- [Announcer] 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 & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Adviser Program.

(folksy music) - Good evening.

You are tuned to Montana Ag Live, originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very vibrant campus of Montana State University, and also from our homes and offices throughout this beautiful state of Montana.

The program is coming to you over the Montana Public Television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology.

I will be your host this evening, and for those of you who have watched the program in the past, you know how it works.

You phone in the questions, and we have this expert panel of very knowledgeable people this evening that will answer your questions to the best of their ability.

Without the questions, the program becomes pretty boring.

So if you have questions, the phone number will be on the screen here shortly and you can phone 'em in.

Before we get started this evening, let me introduce the panel.

Here in the studio with me tonight is Mary Burrows.

Mary is part-time administrator of the College of Agriculture and also a part-time Extension plant pathologist.

So if you have disease questions tonight or anything like that, hey, it's a great opportunity to find out what's going on and get your questions answered.

Very popular guest, Cathy Cripps.

Cathy is a mushroom specialist.

We call her a mycologist, but her real love is mushrooms, and if you have questions about mushrooms tonight, hey, it's an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about a very intriguing type of growth here in the state of Montana.

Also joining us tonight is Abi Saeed.

Abi is our extension horticultural specialist.

She'll answer questions about plants, horticultural plants, house plants, whatever you wanted to find out about those plants, good chance to ask those questions and Tim Seipel.

Tim's, I would say a crop land weed scientist, but he is a little broader than that.

So if you have weed questions, excellent opportunity to ask them this evening.

Taking the questions tonight via phone will be Cheryl Moore-Goff and Bruce Lobel.

They transmit those questions to me over this little tiny computer in front of me through technology called Slack.

Working Facebook and Twitter tonight is Sydney Timmermans and curating the questions for our newsletter and so forth and so on is Abbey Wenger.

So with that, Cathy, I know you've been here many times.

Tell us a little bit about what you do at Montana State University and also about your first love, mushrooms.

- Yes, well I can always talk about mushrooms.

So, I teach classes on mushrooms and fungi at Montana State.

I do research right now.

The research we're doing is looking at the biodiversity of mushrooms in Montana.

We're up to about 2,000 species, and I also work with whitebark pine restoration.

Forest Service is planting a lot of seedlings and we're adding mycorrhizal fungi to help them survive.

So that's the research for now.

I'm identified with the plant disease lab and I'm on call with the Denver Poison Center for mushroom poison cases.

Hopefully you never have to call me for that, and I'll give you the morel report.

- Okay, Cathy let me ask you this question.

I mean, and I sat in plant pathology chair for a long time and invariably, two or three or four times a year we had questions about mushroom poisoning.

How prevalent is that in a state like Montana?

- Well, it's, I do quite a few poison cases a year here, anywhere from, depending on if it's raining and the mushrooms are coming up, maybe five to 20 cases a year, sometimes more casual but these are not for deadly mushrooms usually.

We do not have that many deadly mushrooms.

They're, they can make you sick.

They can send you to the hospital, but deaths are really, really, really rare so yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

Let's switch over to a Facebook question from Hamilton and this is one that's been prevalent for the last two years.

This person has lost their rabbit, raspberries.

They have not leafed out on last year's clink canes.

They want to know whether or not other folks in Montana have the same problem.

They have lots of new growth at the base of the plants.

What caused it?

Was it the early hard frost last year, and should they go ahead and remove the dead canes down?

I'm going to open that up to Abi to start with, and Mary, you may want to jump in too.

Abi, your opinion.

- Yeah, so I have noticed and received a few phone calls about this, and my raspberry patch in the back too.

Some of last year's canes haven't leafed out and I've scraped them and they were not alive anymore.

So it is likely because of the early hard frost that some of them aren't going to leaf out.

I would scrape them to see if they're still alive, and if, if not, just remove them.

Right now, you can cut them back.

- I agree entirely, but it's been two years in a row that we lost raspberries and Mary's sitting here laughing because she loves raspberry jam.

- Yep.

- And it's tough to grow raspberries in - I, you know, I was just really disappointed and I think it was a combination this year, at least, of that fall frost, and then I cut some to bring in onto Ag Live just to show how to prune raspberries, and there was some green ones, and then we got snow.

So it just got a double whammy, and hopefully my third year better produce really, really good raspberries.

- Well, I'm counting on next year and I'm watering my plants very faithfully but about the mid, early-mid part of August I'm going to kind of let them go on their own with a lot more, or a lot less water, and hopefully they will harden off before the break.

- I was also thinking about planting some of these, like, haskap berries and some of the other fruits that they're testing at the research station in Corvallis, just to mix it up a little bit and not have to depend so much on that set the previous year.

- Not a bad plan.

Let's go back to Cathy, and this is a Facebook question that came in.

This person identified morels from your article in Montana Outdoors, and I saw that article, very nicely done.

You said in that article not to eat old morels.

They would like to know how you can tell an old morel versus a young morel.

It's all yours, Cathy.

- Okay well, first of all, thanks for and those of you who haven't seen it, it's in Montana Outdoors, and talking about the main edible mushrooms in Montana.

For morels, there's kind of, there's ways you can check this if they're old.

First of all, if they're just dried up, dried on the hood, don't even pick 'em.

Let them just stay and spread their spores, so if it's dried up, they're hard, even if only part of them has dried up, just leave 'em.

Now, the other possibility is that they might be turning rotten, but you'd see dark areas.

It looks like a fresh mushroom, but there'd be a dark area, kind of soft and squishy, watch for that.

Also I do the sniff test and every morel smells pretty good until it gets old and then you'll get an unpleasant odor.

So right before it turns, it'll get that off odor.

So I actually sniff one the morels.

- Okay.

- So make sure it doesn't have that awful.

- Let me ask you a question.

When I picked morels and I haven't found any last couple of years.

They've not been great morel years, but there's always a few bugs on the inside.

Is that an indication of older morels, or do you just go ahead and use the added protein when you fry the morels?

- Yeah, I think I can show you a morel here for those that haven't seen one just to, here's what we're talking about.

This is a nice fresh, yellow morel.

I think that will focus pretty well.

So you can see pitch and ridges.

The thing of it is, is they're hollow inside, and so, as Jack mentioned, they'll get critters inside.

So what I do is either slice them lengthwise and make sure there's no critters in there.

It doesn't bother me.

I mean, you can have a snail in there, a little escargot to go with your mushroom but also, centipedes, might want to pick out and some of the other, but I don't think it necessarily indicates an old morel.

The critters have just found it, so I don't worry about that.

- Okay, I never have either.

If I'm lucky enough to find a morel I'm gonna eat as many bugs as they're in there because they're pretty tasty, and then you'll never know the bugs are there.

Tim, last week from Laurel, I love this question.

This person wants to kill weeds in an alley but does not want to use Roundup because of its toxicity.

What should they use to kill the weeds?

Good luck.

- Well, there's some other herbicides out there that you can use to kill weeds in your alleyway.

There's some that have longer residual you can buy at the store.

They're likely as toxic as glyphosate would be in in this context or at least toxicity to humans.

You could also consider just, you know, rippin' it up with and dig them, digging them up or ripping them with a harrow or something to knock them down or keep 'em mowed.

That would be my suggestions if you didn't want to use herbicide.

As it gets warmer and hotter too, even spraying glyphosate on weeds in the alley is not gonna, not gonna kill them.

Especially in the Laurel area, there'll be some hard, tough kochia and Russian thistle that'll probably pop up in those alleyways.

- While we're on that subject, you know, there's been some bad press about Roundup.

You know, people can choose to use or not use it, but in reality, for most people Roundup has been found to be relatively safe.

Would you agree with that?

- In general, yeah.

I think, you know, there's big debates out there.

There's lots of lawsuits.

There are a lot of different herbicide molecules and active ingredients on the market.

The acute toxicity, the, the very emergency toxicity of glyphosate is really, really low in that context.

- I agree.

Mary, from Missoula.

Again, last week hollyhocks have holes in the leaves.

This due to insects, or do you think it might be hollyhock rust?

- If it was a rust you'd actually see the spores of rust and my hollyhocks are still a little low and it's been dry.

So unless they've been pretty wet I don't, but I do get holly rust every year, but it's like clockwork and often I'll bring it on Ag Live.

- Okay, thank you.

From Bozeman, this person has June bearing strawberries that have not produced blossoms for three years.

She is not fertilizing early in the season and the plants are green and healthy.

Any idea why there are no blossoms and I don't.

So you guys have any thoughts on that?

- I don't know, Abi?

- It could, it could depend on the age of the, of the strawberries too, and so if they're an old patch of strawberries, older than five to seven years, then they probably won't produce flowers as frequently, and then another chance, another issue could be that you've had the new growth kind of freeze in, in the past couple of years.

So it's, it's hard to say but it would be a good idea to maybe get a soil test to see if, if the nutrients in the soil are available for the strawberries, but other than that, I don't have very many ideas.

Anyone else?

- Well, maybe they could plant a few new plants in there and just see if it's age of the patch.

- I think that would be a good solution.

From Three Forks, Cathy.

This person wants to know exactly where you found that morel.

Would you care to share that information?

(chuckling) - No.

I, I did find, this came up.

This has been in my refrigerator for about, I can say about a week when I found it and it's holding up in there and then I went back and I found a couple more and that was it.

So that's three yellow morels.

We have not had a good season.

Just like the gardening you guys are talking about, it's been too cold for mushrooms, too cold for morels, and we also have, besides the yellow morels, we have the black morels.

They come up in the conifers, like I think Tim found some of these up high in the conifers.

They don't necessarily have to come up on burns.

They would come up next.

The yellow morel season, I thought would maybe, we'd have one more chance.

That would be this week.

It's not going to happen because it's too dry.

The black morels, maybe at the higher elevations will come out, but I don't have a lot of hope for those.

Apparently in Missoula, the gray morels are coming out but not the black, so not a good season at all for these, and no, I'm not going to tell where I found this.

(chuckling) - That is one of the best kept secrets in the state of Montana is where you find your morels.

There's no doubt about it.

Tim, this question came in last week from Gold Creek, and for those of you who do not know where Gold Creek is, it's near Drummond, so.

They have a lots of weeds and grasses in their three-acre pond.

They would like to know what they could do to minimize or control those weeds and grasses without using chemicals.

Any suggestion, Tim?

- Hmm, I think keep the water cool, keep it flowing.

Hopefully it comes in and out well.

They do make pond rakes out there so you can reach in and sort of dig some of that stuff out, but I do not know much about aquatic plants.

- Nor do I, and I will say it's probably pretty tough.

There are some things like Cutrine which you can use on aquatic plants, but most, almost all things are chemical and if they don't want to use chemicals, they're probably gonna have to live with them.

Interesting question email.

They would like to know what you should use to bait traps to catch yellow jackets if you don't have an attractant.

Abi, you wanna know or answer that?

What would you put in a yellow jacket trap?

- Sure, so they have these lures.

I believe it's heptyl butyrate.

They have these lures that you can buy with the traps at any kind of box store.

That will be a great attractant to those yellow jackets.

If they don't want to use one of those specific lures, you're not really going to have an effective way to catch yellow jackets.

You'll probably get anything that's attracted to something sweet, but I would recommend getting those, getting those wasp lures that you can purchase with those yellow jacket traps.

- They work very, very well.

I will attest to that although ironically, and I don't know the answer to this, but we haven't seen the number of yellow jackets the past two years that we have previously.

I don't know why that is, maybe a harsh winter, something but definitely they don't seem to be as big a pest as they were a couple of years ago.

Mary, this also came in last week and they want to know, is MSU working on perennial crops like the Land Institute is, and that came in from Facebook.

- Right, so there are a number of research programs going on in the College of Agriculture on perennial crops.

We have a perennial wheat that is used as a forage.

Then the research station at Corvallis works on a lot of different fruit crops and apples.

There's a heritage apple program.

There's all kinds of stuff going on.

They could learn more about that on our website or just call us and tell us specifically what they're interested in.

- Okay, thank you.

Question from Clinton Rock Creek area, and I have no clue where that is and I've been in this state for 40 years.

So if somebody would care to let me know, I'll learn something there myself, but they say morels have disappeared over the last few years, and Cathy, they'd like to know how the morel population can be repopulated to its previous glory days, and can mushroom spores for that be introduced?

- Well, I would say probably not effectively.

Yes, last year was not a great yellow morel year.

This year, even worse.

It is, seems to be declining.

I mean the solution, rain, or if you happen to be in a place where you've had a river runoff and then that runoff is receding and the ground is wet, that's another possible place you might be able to find them.

As far as seeding them with spores, I've not heard that that's effective at all.

Now I can tell you that there's some new research, this is coming out of China and then France where they've learned how to cultivate morels, and this was a researcher working on it for 27 years, and apparently he's figured out the secret and they're growing them in greenhouses, in domes, and it doesn't look like there are any trees in there.

It looks more like a, a mossy kind of soil, and they're growing them in quite large quantities though.

Commercially, that would really interesting to see if we could get that going here in Montana, but I don't know anything about the, the process and I'm sure the patents are pretty expensive.

To get them going ourselves with morel spores, you're going to have to find the right soil, the right conditions, and put them in at the right time, and then wait a long time before the mycelium can establish.

Probably not gonna happen.

Pray for rain.

- Okay, and we have another question, and this person from Missoula would like to know how to store mushrooms.

They buy 'em, put 'em in a plastic bag, and two days later they don't look very good.

Any suggestions there?

- Never put wild mushrooms, cultivated mushrooms, any mushrooms from the store in a plastic bag.

Plastic bag makes them sweat and it'll grow bacteria and it'll deteriorate the mushrooms really rapidly.

So that is not the way to store mushrooms, and if you're picking them wild, never put them in a plastic bag.

You can use a paper bag.

Even if you buy them from the store and they're in plastic, bring 'em home and put them in a paper bag.

You can put them in Tupperware plastic.

I kept that morel for over a week in Tupperware plastic.

Every day I open the lid, I wipe out the moisture, close it up, and you really can't store it in those plastic bags, and they did a study and found a lot of the edible mushrooms making people sick because were storing them in plastic bags.

So just don't do it for wild mushrooms, don't do it for cultivated mushroom.

Some of them come in those clam shells.

That plastic works for the mushrooms, but not plastic bags.

- Okay.

Yeah, that brings up a question I've always been curious about.

You can buy Shiitake mushrooms now in cans.

You can buy button mushrooms in cans or pieces of stems and mushrooms.

How come those mushrooms stay so solid in artificial media like that whereas they rot or deteriorate so rapidly in other situations?

How do canners and packers do that?

- Well, that's just preserved.

I don't know the actual process, but I mean, preserving the mushrooms, if they're cooking them a little bit first, they'll, once you cook them, enzyme processes stop and then they can be preserved for a little bit longer.

If you have chantrelles, if they come out this fall where there's chantrelles, it's a very chewy mushroom.

You can't dry them to keep them.

If you can cook them a little bit in water, stop the enzymatic process and then freeze them and then they'll be fine in storage that way and then you can, you know unthaw them and then, make sure you're cooking them in butter, but, yeah, not in the fridge in bags.

- All right, thank you.

Let's switch over to Tim and Abi.

From Helena, this is a perennial problem.

How do you, or do you have a solution for getting quackgrass out of a raspberry patch?

You guys have at it.

That's a perennial problem.

- Well, I'll take the first stab at it.

So quackgrass is a real pain and so.

So quackgrass has an underground rhizominous root system and spreads via the roots.

So what I do in my garden is I keep a tilled buffer edge out away from the raspberry patch three, four feet, maybe two tiller passes wide, so that whenever it shows up in that middle area, it's sort of the buffer area where I can take care of it, and then towards the middle of the patch usually I can keep it out of there once I've gotten it all out.

So that's, that's kind of my strategy when I think about it.

There are grassy herbicides that you could potentially apply that would kill the quackgrass.

In those buffer areas, you could also use Roundup or glyphosate to go around the edges.

If the plants are completely dormant, the raspberries, and the quackgrass is growing, you may be able to apply glyphosate over the top but you would have to be very, very careful to not further damage our raspberry patches around the state.

So those are kind of the couple of strategies I have.

I don't know if Abi could add anything to that.

- So I really like the buffer idea, and I would also add if, if you keep a nice layer of mulch at the base of your raspberries, that would reduce the likelihood of that quackgrass kind of popping through there.

So combination of those two things could really help you reduce your quackgrass problems in your raspberry bushes.

- All right, thanks folks.

Mary, from Malta, this person has noticed that his field peas along the edge of the field are shorter and partially stunted when it's compared to the innermost part of the field.

Any thought of what that might be?

- If it's very even, I would say some sort of application might be harming it.

If it, and if it's all around, it's probably not anything that came with the wind.

It was probably something that happened in the field but they could sure send us a sample or some pictures and get, get started or contact your county agent.

- Would the pea leaf, if it around the edge of the field cause that type of damage?

- It comes in so late and you'd only see it on the prevailing wind side, it would come in.

Yeah, I can't think of anything that would just border a field like that but maybe a better description can help us figure it out.

- All right, thank you.

A Facebook question, and this is a good one because I've seen dogs eating mushrooms.

Do people need to be worried about poisonous mushrooms in the yard if their dog eats 'em?

- That's for me.

Yes and no.

I would say not too obsess.

That's the no part because it's not all that common but also yes, it does happen.

Dogs can get into mushrooms.

They can get into the wrong mushrooms and especially puppies, which will eat anything.

So if you see a dog eating a mushroom, the best thing you can do is try to save that mushroom if possible for identification.

If you can take a photo of the top and the underneath, that could help if you don't want to collect the mushroom.

It's not gonna hurt touching it, but it really helps to know what the mushroom is.

Most of the mushrooms are not toxic in the yard or the forest, although they don't taste good.

That's why we don't eat them, and a lot of them are just digestive upset, but there are some that can make dogs and puppies really sick.

If we can identify the mushroom and tell the veterinarian which kind of toxin is involved, and there are maybe six, seven different major categories of toxins and it really helps the vet to know which one they're dealing with because the tendency is to use atropine or everything, and atropine is contraindicated for some of these.

You don't want to give up certain kinds of poisoning.

So if you see your dog is eating a mushroom, save the mushroom for us.

The Denver Poison Center usual gets a hold of me or the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, I'll identify it to see if it's worth worrying about, so, but yeah, it can happen.

They do eat poisonous mushrooms.

- Thank you.

Tim, I'm going to go to you with a really good question here in a moment.

Before we do that, I want to make a comment.

We had a caller call us from Kalispell concerning a question we had last week from Lavina about a naked rodent that was popping out of the ground, and they said that this is probably a shrew, and we didn't think about that, and I think they're probably right, and shrews are small, very predacious type of mammals that probably feed on other rodents.

So that's probably what that was.

I thought I'd throw that out, and now to you, Tim.

From Great Falls, why do weeds develop resistance?

- Ooh, that's a great question.

So weeds devel, develop resistance through applied selection pressures.

So it's evolution in action.

We get to watch evolution in weed science all the time, and so what happens is we've typically, I'll use, I'll use Roundup as an example.

We use Roundup in our chemical fallow no-till for example.

I was out in the state this weekend and I saw lots of people spraying chem fallow, and so we very predictably, predictably spray our chem fallow two, three times a year, and so these plants, they know it's coming.

That'd be our kochia and Russian thistle, and when we apply that selection pressure on there, every time we select for plants that are a little bit more resistant and a little bit more resistant, and so then it becomes a really slippery slope.

All of a sudden we've killed all the plants in the field that are susceptible to that herbicide, and we've selected for the plants that are surviving that.

Well very quickly, the whole population in the field then becomes resistant to that herbicide.

So it's a, it's a selection process in the same way that we breed for resistance in certain, in wheat, in wheat for fungal disease resistance.

We continually select the lines that do the best.

Unfortunately, this is an example of selecting for resistance that we don't want and we do it in the field over and over again.

- Okay, great answer.

Thank you.

From Butte, this caller says they are extremely allergic, anaphylactic shock to mushrooms and lobster, and Cathy would you know what the component that causes this reaction is?

The caller believes it starts with a C or K, any idea?

- Yep, that would be chitin, and chitin is found in shells of seafood.

That's the hard stuff on the, on the outside.

It's also found on insect exoskeletons.

That's also chitin, C-H-I-T-I-N, I think.

Mushrooms contain a lot of chitin, but they don't have that exoskeleton.

They're soft, they're not hard, but they have chitin around all of their cell walls.

So it's this cellular process, so it's microscopic but there is quite an quite a large component in the cell walls of fungi and mushrooms, so that allergy would probably be to chitin.

- Okay, thank you.

I'm going to run this back to Tim because I find this one interesting.

It's something that a lot of people are facing.

It's from Sheridan, Montana.

How soon after spraying 2,4-D on the lawn can the grass clippings be composted, or in other words, how long will the 2,4-D stay in a composted pile also?

- So 2,4-D is a member of the synthetic oxyherbicide group, and we use it on our lawns because it kills only broadleaf or dicot plants, and so when we do that, when we use it on our lawn, we spray it, we mow it, we collect those, and then we put 'em in our compost pile.

Well, those molecules actually break down very slowly sometimes, and if we then use that compost in our gardens we can cause some pretty serious herbicide injury.

In the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, we see lots of leaf twisting and curled up tomatoes from this kind of injury.

So with 2,4-D specifically, I would have to go back and look at the label and look at the formulation that you're using in your lawn, but there's a large number of herbicides in that group that'll stick around and damage your compost and make your compost unusable.

So a lot of people avoid using grass clippings in their lawn.

I know a lot of people who run professional compost businesses and they don't accept lawn clippings at all.

Abi, do you know how long it might 2,4-D itself lasts in lawn clippings?

- No, I do not know, but I agree with you in terms of, I tend to avoid grass clippings in compost, just period.

I try and avoid putting that on any of my, any of my garden beds.

- Okay, thanks to both of you.

Mary, from Butte, home gardener wants to know how to take care of potato scab in a home garden situation.

Any suggestions?

- So there's not a lot you can use that's available to the home gardener.

I think Nina swears by oatmeal.

- [Jack] I think that's right.

- Yeah, and include it, incorporate it into the soil.

You can choose varieties that are more resistant, and you can also rotate out of that area and choose a new area, and probably some fertility.

I'd have to look up a fact sheet.

- I think fertility does play a role, but I think varieties are the real key here because certain varieties just don't develop scab.

I tell you what, call Nina Zidack at Potato Lab, and she'll ferret out, and if you wanna, everybody call her.

Well, she'll know she's re.

- 994-6110.

- 6110, 994-6110, and Nina will tell you.

Hey Cathy, from Billings, this is an interesting question.

Are these mushrooms found in Montana and if so, where?

One, chicken of the woods, two, hen of the woods, and three, entomoloma.

Any, go ahead.

- Chicken of the woods, yes it's found up in northwest Montana.

It's not that common, but you have to be careful.

There are a couple species, and one of thems can cause digestive upset.

So yeah, northwest Montana.

The other, hen of the woods, not that I have seen, maybe possible but I have not personally encountered that here, and I think those are two edibles.

Now the third one, if they said entoloma, E-N-T, I guess, that's a strange third one, because those are often toxic and yes, we have lots of species of entoloma.

I'm not sure that's what you say on there.

It's not an edible mushroom.

It's not something that you really look for for foraging, but we do have a lot of species.

They have pink spores, they're a pink spore, the entoloma.

- Okay, thank you.

Tim, I love this question.

It comes in from Kalispell.

This person says, my neighbors eat purslane.

So can we eat prickly lettuce?

(giggling) - You can eat prickly lettuce when it's very young.

So I would get it early in the spring when it's a little softer.

I was pulling lambsquarter out of my, out of my spinach patch the other day, and I was, tried the lambsquarter and I thought it was a little bit more delicious than probably the prickly lettuce.

The prickly lettuce that we here, have here is called lactuca serriola, and the serriola part means that there's a row of thorns on the bottom of the leaves.

So get it while it's young or it might stick in your gums.

- Okay, I think I prefer just iceberg myself, but you know, everybody to their own liking.

Mary, you have something, and this is very appropriate even though the day is about over, but today was National Weed Your Garden Day.

So after this program, folks, you probably got a couple hours of sun left, of light.

Get out there and weed your garden.

- It's official.

It was today.

- [Jack] Yeah, okay, and that was today.

- [Tim] Red leaf, big leaf.

Less of everything.

- Okay, while you're up, Mary, from Bozeman, and I think I know the answer to this, but I'll let you go with it.

Their potatoes have crispy leaves.

Is this drought or frost?

- I would go with frost.

(laughing) - [Jack] Boy, it did crisp up the potatoes last week.

- Yeah, yeah luckily I'm a late planter, so my stuff was pretty safe but anyone that got in early and got some foliage.

- And even if it did burn it back, the potatoes will come back.

- They'll be fine.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Abi, an email question and this one, I'm curious about myself.

How, and is from Bozeman, how often should they be fertilizing their yard?

- So the easy answer is, it depends on your yard but generally people, I would encourage people to fertilize it two to three times a year in Montana.

Once you want to get, get it in the late spring, around mid to late May, then you want to maybe do another round at the end of June, but you don't want to fertilize it in that midsummer heat because that's going to be detrimental to the grass, and then you want to do another application in September so that it has plenty of time to, before that hard frost hits to grow and then develop that root system and go dormant for the winter season.

So I usually only fertilize mine twice a year.

I do an early June fertilize, fertilization and then I do in September, but if, if your grass is kind of struggling to grow then you can, you can add a third application in there.

- You know, if you fertilize too early, and a lot of people in Montana have a tendency the first few nice days of May to get out their spreader and their tractor and go fertilize, and they pay for it because they're mowing every five days, whereas if you wait 'til June, you can wait at least a week before you have to mow.

- Absolutely.

Just a little bit of sage, lazy advice.

(chuckling) Okay, interesting comment here from Great Falls, and I appreciate when people do respond and give us some good ideas.

This caller uses cut-up cardboard in her raspberry patch and find it's very effective against quackgrass when laid on the ground.

What do you guys think of that as a biological control method or cultural control, I should say?

- I, I've done cardboard and you have to kind of, you can't just lay it and forget it.

You have to kind of keep on top of it but in something that's perennial and established, and then maybe cover it with some mulch and then you probably have to go back after a few years 'cause it does degrade.

- Okay.

I figure it rots off pretty fast the way it does but.

- And you can use landscape fabric too, kind of similar just, and then it has water permeation.

It's not a plastic, but also putting that mulch on top really helps preserve it so you don't have to do it quite so frequently.

- Okay, thanks Mary.

Tim, from Billings, this person lives next to a daycare center and has a lot of broadleaf weeds and, including bindweed and houndstongue.

He feels he can't use Roundup glyphosate.

Is there any herbicide he can use that would be non-toxic to children?

- Ooh, that's a tough one.

I think in general, what you want to do, there are some herbicides that you can, that you could use.

You could use some broadleaf herbicide, and I think if you consult the, the aisle at your, at your ranch supply store or talk to one of the dealers, you could come up with something that'd be non-glyphosate.

I think the key to avoiding it is don't spray when the kids are out there, avoid spraying on any day when it's hot and things could volatilize and sort of get up into the air a little bit, and just try to really avoid that and make sure you read the label carefully so you'll, you'll know how to better do that.

- Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you sprayed glyphosate, say after the kids go home at five, 5:30 in the evening, it's basically inactivated about the time it hits the ground or the plants.

It doesn't stick around very long.

Is that correct?

- Yes and no.

It, it's still there, but it binds very strongly to the soil or it makes it on, it's dry to the plant.

It's not likely to then volatilize or They have, there have been studies that have shown that there is actually, they've detected glyphosate in the rain though and they've detected glyphosate in blown, and in blowing soil so it is still there, but it's generally inactive and, and bonded tightly to the soil and the plant material.

- Okay, thank you.

Okay.

I'm going to throw this one out as something I've never heard of.

It's from Billings, and if we don't have an answer, we'll try to find out one of the future.

Does turkey tail grow in Montana, and if so, is turkey tail edible?

Anybody know what turkey tail is?

- Turkey tail, that's a fungus.

- Okay.

- That's my category.

Yeah, that's, it's a polypore.

It's called turkey tail because it looks like a shelf but it has zones of colors on top, so the zones make it look like a turkey tail.

We don't have the real turkey tail here.

That's more of an eastern fungus.

We have some things that look like it, but it's not here.

It has been used as a medicinal mushroom.

They've done trials with this.

It has anti-cancer properties and it is actually sold as a mycomedicinal, and there does appear to be something to the properties that can help with certain kinds of cancer, but we don't have that here.

- Good information.

Thank you, Cathy, and I learned.

I've never heard of that particular fungus before and I been around it for a long time.

Comment here from Cheryl.

She says that prickly lettuce going to seed will cross with edible lettuce and render your plants growing from that seed inedible.

Tim, were you aware of that?

- No, I was, I was not.

I did not know that they could cross like that and hybridize.

- I didn't either.

Mary, from Loma and for those who do not know where Loma is, it's halfway between, not quite halfway between Great Falls and Havre, this person is growing some chickpeas and they're concerned about ascochyta, but it's a dry year.

Do you think we're going to have an ascochyta issue?

- Right, so we've had one sample in the clinic positive, and growers at first flower tend to include a fungicide in their mix and you know, I would stay away or blend any of the strobilurin fungicides such, you know, the strobies, because we have seen some resistance in the state, and choose that for the susceptible varieties.

Organic growers, we really don't have many options for them as far as a foliar fungicide, but the resistant varieties, I find it difficult to get the pathogen out.

So there is some suppression of the pathogen.

As long as we have a dry year and it continues, we shouldn't see any epidemics at all.

Just be conscious of your rotation, and, and the other thing I've heard about right, right now is just poor nodulation of chickpeas due to the cold temperatures.

So they may want to look at their crop for, and talk to their crop advisor about that.

- Okay, thank you, and on that note, we had a question from Stevensville about windy and colder than normal this spring, and she says her hardy shrubs are barely coming up.

Usually by this time they would be doing much better.

Some of last year's wood seems viable but not all of it.

Should the woody material be cut down and any recommendations to help those shrubs, and we'll get into that a little bit because we're seeing an awful lot of winter damage the last two years on a lot of different types of shrubs and trees.

Abi, you can start it off.

- So I would say if you've kind of scratched the surface and, and seen that live tissue underneath, that whitish with the green border of the cambium, if you see that live tissue, then I would let that plant be, give it time to recover.

If you have the unviable leaf tissues, though, if it's just woody on the inside, I, there's no point in keeping that on there.

So I would remove or prune back any branches that have the tips that have died, and in general, we, we've been seeing a lot of new growth of things that had started to leaf out already this spring be really affected, especially noticeable in some of our evergreens, and so if you have the tips of the branches of your pines and spruces that are starting to, or that were browning over the past couple of weeks, don't worry too much about those.

Either those will start to regrow and that green growth will take over and they, they will recover with patience and as long as those plants are healthy, all of these issues generally on healthy plants will slowly disappear so.

- Abi, a lot of people want to fertilize their bushes and stuff and encourage new growth.

Is that a good idea?

- No, I don't think it's a good idea to fertilize your bushes right now, encourage that new growth.

I would say, just keep your plants watered well, make sure that there are no other stressors that are affecting them and just give them time to bounce back, and as the growing season progresses, they will naturally bounce back from that.

- You know, on that note, we've had several questions come in this spring about elm trees, ash trees, which were generally considered to be quite hardy here in Montana that the past few years have really suffered some serious winter damage, and I can't figure out quite why, but I am thinking maybe that with extended falls and then they don't really have a chance to harden off like they normally do, maybe that first frost, that killing frost is harder on 'em than it used it be.

- We've had a couple of years of drought too, and I think they're just struggling.

- Well, and for years I always considered the green ash to be the smartest tree in Montana.

It leafs out the latest and it loses its leaves the earliest in the fall which should make it hardier for our environment, but the last two years that has not held to be true, and we've really seen tremendous amount of damage, and maybe someday we'll figure that out.

Let's go to Conrad, and this person says they have black streaks on their wheat.

Mary, you have any clue what that might be.

- So we're starting to get some tan spot and septoria.

We do have a winter wheat variety that's new.

Some people are saying it was Bobcat and it looks like tan spot but it's a physiological leaf spot.

It's just like CDC Falcon.

That's how you recognize the variety.

So you don't need to spray it, and we, where you have hail or high winds, you might specie in some leaf streak, bacterial leaf streak and that would follow the vein, and that also wouldn't, a fungicide wouldn't help with that.

- Okay, thank you.

Doesn't say from where but this caller says they enjoy grocery store mushrooms, and I enjoy all mushrooms.

They're very tasty, but they would like to know, do wild collected mushrooms taste different and are they much tastier, and is it worth the risk of getting a toxic mushroom, and we'll cover that a little bit more, but Cathy have at it.

- Well, I think it's worth the risk actually.

Yes, the wild mushrooms, each different kind has its own special flavor.

You want to stick to what we call the good edibles in Montana, the chantrelles, king boletes, black morels, yellow morels.

They all have their different, special flavors.

Some of the meadow mushrooms that are related to store-bought mushrooms, I think are much tastier, but you need to know what you're doing.

Obviously you don't want to make a mistake.

I did want to say something about some of the new store-bought mushrooms that are some of the specialty mushrooms that are coming out in Bozeman now and around the state.

I don't know if Jack would even recognize it.

This is an oyster mushroom, it's called a trumpet.

When we see oyster mushrooms in the wild, they're all cap and very little stem.

This trumpet mushroom is being grown locally, near Bozeman and in various stores.

It's all stem, but this makes some very tasty meals.

You can actually slice this down, make scallop sized pieces and cook it just like scallops or put it in with your stuff, vegetarian scallops because of that nice texture of the stem, so while we're waiting for the mushrooms to come out, some of the new specialty mushrooms are a good way to go.

Some of the others are, I don't think they have that much flavor.

I'm a little bored with the usual stuff.

So try some of those new specialty mushrooms.

You might have to look up a particular recipe for it because you cook each one a little bit differently.

- When it comes to oyster mushrooms, and I pick a lot of them, not this year because it's been quite dry and I saute 'em in butter, puree 'em, use a little cream, little tarragon and I make a mushroom soup out of it that puts any soup that you buy in a can to shame.

The oyster mushroom has got a great flavor.

I really enjoy those.

- That's a good way to cook it because a lot of times the texture might not quite be what you want if you're just frying them individually, but in that soup with that flavor where you can pack it in, yeah excellent.

Jack has some good recipes.

- I enjoy mushrooms.

Tim, this person has a neighbor here in Bozeman that's spraying 2,4-D on weeds during a very hot day.

Will that drift-in harm his tomatoes?

That's an excellent question.

- Yep, you can actually do that.

You should be careful on these really hot days, especially the next couple of days.

I would not be spraying in the middle of the day because it can volatilize and kind of drift around and don't want to curl up your neighbor's tomato plant leaves.

- Yeah, let me throw this out.

Most 2,4-D formulations that you buy for home and garden or home use is the, not the ethyl formulation, but the methyl formulation, but if you use the ester formulation, is that more volatile?

- Yeah, I think the amine formulation is the other one and it can be, it can be pretty volatile.

We don't tend to use that in Montana very often because of the volatility issues.

We have some tough conditions for applying herbicides.

We have relatively low humidity and hot sunny days, and so for a couple of herbicides that can help, but for for a lot of them it makes them more volatile.

They're more prone to evaporation and volatilization.

- Thank you.

We're getting down on time.

Quick answer, Abi, is it too late to spray or to prune their cherry trees?

- Yeah, I would not recommend pruning right now in the midst of the growing season.

You're exposing your plants to potential disease risks.

- And if you prune too late, you stimulate too much new growth and that can become winter susceptible.

- Absolutely.

- All right, folks, thank you again for watching this evening.

We'll be back next week and next week's show's gonna be kind of interesting.

Our guest will be Kendall Van Dyk, who's director of the Montana Land Reliance and our Montana line reliance has done a wonderful job of preserving over a million acres of agricultural land in this state.

So join us next week.

You'll learn a lot about it.

Thanks to everybody.

Have a great week.

Good night.

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