- [Narrator] Montana AG Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, (gentle instrumental music) the MSU Extension Service, the MSU AG Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, the Montana Bankers Association, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Advisor Program.

(gentle instrumental music) - Good evening folks welcome to another new year of Montana AG Live originating tonight from the studios of KUSM here in the beautiful campus of Montana State University.

And coming to you over the Public Television System.

There'll be a couple of us here in the studio tonight, the rest of us will be joining from their various homes and offices located throughout the beautiful state of Montana.

And actually tonight, our guest with a saguaro cactus in the background will be joining us or near Phoenix, I should say.

But anyway, you know, the routine, you provide the questions and we'll do our best to provide the answers.

Before we get into that tonight, let me introduce the panel.

Here in the studio with me is Jane Mangold.

Jane is our weed scientist.

She likes to be called invasive species, invasive weed scientist, but in reality, she's a good weed scientist that handles all kinds of different weed problems throughout the state of Montana.

On the panel tonight, we have Becky Kington.

Becky is the Head of the Montana Weed Control Association.

Folks, if you live in Montana, you know we've got a weed issue.

There's 7 million acres around the state, that are infested with various kinds of weeds, and we're gonna address the weed issue tonight, kind of in-depth.

So if you have questions regarding weeds between Jane tonight and Becky, we'll really get into it in-depth.

Abi Saeed, Abi is our new Extension Abi is joining us from Colorado State University, my alma mater or undergraduate.

And if you've got any questions concerning horticultural issues, plants around the house, and the garden.

Hey, call the question in and we'll try to get it on this evening.

And of course, Laurie Kerzicnik, Laurie is our Extension Diagnostician for Insect Problems throughout the state.

And you know, it's a little early to see a lot of insect activity, but driving yesterday, I did notice I'm seeing the first blotches on the windshield, so the insects are becoming active.

So if you have questions concerning insects tonight, hey, call them in.

We'll try our best to give you the answer that you deserve.

Let me go to our guests tonight.

Becky, tell us a little bit about the Montana Weed Control Association.

- Jack, first of all, thanks for having me tonight.

I'm excited to be back in Montana, virtually.

The Montana Weed Control Association is a member-based organization of about 700 people, a little over 700.

A lot of those are agency folk and we provide publications and trainings.

We're the professional platform so to speak for County Weed Districts, and we have state, federal city, private applicators, and commercial applicators as members.

We do have some landowners who join to be involved 'cause they care about the cause.

So that's a nutshell quick version.

- Okay, I've been around weeds a long time and as Jane knows, I just rag on weeds.

I love to see them controlled.

What does the Weed Control Association actually do to help landowners, people, farmers, ranchers, to actually control some of the noxious weed issues we have around the state.

- Jack, we provide the resources, the training, the networking, the publications for our agency weed managers.

So for instance, when I get a call about leafy spurge in my pasture, we refer people to their local County Representatives, County Weed Coordinators, or County Extension Agents.

And we're not in a place in the home office anyway to be able to diagnose or answer their questions.

A lot of times we'll get questions and there at MSU, and she answers, 'cause we get a lot of questions about weeds.

You know, what kind of weed do I have and how do I control it?

So that's what we do.

We're kind of the train the trainer that's where we're working to become better at that and provide those resources like educational videos, which we have on our website.

We have a weed ID book, we have a couple of different publications that we sell to those county folks or state federal folks for resources.

- Okay, thank you.

Folks, you can sure call-in questions.

Taking the questions tonight are Nancy Blake and Cheryl Moore-Gough.

They relay those questions to me over this little computer via Slack technology.

And you know, it's actually kind of Slack is pretty handy, and unless you provide the questions, we're not gonna provide the answers.

So let's start with a few that've come in, a couple of leftover from last year, but one has come in for Abi.

This came in from billings, Abi, and they'd like to know, is this a good time to fertilize my lawn?

I think they're rushing it a little bit but I'll get your two cents worth.

- So I wouldn't recommend fertilizing your lawn at this time.

You can, if you needed to overseed or reseed some parts of your lawn, you can do that at this time of year.

But fertilizing, I wouldn't recommend doing that just yet.

I would recommend waiting a little bit until it starts to green up a little bit more.

But yes, I think that would be jumping the gun a little bit.

- You know, the earlier you fertilize, the more you have to mow.

And the older you get, the less you have to mow is better.

So I usually wait till around memorial day to actually start fertilizing my yard and it seems to work.

I still have to mow it for first couple of months every week, but after that, it slows down.

A midsummer application also helps a little bit.

Jane, this question came in from Bozeman.

This person is seeing a lot of burdock, he might explain what burdock is.

Is that a regulated plant and do they need to report it to have it controlled?

- Yeah, so burdock it's a biennial.

It has big wide leaves, I always thought it looked like rhubarb.

I think it looks like rhubarb.

In fact, I think I took some home to my mom once when I was a little girl telling her I brought rhubarb home.

It's got these big broad leaves, and then so it'll be kind of growing in a rosette, a circular pattern this time of year.

Well, within a few weeks here, and then it grows probably three, four, or five feet tall and it gets those burs on it.

Those round burs, they get stuck in your dog's ears and hair.

It is not on the state noxious weed list, it is on some county noxious weed list.

So in Montana, the counties are administers of the County Noxious Weed Control Act.

And they have to manage the state-listed weeds, but then some counties also add additional species that are problematic in those counties, but maybe not problematic elsewhere, you know, all counties in the state.

So burdock is on some County noxious weed list.

I can't remember off the top of my head, which counties it is listed in, but I would suggest that the person talk to their County Weed District or the County Extension Agent, either one, they'll get the word to the right person.

And yeah, it's always great, it's always a good idea to report weeds if, and when you see them and then the weed district will decide what the priority is, as far as managing those weeds.

- Is there an area of Montana where burdock is more prevalent than other areas or is it statewide?

- Well, you can find it statewide if I remember correctly, it's, I think some of the counties over in the South Central, the South-Eastern part of the state, have it on the County weed list, maybe Fallon County.

I don't know if Becky, if you can chime in here at all, but if I remember right, it kind of the Southern in the South Eastern counties.

Maybe have more of a burdock issue than other counties.

- The warmer environments.

- Possibly, yeah.

- Okay, all right, thank you.

Laurie, Steve from Helena has had issues with maggots in both onions and peas.

And I haven't seen them in peas before, would like to know how to prevent that.

- Last year we had a big issue with our onion maggots and in a lot of our seed corn maggots, they're same genus different species.

And I think people were pretty excited to get started.

Planning early 'cause of COVID, and these are pests that really like, they're an early-season pest and they also like cool-wet soils.

So if there's anything you could do to try to delay the planting, maybe wait until mid to late May, depending on what other crops you have to.

And then really they like high organic matter soils.

So make sure that your soils aren't too high in organic matter and rotate the planting area if you can.

And just anything you could do to delay, they look like a small house fly.

So they're probably about half the size of the house fly.

And you can monitor for them by using yellow sticky cards too.

So there's a few generations, it happens really fast when things are starting to establish.

So just keep an eye out for them.

- If you plant onions earlier than later, are you more prone to get onion maggots, I'm curious myself.

- I'm not sure, I mean, I just think, I know that last year we had quite a few, well, the earlier season plantings, we had quite a high population of them.

- All right, thank you.

Becky this question came in from Bozeman.

They would like to know if the Montana Weed Control Association is a state agency or an independent regulated agency?

- We get asked that quite a bit because we are so agency-based.

But we are a 501c3 nonprofit, which makes us a charitable nonprofit that folks can deduct their donations to.

So we represent we're a lot like I believe, MACD the Montana Conservation District Association, where they represent county or conservation districts, but they're a non-profit, I believe that's correct with them, but that's how we are.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, from Laurel, great question, good timing.

Is it too late to prune his fruit trees?

And he's talking about apple pears and if you're growing pears on Laurel I congratulate you.

It's not that easy to grow pears on Laurel, but if you are good job.

Abi, what do you think?

- So if you are pruning your apple trees now, you have to be pretty cautious of what you're pruning out of them, but it's not too late to prune your apple trees now they're still dormant.

It is a good time of year to do some shaping too throughout that fall to spring timeline.

But for more information on fruit tree pruning, you can visit our Western AG Research Center website, and they have guides on how and when to prune fruit trees.

And you can also call them at (406) 961-3025, for more information on that.

- Okay, thank you, and if that person who called this in is still watching, I'd like to know what variety of pears, if they know, that they're successfully growing in Laura, I am a little bit curious.

- Jack, can I ask Abi a follow-up question?

- Sure.

So Abi, how do you know if it's too late?

Like if you start pruning your apple tree, is there a way to tell if it's too late and you should stop?

- So what I usually go by is I look to see if the buds have started to swell.

And at that time I would personally not If the buds haven't started to swell yet, then I think it's a pretty safe time to prune it.

- Okay, thank you.

- Okay, Jane, oh go ahead.

- I was just gonna have a follow-up question as well.

We have a couple different varieties of apple trees in our yard and the really good one with the good apples.

It doesn't produce fruit every year.

Is that because of maybe climate too much frost or should it be producing fruit every year?

- So that depends on quite a few things.

It depends on potentially frost affecting the buds.

So if you've had some frost damage to the bud, that's not gonna produce fruit.

If it flowers every year and it doesn't produce fruit, you might have to look into pollination to see if you have another pollinating variety that is going to cross-pollinate with it.

And also if you have sufficient pollinators around that are going to be able to fertilize those flowers.

So I would definitely keep an eye to see what it does during the flowering season, but also take a look at how old that tree is.

Younger trees may not produce fruit every year and may not produce a large set of fruit every year too.

- Okay.

- Thank you.

- Thanks, guys, Jane and Becky from Whitefish, this person would like to know how to control Canada thistle and their yard and garden.

And I'm gonna get on Canada thistle a little bit more in a minute.

They say Roundup doesn't work, any suggestions, Jane, I'll start with you.

- This is in a yard and garden setting.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, and they've tried Roundup and it's not working.

- They say Roundup is not working.

- Well, yard and garden.

In the yard, I think one thing to think about, and Abi can probably chime in here too, but part of it is making sure your lawn is competitive, you know, proper watering, proper fertilization to try to make that lawn as competitive as possible against the Canada thistle.

In the garden, I think you just gonna have to keep, you know, just digging it out.

It does have the tillers and it does the tillering, it's really a difficult species to control.

And if it gets too thick, you might be looking at just moving your garden or, you know, maybe it's time to renovate your lawn.

But, yeah, it's not an easy one, especially once it gets well-established.

- I've been told that you can dig them for two years and you're still going to have some Canada thistle.

- Yeah, I have some I dig out of my raised beds, especially there's a couple beds I'm digging it out every single year, multiple times throughout the growing season.

- Okay, on the Canada thistle issue, to me Canada thistle is Bozeman's local We have plenty of Canada thistle here.

Becky, Jane, I see all kinds of acreage around Bozeman that the Canada thistle is allowed to mature.

You've got 2000, 3000 seeds per plant that are blowing.

It looks like a snowstorm during a thunderstorm.

Why are we not controlling this?

And if they want it controlled, how do we go about getting Canada thistle under control in a place like the Galton Valley, - Becky, (laughs laudly) do you want to answer that?

- I shouldn't have brought it out, right?

- You know, it's the million-dollar question.

We all have job security because weeds are never going to go away.

It's not a glamorous topic, it's a hard topic to gain traction.

We'd like to say though, once you're weedy, you're always weedy.

Because once you realize, and once you start recognizing and you learn about these invasives and what they can do and the damage that they cause, I mean, we're talking millions of dollars in Montana every year from invasive species control.

You'll never forget it, most of us can spot a nap, we'd plan flowering at 80 miles an hour down the interstate, you just learn it.

But it's a tough topic, it's not warm and fuzzy, it's not you know, little kittens and puppies and it's not an easy issue.

So that being said, you know, our first line of defense is education and awareness.

You know, we get asked about the County Weed Act, and quite frankly, the County Weed Act, its wording is may and not shall.

And so it's dependent upon Gallatin County, I'll use your example, the commissioners and the weed board and the County Attorney there to determine how they're best going to manage the County Weed Act in their County.

And that varies totally across the state.

So I don't know if I have a short answer, not everybody knows about noxious weeds, so education and awareness first, and then you know, hopefully, you can work with your neighbors and work with folks in a proactive and positive way to improve the viewshed.

'Cause, it is devastating to agriculture, it's devastating, it can be to gardeners.

It can be devastating to ranchers.

Pretty much there's no one that's not impacted by noxious weeds.

- Jack, I would also add that.

I think one of the problems with noxious weeds is, we don't really think about them at the time when you should be controlling them.

We don't think about controlling them till they're flowering and producing seeds.

And for most species, that's too late to control them.

So, kinda like Becky was saying, we really need the education and awareness and talking about weeds before they're showy and everybody's noticing them.

Because, by that time we've kind of missed our chance in terms of trying to control.

- I agree entirely, and I'll throw this up because Jim in Belgrade called and he said, he spends hundreds of dollars each year to control his weeds, but his neighbors upwind have not controlled their Canada thistle.

And as a result, he's getting re-infested every year.

If he called the County Weed Board, and asked for that particular person who has a thistle problem to control it.

What would happen?

And, you know, any suggestions there?

- Yeah, well, different count in.

Becky, well, you can try to answer this too.

But, different counties kind of have different ways of enforcing the County noxious Weed Control Act.

Some counties enforce it more readily than others.

It kinda depends on what their budget is, how many different landowners they're working with.

But, if this gentleman was concerned about his neighbors and called the County Weed District, he would be asked whether he wanted to file a formal complaint.

- Okay.

- And, that kicks off a process.

Once a formal complaint is filed in most situations, however, people don't wanna do that.

They'd rather talk to their neighbor, let them know.

You know, again, talking about Becky with the education, you know, do you know what this plant is?

Are you aware of the impacts it can have?

And in most situations that I'm aware of, once someone talks to their neighbor and talks to a landowner and provide some educational resources, usually the landowner wants to take action and do something about it.

- Okay, well, there's enough Canada thistle that I don't have enough paper to write enough formal complains in this County.

- Yeah.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that.

There is a Canada thistle rust that is being researched.

It's a, it's called Puccinia or Puccinia punctiformis, I believe is the name.

It's a potential, so it's a rust, it's a pathogen.

And it is a potential biological control that has been researched for many, many years.

Didn't really have a lot of impact, but we've learned some new things about that rust.

And there is research going on across the state, including here at MSU.

Looking at how to use this rust to manage Canada thistle in both cropping systems and pasture and range land.

- Okay, thank you.

I got my two cents worth out (Jane laughs softly) today about Canada thistle.

Laurie, persistent question, year after year we get this.

This personal is about ready to give up gardening here in the Manhattan area.

Basically says, the Flea beetles get all of her produce before she does, any suggestions?

- Yeah, flea beetles are really tricky.

I think anything you could do to maybe make your transplant if you're going to transplant routes anything that's seven to eight, eight inches high would really help kind of combat your Flea beetle issues.

It's crop rotation doesn't really work very well in this situation 'cause they're so mobile.

And I, it's just they're very, if you could plan a trap crop.

I know we've talked about this a lot on egg live, something like radishes.

Something that could tolerate a little bit of damage, but the more you could get.

Your flooding row covers can help too, if you're going with the seedling routes.

But just anything you could do to try to allow your plants to get a little bit larger and tolerate the Flea beetle issues.

And they can take a lot of defoliation.

And so, just keep that in mind too, but sometimes it's just having sort of trap crop will really help a constant battle.

- Okay, I'll make a little suggestion here.

A good friend of mine, Perry Miller, who sits here almost gave up trying to grow broccoli because, he'd try to grow broccoli from And once broccoli pops through, you have 7,952 Flea beetles attacking that broccoli plant.

I suggested to him that he starts with broccoli sets, maybe two, three, four inches high.

And he had more broccoli they knew what to do with last year.

So, trying to grow certain crops from seed doesn't work, where you have Flea beetle issues.

From sets, it works a little bit better.

And with that from Helena, you know, this is for Becky.

And Jane, is there a noxious weeds succession process?

He has noticed in Western Montana that, following weed control that knapweed then cheatgrass, and then hound stones come in.

Is that natural or you guys talk about possible succession?

- Yeah, you want me to take this back to you and... - Yeah, Jane, this is (indistinct).

- Yeah, this is a big problem we have with Invasive Plant Management.

We tend to target one species and we do a good job controlling that, but then another weed comes in after we've controlled one.

I've heard that referred to as the noxious weed treadmill as well.

So, you're always on this treadmill of trying to control the next weed that's coming down the line.

One of the tenants of Integrated Weed Management, is focusing on the desired vegetation.

So, when you think about controlling a weed, you do need to pay attention to what is growing with it, alongside it or in the understory.

And with the expectation that when you do a good job controlling that target weed, those other species are probably gonna grow more robustly, 'cause they don't have to compete with that weed anymore.

But the coller is making a great observation and we see this in other places.

All across the state, my colleagues in Wyoming and Idaho, are seeing the same thing that we see another weed move in after we control one.

That's where revegetation becomes important.

So, you're controlling the weed, there's nothing there growing that you wanna have growing.

Even if you control the weed, you might have bare ground, you might have another weed show up.

What we need to think about doing is, integrating seeding to re-establish desired species in conjunction with the weed control.

We've also noticed and this is more anecdotal than, well, there were some research evidence, but anecdotally people have noticed when we use a species or we use the herbicide Picloram that tends to especially lead to the release of annual grasses, like cheatgrass and ventenata after controlling the invasive forb.

So, using a herbicide that's a little more selective, a little kinder to the other species that are out there, the grasses can help as well.

But it is a big issue and something we need to make sure we're paying attention to, when we manage noxious weeds.

- Okay, on that note, we had a caller who lives in Bridger Canyon call in this evening.

And he understands if they're going to be using helicopters to seed wheatgrass, where the fires were last year.

Is this a good process to keep the noxious weed control or weeds under control?

- It can be.

It depends on how severe the fire burned and what was the abundance of noxious weeds in that area before fire.

if you had high abundance of noxious weeds before the fire, the fire burns severely, the need for revegetation is more likely.

But it's not always likely.

- Okay.

- So, you need to, there needs to be site assessment.

I'm assuming that's been done.

But yeah, it's, it depends on the situation.

- All right, thank you.

Becky, we'll address this one to you.

This person is interested in noxious weeds, but has no idea what a lot of them look like.

I know on your website, you have an educational program to help people understand what noxious weeds look like and how to identify them.

You wanna touch on that a little bit and help this person out?

- Sure, we have all of our state-listed noxious weeds on the website, mtweed.org.

And you can go through and look at those.

And we also have little quick two-minute videos on each of those weeds.

They're not very long, but you can kind of see it live in-person versus, you know, just reading about it and seeing pictures.

And then we also we have a kind of more Lyman type, a noxious weed field guide, which is just a little pocket booklet that you can throw in your jockey box.

But I know, and I know MSU also has a weed ID booklet.

So, it's really about you know, going out and, you know, you have to educate yourself and taking the initiative to do that and to become aware of the problem.

- Okay, thank you, I have actually learned a lot about noxious weeds, and I have a long ways to go.

Yeah, you don't have to comment on that.

But I did look at your website and those two-minute videos by, I think a gentleman with the last name, Andrew, they're similar.

Has really done a beautiful job in creating awareness and helping the average individual identify weeds.

It's a great website.

So, if anybody wants, look up Montana Weed Control Association, and you'll find that website there and become educated.

I have, and my wife says it doesn't help, but so, be it.

Abi, this person from Libby has an interesting question and it won't require a long answer.

She has a lemon tree in a pot.

She wants to know, if she puts it outside during the winter, what would happen to it?

- (laughs softly) Well, that tree would probably, I think the worst-case scenario would be that tree would be killed.

And the best-case scenario would be that, that tree really not do well at all.

So, I don't recommend leaving lemon trees.

Their growing zone is much higher than we have anywhere in Montana.

Bring that tree in, as soon as things cool down in the fall, and wait until the spring.

After the frost danger has passed probably around Memorial day, before you put that tree back outside.

- I have no doubt it would not survive a winter here in Montana.

I don't think it's a certified at 40 below zero.

Anyway, Laurie, from Kalispell, and I'm curious about this myself.

This person would like to know if there's a good way to control earwigs.

And I don't think they do a lot of damage, but they are not a very sightly pest.

- Yeah, that one's, for earwigs, it's really good to try to get rid of their sheltering areas.

And that's probably the best way to control them.

They're active at night and they hide during the day.

So, anything you could put around corrugated cardboard.

Maybe just some sort of tubig or something.

Give them somewhere to rest, and then you could throw away those pieces of corrugated cardboard.

And I mean, you try to mulch for a lot of your plants to preserve moisture, but you're also providing habitat for your earwigs.

So, it gets pretty tricky to try to control them.

And, but if you can give them a couple of hiding spots, kind of wet that coordinated cardboard and throw it away, then that would be a way to get rid of them and try to reduce around the yard.

But they also do provide a very good service.

They feed on aphids and they feed on some other soft-bodied insects.

So, they are performing a good service, even though sometimes they chew on your dahlias and roses and things of that sort.

And they kind of, they're kind of creepy for an insect, (all laughs softly) but they do have a good service in the ecosystem.

- They're not the prettiest insect I've ever seen.

- I can't believe I heard Laurie say they're kind of creepy, as an insect.

(Jack laughs loudly) - Yeah.

- I had cracks in my foundation in Michigan.

And so, they were in my basement and in my bed all the time.

So, they were just, that they were, they infested my room.

And so, I, of all things to be creeped out by, that was the one that gets me.

- Okay, interesting question from Bozeman, I liked this one.

This person would like to know whether she should spend her stimulus check on having her windows clean or spraying.

Her lawn for weeds, is spraying for weeds.

When is the best time to do it?

She does have a weed problem.

I suspect it's dandelions and thistle and everything else.

Jane, it's all yours.

- This is a great question.

I think it depends on how dirty her windows are.

(Jane and Jack laughs loudly) - Okay.

- Compared to how many weeds she has, yeah, well to get to the question, I think was, what would be a good time to do that?

I think we're probably a month or so out from really spraying lives, - At least yeah.

- in the Bozeman area, yeah.

Abi, what do you think?

- I would agree with that.

I think right now would be too early to spray, but yeah.

I liked that comment of how dirty the windows are, (all laughs softly) that's great.

- Okay, we've got that one solved.

I've got you up Jane, this came in from Phillipsburg.

They would like to know what chemical would be used to control lupine in a field, which they have a lot of.

The cows eat the lupine and their calves are born deformed.

Let's talk about lupine.

Is it a noxious weed first of all?

- Yeah, no, lupine is a native plant.

- Right.

- It's not an noxious weed, but it does.

There are certain years and certain places where you can get really dense and I don't call infestations, but really dense populations of lupine.

And they do, cause does have toxicity and it can cause I believe their birth defects with calves.

I don't know off the top of my head, like how to treat it, but I do know that with lupine, there are some ways with grazing management to move your animals around in ways to lessen or prevent the impacts associated with lupine.

It's probably a little more complicated question than we can try to answer, you know, in a 30, 45-second response here tonight.

But if she wants to give me a call, I could talk to her about that more.

My phone number is 994513.

- Okay, thank you.

We did have a response from Laurie and I thank him for calling back.

The pair of varieties they are growing are, Uri, U-R-E, golden spice, heirs, and box pairs.

So, good job out there Laurie, thank you for the response.

- Jack, can I ask a question of Laurie.

- Sure.

- You talked about to give up gardening and I have to ask you, I'm about to give up on my absolute favorite, favorite flower peonies, because something is eating them.

Every summer the leaves just get eaten alive.

Do you have any idea what that is?

I'm in twin bridges.

- If it's just the leaves, are they skeletonized the point where it's just the vein, or is they just on the outside?

- It's just on the outside.

- Yeah, so, that I think is probably a root weevil and it's not really, did you say it's damaging your flowers at all or it's just... - Well, they're young plants and you know, I think I should probably hire you to come help me figure out how to make this work because I love peonies, but I kill them constantly.

So, I got, I only have a couple plants that bloom, but the lead, the young ones that I've planted.

The leaves are being chewed up.

- Yeah, we have several species of root weevils here in Montana that will take notches out of the sides of the leaves.

And in the immature stage, they feed on the roots of the plants.

But in Montana yet we haven't seen too much of an issue with the root-feeding causing damage.

So, it's more of a cosmetic thing.

But there is a way to, you could definitely treat the root weevils if you, but they're active at night.

I think that's most of the time you don't see them chewing.

So, I think that's why people are surprised about the peonies are.

They don't know it's doing that.

But yeah, it's, you could either let it be, or if it gets really bad, then you could try to.

There's some old products that could help you.

I could show to you that you can actually treat the root weevils in the evening, early evening.

- Okay.

- Okay, Jane, I see some plants that are green and there's not a lot of green stuff out there yet.

And we do have several questions regarding the one I recognized, which is cheatgrass.

- Yeah.

- You can talk about cheatgrass.

I'm also very curious about the next one.

That looks almost like a parsley plant.

- It does, it's in the same family, yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah, so, I did a little walkabout this afternoon to try to find something growing that I could bring on the show tonight, since I was gonna be in the studio.

And I wasn't surprised that one of the few things I found was cheatgrass.

Cheatgrass is, it's a winter annual.

So, it most of these would have.

Well, we had some germination last fall, but last fall was so dry that we didn't have a lot.

But these are just some little seedlings of cheatgrass.

It's just kind of, just two leaves.

This is here around Bozeman.

I think other parts of the state where maybe it's a little warmer, you have a little bigger plants, here's a cup.

I just dug up some soil and it's just kind of a little green carpet of cheatgrass.

You can see the stems from last year.

Spring is a great time to treat cheatgrass because as you can see, it's greening up before other grasses are coming out of dormancy.

So, you can use fairly low rates of glyphosate products, like six ounces per acre.

I would want my cheatgrass to be a little bit bigger than this for treatment.

If we, if it stays kind of warm and the next week to 10 days, I think we get a little more growth on the cheatgrass around here, and it'd be great.

But yeah, this plant matures early, grows earlier than everything else.

And it's a big problem.

We get questions about it all the time on Montana Ag Live and elsewhere.

And then the other plant I brought in is poison hemlock.

It's in the carrot family, and it's just starting to green up.

It's a very toxic plant.

I don't even really wanna touch it here.

It's on some County listed noxious weeds, but not the state list, but it has this real feathery leaf.

It does look like parsley or like a carrot leaf.

And as this plant continues to grow, it'll get, you know, five, six, sometimes seven feet tall, depending on where it's growing and it gets big white flowers on it.

And I noticed this growing.

A great time to control this will probably be in a few weeks if it stays kinda warm.

Because it's greening up and we're getting these rosettes on the ground.

But nothing else is greening up around it.

So you can come along with like a 240 product or a met sulfur on product and get good control of that without having impact on other vegetation.

- You'll find that in wetter areas generally.

- Yeah, it's it does like a little more moist areas where I see a lot of this around Bozeman is like in the deciduous forest, along the riparian areas.

- And are the leaves toxic or just the root?

- All parts of the plant are toxic, yeah, yeah.

- So, and while we have you there, I see some nap weed down there.

- Yeah, I just picked this again.

I was a little desperate for trying to find things growing.

It's not very green around here, here's last year's old stems.

They show up.

They're very easy to see, but there was a little bit of greening up of the leaves.

And actually now's not the greatest time to treat knapweed.

You get the best control unless you're pulling it.

You can see that I pulled this out of the ground, has this taproot.

It pulls when the soil is moist.

Now's a good time to do that.

As it gets later in the summer, if you were going to use a herbicide or mowing, you would do that when it starts forming buds, flower buds.

- Thank you, Jane.

Becky, a question from Cheryl down in your old home stomping grounds.

This person here is of priority 2a, 1a classifications, and noxious weeds.

Would you care to explain how they're classified and why?

- Oh my goodness, I don't know if I can answer this, maybe Jane can.

They just, they reclassified, I don't know, five, six years ago maybe.

And it has to do, I don't have the list in front of me, but it has to do with that, how important they are or how invasive they are, or how damaging they are.

And if we don't have them in the state.

So like yellow starthistle is one plant we don't have in Montana, it's been found before, but we don't have it that we know of.

So, and Jane, I'm sorry, I don't have the weed list in front of me, but priority 1a, I mean, they go in like, what's common to what's least common, so you're gonna have to help me out.

- Yeah, so the priority one species are the least abundant in the state.

So they're higher priority because we're trying to prevent them from either getting here at all, or we're trying to prevent them from becoming more established.

So like, yeah, like, Becky was saying, Yellow Star Thistles priority 1a and then we go down to 1b and those are abundant in just localized areas.

And then we move into the 2a and 2b, and those are the species that are far more abundant.

For example, Canada Thistle, Spotted Knapweed, Leafy Spurge.

So it's kind of counter-intuitive because the more abundant a plant is it's kind of the lower, the priority is because the focus is on prevention and eradication where possible.

- Okay, makes sense.

- Hopefully, that makes sense.

- It does.

- You can find the list at the Montana Department of AG website.

- Okay.

- So if you just Google Montana Department of AG Noxious Weeds, you can find the list and it does explain how and why they're categorized the way they are.

- Okay, thank you, Becky, this person would like you to repeat the website identifier for noxious weeds and how can they find out where the website is to identify there.

- Sure.

- Go for it.

- If you even Google Montana noxious weeds, it's gonna rise up pretty high.

So it's the Montana Weed Control Association, mtweed.org, WWW.MTWEED.ORG.

And we have all the videos on there.

I appreciate you were talking earlier about how informative it is.

There's a lot of information on that website.

So I go there and check it out.

- Thank you, Laurie, this is an interesting one because I've had this problem myself.

From Big Fork, they would like to know what the tiny black flies are that bite causing welts on the skin.

And are these the same flies that attack livestock?

- I think these, they might be talking about black flies, if it's if they're near a water source, that way, those are biting flies and we don't have those in every area of the state.

As far as the ones, I'm not sure if black flies are a pest of livestock at all.

I should know that, but if anybody, I don't know if anybody else on the panel does that, but yeah, I don't.

We also have biting midges that are a different type of fly that are passive livestock.

So I don't know, I'm not sure about the black flies.

- Okay, thank you.

Jane from Helena quickly, how do you control Burdock we didn't get into that.

They mentioned that we talked about it, but in an urban area, how do you control?

- Yeah, well, you can hand pull it.

It's got a nice big taproot weed control is work, yeah.

You can hand pull it or, you know, use a spade and pop it out of the ground.

It, when the soil is moist, it comes out well, it has a nice big taproot.

If you miss that opportunity or there's too much to do that 2 4 D early spring, and then another thing you can do is let it grow up and mow it.

So when you start seeing flowers, mow it down.

- Will that get rid of it over time?

- It will get rid of it over time because it only reproduces through the seeds.

So if you're doing that, you're stopping the seed production and those plants will only live so long.

- You mentioned 24d, and we just had a question from Bozeman and I'll throw this out.

How effective is 24d against Canada Thistle?

- You know, it works all right, if you do it fairly early summer, when it's in that rosettes stage before you start getting bolting, which is when the plant starts growing tall and the flower buds forming.

So in the spring or in the fall.

- Thank you, Abby, from Whitefish this person wants to know if they should leave grass clippings on his lawn to improve the soil or bag them and get rid of them you're up.

- So it would depend on how much, how tall the grass is, and how many clippings there are.

But it's usually a good idea to leave the grass clippings on the lawn.

Unless you are mowing six inches of grass and you're going to kind of mat it down and create this kind of woven mat of clippings.

But usually, it's a great idea to leave those clippings in the grass over the grass.

You rarely need to bag them up unless you have a lot of grass.

- Okay, thank you, from Frenchtown.

This person would like to know if anybody on the panel knows what the weed was that came into Idaho after the 2016, 2017 fires down there.

I have no clue, anybody have a thought on that?

If not, we'll look it up and find out.

- Yeah, I don't know, there's just not quite enough information there to make a good guess.

- Okay, well, if we hear anything, we'll bring it out next time.

Facebook question our neighbor, or this person says a neighbor has toxic blueweed, but in their ornamental area, this person thinks it's pestment.

How do you tell the difference and how can you be sure?

Anybody know the answer to that?

- Well, I would say the best thing to do would be to get a sample into your extension office and see if the local agent can help with the ID.

There are ways to tell Penstemon from Blueweed, but I can see why the person might be confused as well, 'cause look very similar to each other.

So just get a sample into your local office and we'll see what we can see what we can tell.

- Okay.

- And Jack, I wanna weigh in on that if I could.

- Sure.

If we often get a lot of questions I kinda laugh sometimes I'll get a call, "You know, I have a green plant in my yard "with the yellow flower, what is it?"

Which kinda is a little tough to answer.

So I learned this a few years ago, is you can actually scan if you have a printer scanner in your office or home, or even take a picture of it and send it to the MSU Diagnostic Lab.

Noel is fabulous at helping identify those plants.

So I just have to put a shout-out to the diagnostic lab 'cause it's pretty amazing.

- And on that note, we had a question tonight from Dylan.

This person has a very short yellow-flowered weed in the lawn that spreads.

It is too short to mow.

What is it, and how can he control it?

And you just answered the question, send a picture in perfect timing, folks, well I have you up?

And this one, I like from Helena.

They wanna know why Russian Olives are now considered invasive and, or a noxious weed in some areas.

When they were originally planted throughout the state many years ago for erosion control and other effects.

Have at it folks, I wanna know why we can't have that plant.

- I'll let Becky start that one and then I can Chime in as needed.

- We have two trees of sort in Montana that can become incredibly invasive if they were given a lot of water.

One is Russian Olive, and one is called Salt Cedar.

And if you go along some of our waterways and Central Montana going towards Eastern Montana, these plants take up a tremendous amount of water and become invasive.

And so I don't know where the state is with it.

I can't remember if it's a regulated plant Jane on our list or not.

But the reason is because it, you know, I had Salt Cedar outside my door planted as an ornamental.

It went nowhere and it was fine, but it was on the noxious weed list we had to get rid of it.

And that's kind of the premise with both of those plants is they're so destructive when they get into waterways.

Particularly that's why they were promoted for that.

Now, if you get into Eastern Montana and Jane correct me if I'm wrong on this.

But you can get into drier locations where you won't see that.

I mean, they're not near water and they don't spread like that.

So they were great shelter belts back in the day, but now we're starting to find with more water, they become invasive and I'll let Jane finish anything I forgot.

- Yeah, I think, you know, in certain places they become invasive in the situation is we can't control where the seeds go.

So if you think about those olives, they're very attractive to a lot of wildlife.

They can fall in rivers and float downstream.

So while rationale has a use in some locations.

There's no doubt it's invasive.

You can see it growing like Becky was saying in river systems, especially in the South and South-Eastern part of the state.

And we can't control where the seeds end up.

- I have been told that there are new varieties of Russian Olives that are more accepted than the old varieties, is that true or not?

- Well, maybe Abby can chime in here.

I know there is some plant breeding.

I don't know if it's breathing, it's horticultural development of some Russian Olives that don't have viable seeds.

Is that right Abby, have you heard anything about that?

- I am not too knowledgeable on that topic, but I will look that up that's interesting.

- I think Bill Hoke here at, in Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology years ago was doing work on that.

I'm not sure where he is with that research.

- Okay, sounds good.

Folks we've had numerous questions tonight about gophers, bowls, stuff like that.

We're going to get to that later on.

We've got people that specialize in small vertebrate control scheduled to be on the program.

I'm gonna hold those questions because I'm dangerous when it gets to that kind of stuff.

We've got two minutes left.

We're gonna try to throw a few quick questions out.

Abby, this person has tomato plants that they start in the house.

By the time they put them in the garden, they're three foot high and spindly, how do they prevent that?

- So one thing that they could do, if they're spindly is to make sure that they're getting enough light.

Sometimes when plants are trying to reach out to get access to that light, they get a little leggy.

But for more information on that, I would contact your local extension office and they can give you some tips on growing tomatoes and hardening them off before you put them on the ground.

- Okay, Bellflower control, lawns, and gardens.

- I don't remember.

- You'll find out.

- I'll find out.

- Okay, from Trout Creek and I have not heard this one.

This person has Ventinata weed in his hayfield.

Do you have any idea what that is?

- Yeah, Ventinata is a annual grass, much like cheatgrass.

It's our newest species on the noxious weed list.

And it's very difficult to control, but there are herbicides that will work on it.

That's about all we have right now for options.

So in Trout Creek, I would reach out, I think Trout Creek is Sanders County if I'm correct.

Reach out to your Weed District Office and the County Extension Office there because I've been talking to them a lot over the years about Ventinata.

So they'll have some ideas.

- Okay, I'd like to see a sample that sometime when... - Okay.

- Okay, all right, folks, we're down to about 30 seconds.

Let me thank the panel.

First of all, Becky, thank you for joining us from the sunny Phoenix area.

Everybody else I appreciate you being here.

We're gonna be back again next week.

And next week, we're going to look at the nursery and landscape association and what they do for a state like Montana at work urbanization is occurring at a rapid rate.

So join us next week.

Have a good week, good night - [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(gentle instrumental music) Montana AG Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture.

The MSU Extension Service.

The MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture.

The Montana Wheat and Barley Committee.

The Montana Bankers Association.

Cashman Nursery and Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Advisor Program.

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