- [Narrator] 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 & Barley Committee, the Montana Bankers Association, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Advisor Program.

(Indie theme music) - Good evening, you are tuned to Montana AG Live, originating tonight from the studios of KUSM.

On the beautiful and vibrant campus of Montana State University, and also coming to you from our homes and offices throughout beautiful Montana.

I'm Jack Riesselman, Retired Professor of Plant Pathology.

I'll be your host this evening.

Those of you who have watched the program in the past know how it works.

You provide the questions and we will guess at the answers.

No, I'm kidding, we will have really good answers.

We're kind of following up on various associations that provide jobs and a lot of education to the people of the State of Montana.

Tonight, we're going to talk about the Montana Nursery and Landscape Association.

We do have the president of that association joining us tonight.

So before we go any farther, let me introduce tonight's panel.

Here in the studio with me is Mary Burrows.

Mary is a Plant Pathologist... Extension Plant Pathologist and also has a part-time Administrative Associate Director of the AG Experiment Station.

Joining us from Laurel tonight, Steve Lehenbauer.

Steve is owner of Rocky Ridge... River Ridge Landscape and Nursery there in Laurel.

He's also President of the Montana Nursery and Landscape Association.

And we'll come back to Steve here in a minute and get some more information from him about what the association does or what it's all about.

Mac Burgess.

Mac is up in the left-hand corner there.

Mac is small farm Horticulturalist.

If you have questions about small farms horticulture issues tonight, Mac will take those questions.

And of course you all know Clain Jones.

Clain is our fertility...

Soil Fertility specialists.

Clain is really knowledgeable about when and what to put on plants to make them healthy and grow at its best rate of speed.

So before we go any farther, Steve tell us about the nursery association if you would, please.

- You bet.

One of my second stint as the President of the Montana Nursery and Landscape Association, we call the MNLA for short.

It's a statewide organization with members affiliated with the green industry.

A lot of our members are garden center owners, landscapers, plant growers, plant re-wholesalers.

We have lawn maintenance companies including spray applicators involved in the organization.

We've got some underground irrigation companies, arborists, and then obviously all the suppliers that supply the plants, the chemicals, the fertilizers, and the equipment for our industry.

They are all members of our statewide Montana Nursery and Landscape Association.

- You know, Steve, that industry has just, from what I've seen, blown up in this state.

I mean, we're seeing more and more urban or horticulture urban issues with plants.

A lot of it is based on our increased population and a lot of it has to do with people that are more interested in urban issues, horticultural issues.

Can you give me a little bit of education on how businesses increased for a lot of the landscape and nursery associations?

- Sure.

I mean, it's over the last 10 years or so, a lot of people have gotten into this feeling that they wanna stay at home more.

We have a lot of things that catered to us right to our house, we don't have to go out as much.

They want their yard looking good.

There's a lot of interest in vegetable gardening going on.

It's been getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Landscaping your house, I mean, it's just... That's the norm now, and the norm now is putting this underground sprinkler system for those things.

The pandemic of this last year has really surprised us around the state.

We are actually doing a bang-up job and great business because people are staying home.

They're not flying, they're not going and spending their money traveling, they're gonna spend their money on fixing up their yards, maybe doing a little more gardening than they have in the past.

And we're also seeing a little bit of a resurgence in the interest of planting fruit trees and whatnot.

So, the industry is doing good in Montana right now.

- Okay.

We'll get back to that and talk a little bit more about that, as we go through the program this evening.

Meanwhile, a question for Mac.

This person from Manhattan would like to know can they plant sweet peas this week?

- This week, maybe in Manhattan, in Bozeman, it's a little early yet.

And certainly in West Yellowstone where it's way too early.

Manhattan, a little lower elevation, I think it might...

There it might be possible.

The first thing you wanna do is not work your soil when it's wet, so if the soil is dried out, yeah, that's possible.

I don't know whether you're gaining a whole lot by doing it this week, as opposed to a week or two or even three from now, so while it may be possible, they may well emerge and thrive.

It's not on the early side.

So I wouldn't be in a big rush to, but yeah you could probably get away with it and they may well come up, it's a gamble.

- It is a gamble and we will have more snow yet this year, I can guarantee that.

- No, not if am sweeping the flower, as opposed to vegetable peas.

There's so many little tricks to get those to emerge, scarifying the seed if you plant them by hand.

But if you want blooms in August, it's a little earlier than necessary yet.

- Okay.

Thanks man.

Whereas we're on the subject of peas, lots of areas of state you could be planning dry peas now, can't we?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I know the planters are rolling in the triangle right now.

They're probably putting peas, maybe spring wheat.

Next we'll probably go into lentils but chickpeas are gonna wait a while.

We want the temperatures of the soil a little warmer, ideally 55 degrees.

And that's because the Caboolture pig chickpeas in particular are very susceptible to damping off.

A lot of our organic growers lost their crops last year 'cause they planted cooler soils and there's a pathogen called Pythium, and it really, really likes chickpeas, especially the Caboolture types.

- Yeah.

I remember that well when I was in that arena.

Steve, this question came in from Helena, and they would like to know does the nursery association help fledgling nurseries find genetically adapted plant material for Montana?

You wanna jump on that one a little bit?

- So we've got an... MNLA is a good source for any up and coming nursery if you wanna start a nursery.

The MNLA will help you find all kinds of plant dealers or sources for your plants, or at least points in the right directions.

We've put out a nice catalog of all of our members in there.

The people that are supplying plant material, and we are happy to share those names of those growers with you.

To be, you know, the right exact genetic, what he may be looking for, he made need to take... Make a few calls, but we can absolutely get him started with some of the bigger growers in the Western United States and some even in Montana here, and get them going in the right direction.

- Yeah, thanks for that answer but what I've noticed about the nursery and landscape association is that even though everybody's a little bit of a competitor, they're more than happy to help each other out.

I liked that type of business model.

Okay.

Clain, this question came in from Facebook last week and we get it every time and by the way, folks, if you wanna use email or Facebook to send in questions, we're more than happy to do that.

We have people that will take them and get them to us this evening.

From Ronnan, this person would like to know where they can get their garden soil tested.

And I'll ask you a further question, does it need to be tested?

- Good question.

So there's a number of regional labs, somewhere on the order of 12 or 15 labs.

They're all included in a document, a MontGuide document, that I have produced called Soil Test Interpretation for the Home Gardener.

And so that individual can call me or email me and I can send a link.

They could contact their County Agent, or they can do a search on "soil" and "Clain" and my website will turn up and then they should look under home gardening.

As far as whether it needs to be, that's a good question, you know, I recommend it because it's very easy to over fertilize a garden, that happens more than under fertilization.

I would probably maybe hold off only, soil test if I start seeing problems, and you can fertilize just standard application rates or if you're curious, go ahead and soil test and call me, or email me and I'll help you interpret those results.

- Clain, do you wanna talk a little bit about being careful about where you get your amendments from?

Just because of the herbicide residual issues we see in the state?

- Sure.

So, the... What Mary is alluding to is there's a lot of compost products out there, and if the manure that was used to make that compost had been sprayed with a herbicide that has a long half-life, it takes awhile to break down.

Sometimes we see damage especially to sensitive crops in gardens and so one has to be careful.

You can do what's called a bioassay, they do a little test in your kitchen ahead of time.

You can make sure, for example, where did the maneuver come from?

Where did the compost come from?

If you buy organic composted, almost without a doubt will not have herbicides in it.

So, yeah, just use caution as Mary mentioned in buying amendments.

- Okay.

Thanks, Clain.

Question from Belgrade.

And by the way, before we go any farther, I mentioned Belgrade.

Last week, the Belgrade News had a really neat article.

I'm gonna show it to the camera here.

About this program and it was called "From Humor To Horse Manure."

And I think that's probably what we sometimes do on this program.

But anyway, if you get a chance, I'd like to thank the writer, Karen Davis for putting this out.

It's really kind of an interesting article, it tells about the 27 years that this program has been on the air.

So if you get a chance, pick it up and read it and if you like it, you know, tell Karen that it was a nice article.

Mac, is there a association of truck farms in the state?

And you might explain what a truck farm is.

A lot of people probably don't know that term.

- Yeah.

I don't use that word a whole lot but I know what it means and I guess...

So there's not an association called the truck farm association or anything like that but to me a truck farm is a farm it's small enough to be... You know, mostly providing a local food products and using a truck to deliver those locally or regionally.

In Western Montana, there is a growers association, primarily serving growers in the Bitterroot Valley area.

And yeah, that would be the Western Montana Growers Association, would be the primary one there.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Statewide I know that.

- All right back to Belgrade, Mary, I kind of skipped by that but this person has a bunch of choke cherries and they've been unsuccessful in getting choked cherries for making jam and also wine they mentioned.

They have a bunch of black growth on them, and then about the time they harvest them, they're wormy.

Any suggestions of what's going on?

- Well, they might wanna contact Lori 'cause I need to talk about the insect issues they're seeing in the choke cherries, there are a number.

Also, I did bring a show and tell me that fits pretty well.

Cherries can get a fungus called black knot, which is how I recognize cherries when I'm hiking.

And it's not a problem, usually it's very cosmetic, and it can incur from very small to very large cankers.

This large canker did kill a branch on my cherry tree, and the little one, I don't think it's gonna do much damage.

You said your trees have been pretty stable for a number of years, with the black not?

- [Jack] Yeah.

- Yeah.

So not just prune it out and if it bothers you and if not, just leave it - You know, it's surprising.

I always thought it spread rather rapidly, but you know, for whatever reason, I'm not seeing the spread very much.

- Yeah.

I just keep this tree for show and tell.

- Okay.

(Mary sighs) - Steve, a question from Billings and they've heard the term "Plant something Montana."

Are you familiar with that term or anybody else familiar with that term?

- Plant something was a program we had going on.

It was built by a grant, I think is what they're maybe talking about, where we have some very good educational videos on our plantingmontana.com, the MNLA website.

And you can go get those videos and they're really good made videos by the MNLA to help educate the public on, I think there's like six or so topics there?

And part of that grant program was just to get everybody to thinking about, Hey, planting gardens, planting trees, shrubs, helping our environment, and getting going on that kind of thing but our website has those videos on there that were help pay by the Montana department of AG, and the public is more than welcome to go and look at that.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So have you seen any shortages, in either seeds or planting materials due to the pandemic?

- Right now, there's a huge shortage in all kinds of stuff that is in our industry.

A lot of plant material is hard to come by right now if you're a garden center or nursery and you haven't ordered your plant material.

It's in short supply, like I said, a lot of people never recovered... A lot of the growers never recovered from the downturn in what was that, nine... 2009 and 10 where they had to just chop trees and throw trees away, and now, with the demand for landscaping just going through the roof, there is a short needs of all kinds of plant materials.

I don't know about seeds per se, but plant materials is very hard, especially evergreen trees.

If you're looking for a larger evergreen trees right now, those are getting tougher and tougher to find.

And there's gonna be a critical shortage of Baldwin burlap, spruce, pine, in the near future.

A lot of those wholesale nurseries that have been doing those types of growing, it just takes too long for them to grow that product from a ceiling and a lot of them have just given up on it.

So, larger trees, evergreens, are gonna be part of the tightest thing coming forward.

- Steve I'm gonna follow-up on that because we have a question that came in from Bozeman.

And the question is, "Does the nursery and landscape association help big-box stores select the proper type of materials to grow here in Montana?

And I say that because I do see a lot of evergreen trees showing up at big-box stores that may or may not be adapted to the area.

You wanna comment on that a little bit?

- Sure.

The MNLA doesn't necessarily really support big box stores.

To say I'm a nerd, they're a competitor of what I would call "the mom and pop nursery," that mom and pop garden center they're trying to take over, and I'd be really cautious, you know, not to say anything bad about big box stores but like you're alluding to, when you go to a big box store, you gotta be really careful of what they're selling there, 'cause their buyers buy for a whole...

Whole region, in Bozeman Montana, Billings Montana, don't necessarily grow the same exact thing that they may be selling us so, be sure that you know what you're looking for, do a little research before you go there, but no, the MNLA really doesn't support them with any kind of education or whatsoever.

We really encourage the Montana Department of Agriculture to keep an eye on these box stores so to make sure they're got all the licensing required to sell that plant material 'cause they're bringing, you know, they didn't like to say, from all kinds of parts of the country so we want them to be on the same playing field as our mom and pop garden center.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Clain, a follow-up to the garden soil they would like to know what they need to have analyzed if they do a soil test.

- Yeah.

So soil test labs can analyze somewhere on the order of probably 30 different parameters.

I would recommend basically six of those.

So soil organic matter is huge.

The abbreviation is SOM, soil pH, salts or salinity, some labs called EC, short for electrical conductivity, and then nutrient wise, I would have nitrate, Allston-phosphorus and soil test potassium analyzed.

So those are the big six.

Those come back and maybe they don't explain a problem then I might ask for some other things, some micronutrients, maybe soil texture, but those six will really get you pretty far and I can work with you if you get those six analyzed at a minimum.

- What do you see as the biggest problems in home garden soils in the state?

- Yeah, so at least when I get soil tests reports from home gardens, it's usually because there's a problem, and for the most part that problem is too And often that's too much compost, which often results in too much phosphorus, that can cause certain things like zinc deficiencies too much potassium can occasionally cause a calcium deficiency and sometimes too much salts, depending on the source of the manure.

So for the most part, if I look at a soil test report and somebody doesn't tell me where it came from.

I can usually determine if it came from a home garden or a farmer's field because a home garden almost always will have very high levels, and farmer's fields have generally just about what they need because fertilizer for them costs too much to over fertilize, whereas a home gardener can easily over fertilize.

- Okay.

Thank you.

A question from Paulson.

This coral has a horse chestnut tree, that has two 50 cent diameter holes into the tree and kind of right to the center of the tree.

He says, it's not due to a woodpecker.

Anybody have a guess as to what might be causing a 50 cent diameter hole?

And I'll open that up to anybody that wants to try to answer that.

I'm not getting a take?

- Maybe he could take a picture and email it to diagnostics@montana.edu.

- All right.

Let's do that.

Get a picture of it.

I'm curious for myself because that's a pretty good size of hole.

I don't think bores would do that bigger?

But, who knows?

- It's nice to see what the whole shape is too, give some clues.

- Okay.

And from Bozeman, the Four Corners area.

Dormant oil is on his fruit trees.

Is it too late to do that?

- [Mary] Oh, Mac?

- It's the perfect time to do that.

- Still good?

- Before they putt out and you know, when you're...

When the snow is melted off it's time...

Follow the label on the product.

The dormant oils or horticultural oils or mineral oil type products that are water-soluble and maybe won't put up the pores in eggs of various insect pests, if it's, and others, and they're effective and pretty safe but you should follow the instructions, follow the label closely.

The different products have different levels of safety to the plant at different stages of growth but right now you should be safe.

- [Jack] Okay.

Thank you.

- Yeah.

You probably don't want to throw him too late 'cause you might hurt the buds, or the leaves.

Yeah.

- Yap.

All right.

And on spruce trees and stuff like that, it's a great time to control the... - White- - [Mary] Pine.

- But, yeah.

- [Mary] The whole thing?

- What are they called?

- I can't even remember.

- Scales?

- Scales.

That's it!

- Yeah, okay.

We got it.

Question from Helena.

And we'll address this to Steve.

He says he sees all kinds of job wanted signs all over the country wherever he travels, he travels the state extensively.

He would like to know whether or not the nursery association members have a difficult time right now in finding labor.

Steve, you wanna try that one?

- You bet.

I mean, it's a great question and to be very truthful as a business owner, I mean, that is my biggest... My biggest problem right now is finding help.

I've got ads in almost every publication and we can't find anybody even to walk in the door to fill out an application.

It is actually holding our industry back significantly 'cause we can't hire enough help.

My company for instance, it's probably running at about 50% of where it was, three, four, five years ago due to the fact that we just cannot find enough help.

And everybody I talked to, online members of the MNLA, they're having the same exact thing.

I really wish that we would try to push more of this education where for kids in high schools where they can get into the green industry and not necessarily have to go to college, or even the... Is it Gallatin College up there in Bozeman I think?

Even if they could offer some type of a photo top... Horticulture or landscape type, two-year degree to help us find people for our industry, but yeah, the answer is yes, the labor is short supply is really detrimental right now to our industry, as well as the COVID.

Unemployment money that's running around, nobody really wants to stay home, make more money.

So yeah, it's terrible right now.

- Do any of the trade schools that you're aware of have programs to train horticultural professionals at all?

- No, none that I know of and I think it would be a perfect spot for up there.

I think it's, is it Galton College?

Is that what it's called?

- [Jack] Yes.

- A little trade school.

It's up there.

If they get something going, I think there's a huge need for that, and there's a huge need for a place for some of these kids to go to get a trade degree that is in that AG industry and I think that would be perfect and it will help us out immensely.

- What kind of skills would your ideal starting employee have?

Do you need to know how to identify plants particularly well or do you just need to... - Yeah, it really depends on...

I mean, we'll take all skill levels.

We were pretty labor-intense industry so, a lot of our people just need to be able to show up to work and work with their hands and dig and plant trees and move rock.

We also obviously need that next level guy that knows about plant material and again, can identify a green ash tree or a yellow plot and teller or whatever, and know how to plant it, to supervise these other folks.

We're also looking for guys that can mow lawns.

Run fertilizer spreaders.

We've got all kinds of levels of professionalism or work knowledge that we need.

Anywhere from the very bottom, all the way up into management.

- To me, it'd be a great job for the high school and even summer college kids because number one, you're outside, and number two, you just don't have to sit behind a desk which, I found to be kind of boring as I grew up.

Okay.

Anyway, let's change tune a little bit and go to Highwood.

This person would like to know what micro nutrients might wheat need?

They've been seeing a lot of ads in the press about micronutrients.

Clain, that's all yours.

- Okay.

Yeah, for the most part, historically, we haven't seen much need for micronutrients in Montana crops, but I would say, you know, maybe in the last 10, 15 years that's changed a little bit and it's probably partly because a lot of farmers aren't putting micronutrients on because they weren't seeing responses and it costs money.

But a little more recently, I've been seeing more chloride deficiencies and data from laboratories backs that up, that our chloride levels in our soils have gone down in the last decade or two.

And there are certain weeds that do not like having not enough chloride.

So that's one, the other one that's popped up somewhat recently is copper deficiency.

So I've been hearing about copper deficiency in Western Canada for about 20 years, but it wasn't until really last year that I started seeing tissue concentrations and soil concentrations, especially in Eastern and Northeastern Montana, that were below what's called critical levels, which is basically the sufficient level for copper so, I would say copper, zinc, and chloride are probably the big three micros that I see with the best chance of having deficiencies in our cereal crops.

- Well, we're on micronutrients so, I'll throw it to Clain and Steve.

Micronutrients in trees, do we use any?

Or do they need any?

- I think micro nutrients are needed by all types of plant material, including trees and shrubs.

Like any plant material and not in very big quantities but you'll notice you're like iron, you know, iron deficiencies in plant materials is a big deal in Montana, where you find that there are really yellow chlorotic leaves.

So yeah, micro nutrients in trees and shrubs is valid.

- Steve, my academic perspective would be the most micronutrient deficiencies in trees are fundamentally caused by a pH issue.

In a practical sense in the real world somebody calls you, would you... How would you approach that?

Would you attempt to address pH or would you just apply the micronutrient that's deficient?

- It's somewhat difficult and expensive for a lot of homeowners, gardeners to adjust their pH, you know.

So sometimes it's just...

They just don't do it but I think you're exactly right on that, you know.

Put in... Sulfur is an element that's...

I think takes the pH quite a bit.

In gypsum, put in gypsum and help add pH a little bit too, you almost have to put so much that down, it's almost cost-prohibitive on some landscapes, so... - Okay.

What we've... What we generally find as a soil scientist is that gypsum does not affect soil pH.

I know it's added as an amendment for but lime affects, you know, raises the pH, and then elemental sulfur as you mentioned, Steve, decreases it.

What about chelated products though?

I always think that even though they're more expensive, if you chelate iron, it should be a little bit more available to the trade.

Do you see any responses either Mac or Steve with chelated iron?

- There's always a lot of chelated iron products available for gardens.

I guess it couldn't say a lot, but they're out there.

One of them built for lawns is called an ironide.

They've got a pelletized fertilizer that's chelated iron, and they make products that's the liquid that you can spray on or not and whatnot but there are chelated iron products out there for homeowners in whatnot that I've seen, yes.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Mary, question from Plentywood.

They would like to know what the best seed treatments are for the pulse crops?

They've heard that you really shouldn't start using seed treatment.

- Yeah, you absolutely need to use seed treatments with pulses.

A root rot is a major issue, especially in the Plentywood area where they've repeatedly planted pulses for probably about 20 years now?

There's a lot of combination products and I think there's a lot of new chemistries that are probably better than the old chemistries.

There's a table on the Extension Plant Pathology website, or you can just Google "seed treatment pulses," and this is put together by the Pulse Crop Working Group and it lists all the registered products and then what they're effective against so if you know you have a problem.

The other question is if they're targeting a seed-borne pathogen or a soil-borne pathogen?

So if they have some ascochyta on their seed they're gonna want something with efficacy against that or portrayed as, especially on the chickpeas, and then...

Otherwise, like the fusarium there in the soil.

So you want something with efficacy against that.

- Okay.

Thank you.

- May I... Just a question.

For that resource you mentioned is that only for a fungicide, seed coats, or does that also include insecticide seed traits that might control like pea leaf weevil, for example?

- Right.

We focus only on the seed treatment fungicides and then we have a separate table for the foliar fungicides, and then Ooda McCalvy is working on a table for biological treatments that are registered on pulses.

- Okay.

- Where could somebody go for insecticides for seed treats for PE for example?

- I believe NDSU has some publications, but since I don't want to answer many questions on insects, so you could call Kevin Warner and ask him.

- [Jack] Okay- - Thanks.

- Thank you.

From Hamilton for Steve.

And this is a loaded question, but I'll throw it out anyway.

What is a starting wage for a landscape worker?

And I'm sure there's a wide variety there.

- Yeah.

I mean, right now it's around that $14 range, 13, $14 for just somebody just out of high school wanting to get into the trade.

It starts there, that wage is gonna keep going up I think though, 'cause it's just so hard for us to find people, but we'll start those guys out at 13, $14 an hour.

And if they can show up on time and come to work every day and wanna learn, within a year, they can be up into that $16, $17 and after maybe four or five years they wanna become a foreman or lead a crew, they can go anywhere from 18 to $28 an hour or so.

- You know, I'm gonna date myself.

When I was in high school...

Graduated from high school and worked my first summer, in construction and driving a truck, I got paid a dollar and a quarter an hour.

- Hey, I was 4.25.

(laughing) - I thought I was in heaven back then.

So yeah.

That's not bad and I do understand that not only with the nursery association, the landscapers and so forth, but statewide agricultural, it's hard to find labor right now.

- And Jack, how much a gallon of gas cost them too?

(laughing) - That's true, it was.

Okay.

Let's look at... From Billings.

An animal is climbing up a pine tree and eating the bark.

He thinks it might be a porcupine, any idea what it might be and will it damage the tree?

And here's the real tough question, how to get rid of it "humanely."

You guys want to try that?

Steve, you're in that business a little bit?

- Yeah, it's most likely a porcupine.

We see that all the time, supposedly... Mostly evergreen trees.

They'll go up the tree and they'll just...

They'll eat that bark all the way around the tree, and once it eats it all the way around, the tree is basically the cambium layer, that tree no longer has a way to get the water and food and nutrients up to the top.

And normally the top of the tree or wherever above where that porcupine was eating will die, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

What to do with the porcupine humanely?

(laughs) I don't know then.

They're hard to find 'cause they're usually there at night and whatnot, but there's some chemicals that are for animal control type thing that they might spread underneath the trees that you find in some garden stores.

A lot of them work for deer and other critters, maybe try some of that.

- They're like the coyote urine kind of stuff or?

- [Clain] Yeah, exactly.

- I always wondered where they got that?

(laughs) - Yeah, how do they get it?

That's the hindrance, how did they get it?

- Porcupines are pretty persistent and I remember an issue with porcupines, I tried an old product, I don't think you can find it anymore called rope hell, that got me to quit smoking pipes because my kids put rope hell in my tobacco all the time and I just loved my taste buds going bad but that might've worked, yeah, I know.

(laughing) - They weren't educated about pesticide exposure?

(laughing) - For Steve, how old is the nursery association... Landscape nursery association?

Has it been around a long time?

- Yeah.

You know what, actually this thing's been around for about...

Since the 1950s I think, or somewhere in there?

A group of guys...

Most of them from actually the Billings area and a couple of guys from across other part of the state but they got together in the fifties and started the organization and when it first started was called MAN, M A N, the Montana Associated... Montana Association of Nursery.

And one of the founders, Jim O'Toole, had a place here in Billings, the Marbles, I think were original founders and they own Billings Nursery here in town.

And I think there's some other people who crushed in but it's been around since the fifties.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I'll throw this one to Mac.

This person has raised beds with peat moss and the plants come up but don't have any roots and die.

Should he add manure or soil?

He says dirt, but we use the term soil, instead to the beds.

- Oh, probably a little bit of both would help.

Peat moss has a great water-holding capacity, but when it dries out, it can become kind of hydrophobic, so I would encourage regular watering as well, but things are gonna leach... Nutrients are gonna leach out of that.

So just straight peat moss is a great plant growth medium from a root... Growth and development perspective but you've got to fertilize regularly.

So in that situation maybe a soluble fertilizer would be appropriate, but some mineral soil can make peat moss hold nutrients a little bit better and depending on the history, if there's been manure applied there in the past, as Clain has mentioned, it's more likely that there's too much and so the possibility of a high...

So one of them or their electrical conductivity so in this case, maybe a soil test would be in order.

- Okay.

You're mentioning that I'm gonna follow up with a question from Barter and it's a little bit out of the area, but I think the same principles apply.

This particular coral has a problem with bales cows in a field where they feed cattle in the winter.

The area dies due to cow manure.

How can they fix that and could they lime that soil or is there a better way?

Mac, am gonna ask you to handle.

Pardon?

- They just try to spread it out better, I suppose?

- [Jack] Would lime help though?

Do you think?

(all nodding in the negative) - I don't think so.

Yeah, if he can spread it out that would be the logical thing to do.

Clain, this is an interesting question.

They've heard that in the Brown Soil areas of Canada, that copper, if it's too low, will lead to disease issues.

Have you seen any of that with copper here in Northeast part of the state?

And Mary, you can jump in too.

- I have not, I mean, what some of the classic symptoms are deformed weed heads but not from disease, from lack of copper.

But almost every nutrient if you have too little of it can make the plant susceptible and I would believe the person that's there could be diseases as a result of too little copper.

How about you, Mary?

- Yeah, I haven't seen any of that yet.

One of the dangers of organic farming is a lot of the pesticides are copper based, and so you can toxify the soil over time by applying too much copper, but I haven't seen any copper deficiency issues yet in the clinic.

- I'll throw it in at Jeff Jacobson.

Clain's predecessor and I did some work probably 20 years ago, and actually Clain, we didn't find low copper levels in very many soils in Central and Western Montana.

We did not look at Northeast part of the state.

So we probably missed something there.

From Columbia Falls.

He would like to know if Steve could talk about using native plants in urban and home landscaping.

Is that being encouraged throughout the state?

- Yeah, we've been trying to get more natives in our landscape for 20 years.

It seems like whenever we have our Montana Nursery and landscape Conventions and stuff there's always been speakers talk about native plants.

And native is kind of relative term, I mean, where's the natives from?

But Montana native plants, we use a lot of Montana native plants in our landscapes.

They tend to be a little more obviously called cold hardy.

Most of them use a little less water, but yeah, a lot of our landscape material is native pine material, and it's been getting better and better and more pronounced in the last 20 years.

- Okay.

Mary, this question is from Bozeman and they have a spruce tree that's dying on the Southwest side.

Any idea what that might be?

- It's probably winter injury.

So if plants aren't adequately watered into the fall, they'll dehydrate, they just can't get water out of the soil during the winter and especially that Southwest exposed side that gets the sun and the wind, just kind of dies off.

So, deep watering in the fall is pretty critical.

- And that doesn't always work.

I've watered horrible variety and I pretty religiously water in the fall and it helps but I lost the Southwest side, not this year, the previous year.

- The other thing we're seeing a lot of in Bozeman right now is the ends...

The tip ends of the spruces are scattered at the bottom and I'll show it, there's a picture there.

And guess what this was due to?

- [Jack] Tell me.

- [Mary] Squirrels.

(laughing) So this has happened a lot in town, and I don't see any at my place.

- [Jack] Okay.

And squirrels are relatively new here in... - [Mary] They are.

- 10 years ago, we did not have squirrels and believe or not, squirrels can be pretty damaging to a lot of different- - Yeah.

So we got a lot of people calling about this thinking it's a disease problem or an insect problem, but no, it's just those pesky squirrels.

- Okay.

Thank you.

This one I wanna find out about 'cause I liked the concept.

It comes from Fort Benton and I'll address this to Mac and or Steve.

The caller has heard that there is a lilac plant that blooms both in the spring and fall.

They wanna know, is there such a plant?

And if so, what color are the blooms and how tall does it grow?

And will it grow here in Montana?

Have heard it guys.

- I haven't heard a lot.

It does blooms in the spring and the fall?

I have not.

Mac?

- If you can't eat it, I don't know much about it?

(laughing) - The most common question we got at the clinic was lilacs not blooming, and we'd always ask the client if they pruned the file the previous fall?

And so if you prune it off in the fall, that's when the blooms are formed.

And so that might bloom in the fall?

- Yeah.

That's a good point because I have actually seen small blooms in the fall.

Just a few- - Yeah, just a scattering.

- Yeah, scattering but I've not heard of any that's- - That's where the deer nipped it.

- Yeah.

(Mary laughs) - Okay.

Mac, I'm not gonna let you off easy.

This person from Bozeman would like to know how soon they can plant their garden.

- Well, like I said earlier, the first thing to know is you don't wanna work your soil when it's wet.

So the absolute worst thing you could do would be to go out in mud and start trying to rotator or dig, if you're smearing soil you're causing destruction and that's not good.

So you wanna wait until it dries down.

And once you're at that point where it's dry enough to rake or hoe or rotator or whatever you're gonna do to get ready to put seed in the ground, your next question is, frost tolerance and ability to germinate in cold soils and you could plant peas and carrots and spinach probably in both... As soon as they're in the next week if it gets warm again.

You don't have a whole lot of advantage outdoors without some plastic to retain heat and doing it in early April as opposed to late April.

Now, when you talk about tomatoes or peppers or something like that, I would be waiting to mid to late May or even early June you know, it seems like we always get a snow storm in early June here in the Gallatin Valley and since we're talking about plants that are sensitive to frost, squash, tomatoes, wait, some time yeah, for those.

But peas and carrots and spinach as soon as the soil can be worked on, that seed can be put in the ground and a home gardener, you know, should think of every early planning as a gamble and sometimes it pays off and if it doesn't... - Yeah, Don Matthew told me not to start my seeds indoors until tax day, so April 15th.

And I did get ambitious one year and I had the tallest tomatoes you've ever seen.

(laughing) - Yeah.

And they don't produce very well.

- No.

- No?

You know, on that note about planning, Steve, let me ask you, you've transplanted a lot of trees both bare root and bagged the burlap, what do you consider the best time to plant trees?

- Well, historically, the best time's in spring or the fall, when they're dormant but, any more with the modern plants that are growing in containers and whatnot, we can plant almost anywhere where the ground is not frozen.

We can get in the ground.

Plants are now shipped in pods, and can be put in the ground at any time.

The biggest thing to remember is if you're digging up a tree that's been growing in this spot for several years, you'd wanna grow... You don't wanna dig that up when it's got a bunch of leaves on it or whatnot.

So you want it to have, you know, lost its leaves, usually in the fall there or an early spring, you'll be moving plant material.

But if you're buying plant material from gardens there, nurseries or whatever, that stuff can be planted all summer long with good success - As long as you water well, and pay a little attention to what you're doing with it.

Are you a...

Sorry, I assume the frost is out in the Billings area, are you planting trees now?

- Yeah.

Frost is out.

We've got our first load of ball and burlap trees that came in the other day so, we've got them healed into the ground.

So we're ready to go.

We're actually planting some commercial projects right now as well.

Just hand watering them in because we can't turn our sprinkler systems on quite yet.

We like to wait until about April 15th before we start charging irrigation systems and whatnot.

But yeah, we're almost planting.

- Okay.

Mary, from Lewistown.

This person would like to know if there are any potential serious disease risks on their wheat.

And I'm...

They're talking winter wheat this year.

- Yeah.

You know, there wasn't a lot last couple of years.

So I'd say our disease potential's but it always depends on the water.

If we get high yield potential that means we have high disease potential, but we try to keep our lookout and see if there's anything coming our way like stripe breasts and give people notice that it's coming, and then give it out by AG alerts, and you can get those emails or texts texted to you.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Interesting and I'm not sure we can answer this but it's a question, came in from Clancy for Mary.

Are the squirrels just mentioned?

Native squirrels are invasive.

(laughing) - [Mary] I can't answer that- - If you've got them in your yard are invasive, right?

- Right.

- Actually, I have seen squirrels in the Lorry Yellowstone area.

Steve you've had them in Billings and Laurel forever.

So I suspect- - Yeah, my dad got squirrels, runs around his yard and they're invasive thing I mean.

They grab all the walnut trees... Walnuts, they start planting them all over the yards and he's got little trees coming up in his flower beds, in his flower pots, transfer all those seeds around and he's livid, trust me.

(Jack laughs) - I will say they do eat well.

The red squirrel or fox squirrels, that's from when I was a kid.

Today, no.

There's too much work trying to clean one.

Mary, this person would like to know a little bit about snow mold and I know we took some photos and looked at them, tell this person, and this is again from Bozeman.

Is snow mold an issue or will it go away?

- Snow mold occurs when turf or winter wheat is under snow for extended periods, usually over three months, which is every year in Montana.

And then in the spring, you'll see dying dead patches like this.

And usually they just get covered when the grass grows right through those patches.

So you can rake up the dead stuff and get rid of it.

If it's truly has died and the rest of your lawn looks great and this doesn't just recede into it.

There's some fungicides you can use in the fall if it is an extended problem and you're concerned about it, but generally, the lawn comes right back out of it.

- You know, I had previous house in area that snow stayed most of the year and they came early on unfrozen ground.

So historically I did have snow mold in that area.

It didn't take the grass, but it really set her back.

So I started using the fungicides in areas that held snow for a long period of time, and it did do a very nice job.

Back to Steve.

This person would like to know if you have to be a member of the nursery and landscape association, to attend something called the Green Expo?

What is the Green Expo?

- Montana Green Expo, that's the... That's our big convention for the year that we have... Usually we'll have a one-year in Billings and then one year over on the West side of the state, like the Zilla, but that's our three day education seminars where we'll have about 16 seminars over three days, drawing a lot of local professional speakers in the horticulture industry.

We'll also bring in some speakers from other parts of the country.

And then we have about an 80 suppliers kind of a trade show type thing going on where we can look at different plants, fertilizers suppliers, soil suppliers, even irrigation products, and equipment that we are using in our industry.

But, we opened that show up to anybody that really wants to come take a look.

You don't have to have... Be a member of the MNLA to come to that.

We don't really invite just the public.

If you're in the industry and are trying to check out, the MNLA, whether you should join or not, that's a perfect place to come and get involved but as far as the general public coming to that convention, it's not that encouraged, but everybody wants to become with MNLA membership come to that even if you're not a member.

- And MNLA has been a great partner with the Montana State IPM Program too and offering training to their members and other people in the I don't know if you guys list your...

The training on your website but the Montana IPM Program, there's a events site.

So if you're interested in learning more about trees or turf, that's a good place to find out.

- Okay, thank both of you.

- We also have a lot of Montana Department of AG credits there for spraying license, commercial and private applicators license, continuing education.

Credits are available at those classes and ISA credits as well for the Certified Arborist that they need credits.

They can get those in our Montana Greta.

- More and more are online too.

- Okay.

All right.

Just to note here that you can follow this program on Facebook, if you're so inclined, and if you wanna get the newsletter, the Montana AG Live Newsletter, visit montanapbs.org/aglive in New Oak and sign up for the newsletter.

We're getting a little low on time, but we do have a couple of questions that we can answer quickly.

Mac, are there any commercial vegetable producers in the state of Montana?

- Yeah.

There's hundreds of them actually.

Mostly service fairly small and mostly servicing local markets.

But I think last time I checked there were 65 different farmer's markets in Montana.

We have farmer's markets, literally everywhere from Glen Dive to Shelby, but in the bigger cities, Billings, Helena, Bozeman, and all opened up Computer Valley, there are thriving farmer's markets with lots of, you know, anything from somebody just making a few extra bucks in their yard, to quite a number of farms.

I could probably think of half a dozen just in the Gallatin Valley that are legitimate businesses with youth unemployment opportunities and then you're supporting a family and growing a wide diversity of vegetables.

So absolutely we have a thriving local vegetable production economy here in Montana.

As far as growing vegetables for export to other places, the biggest one foreign far away would be seed potatoes.

And that's a difficult one to tease the AG statistics out because seed potatoes are counted as vegetables by USDA.

So that's the... That's the largest portion of it.

But many of those seed potato growers also sell potatoes for consumption locally as well.

- All right, thank you.

I'm gonna add these two comments that came in.

One from Big Timber and one from Stevensville.

And for Big Timbers, they say there's a continuous blooming lilac spring-to-fall called boomerang, it's available.

And this person from Stevensville made A lilac plant called boomerang has spring and fall blooms.

It grows well here and somebody in Stevensville sells them.

Their colors are purple and pink.

With that folks, we've basically coming to the end of another program.

I wanna especially thank Steve for showing up from Laurel, we enjoyed it.

And the rest of the panel, as always we appreciate you coming in this evening.

Next week, we're gonna have Weston Merril.

Weston is a Marketing Specialist with the Department of AG.

We'll talk about hemp for two weeks.

We're not her at Easter, good night.

- [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(Indie theme music) - [Narrator] 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 & 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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