears these speakers that are via Zoom.

So it's live in person, but the Zoom speakers are also live, but they are Zoomed in across the state.

So three nights, people hear these really great speakers that talk about positive things happening in rural, positive data, positive success stories.

And then they have, that's for the first hour, the second hour of each of the three nights, they have time to talk about what they heard and what might work here, what other things do we have going on or that might be exciting things to work on.

So it's been really great because it inspires people.

It really flips the narrative because if you've been living in a small town for a long time, really it's hard to see the positive things 'cause all you can see is the change in the negative things that have happened.

So we come in and share some really positive things that have happened, that are happening, and it really helps people flip the narrative and imagine something bigger that might be possible.

This picture is, that you just saw was in Forsyth, coming out Reimagining Rural, the little town of Forsyth, they decided that they wanted to welcome newcomers to Forsyth, 'cause some of the essential data that we share is that rural is really not, it's changing.

So people are moving into rural places all across the country.

This is a picture of what a Reimagining Rural meeting looks like.

This is also Forsyth, but, so I lost my chain of thought.

What was I talking about?

Oh, the newcomer meeting in Forsyth.

Oh my gosh, so that was so awesome.

So little Forsyth, they heard this data like of newcomers are coming and they're like, "Well, I don't think that's really happening here."

So they did a newcomer event.

They had almost 100 people show up in that picture that you saw, 100 people show up in Forsyth and about over half of them were newcomers and they were just so excited to be there and talk about why they chose Forsyth to move to.

So it was really great for the newcomers, but it was really great for the people that have been there a long time because they could see their town through their newcomers eyes and they're like, "Oh, my gosh, this is kind of a great town and we are kind of awesome.

And it is really a nice place to live."

'Cause when you live there for a long time, you just see the things that you don't have anymore.

So just flipping that narrative is really, pretty, pretty impactful.

- Great, thanks.

Sounds like an interesting program.

We'll come back to it.

One note, I forgot, I'm gonna have to say Jack wanted me to say, thank you to Wally McLean from Billings last week who provided some historic information on the Montana Stockgrowers.

Jack sent that to me this week and wanted to make sure that I said that on air today.

Okay, so Abi, we have a question from Fort Benton.

I put in a strawberry bed this year.

Should I do anything special to get those strawberries through the winter?

- Yeah, so usually what I recommend for first year perennial, beds of any kind and strawberries are an example of this.

I recommend putting a two to four inch layer of straw mulch on there to help kind of protect that root system going into their first winter.

And then once they become kind of well-established, you shouldn't need to mulch anymore.

But mulching for the first season of a perennial bed is usually a good way to get them to survive a tough winter.

- Hmm.

Okay, thanks.

- Abi, are all strawberries perennial and are they all fit to survive in Montana?

- No, so you would wanna make sure that you are choosing the right strawberries that are hardy for your zone for sure.

Good follow-up.

Yeah.

- Hmm.

Okay.

We have another caller from Fort Benton and we'll stick with asking Abi questions from callers from Fort Benton.

(panelists laughing) We've had several times, his weeping birch tree never leafed out this summer.

A horticulturalist scraped the bark and said it was still alive.

So I'm assuming it's was a little green under the bark.

Does Abi think it will leaf out next spring or should they replace it?

- So that is a tough question, but a good question.

We had a few trees that just didn't leaf out this year.

And what I usually recommend, if your tree doesn't leaf out for the first year, a lot of times if they're an established tree that has a well-developed root system, they usually have enough stores to make it through a year.

But if it's not a structural hazard, so if you had someone come and take a look at it, if it's not a structural hazard, then I would say let it go through winter and take a look at it next spring and summer and see what it does.

And if it doesn't leaf out next summer, then take it out then, but give it a little bit of a chance, 'cause the trees are a long-term time investment, monetary investment.

So give it a whole year to kind of see if it can bounce back.

- Okay.

Could I ask a question?

Is having a water birch in Fort Benton, is that, that's a pretty tough tree to keep alive in Fort- - Weeping birch?

- Or weeping birch, yeah, sorry.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so weeping birches can be, they're not very long lived trees in a lot of places in Montana, so usually like 20, 30 years or so.

It depends though.

But so they can be kind of tough to get them to survive long-term.

And so if it's marginally hardy, that could affect why it didn't make it through the winter very low.

- Okay, and if they're gonna replace it, what do they replace it with?

- There are so many options.

So I would say contact your county extension agent and talk about what you want to see in types, in terms of the type of tree in your landscape, but we have countless options for awesome trees in Montana.

- Yep, go talk to Tyler Lane in Fort Benton.

He'd be a great resource to go talk to.

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

We have a call, a question from Gallatin County.

This is for Uta.

I think Uta can handle, I noticed black swollen masses on choke cherry trees while walking this weekend.

What is it and will it kill the plants?

- Well, if it looks like poop on a stick, it's probably black knot.

It's a fungal disease that affects trees and shrubs that are in the prunus family.

So choke cherries, cherries, ornamental cherry trees, plums.

And it's probably super obvious now that we lost the leaves on the trees.

So now it just sticks out like a sore thumb.

If the tree is really susceptible, it could ultimately kill it, but really it's not very pretty to look at and it can girdle the branches and twigs that this goal-like structure is on.

If this is something that you have in your garden and you wanna kind of control it, you would wanna cut out the branches and twigs that have this mass in the late winter before we have spring growth.

And then dispose of that, you know, fungal growth.

If it's not controlled, then in the spring under wet cold conditions, it'll produce spores and then will attack young new growth or injured branches, wounds.

And that's how the disease perpetuates.

And now that I see this resource here, for clarification, we have some pictures actually of, of what black knot looks like.

So if it's anything like this.

- Excellent.

- All the information I said is correct.

If it looks different, I recommend you contact your local extension agent or you contact the Schutter Diagnostic Lab or you contact the Extension store and you try to get a hold of this publication and then you could scout for yourself for a more likely explanation for what you're seeing on your walk.

But my bet would be on black knot.

- Great, thanks.

Bill, we have a question and I feel like this is a rite of passage for being on "Montana AG Live."

Gallatin Valley caller has a lot of purslane taking over.

What can be done?

- Well, I've heard it's edible, Tim.

- Yep, I did say that last week.

- You know, it's, you often see purslane in flower beds, particularly, ornamental beds.

It can be in your garden, your vegetable garden.

And it is a really tough weed to deal with.

It has these tiny little seeds, it's like the tiniest seed, almost of any weed I've ever I've ever seen.

And so what you really wanna do in most of those situations, you'll probably gonna end up hand pulling it or hoeing it, some sort of mechanical method and you wanna do it before it flowers or before it sets seed anyway 'cause you definitely don't want those seeds to disperse.

So you'll be dealing with it for years to come.

There are herbicides, glyphosate, or Roundup is pretty effective on it.

So the main thing is if it's just getting started to really go after it.

- Yeah, I have to say I lost- in some of, it's a very warm season weed, right.

It doesn't emerge in Montana until you get into June, late June, middle late June almost.

And I get the first couple flushes, but then I lose the last couple flushes because things start getting harvested, things get busy in the summer.

Yep, it's a tough weed to manage.

Do you know how long those seeds will stay in the seed bank?

- I don't know that.

- I don't actually- - I don't know how long they are, one of the problems is that it's so low in prostrate that often you won't see it once the other vegetation takes off.

And so, you know, it might be under your tomato plant and you don't know it's there.

So, you know, if you're in a situation where it's just getting started, just be really diligent.

If you've had it and it's spreading into new areas, you know, you'll have to be like Tim and really go hard after it for at least half the summer.

- Yeah, you know, I think I might switch my strategy next year and put cool season vegetables in there where the spinach will come out early and it'll bolt and come out early and then I can keep it clean, but a little longer as I go in there.

- You know what, I think you could, I think mulching probably would be pretty good for- - Yeah, I bet mulching could- - Because it is such I mean, it is smaller than a pinhead, the seed, and I can't imagine that it would come through straw, a straw mulch very, very easily.

- Okay.

We have another question for Tara in here.

They say that they have few things to keep people in their small town in Montana.

What can they do to keep people in town and keep the town vibrant and active?

- That's such a, that's a good question.

Yes, we hear that a lot, that people are quite alarmed that all the young people are leaving and what can we do, we don't have anything to keep them there.

I guess, my thought on that is it's really hard to tell an 18-year-old what to do I have one in my house right now.

And you know, young people, they wanna go out and see the world and what we have been talking about with Reimagining Rural is that there, the census data shows us that yes, in just about every rural county, rural designated county in the country, if you look at the age change from, you know, over the tenure of the census.

Yes, people in the younger ages, they leave, they leave rural counties and I don't have a picture of this, but what we don't, so that's the brain drain.

So that is the youth leaving.

But what we don't talk about is people in their 30s and 40s are moving into rural counties in every county in the country that's designated rural.

So people do leave when they're young, but people come to rural counties, they wanna live in a rural county and they're moving in in their 30s and 40s.

So yes, people are leaving, but people are coming back and you don't really realize that.

Like I still get my paper from Wolf Point and I get my paper from Whitehall where I used to live and it's pretty amazing how like we left Whitehall and we weren't gone long and I didn't recognize the names in the paper.

Like people move, people are quite mobile.

In Montana, about half of all Montanans move every five years.

People are mobile.

So people are moving into your community and when we talk about that in Reimagining Rural, they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's true actually," you think about it like the elevator manager, we got some teachers, we have, you know, like people are moving into our rural communities and have, it's not new.

They've been moving for since the '70s.

It's a decades long trend.

It's just more people, it's just more intriguing to talk about the young people leaving, but the more interesting thing is the 30s and 40s, they're moving into rural communities and they're bringing a spouse, kids for the school, a business, about a quarter of them own a business.

- Wow.

- This is not new and it's census data.

- Tara, do you have any insight or even data on those people that you mentioned are moving to rural communities?

Or it seems like maybe there's even a trend that more people are moving to rural communities?

Like what do they share?

What attracts them to those communities?

- Yeah, we actually did, we did a survey, we did a survey on this in, a couple of years ago.

We replicated a study that they did in Minnesota and the survey was really to find out, 'cause the census tells us that people are moving to these rural counties.

So our data showed why, why people are moving to these, to Montana communities from anywhere, not just from Montana, not just from out of the state.

And we found that people are moving for, they're really moving for non-financial reasons.

They're moving for quality of life, more space, you know, a slower pace of life.

They're not moving for financial reasons, a job.

Only about a third of people are moving for a job.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Surprising.

- Thanks, we got a bunch of questions that are stacking up here.

(Tara laughs) Okay.

So quick one for Abi.

Bozeman caller is asking, what are the pros and cons of using fall leaves as mulch and will it attract pests or will some pests survive to the next year?

- So there can be a few cons, but I usually find that there are a lot of pros.

One of the cons, let's talk about that first is, in Montana these leaves don't decompose as fast as they would in a state that got a lot more precipitation.

And so the way to kind of use them is if you can shred them a little bit, that helps them decompose a little bit faster.

In terms of pros, there are a lot because you're adding those nutrients back into the soil.

If you're using them in your compost pile, you wanna add some green compost material too not just this brown compost material.

So you wanna kinda balance that out.

But in general, using this on your landscape beds is a nice kind of natural way to help insulate them, add those nutrients slowly back into the soil.

Over time it'll help improve soil texture and also beneficial insects.

So not just pests, beneficial insects will nest in leaf litter.

And so bumblebee queens for example, nest in leaf litter.

And a lot of our kind of nice beneficial insects that we need for our landscapes also use this as a nesting habitat.

So I usually find that the pros outweigh the cons for keeping them in your landscape.

If you have too thick of a layer of leaves in your lawn for example, then you might wanna shred some of them and remove some of them and put them on your garden beds or something like that or some of them in your compost pile.

But other than that it's a good thing to keep in your gardens.

- Great.

- As a plant pathologist, just the word of caution.

If the trees looked like they had a disease then those leaves I would probably rather dispose of than keeping around 'cause it's possible that the pathogen survives on that material.

And then reinfect from there again so.

- Definitely.

- So in my aspens in my front yard I have, this year wasn't a bad year but some years they turn rather, they turn black and they fall off.

What's the name of that disease?

They get this- - Marssonina?

- Marssonina leaf spot?

- Yeah.

Maybe I don't know.

I'm a weed scientist.

(panelist laughing) So if they fall off and they do that, does that help reinfect the tree the next year?

So I should pick those up and move those away from the aspens.

- Yeah, I would caution on this.

How do you say that?

I would be a little bit more conservative and you know, cautious with those and just remove whatever looks diseased.

- Okay.

- I mean, you know, I guess we could diagnose your disease specifically and then we would know what the best practice is.

- I was going to say that- - But oftentimes the pathogen over winters in that shed it like plant material, right.

And then comes up from there again so, but that's really just for if you saw a big issue in your tree, like big symptoms.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

- You know, I'm also often worried that using really high carbon mulches will tie up nitrogen and things like that.

Particularly like for vegetable gardens.

- Yeah, so if you have like a nutrient intensive kind of soil source like that, then it can sometimes within the very top inches, but in general for like landscape trees and stuff perennials that are deeper rooted or woody ornamentals, there isn't very much of a tie up of nitrogen for some of these mulches in that soil.

So they're kind of we're debunking like how much it actually does tie up.

And so usually it's you know, only that first inch or two inch layer of soil that's doing anything to and usually your root system's lower than that can still get all the nitrogen that they need so- - [Bill] I need to save my leaves.

- Uh-huh.

- Okay, we have a caller from Missoula for Tara.

Missoula caller asking who are the speakers for Reimagining Rural and how are they chosen and how are the topics chosen?

- Oh, that's a good question.

So we are looking at having, well, so we've had the first couple of years we had Ben Winchester from University of Minnesota speak as our keynote speaker and since we did our study with our newcomer study, so now I get to do that, which is pretty cool.

We will be having Becky McCray and Deb Brown speak again and they're awesome.

They are, they go around and talk to very small towns about how to make things happen in their small towns with what they have right now.

Not kind of waiting for somebody to come and save you, very practical.

They have this idea friendly method which people just love.

So they're gonna be a speaker and then we're still kind of deciding.

We really, I think one of our biggest strengths about Reimagining Rural is we really kinda listen to what's going on and what are people really interested in.

And we try to pull that, pull something in that really is relevant to what people are talking about right now, what people are dealing with.

But we always keep it very focused because we are very aware that in rural places, volunteers run everything.

We don't often have the luxury of having staff to do stuff.

So we really aim everything at something that a rural, a rural volunteer could make happen like that night or the next day.

It's very action-oriented 'cause we're trying to get people excited and get them motivated to try something new.

This, I love this picture.

This is coming out of Reimagining Rural two years ago, the town of Chester.

That's what they decided to do with the Montana Community Foundation in the last three years has given small grants to our Reimagining Rural communities and they use their grant money to put in, to spiff up their entrance to town.

'Cause they were, they wanted to kind of make their town reflect how they feel about their town.

- Great.

- Yeah.

- I really do like the Rudyard town sign actually if you guys have ever been to Rudyard.

I think it's something like, "598 nice people in one Old Sore Head" and they actually elect to dip the Sore Head (panelists laughing) over time.

(laughs) Yep, which is not too far from Chester there.

- No, just on the- - Oh, just down the road.

So Bill, we have a caller, I'm interested in what you just have to say about this one.

Caller from Butte.

They have a large infestation of cotton-roses, which is Filago arvet- Filago, sometimes it's called cudweed too.

It looks a little bit like a, it looks a little bit like an Antennaria or Pussytoes, but it's tall and it gets about this big and they have native grasses and it's their yard and they would like to know how to control it.

- Oh, my, this sounds like you should answer this.

(panelists laughing) Is it a rose?

- No, it is not a rose.

It's a little aster species.

- Okay, and it's- - Cudweed.

- It's, yeah, it's cudweed and it's very fuzzy and so it has a pretty- and it's annual that pops up.

I see it a lot between - There was somebody- - Yeah.

And the kind of the Butte area, it's in between the bunches of bluebunch wheat grass that are out there and it's kind of cute but it's a little bit of a, it can be of- - I'm familiar with, with some of the cudweeds.

- Yep.

- I'm glad it's not a rose and I'm glad it's an annual.

- Yeah.

- That makes it a little bit easier.

- Yep.

- And it's in a native grass landscape.

- [Tim] Yep.

- And so probably this individual's tried, you know, the hard ways or the maybe the hard ways to manage it, which is, you know, mechanical, hand pulling, you know, you're not gonna mow usually native grass very frequently, so that's not gonna be an option.

There are herbicides if they're willing to use a herbicide, things like 2,4-D and some of the growth regulator products that are active usually on those aster species, you know, sort of depends on how comfortable, how comfortable they are with using herbicides or whether they, you know, again, hoe, hoe, hoe.

- Yeah.

- Pulling.

- Yeah, I think, it'll come back.

I almost leaned to the two, maybe try patch a small area of 2,4-D next spring and see if it works on it as it emerges.

That would probably be the best thing I could think of.

If you add other native forbs in your lawn too that you wanted to keep, that would be the hard part about using a broad- - Yeah.

- If it's just the grasses then there's options, but if you have other forbs, broadleaves then they're, you're gonna have a hard time selectively taking that out without hurting them at the same time with the herbicide.

- Yep.

Okay.

- I'm glad we agree.

- Yeah.

(laughs) Yeah, it's a tough one.

You see, it's pretty common.

Yeah, it's common in a lot of range in Montana.

Abi we have another question from Bozeman.

How do I get rid of mealybugs on one of my house plants?

- Okay, yeah, mealybugs.

Mealybugs can be pretty challenging.

They're common indoor and greenhouse pest They look like white kind of fuzzy creatures that have like a waxy kind of buildup on them.

And so if it's on one of your house plants, my first step would be to quarantine that plant away from the rest of your house plants so that they don't spread on those other plants.

But if you have kind of a small infestation of these, you know, where you see them, they usually like to hide out in the nooks and crannies and in like in between branches or right underneath the base of leaves and stuff, you can take a cotton swab or Q-tip and dip it in alcohol and dab them with it and then pull them off physically to get rid of them.

That's one of the simplest ways, that's how I've dealt with them in the past.

There are of course insecticides that are labeled for mealybug control too.

Make sure that you're using insecticides labeled for house plants and read and follow those labeled directions.

But in general, if you have a small infestation, I think that Q-tip alcohol method works pretty well.

- Do you know if the soap type insecticides are effective on- - So sometimes, yeah, sometimes those contact insecticides, like those insecticidal soaps can work on those smaller life stages of mealybugs.

But as they are larger, they're much harder to control with that.

So sometimes people will dip just the top of their plant in some soapy water.

Make sure that you're using the soap that's labeled for plants and not just your household soaps for this.

But some people can do that and kind of knock some of them off.

So in some cases, yes, but the larger ones can be pretty tough to manage with those.

- Okay.

We have two tulip questions.

The first tulip question is, I didn't get my tulip bulbs in this fall.

Should I stick them in now?

And then we have a caller from Big Timber who is asking if they plant tulip bulbs in a stock tank with soil in it, will they die over winter and not produce in the spring?

- So both good, thank you for my tulip questions.

For the first one in terms of, you didn't get them planted yet and we were just having this conversation about your garlic just before the show started, but in general I like to kind of shy away from planting things too late.

So November I would say would be a little late because you'd want that bulb to get a nice established root system before going into winter or they might die.

And so if you missed out on planting them, I know you're more of like a renegade and you're like, "I'm gonna do it anyways."

But if you- - [Bill] It was awful nice out today.

- Well, yeah it is very nice out today.

But I usually kind of would worry a little bit about, you know, putting them in now, if temperatures freeze and stuff, you might just waste your tulip bulbs.

One thing you can do is you can store them over winter in kind of a nice cool dry place in a mesh bag and plant them early in the spring.

They won't flower that year probably, but they will the following year.

They may flower later on in the summer sometimes as well.

For the other tulip question in stock tank it's difficult to say.

So stock tanks are kinda small compared to traditional raised beds usually.

And so my concern based, you know, depending on how cold, where are they located?

- Big Timber.

- Big Timber, so my concern based on kind of, you know, how cold it might be, if we had temperatures like we did last winter again this winter, I would worry about them not being able to make it, 'cause you're usually in those containers they cool down much more readily and they also dry out much more readily than in ground.

So I would be a little concerned but I'm also, you know, to the effect of trying things out and see if it works, you know, and it could.

- Yep.

- I mean, they're predicting an El Nino winter, right?

- Yeah.

- So it may not get that cold.

- Exactly, so it's definitely possible try it on.

- But would they, speaking of not getting cold but maybe Big Timber, the wind, do you think they would desiccate in a - They could.

- Where they might be a little, they might not have enough water in that system so every once in a while maybe when the Chinook comes through, do you pour a little water on there?

- Do a light sprinkle, yeah.

Exactly, to make sure it doesn't get too dry - And call back next spring and tell us.

- Yeah, call and tell us.

- Yeah, please let us know.

- Yeah, call back next spring.

and tell us if they make it or not.

- Yeah.

- I think it's worth the experiment.

- Yeah, it's worth the experiment.

- At least a small experiment.

I realized I forgot to do something at the beginning of the show.

I did not introduce our phone operators tonight.

We have Nancy Blake and John Hawley answering the phones there tonight.

So please keep the phones ringing back there and keep questions coming into them.

Okay, we have had some other questions come in.

Bill, I have a cud well- - I'm ready for an easy one.

(panelists laughing) - Well, we don't get too many easy questions.

So we have a caller, he is asking for recommendations for controlling chickweed in their lawns.

So Abi or Bill.

- So I wonder which chickweed it is.

We have, there's two chickweeds that we mostly deal with.

There's an annual common chickweed, which isn't that common in lawns 'cause it's an annual.

- Yeah.

- Versus mouse-ear chickweed which is the perennial, which is more common in lawns and so, and so first off either one, they're gonna tolerate mowing.

So mowing is really not gonna do a whole lot to manage it.

If it's actually either one, you can pull them by hand, mouse-ear, even the perennial, it's not really a creeping perennial.

And so you can, if you, you know, get a good grip on it, you can pull it out.

You know, that if it's not hugely widespread, that's probably what I would recommend first, you know, I hate to be recommending but you could use a herbicide and some of the lawn products, you know, things that you might use for dandelion control as an example can be pretty effective on both those chickweeds.

- And I would add too, in general, if you have a really, really healthy lawn and so your lawn is vigorous and competitive, they have less weed issues in general.

So a few things to kind of look at is your lawn management, you know, regimen, kind of see how often you fertilize it, make sure that they're getting enough nutrients and make sure that your, if your soil is a little bit compacted, you can do an aeration.

I recommend aerating once a year if you have really compacted soils maybe twice a year so you can kind of take a little core of your soil and see if they're kind of really, you know, if those bare patches are compacted and when you aerate you can add some compost in there too.

And you can also seed at the same time.

So in the springtime, you can kind of go with that strategy to help fill in those bare spots.

And if your grass is healthy and competitive, you would have less weed problems overall.

- Yep, thanks.

- Good points.

- Yeah, great.

Okay.

Uta, do you wanna tell us about your show and tell your potatoes there that we have in front of us?

- Great.

Yeah, I brought, it's like the same sample we actually gutted a few weeks ago in the Schutter Lab, but it shows two problems so I wanna talk about both of them.

So this potato here, for example, is showing what we call black scurf.

And so this is something that you would notice on your potatoes obviously as you pull them out of the ground.

So black scurf is a fungal disease and so it's really what you think maybe just looks like, "Oh, she didn't clean those potatoes."

So it's like these black irregular shapes, slightly raised structures on the potatoes and even if you wash them really hard and get rid of all the soil, they'll still be there.

That would be a good indicator that you're looking at black scurf.

It's caused by the pathogen, it's called Rhizoctonia.

On the tubers itself, like it shouldn't affect the storage, it's just superficial.

So you could peel those potatoes and still eat them.

That's really not a concern.

I would wanna point out that if you are thinking about using potatoes like that as seed next year, that's a bad idea because that pathogen will grow under the right conditions and then infect a sprouts coming from your tuber and then you might observe what is called Rhizoctonia canker, which really just girdles the sprouts and can kill your plants.

And so if you have this on your tubers, think about rotating or not growing your potatoes in those beds for ideally three years.

You could get by with two years, definitely don't use these kind of infected tubers as seed, but don't worry so much about not being able to eat them over the winter, that should still be fine.

- [Bill] Are there varietal differences for that?

- You know, there probably are varieties that are more susceptible or less susceptible and I'm sure that you could research that I'm honestly not super feeling with those- - Well, I had fingerling potatoes that had that problem.

I wondered whether they might be more prone to it.

- It could be, and then the Rhizoctonia pathogen, it also occurs just in the soil, so it's not just those tubers.

So you wanna, if you have a history with this disease in your potato crop, you wanna also make sure that you plant your potatoes rather later when the soil is warm 'cause this pathogen really thrives when it's cooler.

And so when you have conditions where you have slow sprouting and emergence, that's when those plants are super vulnerable and you can get that disease.

And then the other thing that I observed on the sample is growth cracks or tuber cracking.

So you'll see here that this tuber has these cracks all around.

And so this is actually a physiological issue that is related to kind of irregular or intense fluctuations in water availability through the summer.

So say you had a period where it was really dry and hot and then there was a really heavy rain or you forgot to water for a while and then you irrigated a ton, these growth cracks happen when the inside of the tuber grows faster than the outer layer can keep up.

And so it naturally starts cracking.

One way to maybe distinguish between that and what might be an injury from harvesting your tubers is that those growth cracks, they will be healed, like there will be skin and healing on those cracks.

Whereas a piece that was cut during harvest, you might see it here, admittedly this so it looks somewhat healed here too, but it's kind of a fresher scar.

And so with those growth cracks, most likely it's related to water management.

So just pay a closer attention to that.

Make sure you keep like a consistent soil moisture, water regularly.

And it could also be related to fertilizing with nitrogen at an inopportune time during mid tuber setting or applying too much fertilizer.

Anything that really promotes a lot of fast plant growth, we wanna keep it kind of at a good pace so that the outer layer can keep up.

That doesn't look pretty, but it should also not be an issue for your tubers.

I will say though, the growth cracking, you know, is essentially in the beginning of wound and can make this tuber more vulnerable to other pathogens in the soil.

So these, I mean, I guess they got the black scurf so they didn't, you know, escape entirely, (chuckles) but at least your harvest is not entirely destroyed with these two issues.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Tara, we have a question.

A community is thinking of applying for Reimagining Rural, what do they need to do and where do they need to go and who do they need to get in contact with?

- So we do Reimagining Rural once a year and applications are open right now.

You need to apply, it's free, I think you have the website for the application.

- It's up on there.

- Yeah, so you can get the application there.

Applications are due December 15th.

So it's a great program if your community is kind of like ready to do something or you wanna kind of get some new ideas going or you're thinking about if there's some new people in your town that you maybe wanna get involved.

It's just kind of a, it's really, it's just kind of a way to just, there's no real agenda other than getting some new ideas and thinking about what's possible for our town.

- Would your local extension agent be a good person to talk to?

- Yeah, yeah, you know, you don't have to have your extension agent involved.

You certainly can and many do, but we actually counted it up.

We have about 48 communities that have participated and only about half had their extension agent involved.

So we really try to design it 'cause it doesn't always work into the extension agent's schedule, you know, so, yeah, but they would know about it.

They definitely would know about it and be able to help you with, the application is really pretty easy, but we do ask for that 'cause we want you to kind of think about what's going on in community and how might this help with what you guys are thinking about.

- Great, thanks.

Okay, we got a stack of questions here.

We got a call from- - A fire.

- Caller from Noxon, Dixon area out by Arlee, Evaro Hill.

They wanna know, we have two callers from Noxon actually.

First one is, what's the best time to seed grass in Northwest Montana?

And then another call from Noxon, caller suggests controlling grasshoppers in pasture and putting up kestrel broxes to attract kestrel hawks because they eat grasshoppers.

Now someone told me that coyote pups also eat grasshoppers today.

Do any of you guys know?

Is that true?

- I don't know.

- We're gonna have to answer that question next spring, but that was interesting, someone also mentioned coyotes eating, yeah.

- I mean, I'm sure they do.

Like my dogs eat grasshoppers so.

- But yeah, it's a big population to eat.

- So the other question from Noxon - For the grass seed.

- Yep.

So we need to plant the lawn for the grasshoppers.

- Yeah, so, (laughs) so there is, I mean, you hear kind of fall and spring, that's usually the best time to seed your lawn, spring or early fall.

And usually for me, I usually recommend kind of mid-September if you're doing it in the fall because you want that turf to get a really nice root system established before winter.

And then in the spring, you know, as soon as kind of the, there is no snow cover and the soil is, you know, visible, you can start seeding and it's gonna start to kind of take root.

So usually I say probably like April or early May sometime around then.

So spring and fall because we have our cool season grasses, that's the most common type of turf grass we use here in Montana and that's when they're the most vigorously growing.

And so before they get, summer would not be a good time because in summer our cool season grasses get really stressed by heat and drought and so in the kind of spring and fall periods are good times to seed.

- Okay, we're gonna piggyback onto that question.

A caller from Helena asked, they have a small lawn that's full of weeds and they want to sod it in the spring.

Should they kill the weeds beforehand?

And what is safe to use around their cat?

How should they go about prepping that seed bed?

- So that's a good question.

In terms of controlling them, you know, it's usually a good idea to kind of control your weeds in general.

If you're sodding, it's less of a concern than if you were seeding because you're covering that area with, you know, thick carpets of sod.

But if that's, you know, so it wouldn't be as vital.

What would you say to that?

- Well, normally, you would probably rototill the area up before you laid the sod so the soil would be loose and the grass, the turf grass roots would get started quickly.

And I think most weeds would be controlled by that, the most lawn weeds certainly.

I mean, unless you have something like Canada thistle or something odd.

- Yeah, so I wouldn't personally use a herbicide in that type of situation.

- I don't think you need to.

- And if you do rototill you can add a nice layer of compost in there and kind of work it into that top layer of soil.

Make sure you don't leave like a really distinct, you know, surface of soil when you're sodding because that prevents- - And then start like a month ahead of time so that you, you know, you get it prepped and then you can see what comes back and then you can do it again if you need to before you lay the sod.

- Yeah, so I think that manual method would be a good strategy for sod.

- Yeah.

- Then you don't need to worry about the cat either.

- I would actually walk, you know, if this ground stays thawed out and we don't have much time 'cause we have a lot of questions to still cover, I'd walk out and just hack out the big tumble mustards and those henbane like rosettes that are on the ground this fall, I think it'd be a good- - Or dandelion.

- Or the dandelions.

Yep.

- Yep.

- Okay, so let's keep, well, okay, we'll put these two questions together.

We have one question about, Bozeman caller says she has a tall juniper variety that had significant dieback this summer.

Should she leave them until next year to see if they regrow?

And then additionally, we have Livingston caller who had four arborvitaes die from winter kill last year and planted new ones this year.

What can they do to get them through the winter?

- Okay.

- So what's the difference between an arborvitae and a juniper first of all?

- They are, you know, they look very similar.

They're different, slightly different plants, but they're both evergreen plants and so these are plants that are really susceptible to winter injury and drying out and we saw a lot of that this year.

So for your juniper that didn't bounce back and you have kind of a lot of dieback, you can check to see those branches that Take a little pocket knife and scrape the tip of it and see if there's kind of green right on the underside of that bark that's living kind of tissue living cambium.

And that could indicate that, yes, possibly it might come back.

But usually I'd say wait until next spring and kind of see how it does.

For arborvitae, did you say there were new?

- Yep, new, they planted, they had four arborvitae die last year and they planted new ones this year.

- Okay, so for those new arborvitae and this will also apply to the juniper, make sure that both of these plants are getting really good soaking of water right now because we still have those really nice temperatures and before the ground kind of fully freezes, you want them to be able to have all the moisture that they need to get through the winter that's pretty tough.

Arborvitae can be tough to manage here because the deer love arborvitae.

So you wanna make sure that you have a fence or some way to protect those plants from deer or they are going to devour them.

And then another thing you can do, so if they're planted in a more sheltered location, you don't need to worry as much about it if they're getting enough moisture, but if they're kind of in an open location and windier environment, you can use burlap to kind of cover them and use kind of wooden stakes to kind of just protect them from drying out as much, from getting too much of that sunlight and that can usually help them get through that winter.

Especially for those young plants that can be marginally hardy sometimes.

- Great, thanks.

Okay, maybe this is a question for Uta and Abi.

Billings caller has a pine tree with white specks on the needles.

What could be the cause and what could be done to address the issue?

- So knowing what type of pine it is, so bristlecone pine for example, they have those natural white specks on those needles and so that's just a natural part of those types of pine trees and they're perfectly healthy.

So if it's not a bristlecone pine though and you have those white specks scale insects, pine needle scale are white little specs that are on those needles of those plants and those can be kind of, you know, difficult to manage because they're protected by this really nice waxy covering.

So for those, the timing of management is really important.

So looking at, as soon as those crawlers hatch, so that's the first, as soon as those eggs hatch, the first-instar larvae of scale insects are called crawlers and that's the best time to target an insecticide treatment to get rid of them.

But a few things to kind of keep in mind for the healthcare of those plants.

Usually pine needle scale are more of a problem in stressed trees.

So managing the other stressors that might be going on with your tree, making sure they're getting enough moisture would be another good one.

And Uta, do you have pictures?

- She's got the gray pictures- - She has pictures of the pine needle scale up there and so yeah, if it looks kind of like that and they have those little brown kind of heads on there, then they are the scale.

So keep an eye on the health of the plant and make sure that they're healthy.

And then targeting the crawler stage in the spring and then bristlecone pine though have natural white specks.

So make sure that they're not just, you know, that natural white speck that trees have.

- Great, I have a call, question from Musselshell County, dry land wheat and barley farmer.

The caller is considering planting lentils, but is concerned about how bare it leaves the soil.

Is it a bad crop for the soil?

- Well, there is ongoing discussion about that and it is true that pulse crops leave less residue after harvest.

- [Tim] Especially lentils.

- Especially lentils, yeah.

So on the other hand though, they also offer great benefits, you know, they fix nitrogen and so you need to add less inorganic nitrogen to your crop and you know, even the crop following your lentil crops, so there is that advantage too.

And they're water conserving, which also has its benefits, the post crops are so, if it's- - Is this alternative fallow?

I mean, then that certainly is far worse than the- - Yeah, yeah, it might depend on what they would rotate to.

- Yeah.

- I think, you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier in the season talking about soil erosion in those contexts.

I think maybe try to have a couple years of high carbon input in there in the soil with taller stubbles.

So maybe a wheat and barley year and then, you know, look for a, when you've had tall stubble or you'll put tall stubble in behind it, it is true, I did see some lentil fields the last couple days that they're pretty bare for this time of year when we don't have snow cover and that can be tough for wind erosion.

I'd also say be aware of, you know, if this first time you're gonna plant lentils, go back and check that herbicide history.

- Yep.

- Because herbicide carryover, damaging lentils is a really big deal from the herbicides that we use in cereal crops is the group two herbicides, all these Rimsulfurons, Mesosulfuron, all these- those have a long half-life in the soil and can injure pulse crops.

Ally, I think is up to three years, four years, it can injure pulse crops.

So double check that, but I do like growing lentils.

Lentils are a great crop and there's a, you can work them into your rotation and I think, yeah.

- I agree.

- Sometimes worth a try, maybe on a small spot first, yep.

Lewistown, someone is asking, you and I discuss this Abi, is it too late to plant garlic bulbs?

- So if so yeah, I would say you're kind of cutting it a little bit too close for my comfort, but you would say go for it.

So I would say maybe, you know, it might be a little too late.

- Yeah.

- You want- - I was, some of the shadier spots in my garden, the ground is a little bit frozen and I - Yeah.

- Last year when I planted them in October, I think it snowed the next day and then they were covered by snow until April.

- Yeah.

- So yeah- - So I would say too late now.

- Yeah.

Might be too late.

- Store them over the winter and plant them.

- Can me and this caller in Lewistown, can we put them in in the spring and still get vernalization and still get a decent crop out of it?

- Yeah, if you get them early enough in the spring, you should be able to, yeah.

- Okay, we're gonna- - Use your healthiest, healthiest bulbs, yeah.

- Large bulbs, yeah.

Okay, caller from Columbia Falls is asking what the pros and cons of having clover in your yard are.

We have two minutes.

- Okay.

- We gotta go quick.

- All right, good question.

So clover in general, one of the pros is that pollinators love clover flowers.

So they are a really nice nutritious source of nectar and pollen for bees.

So that's a really good reason.

If clover is thriving in a landscape where your lawn isn't, then I would say let it keep going there, let it keep growing.

It handles mowing pretty well and it can handle those kind of landscape kind of environments.

In terms of cons, I would worry about if you want a clover only lawn, clover can thin out pretty quickly and so you would need to reseed it regularly to keep a large space of clover fully functional.

- Yep.

- As clover.

- I do have a lot of white clover Trifolium repens mixed into my yard.

- Absolutely.

- Yep.

- Looks great.

- Yeah, it is.

Caller from Billings for Uta.

Billings caller, you just have just a little time, Uta.

Says her potatoes have tiny roots under the skin of the potato.

- [Uta] Oh.

- They rotate the plantings, but it is happened several years.

Is this due to fertilization or watering?

- You know, short answer in the interest of time, I don't know.

- Yeah.

- Let's, call me, email me and I'll dig deeper and try and find an answer for you.

Not sure.

- Yep.

- In 30 seconds, Bill, can you answer?

Caller wants to get rid of bindweed in their lawn.

- Oh, yeah.

- 30 seconds.

- That's gonna take longer than 30 seconds to get a bindweed.

That's probably the most difficult weed that you can be dealing with 'cause it's a creeping perennial.

It's tolerant to a lot of herbicides.

It produces viable seed, roots go really deep.

- Yep.

- It's a tough one.

- It is a tough one.

And yards, it can be a really tough one to manage.

Don't have a super easy, if they wanna call me, we can talk about some other recommendations.

- Yeah, there you go.

Call Tim.

- Yeah, call me and we can talk about it later in the week.

So I'd like to thank everyone for joining us tonight, for special guest, Tara Mastel, talking about community vitality and rural community vitality.

It's been great to hear about all the things going on in rural Montana.

And this is our last show, the fall season.

We'll see everyone again in the springtime.

Take care, have a good winter.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Announcer] For more information and resources, visit Montanapbs.org/aglive.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music continues) - [Presenter] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

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