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

(soft music) - Good evening folks, you are tuned to "Montana Ag Live" originating tonight from the studios on the campus of Montana State University, and also from our homes and offices around the state of Montana.

It's being brought to you over the Montana Public Television System.

I'm Jack Riesselman retired professor of plant pathology.

I'll be your host or moderator this evening.

We have an interesting program tonight, we're gonna look at some value-added crops around the state, along with everything else, and try to answer some of the questions that you sent in last week that we did not get to.

If you have questions this week, please send them in we'll do our best to get to them.

We don't have animus just tonight I stored up a bunch of insight questions we'll get to those either next week or the following week, so keep watching and we'll do those questions when we have the opportunity.

Let me introduce tonight's panel.

Way on my left here is Jane Mangold.

She likes to be called an invasive plant specialist.

I personally like to call her a weed scientist and a very good one at that.

Joining us from the Extension Horticulture position, Abi Saeed, Abi has been here for a couple of years, she does a great job.

If you have questions about horticultural plants tonight, here's an excellent opportunity to ask them.

Joining us via Zoom tonight, we have the interim director of Montana Department of Agriculture, Christy Clark here.

Christy big smile for the audience.

- Hi.

- (laughs) She's been here before, and if you have questions, what the Department of Ag is doing?

What the value-added crops are?

Anything that they might be of interest to you, hey, send those questions in either Facebook, email, or call them in on the number on your screen.

Also via Zoom tonight Clain Jones, Clain has been here many times.

He's our herbicide, not herbicide, fertilizer specialist and an excellent soil scientists.

So if you have questions relative to soil issues, fertilizer issues, hey, call him in tonight and we'll do our best to answer all of those.

Christy, tell us a little bit about what you do for the Department of Agriculture and especially the value-added portion that you're working with.

- All right, thank you.

Thanks Jack for the opportunity, I'm always excited to talk about what we're doing at the department.

So it's a little different now the new administration, governor Gianforte took over and he had a very, very large focus on value-added agriculture.

We all know that Montana is famous for raising great quality crops, but we tend to ship those out in raw form.

And so there's a large capacity to really build that gap in that system.

And so we've put a big emphasis on that, He asked us to go out, to find innovators, to spotlight them, to highlight them and to encourage them to inspire others that might have really good ideas.

And I have to say it's working because we just closed our growth through agriculture grant program.

And we had almost $8 million in requests for a grant program that has $900,000 in funding.

So I would say people are fired up, people are getting the idea that this is a good place to be.

On our value-added road show we went to all different places.

We went to Molson Coors, they use one-third Molson's beer uses Montana barley.

We went to Pasta Montana, Sidney Sugars, Big Sky Hops.

Hops is a diversified crop that's gaining a lot of popularity.

It's adding to our already hugely growing craft beer industry, and we know Montanans love our beer, and especially craft beer.

Now I think this weekend they had a local or fresh hops competition in Bozeman.

I didn't hear how that went out, but that would be kind of fun to see.

We also went to Willow Mountain Winery and it's a real vineyard that is growing their own grapes and making their own wine is very, very impressive.

We hit a few others along the way.

We also put on our first Montana beverage show, which was really fun.

It was everything from whiskeys, spirits, beers, teas, locally roasted coffee, homemade kombucha, not homemade, locally made kombucha.

So that was really fun to bring all those together.

The governor came down and picked out the best to show for all those.

That was a really fun one, that was a great event.

We also have the Montana Made Tradeshow where we get a highlight some more of those value-added businesses.

I wanna talk a little bit about crop diversification too, because I think that's important to know that we have a lot of funding that comes through USDA, and it's called the Specialty Crop Block Program, and that money is funneled into state Departments of Agriculture, and then we get a grant that money out, and that helps people diversify crops.

So some of the research and some of the interests that's been happening or like cold hardy berries, they've been growing for decades in Canada, like haskap, some saskatoons, and so there's a lot more interest in those.

So these maybe aren't our traditional, we will always be wheat, barley and beef because we do that really well, but there is room for some other diversification in those crops.

Pulse crops are another one that are considered a specialty crop, and there's some experimentation going on with possibly the development of winter lentil, that would be really interesting.

Some of the projects that we have funded in the past have been apple and apple cider research, apple cider, apple, orchards in Montana are getting a lot of attention.

There's certainly a good market for that, Big Sky cider works up in Kalispell if you ever get the opportunity, actually planted an orchard and then build their cideries.

So you can sit and sip a cider that's made right there and look at the orchard where the apples were grown, it's pretty impressive.

There's also been additional interest in doing some research for more development.

So in those alternative crops like mental cracker, or Haskap juice, things like that, that maybe we wouldn't traditionally think of as agriculture.

So that's kind of what we've been up to.

It's been a lot, it's been a whirlwind, we're busy here.

I mean, I can't fail to talk a little bit about we do all of the regulatory work, they're the unsung heroes, they don't get all the splashy media, but they do keep us safe and they keep our products able to export.

And so that's a large part of what we do at the department too.

- All right, thanks Christy, and we'll come back to you with some specific questions that have come in.

- Will be glad.

- Before that taking the phone questions tonight in the studio is Cheryl Bennett.

The phone number is on the screen so you can call those questions in.

And for remote questions tonight Nikki and Joe Rittenberg are doing those, so hey, get those phones ringing and we'll start answering those questions.

One that has come in for Jane, this person would like to know if it's too late to spray Canada thistle, that's a good question.

Also, I'll add, how about spotted knapweed?

Is it too late for that?

- Yeah, well, it kind of depends where you live in the state and how cold it got in the last, just in this past week we had some pretty cold weather, and is it too late to spray?

If you still have green down at the base of the plant and those leaves still feel kind of plump, like they're not frozen, they haven't frozen, I think you could still get some spray down.

I think one thing with Canada, thistle and spotted knapweed, you would want to make sure you're using a herbicide that has some soil residual.

So you would want a herbicide that has both foliar activity, but also soil activity so that when spring rolls around and things are growing again, there's active herbicide in the soil that can help to control those species 'cause we're probably right on the edge in a lot of places if you're still going to get herbicide activity on on the leaves.

- Most areas of state, I'd say we might be a little bit late.

Maybe some of the warmer areas not.

You mentioned the herbicides, you wanna give a specific name, no endorsement, just one that would work.

- Right, well for Canada thistle and spotted knapweed you can use products that contain aminopyralid or clopyralid.

So those would be products like milestone, curtail, trans line those would be some options.

- Abi this question has come in each week and we haven't had anybody here to answer it for a while.

This person from Bozeman, Wasta remove her raspberry patch, how can she kill the roots without damaging the surrounding grass?

- That's a good question.

If it was me and my raspberry patch, what I would do, if that plant isn't dormant yet, I would cut it back and I would apply some glyphosate right to the open wounds that you create, that's gonna make that plant take that chemical into its roots and kill the roots as well.

If that plant is dormant I'd cut it back now, and then as it starts to green up in the spring, I would apply glyphosate as well, - Okay, thank you.

- At that time.

- I have a follow-up question for Abi, can you just dig, dig the root balls out?

- You can.

- Would that be effective or will it still sprout up?

- [Jack] It sounds like hard work.

- Yeah, that is a good question.

I'm thinking about my raspberry patch, which is about 20 by 20 square feet, and so I wouldn't wanna dig all that, but if you have a smaller raspberry plant you could definitely dig it out.

- Question from Highwood, and this is for both Clain and Christy, this person has heard that there's going in fertilizer prices coming this next year.

Do you foresee that as reality or should they apply fertilizer this fall?

You guys have heard it.

- [Narrator] We have all heard about it.

- So there's already been a big uptake, I can't predict how it's gonna go in the spring and I can't predict the future and even ag economists can't, but if a grower or producer has gut feel that prices may go up or have a good chance of going up, then certainly fall application can make sense.

I would avoid nitrogen application specifically on shallow soils, rocky soils, just because a lot can be lost over winter.

And I would make sure to apply urea before a large snow or rain event so we don't get volatilization to the atmosphere.

What are your thoughts Christy?

- Well, my thoughts are that we had anticipated and maybe they already did take a fairly steep jump, but because the conditions were so dry this year, that a lot of people didn't apply those fertilizers.

And so I think there's an anticipation in the industry that there's going to be an uptick in those, considering that people might've skipped a year just because of the conditions.

- Okay, a follow-up question that has come in from Great Falls.

This person says that he's been told that 70% of the commodities, mainly wheat and barley growing in the state of Montana is exported, and I know that's true for wheat, maybe not barley.

They wanna know what effect this bottleneck of shipping has on our ability to export grain out of this state.

Any thought on that?

- Well, it absolutely has had an impact and we've worked as best we can through that process.

Those ports unfortunately they lie outside of our control.

But we've managed, I mean, we have a fairly large storage ability in this state and we have managed to keep things flowing.

And in fact, through the pandemic we managed to keep trains flowing and that still shipping, those people still need those products, so yeah, it is true, we do export an awfully lot of our larger commodities.

- I keep hearing about a shortage of trucks in the United States.

Do we have sufficient trucking capability in the state of Montana to get the grain from say Plentywood to one of our terminals to ship it to the West Coast?

- Well, I think there's a shortage of trucking labor in general, and I think we're certainly not immune to that.

And I know, my kids trying to ship cattle this last week and trying to schedule trucks and trucks trying to get drivers, it is a challenge, but it's a challenge that I think we share with all the other industries that depend on movement of product.

- Okay, Clain fertilizer that comes in the state is that brought in by ships, rail, trucks, your thoughts there.

- You're asking me or Christy?

- Yeah, go ahead.

- I don't know the main ways that they come in Christy might know better than I.

- I believe those come in mostly in trucks.

And the reason I know that is because in the spring we get a real bottleneck with those restricted hours and we tend to write an emergency order to extend hours of operation for those drivers so that they can actually get those products to the farm in a timely manner.

- Okay, thank you.

Have a question here for Jane and then we're gonna throw one that I find kind of interesting to Abi.

First Jane, how long will it take to graze down knapweed with goats rather than with chemicals?

And what time of the year is best spring or fall?

And can cows graze first, then have goats come in afterwards to try to control it?

A lot of questions there.

- Yeah, so goats on knapweed, correct?

Yeah, and how long will it take?

I think, I'm assuming the question there is, like how long to get rid of the knapweed if you're grazing?

It probably will never go away if you're just grazing.

If you have enough knapweed there targeted grazing is an option, you probably have a lot of knapweed and you might wanna think about grazing for a number of years to stop seed production and maybe change kind of the age class of the plants that you have.

But at some point you may have to do some revegetation.

The best time to graze knapweed is just before it's going to flower.

Animals will come in and they'll nip those buds off, and then you've also stopped the plant from flowering and producing seed for that year.

- All right, then good enough, thank you.

Abi, from the Highline, this person was pruning their poplar trees, and I've not seen this before, they noticed a red sap where the dead wood meets the live wood.

Any idea what this might be, I have no clue, have you ever heard of it?

- No, I can't think of off the top of my head what that could be, but it might warrant sending a sample to the Scutter Lab where they'll be able to try and see if they can get some fungal spores out of it.

- All right, thank you.

Clain, a Facebook question.

When is a good time and is it advisable to mulcher garden?

And does that affect the fertility of a garden?

- No, for mulching I wouldn't say that it's a great necessarily a nutrient management or fertility practice, but it can be a good practice to keep your soil warm.

So for example, I've mulched strawberries, I mulched carrots that I didn't get to harvest so that I could dig them during the winter.

Mulching, the bare ground I would say probably does not have many advantages and can have the disadvantage of moles, moles love being under a mulch layer voles.

And so there is a downside to mulching.

I'm wondering what Abi thinks about mulching.

- Yeah, so I like to recommend mulching around your thin bark trees and shrubs or any sort of sensitive or younger plants to help conserve moisture, especially into the fall and through that winter season when they're prone to desiccation.

So I think mulching is good for water conservation as well.

- Okay, we have a question that came in prior to this week, then I'll follow up.

This person has a burning bush that has desiccated and they want to know do they need to mulch that and prune it back to help it survive in the future?

And I will say voles love burning bushes I can tell you that, so mulching would work there.

- Yeah, absolutely, mulching is a great idea, especially in windier areas or areas that have that high, hot winter sun activity, that'll get those plants active.

- May I ask a follow-up question for Clain and Abi, I think it's along the same lines as what we're talking about here.

My husband and I were talking about, like usually we rake all the leaves off our lawn, and going into winter, but we were actually thinking about this year, if it would be helpful to just kind of mulch them up or mow with the mower and then just leave them, would that help with water retention?

We just had such a, it's so hot and dry, we didn't water our lawn all summer, and we're just thinking about, are there some things we can do now to help with that?

- So I'm not sure specific to how much impact that would have when it comes to water retention, but I encourage people if they don't have a huge amount of leaves on their lawn, I recommend you just mow it and get it to break down into smaller pieces because that's gonna add nutrients back into that soil and leaving your leaves around your landscape, beds and stuff are also good habitat for beneficial organisms in your landscapes.

- I don't have to rake then that's what you're telling me.

(laughing) - And a follow-up comment on that my wife says, "Get out there and rake those leaves and get them off the yard."

So what I figured out is about the 1st of November, I get the lawnmower and I cut the grass really short, then I hope for big wind because my neighbors can break them then, it works very well.

So anyway, with that, let's move on from Manhattan.

Christy, this person wants to know with the explosion of craft breweries in the state is the department of lending assistant to wanna be hot producers and malt barley industry?

Any comment on that?

- Yes, that's a great question.

We do actually give growth through ag grants.

We've funded quite a few of the breweries for startups, and we do work very closely with the hop industry.

We we've supported them through grower organization and just participating with them.

And then they've also several of them have received grants through ED Grants for equipment.

The equipment is a pretty big barrier and they can be really labor-intensive if you don't have the right equipment.

So the department has done quite a bit through specialty crop and grows through ag to assist the hop industry.

- We had a young hop grower on the program here a couple of years ago from Bozeman, Jake Dorsel, and I find it fascinating.

He is trying to expand and has done a good job of it.

And to educate me, has the hop industry expanded considerably in this state or is it still in its infancy?

- It's expanded considerably, and we did the Phytosanitary Certificates, which is so that it can be exported.

First export to Mexico was done just within the month.

And I think it's 8,000 pounds of hops being exported to Mexico and Mexico imports a lot like 70% of their malt barley is Montana, sourced from Montana.

So it's exciting for us to see that hops may be able to follow the barley now to Mexico, but if you've drank a Corona or Modelo or a Pacifico, chances are that's Montana barley.

And then on the malt part, we have malt.

Europe is probably one of the largest malters in the nation and they're in Great Falls.

And then we also have Montana craft malt in Butte, and they are more of a boutique type.

Although they're doing, I understand there may be doing some more general malting too, but their malt barley is a big value add in the state.

- And we do a very nice job of growing malt barley in this state.

I've been around that industry for 40 years, and I am impressed with the ability to grow high quality malt barley in this state.

Abi from Facebook question from last week, they wanna know tricks to winterize roses so they survive here in the state, and that is a tough one.

- Absolutely, roses can be quite a challenge in Montana, but if you have shrub roses, they're pretty hardy here in our state.

And so you don't really need to do very much when it comes to protecting them for winter, other than making sure they're sheltered from windy areas.

And you might wanna add some mulch, like some weed-free straw mulch at the base of the plants to help protect them in dryer years, if you don't have snow cover.

But generally those shrub roses do pretty well through the winter.

- [Jack] And hybrid roses, not so much.

- No, hybrid teas don't do very well here.

You'd probably be fighting every winter to keep those alive, depending on where you are.

- I had a neighbor once who I bet his hybrid roses wouldn't make it.

The (indistinct) in my neighbor's yard were huge, I lost the bet, they did survive, but they weren't great.

Okay, Clain I had a question here they came in via Facebook and they wanna know when is the best time to apply urea or manure to reduce the volatilization or loss of the nitrogen?

- Yeah, so volatilization means nitrogen gets converted over to ammonia and then escapes to the atmosphere where it doesn't do any good for anybody.

The best time is before a large rain or snow event because that precipitation will push the urea down into the ground or the manure into the ground, and that will essentially stop volatilization.

In Montana our weather pattern is quite dry in the fall, so my colleague Rick Angle has found very high levels of volatilization when urea is applied in the fall, much less in the spring, largely because there's bigger snows and bigger rain.

So I would time it with a precipitation event and also recognize the reality that there's only so many fertilizer crop advisers, co-ops have to apply at some point, and there's probably not enough to apply all when Dr. Jones says to.

So now or later as long as there's some precipitation on the way would be fine.

- Okay, thanks Clain, good advice.

Abi, a quick one here.

A caller from Darby has young raspberry plants that she would like to transplant, what is the best time to do that?

- I would wait until the plants are dormant to transplant them.

So wait until you've had your first killing frost, you can wait until late spring as well, but wait until they're dormant to give them the best shot.

- Thank you, interesting question, Christy from Hamilton and this person wants to know why so many of our products are shipped out of state.

If we want to consume local Montana products, where can we get them from restaurants?

I think they're talking about perishable items and why is the emphasis on export?

And I think the emphasis is mainly small grants, but go ahead and answer what you can with that, would you please.

- Sure, and that's a lot of what we have focused on in the department these last nine or 10 months, we've really tried to entice people to look at that value-added piece.

I mean, the barriers for the state of Montana are of course labor force, the cost of equipment, that sort of stuff, but there is a real emphasis on growing that part of our economy.

I mean, there's one thing, we've not necessarily emphasized raw commodity shipments, but it's just the way we're poised.

There's a lot of value to capturing that in between step.

And so if you can take durum and turn it into pasta and then ship the pasta, there's a lot of advantages to that, but you can imagine how expensive a pasta plant is to put up.

There's also a lot of interest in trying to get some of these companies to relocate here.

One food company did just relocate here because they make a lot of hemp hearts and we have a lot of hemp acres in the state, and so they moved to be closer to the hemp.

I'm hoping that that's a trend that's gonna catch on.

The value adds that we've tend to emphasize more of have been the smaller ones.

We're a small business state and small towns but there's, an example is Stricks AG in Chester added 26 jobs by adding value to those pulse crops.

And so it's definitely the direction that we're emphasizing in the state, and I'm hoping that, and it is, it's working, people are getting more interested.

It's just the way we've done it.

- Okay, I'm gonna throw this to Abi.

From what I've seen, we've seen a big explosion of truck gardens or locally produced vegetables available for restaurants.

You see that continuing here in the state?

- I don't see why not.

I think over the past few years, a lot of places are trending towards supporting local production and bringing that to their consumers, so I don't see why it wouldn't.

- Okay, thank you.

Jane, good question here from Hot Springs, this person is wondering what we can do with the problem of weeds becoming resistant to herbicides.

They wanna know where we're heading in the future.

It's an excellent conceptual question, go for it.

- Yeah, so herbicide resistance is mostly a problem in cropping systems not so much in range and pasture where I spend a lot of my time, but as far as how can it, I'm glad the caller or the viewer called in because it is a very serious that we need to think about as we move into the future of weed management.

And we're probably looking at doing more integrated weed management, perhaps a return to things like tillage or cropping system, like more rotations and just being more creative in how we manage weeds without relying heavily on herbicides.

So I would say integrated weed management is one of the big answers to herbicide resistance.

- And I think the university and the AI industry is really working hard to avoid considerable resistant weeds.

- Yeah, it's a big, I mean, the Weed Science Society of America, the Western Society of Weeds Science, any of the regional chapters of the national association, all the people at our university, universities around the country, they're all working on herbicide resistance.

- Okay, Christy is the Department of Ag have a role in helping to avoid things like herbicide resistance?

- Well, we do in the sense that we license a pesticide applicators and we put a real emphasis on using those products accurately, and knowing how to use those, knowing how to measure, how to be safe in handling those and how to prevent drift, and things like that.

That's all emphasized through our pesticide education program and then the licensing that follows that.

And it's pretty rigorous and they have to follow up and continue education points and we've moved more of it online since COVID so I think it's even more accessible, but we have a lot of resources that the departments who are Pesticide Education Program, that would be helpful.

- Having been involved with that for a year or so, it's a great program that you guys do a good job with that, and along with them I assume.

Jane, I like this one.

Why is there a wild licorice, and I think that's cocklebur, a noxious weed in the state of Montana?

- Well, I'm not sure it's cocklebur 'cause there is wild licorice and I'm not gonna think of the scientific name off the top of my head.

But if the viewer is actually talking about wild licorice, which does have little cocklebur type seed heads, but it's not cocklebur it's a little different but it, wild licorice is a native plant and Montana will not list a species native to the state as a noxious weed.

And usually where I see wild licorice it's in places, animals don't like to graze it.

So sometimes you see it increase in areas where the grazing is heavy, there's heavy grazing pressure, and it doesn't really invade, it likes its certain habitat in certain areas where it lives.

And when you see it becoming a problem it's usually because of heavy grazing pressure.

- Okay, cocklebur or wild licorice.

I know long hair dogs don't get along with either of them.

- [Jane] No, either species would be trouble for even short haired dogs I would say, yeah.

- It gets under their legs and it's not pleasant.

Clain, from Cut Bank they would like to know whether or not these high protein spring wheats, the spring wheat Braider talked about last week require more nitrogen fertilizer or are they fertilized at the same rate as normal protein spring wheats?

It's a good question.

- Yeah, now that is a great question.

Essentially, what you need to think about is both yield and protein.

Protein has a certain fraction or percentage of nitrogen, so the total removal of nitrogen would be higher if it was high protein wheat and it yielded well.

Some high protein wheats yield may be a little bit less, so the total nitrogen removed or needed might be about the same, but again, you have a yield well, and they have high protein, they're probably gonna need a slightly more nitrogen.

- Okay, I haven't followed it this year.

Is there a good premium for high protein spring wheat this year?

- I haven't looked recently enough to comment on that.

I would say when I was looking two months ago, it wasn't a super high, but it can really changes with US and even global markets.

- Okay, thank you.

Jane, from Miles City, and this came in last week and I think you were prepared because I told you ahead of time that this was gonna come in.

This person says there's been a lot of hay moving around Montana, where is it coming from?

And could new weeds come into the state via all this hay being brought into the state under drought conditions?

Good question.

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And actually I'll defer maybe to Christy, she may be more familiar with where some of the hay is coming from, but we typically get hay from the Midwest, although it was droughty there this year too, but it comes from all over the place and yes, it can be a vector for new weed species to get introduced.

There are some resources out there for people to kind of pay attention to some best management practices if they're using hay that has come from even another area in Montana or from out of state.

So one of those resources is from the USDA, NRCS it's preventing weeds spread from hay, so that's one of the resources.

Another resource that we put out in August of this year is the Monthly Weed Post.

And that comes out of my lab, preventing weed invasion from hay shipments.

And there are some both short and long-term practices to think about.

In the short term probably the most important thing for people to do is feed that hay in a limited area.

So if there are new weed species in the hay, they're not getting spread over a large area, but in a kind of a limited area that can be monitored.

So be looking for new weeds next spring, and then even two, three years afterwards, 'cause sometimes seeds can remain dormant for a period of time before they actually germinate and emerge.

And then I don't Christy, I don't know if you wanna add anything about where some of the hay has come into Montana from?

- Sure, we operate the hay hotline, and so we get to see what's advertised on there.

And we also had a lot of interest in some brokers from Tennessee getting us hay and so we had a call actually a Zoom meeting with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, just to kind of get a sense of what we need to be aware of.

There's a federal quarantine in parts of Tennessee for red fire ants and we just wanted to make sure that, that quarantine was being followed and if we did end up with an infestation of red fire ants, could they live here?

And so we did some work ahead.

We also posted those resources on our website and encouraged people not to feed the hay around a body of water, to feed it in a tight area, especially out of state hay and to contact your weed district in the spring and to have somebody come out and do a thorough investigation, but make them aware of where the hay was sourced from.

There's hay on our hotline from Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas.

I mean, it's a variety.

It's a year where producers have just really struggled and we certainly don't want to discourage them from getting hay that's maybe more affordable, even if they can source it locally it's just been such a rough hay year.

So we just tried to give them all of the resources we could and hold them and then reached out to the weed districts and said, be prepared in the spring to really get out there and do some inspections and to try to assist these guys.

- Okay, thank you Christy, I'll make a little comment.

I was out in the Eastern part of Montana this past week, put a plug in, it's a beautiful place if you haven't been out to vacation in Eastern Montana.

And he live in the Western part of the state, Eastern Montana is really enchanting and beautiful.

But what I did see up there was a lot of corn that was drought out that was being bailed for hay.

And also a lot of the winter wheat that didn't make it for grain has also been bailed for hay.

And I don't know how nutritious this is.

We may try to find out and have somebody on the next couple of weeks to talk a little bit more about that.

Meanwhile, Abi, when's the best time to cut back roses.

- The roses that we grow well in this state, like those shrub roses don't really need that much pruning back.

So if you have any damaged or dead parts of your branches, or if you have excessive growth, you should prune those when they're dormant.

But other than that, we don't need to cut them back to the ground or anything for most of our roses.

- Okay, and another quick one, this person would like to know from Townsend, when is the best time to transplant rhubarb?

- Transplant rhubarb.

- Yeah.

- I would probably wait until the spring to transplant rhubarb.

- Okay, thank you.

Facebook, they say love the show and the information, they want to raise a few goats, but their field they have for them has lots of dried moss.

Is it okay for the goats the moss?

From Hamilton, that's all yours, I love these.

- I don't know.

Yeah, that's not really a question that I would wanna try to answer.

I mean, I would think it would be safe, but I don't wanna say it's safe.

That would be a good question for probably Jeff Moseley, our range management specialist.

- I think moss is probably not gonna hurt anything that, I mean, I've seen a lot of animals graze in moss infected pastures, and they do fine.

I don't think it's nutritious, but I don't think it's harmful.

But we will look it up in Kingsbury, poisonous plant book and we'll have answer next week for sure.

- Yeah, I'm not aware of issues with moss, but gosh, it's not something, if you're unsure, it's not something you just want to assume is okay.

- Okay, good answer.

And while I have you up, from Missoula.

Interesting question, what percentage of noxious weeds have been brought in from other countries?

Do you have any idea on that?

- Oh gosh, well the Montana noxious weed list, as I mentioned earlier, we don't have any species that are native to Montana and I don't think we even have any species that are native to North America.

So all of the species on our list have come from, most of them have come from Europe or Asia, and there's one or two that have come from Japan as well.

But yeah, mostly, some were brought here intentionally they're planted 'cause they're pretty like the toad flexes, others were brought here accidentally as contaminants in seed or straw or hay or something like that.

- Okay, I don't know for sure, I never thought of it that way, but it is an interesting question.

From Miles City, again, Christy, this person is a member of the Montana Stockgrowers Association and all he has heard tonight is value-added plants and stuff like that.

He would like to know what the Department of Ag is doing to add value to beef and I'll add lamb or anything else.

Good question.

- Great question, so yeah, I did focus mostly on value-added not beef because we did a huge value-added beef it was our Montana Meat Processing Infrastructure Grant.

We put 12 and a half million dollars worth of cares act money towards middle-sized meat processors.

And we did see the needle move.

Those were $150,000 grants up to and 12 and a half million dollars went out the door.

And it was a really short timeframe because that's how that cares act money was structured.

And I have to say those meat processors did a phenomenal job and we have seen slaughter numbers increase across the state each month.

I feel like we are moving that needle, and that was really exciting.

Hamilton Pack was one of the value-added visits that we did last week and there kind of an artistan butcher shop that triages and smokes meats.

And they're doing phenomenal work, expanding like crazy.

And so I think we have seen some real growth and I think we'll continue to see that growth.

Increasing slaughter facilities then comes, increasing feedlots to finish those cattle, and I'm hoping that we see more of that.

It seems like there's more interest that way, but I'd love to see that model of exporting calves start to curve and be able to capture more of that in the state of Montana.

We certainly have a market, people want Montana beef, they value that and we could brand it more, we could do more for identity I think for Montana meat processors and Montana ranchers.

- Interestingly, I just read an article in the Bozeman, Chronicle Bozeman paper this morning that a group of ranchers in Nebraska are starting their own private packing plant, I believe it was at North Platte and they're inviting ranchers from all over the West to join in this operation.

Have you heard of this or are aware of that operation at all?

- I'm not, I'm not familiar with that one, but I've heard that model as touted.

I think Idaho also put a lot of resources towards doing one really large processing plant.

In Montana our emphasis was on the middle-sized processors, and again, it's because of the workforce element that we really would struggle.

I think we would struggle finding a workforce.

There are some fairly large processors in the state, Eastern Montana Meats and Sidney is processing a lot of cattle every day.

But again, that it's a real challenge with the workforce and because we tend to be more small town based it's difficult to get one of those really big processors and I would love to see the ranchers co-op and build one, that would be great.

- Okay, thank you.

Question, Clain that came in from Facebook, this person would like to know a phosphorus and sulfur applied to hay ground would make it to the roads if they apply this coming spring.

And I know sulfur is not very mobile in the soil, so your answer.

- You just answered for me Jack, that's exactly right.

So phosphorus sticks really strongly to soil, especially here in Montana, where we have a lot of calcium, calcium and phosphorus form minerals, just like our teeth and bones are made of calcium and phosphorus, so phosphorus applied in the spring to hay ground almost for sure will not make it to the roots in 2022.

Sulfur would, sulfur is quite a bit more soluble.

The only form of sulfur that's not that soluble or mobile is elemental sulfur that takes a few months to a year or two to break down into sulfate.

So phosphorus should really be applied now to increase the chance that it will make it to the hay ground roots in 2022.

- Okay, thank you.

All right Jane, this person had a wildfire go partially through their land and they've heard in the past that after wildfires there is the potential of having severe weed outbreaks.

We've talked about this in the past, you wanna answer that one?

- Yeah, so weeds love disturbance and wildfire is a disturbance, so if there were weeds there prior to the fire, it's very likely that they're going to respond very positively to that fire and come back afterwards.

So how much weeds you have on your land after a fire kind of depends on what was there prior to the burn and then how severe the fire burned.

If the fire burned very severely, that can also lead to more weeds.

So it kinda depends (laughs) I hate to say that, but it does depend.

I like think of wildfire as an opportunity to manage weeds because they will be some of the first things greening up after the fire, and they're going to be very visible, because everything, all the standing vegetation burned.

So it's actually a good time to look for weeds and treat weeds also because there's nothing to intercept if you're using herbicides, there's nothing to intercept that herbicide.

Extension does have a publication on managing weeds after wildfire.

I brought this tonight along with the preventing invasion from hay shipments, because they seem like very timely topics to talk about if we had a chance.

So this publication is available online.

You can either get a hard copy like I have in my hands right now, or you can read it online, and you can also go to your local extension office and they can get a copy for you.

- Okay, thank you, my question now.

I just read in this morning paper again, that we had just about a hundred thousand acres of ground burn in the state this year if my numbers are correct, if that's on national forest or BLM ground and you get the weed infestation there, who's responsible and what do they do about that?

- Well, if it's on state or federal land the agencies that are in charge of managing that land are responsible for it, for managing the weeds post-fire.

I should mention too that one thing we've seen over the years and through the research is that sometimes some of the things we do to fight a wildfire can actually exacerbate a weed problem.

So if you think about things like dozer lines, fire lines that are put in, that's a lot of ground disturbance and we have seen weeds come in on those dozer lines after fire.

You can also have fire introduced by that are fighting fires.

So that's something to keep in mind as well post-fire looking for perhaps new species showing up that were never there before.

- Okay, interesting question here.

This person did not know nor did I, that if it's a native weed, it cannot be declared noxious.

So they wanna know did the Canada thistle actually originate in Canada and it's not native here.

- No, Canada thistle did not come from Canada.

The Canadians really liked call it creeping thistle instead of Canada thistle, but it's from Europe and Asia.

- All right, Abi, from Missoula, this person who says their roses bloom maybe every other year, but not every year, is there a reason for that?

- There could be many reasons for that.

Sometimes your plants won't bloom because they don't have enough nutrients to put towards those blooms.

Sometimes it could be excessive nitrogen, and sometimes winter damage or damage to those buds can also prevent them from blooming.

So I do some troubleshooting to make sure those plants were healthy and then go from there.

- Okay, thank you.

From Hamilton, this person Christy would like to know a little bit more about the growth in agricultural program.

And is it focused at commodity crops or can horticultural crops also qualify for that?

You are up.

- Okay, the grants through agricultural program is a grant and loan program.

The grants are capped at 50,000, the loans are capped at a hundred thousand, and it is for innovative agriculture ideas.

We have funded everything from crops, any sort of value-added crops to fertilizer companies, to I'm trying to think some of the recent ones that work, lots of meat shops, breweries, hops, all that stuff gets covered in that.

It's just for whatever ideas people have that they wanna give it, that maybe they need a little bit of startup money, sometimes it's just a bump to get to the next level for marketing, it's just whatever they need.

I would encourage him to look at our website.

There's a lot of information on the grants through ag program.

the deadline did just close and it's an annual deadline, so it'll be coming up again next year.

It has a specific focus and every year we set those matrix and it has to grow agriculture in some form.

And then there's some other things we take into consideration, location, is this in a place where jobs need to be built or the economy could use a shot in the arm from a business locating there.

So there's a lot of different things that go into it.

And the last thing I wanna add is that the decisions for who receives those grants are not made by staff in the department, they're made by a council, it's called the Ag Development Council, and that is a council that is appointed by the governor.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, from Facebook, and this was one I'm not familiar with, is it better to trim Siberian iris stems back in the fall or wait until spring?

What is a Siberian iris?

- Siberian iris is an iris that has these really long, beautiful stocks and usually a good time to trim them would be once those flowers have wilted, after they bloomed that's when you remove the flower, but you don't wanna remove the rest of the vegetation, you wanna keep that on the plant until they're dormant, and then you can trim off the rest of that vegetation and cut it back about an inch or two from the ground.

- Are they fairly adapted to the state of Montana?

- They do pretty well here up to zone three, they do pretty well here.

- What is most of the Montana, zone three or zone four?

- I hear most of Montana is around zone four A and four B, but that varies.

- All right, you can find that online if you look up zones, okay.

we're running a little low on time, but I have a couple of questions here, I'm gonna throw this one to Jane.

This person has a vacation home in Darby and they want to have wildflowers as a lawn without inviting many weeds.

Any suggestion on how they might do this?

A wildflower lawn.

- Yeah, you could till it up and seed it with a wildflower mix.

I would recommend going to your local NRCS office and getting recommendations on what to seed.

And there's great native species that are available with seed that establish fairly easily here.

The NRCS or extension office would be able to provide species recommendations.

- All right, thank you.

Clain we're down to one minute, a quick question here that came in, a crop advisor wants the soil sample now, or should they wait until spring?

Your advice.

- Spring is always better, if the crop advisor say only has time to do it now, now is fine, my big concern is that nutrient levels can change over winter, so early spring, late winter is probably preferred.

- Okay, with that folks I'm gonna stop the questions and thank everybody here on the panel, especially Christy for joining us from Helena this evening.

- Thank you for the opportunity.

- Hey, it's always great to have somebody from Department of Ag join us.

Next week Bill Klein in Dell, he'll talk to us about the value of wetlands to agriculture, and it'll be an interesting topic.

With that folks please join us again next week.

Thanks for your questions tonight, have a good weekend and good night.

(soft music) - [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit Montanapbs.org/aglive.

(soft music) "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by, the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, the Montana Bankers Association, Cashman the Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Advisor Program.

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