- [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 and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, The Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardener's Club.

(toe-tapping bluesy acoustic guitar music) - Good evening.

Welcome to Montana Ag Live originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University.

And coming to you over the Montana Public I'm Jack Riesselman.

I'll be your host this evening, retired professor of plant pathology.

And those of you who have watched the program in the past, you know how this works.

There's a phone number on the screen.

If you have questions for our panel this evening, phone them in, the sooner you get them in, the better chance you'll have that they will be answered.

And without your questions, this program gets pretty boring.

(panelists chuckle) As you well know this spring series is featuring women in agriculture, and it's really been fun to do this, because they have really taken over agriculture.

There's more women that go into agriculture now than men are.

So it's really been a pleasure to feature some of the women.

We have a guest tonight that I'm glad she's here.

She came all the way from Ballantine.

And I will tell you where Ballantine is, in a little bit later.

But before we do that, let me introduce this evening's panel.

Clain Jones, Clain is our soil fertility specialist, cropping systems, all kinds of things that he does.

Our special guest tonight, all the way from Ballantine, which is 30 miles east of Billings.

- Yep.

- Kate Vogel.

Kate is the co-owner of North 40 Ag, she's a certified crop advisor.

She's done a lot on cover crops out in that area.

So she'll share with us some of what she does out there.

And we have lots of questions that have come in that will focus on some of the things you've done.

Everybody knows Laurie, Laurie Kerzicnik, she's our entomologist.

Hey, we have some entomology questions here, other words, bug questions.

(Laurie laughs) If you've got bugs that are bothering you, and most people do, good chance to get them answered this evening.

And of course, Tim Seipel, Tim.

He has all these fancy titles, but he is a weed scientist.

(panelists laughing) If you have questions about weeds this evening, it's an excellent opportunity to get them answered.

Kate, thanks for coming down.

Tell us a little bit about what you do out in Ballantine.

- Yeah, so in 2014, right after my husband and I got married, we decided the best thing to do for our new marriage was to start a business.

(everyone laughs) - Brave, aren't you?

- Yeah.

(laughs) So my husband and his family, brothers, and dad and uncle all farm right there and feed cattle.

And so he had been experimenting with some cover crops.

And we'd had some issues finding seed, and some of the knowing what some of the things were in there.

I had been working with cover crops for the years before and did some work with no-till, and cropping systems before that.

And so we decided that we could educate, and make it a much better experience if we sold seed ourselves.

So back then we started up selling seed, and then we do a lot of education with it.

We'd put on field days and workshops throughout the winter to try to get people to understand what's going on, and then offer a lot of service when we're doing our sales.

- Sounds like a lot of fun, but before you go any farther, you know, we've used the term cover crop on this program a lot.

And I'm sure some of the people sitting in Bozeman, Missoula and Billings may not know what a cover crop is.

What is a cover crop?

- There's probably a lot of definitions of a cover crop.

- I'm sure there is.

(panelists laugh) - Well, specifically in Montana, we see it used a lot of times in lieu of crop or between crops.

So it's something to keep roots living in the ground, in the soil.

It also can be used for a bunch of different goals.

But a lot of times we see it in place of fallow for like a whole season long.

But it's a crop of usually a mixed diversity, different species to try to achieve a specific goal that that landowner or user is trying to get after.

- Okay.

We'll get back to that in a little bit.

I forgot to mention, we have a couple phone answerers here in the studio tonight.

We have Nancy Blake and Jennifer Weiss taking your phone calls.

And they look like they're busy, so keep trying.

The more calls we get, the more exciting this program becomes.

Tim, a question that came in last week.

This person wants to know your opinion of weed and feed for lawns versus just fertilizer or weed control.

What do you think?

- Ooh, that's a good question.

I think the weed and feed, it has a little 2,4-D in it, it has a little Sulfentrazone in it, and it has a little MCPA in it.

And it also has fertilizer in it.

So it's gonna get those broad leafs mostly.

I think if you want to make one pass, that's probably your best bet.

If you want to make, if you want to separate your nitrogen and your weed control, you can also do that, but it would take a little bit more labor.

I'm personally, I like my dandelions, I like my clover in my yard.

And I don't like to mow very much so I don't weed and feed.

(everyone laughs) - I can buy that.

Okay, great answer, thank you.

Kate, this question came in from Manhattan.

This person would like to know, are there any cover crops that could be used to attract wildlife?

That's an interesting question.

- We get that quite a bit actually.

So I'd say species specific, like what kind of wildlife are you looking for?

Are you looking for more birds, or more big game?

But there's definitely a lot of different things we can do.

A lot of times we put a lot of, for big game, we'll put in a lot of broad leaf species, but then also, you know, corn, sorghum, sedans, a lot of those are very attractive.

If you're looking more for birds, we're gonna say, you know, some of the millets that drop seed, and then a lot of flowering species that'll attract insects.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

Carpenter ants.

This person thinks they have carpenter ants.

Laurie, they have hills next to the house.

I don't think those would be carpenter ants, would they be?

- They'd probably be field ants.

Yes.

If you see the hills, they call those, they actually call those thatching ants, or mound ants.

So I'd be happy to look at a sample for you, but I think carpenter ants would be probably you'd see some sawdust associated with them.

Yeah, the mounds make me think that it's probably a field ant, which are harmless and just let them be.

- Okay, you know I have both you and Kate up here.

You mentioned pollinators, and stuff like that.

There was an interesting article today in the Bozeman paper, about the number of bee species that we have in the state of Montana.

- Yeah.

- It's amazing, you wanna just touch on that a little bit?

- Oh sure.

Yeah.

So there's an article, like Jack said, that just came out in the Daily Chronicle, about, this is about native bees, and talking about the wild bees of, this is a Wild Bees of Montana Project with Casey Delphia and Mike Ivie.

And it's a gonna be a 15-year project to try to see what native bees we have out in Montana.

And they estimate anywhere between 750. to 1,000 native species.

- Wow.

- And when the project started, I think they said they had about 250, so way more than they...

They're anticipating way more than they originally thought.

Pretty fantastic project they're bringing together.

- It is amazing.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] It really is.

- Su Boda Acari was a graduate student at MSU in the LRES department.

And around the Big Sandy area, he did a project and found over 130 bee species, even just out in wheat fields with very little pollinator, - [Laurie] Wow.

- nectar available.

- [Jack] That's amazing.

They're an important insect, they really are.

- Yeah, Montana's a really interesting spot, because you have species coming from the Arctic zone, and species coming from the Pacific Northwest.

So you're getting a lot of diversity compared to other states.

- Okay.

- Clain, and then I want to switch back to Kate.

This question came in last week, the week before, and again this evening.

It has to do with the cost of MPK, nitrogen phosphorus, potassium, they're all up this year.

Can a producer, spring wheat producer, reduce the amount of nitrogen, and still expect a good yield and proper protein?

- Yeah, what Jack's referring to, for those of you who aren't farmers is fertilizer prices have doubled or tripled just since last August.

So it's a very serious bite into a producer's bottom line.

Fortunately, some commodity, most commodity prices, wheat and corn, and others have also gone up.

So revenue will be up, but the risk becomes much higher, when all those input costs are high.

Spring wheat is a wheat that producers get paid for high protein, and they get what's called docked for lower protein.

So they can cut back on nitrogen, and probably, some, and not have a big yield drop.

But if they cut back too much on nitrogen, they probably will have a protein drop.

It's a trade off with these high, both wheat prices and nitrogen fertilizer costs, and some consequences we're seeing for high nitrogen rates like soil acidification.

This might be a year to start trying to cut back on nitrogen rates.

- So I'm gonna ask you a question, and I want to have Kate verify it.

(panelists laugh) With the drought, there's probably some residual nitrate, or nitrogen in the soil.

Which if you did a soil test, I know you always recommend soil tests, You would find out that you may not have to use as much nitrogen.

Is that correct?

- That's correct.

There's a commercial lab named Agvise out of North Dakota and Minnesota that does a great job of keeping track of residual nitrate collected in the fall.

And what they showed was in 2021 nitrate levels about doubled from where they typically.

So for the producer that just says, "I'm gonna apply the same thing I always apply," they're probably overlying it.

It is the year really to soil test, and make sure that what you know you think you have is actually there.

Some of it might have leached over winter.

Some might still be there.

So soil testing becomes really important after a drought.

- Okay.

So now I'm gonna ask Kate.

I've heard you for years, promote soil tests.

Kate, you work with a lot of growers.

What percentage of the growers that you work with actually do soil testing?

- I think a smaller percentage.

I don't think it's a huge percentage that do it, but we have done a lot of soil testing this fall.

Especially we've had guys who can see the value in it with the price of fertilizer.

And I can verify that we're seeing huge amounts of nitrogen left out there in the field.

There's a few fields that aren't gonna require any nitrogen at all.

So I think, like you said, if you're gonna, if you're gonna decrease your fertilizer, this will be the year.

But if you are gonna only soil test one time, I think you could see significant profitability just from doing in some of those soil tests right now.

'Cause you could cut a lot of fertilizer.

- Okay.

I think we covered that well.

Thank you, too.

We have a question, and again, it's come in a couple times has to do with pines that the tips are not looking good.

And you have something there?

- Yeah, this isn't a pine, but we can certainly talk about it.

But a lot of the pines we're seeing, we're seeing the tip die back, and that happened last year, and I think even the year before.

And a little bit, some of it's abiotic, which means it's not caused by an insect or disease.

And sometimes it's, we do have, we have had some terminal weevils, beetles that we've seen in the tops of the trees.

The only way to really know is to get a sample from the top, and sometimes it's pretty difficult to do that.

But this right here is this is damage that we have.

And this is pretty common.

We've had this quite a bit for many years.

This is white pine weevil damage.

And this is a small weevil that lays eggs on the outside of spruce trees.

And at the top it'll cause, at the top of the tree, and then it'll cause the leader to kind of, they call it a shepherd's crook, kind of curve over a little bit.

Right now is actually the time to treat if you wanted to treat for this pest chemically.

And you can actually spray the terminal with a class of insecticides called pyrethroids.

Or this is one actually that you can prune out.

And actually you need to wait for the beetles to all be underneath the bark, which would probably be in a few weeks.

And so maybe try to prune this out sometime in June.

And you just would prune out the top of the leader, and maybe prune down a few inches below where you see the last exit hole of the beetle.

- Need to have a new leader that takes over then.

- Yeah.

If it's a young tree, you can train a new leader.

- Exactly.

- Then you won't lose the shape of the tree.

If it's an older tree, you're gonna end up lopping the top off it, and it's just not gonna look very pretty.

- Okay, thank you.

I have a call about CCA, but before we do that, I want to go to Tim quickly.

This person from Billings would like to know a good way to encourage control of spotted knapweed on forest service land.

And also what's the best way to control spotted knapweed?

- On forest service land I think I would talk to your county weed board and then the forest service.

And they'll have some representatives that can get in touch with everyone, and probably get a plan to manage the knapweed on forest service land.

Gene Mangold's the best person to ask about spotted knapweed control.

But I think in general, there's a couple of herbicides out there like Stinger or Curtail that get used fairly often, and then Rimsulfuron, And I can't remember.

Telar is one of the mixes as well that people end up using quite a lot too.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Tim, is there any bio control, like insects that are released for knapweed?

- Yeah, there is insects, there is, there are insect bio controls for knapweed.

And there's multiple ones that are out there.

I don't know exactly how widespread they are all over the place, but in some places they do wear the knapweed down pretty well, and can at least knock it back really far.

- Okay.

Kate, from Forsyth.

This person would like to know what CCA means, and how you become a CCA person?

And Clain and Kate, you can both jump in on this one.

- Perfect.

CCA means certified crop advisor.

And I did my CCA several years ago.

It was right after I got out of school, but you have to take a test.

And then you have to have so much experience and so much, study in order to get your certification for that.

And then each year, every two year cycle, you have to have continuing education credits to maintain that CCA.

- [Jack] Clain, you want to add anything?

- Yeah, you can take exams either in February or August, and now, they're going to online, so you can take them anytime, which is convenient.

You have to pass a local exam, which tends to be more focused on, you know, wheat, barley, peas, oil seeds.

And then what's called an international exam that's more focused on all the crops that might grow in North America.

Once you pass those two tests, like Kate said, you have two, basically two years of experience, after a bachelor's degree, you can become a certified crop advisor.

- How many in the state do we have?

- So there's about 90 in the state, and close to 100 between Montana and Wyoming.

And if anyone has questions on the program, I'm the 20-year long chair.

I've been the chair for a long time.

(panelists laugh) And so I can probably answer your questions.

- Okay, you know, I'll mention, and we talked about this little before the program.

About 30, 35 years ago, when I started around here, it was pretty easy to know a fair amount about cropping, because all we did was wheat, barley rotation, fallow, wheat, barley.

Today with the diversity of crops that we have in the state it's probably more difficult to be knowledgeable in all those.

So it it's challenging, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Definitely.

- Not everyone passes the exam.

(panelists laugh) - I don't think I would.

(everyone laughs) I'm not sure we can answer this one, but we'll try.

From Ovando, the caller has 28 acres of dryland pasture with bare spots.

She grazes five horses on it.

She wants to maintain weed control, but would like to improve the bare spots.

Any suggestions on that?

- Ooh, I think the best competition against weeds is good grass coverage in those bare spots.

So I would say, get out there, and maybe seed those this spring, if you can, or try to get something growing on those bare spots.

I think that's really how to maintain the best weed-free sort of area.

Yeah, it would be interesting to hear why those bare spots are there.

She says red sorrel is the main weed.

What is red sorrel?

- Oh, okay.

Oh so red sorrel.

Actually, it might be called sheep sorrel as well, red sorrel, sheep sorrel.

It's a Rumex species in the genus Rumex, which is this, curlydock is also in that genus.

And so it can be toxic to livestock.

So it would have Oxaloacetate in it, I think, so OAA.

It becomes a weed.

You know curlydock can be a real weed in irrigated pastures sometimes.

Sheep sorrel kind of behaves the same way.

It's a rhysomonous plant that spreads out.

There's probably a few ways that you could manage it.

Probably something like 2,4-D, and then really promoting that grass.

Or a broad leaf herbicide and promoting the grass.

- Okay, thank you.

Kate, from Billings.

They've heard about cover crops.

They don't see a lot of them in the state.

How extensive are the cover crop acres in the state?

Do you have any clue on that?

- I can say it's definitely been increasing.

I mean, just judging from what we're selling in seed.

Last year we were right around that 85,000 acres, and some of that was just monoculture.

But I'd say 60,000 of that was mixed species cover crops that were going out there either in lieu of fallow, or you know, in a potato rotation or after crop.

That's just us, so I'd imagine throughout the, throughout the region our other sales, there's a lot more out there.

So it's becoming pretty significant.

- Okay.

Thank you.

From Fairfield, this person tore out an old alfalfa grass field, and will replant with new alfalfa.

Will the old alfalfa affect the new seeding?

And I think it will.

Anybody want to answer that?

- Yeah.

- I would go to a cereal rotation for a few years, and just clean up all the old alfalfa and start over.

- It's really difficult to seed into an established alfalfa stand.

Even if that alfalfa is fading out, it has a lot of allelopathic chemicals that it's releasing out there.

About the only time you can enter seed into alfalfa is in that first year of establishment if that stand comes back pretty weak.

A lot of times we have guys who will try to intercede into that alfalfa with either a perennial grass to try to simulate that and go with an alfalfa grass.

Or they can, you know, to extend it one more year, might throw in sorghum sudan or a grain.

Otherwise I'd agree with Tim.

You need to probably terminate that alfalfa, and plant either a cereal, or we have a lot of people who are planting, you know, if it's irrigated, they might put in a cereal, hay that off and then plant a warm season cover crop and graze that.

So you can almost double crop it in that timeframe.

- On that note.

Is there any issues with grazing?

I know a lot of people are grazing cover crops now.

Is there any toxicity issues potential with young cows or heifers?

- There's toxicity issues with anything you graze on, you know, we talked about weed species that might be out there, or certain grass species.

So diversity is going to help that.

I've talked to, you know, definitely different cover crops can have some issues.

There can be prussic acid at frost with sorghum sudans.

Buckwheats can have a fagopyrum that can cause sun sensitivity.

But overall, it's going to be that diversity's gonna play a bigger role in that.

So if you can have more things out there that they're not focusing on one certain thing that's going to help.

And just knowing what the risks are for those species that you put into the mix, so you can avoid them during certain times.

- Okay.

Yeah, I remember years ago we used to top beets and turn the cattle in, and the cattle would graze the beets.

And you do as a few because they choke.

I know turnips are used a lot in cover crops.

Is there a danger of cattle ingesting those and choking?

- There is, yeah.

I've actually had a grower who had a heifer choke on a turnip.

And then he, to verify that, cut it out, and threw it back on the ground.

And then he thought twice and cut it in half, so someone else didn't come back and get it.

But in that situation, a lot of the things we've been changing into forage collards, which are, they have more of a tap root.

They don't have that bulb at the top.

And so you get one, multiple tap roots that go into the ground, so that can achieve some of that, what you're trying to achieve with a brassica anyway.

And then it has a lot of forage biomass on top.

Or some of the hybrid turnips they keep that tuber much deeper into the ground, and so it's not as easily to pull out.

And, you know, depending on when you're grazing in the season, those sizes are gonna change.

So I mean, turnips can get to the size of a softball, which then mitigates the problem, but it just depends on when you're grazing that.

So again, planning that and making those decisions before you plant it, and you're gonna turn in.

- Okay, I have a couple more questions that have come in about cover crops, we'll get to in a minute, but I have a Facebook question here from Ron in Missoula.

They have black gray bugs that are coming into the house by the hundreds.

They're being invaded.

I see them in the fall, too.

I found some in my firewood piles, what are they?

And will they damage the trees around the house?

- Well, we do have a couple of, if they're smaller, we do have a couple of seed bugs that are kind of black/gray color that are, they're called dirt colored seed bugs, that are coming in by the hundreds.

And also, they come in in the fall, too.

So it could be those.

The one thing that we don't know too much about them, so yeah, they're invasive, but they're not really anything.

They're not doing anything terrible.

But they're often associated with areas that are adjacent to weedy pastures, or on areas that have quite a bit of weeds.

They feed on weeds, they're not gonna damage trees.

They're just annoying, they come in.

And they like to sit in firewood, too.

So if your firewood pile's close to the house, they'll come in that way, as well.

So not damaging.

- All right.

Thank you.

From Miles City.

This person has been considering cover crops, but they're curious as to whether or not this would be a good time to start with them, because with fertilizer prices being high, do they require fertilizer like the cereal crops?

- So I think it kind of depends on what you're going with.

On some of the cool season species, you know, oats, peas, barley kind of as the base.

Sometimes we will recommend a little bit of fertility with those, just because you're planting them into cooler soils.

You don't have as much nitrogen moving.

But typically in most cover crop situations, we don't recommend to put fertility out there.

A lot of times we're trying to put legumes, we're trying to get those soils active and the soil biology to start working.

And so we see that when you put that fertility out there, you're not gonna make that soil as active.

The warm season species, for sure.

They one, have a much lower fertility requirement to begin with, and they're planted in much warmer temperatures.

So you're starting to see some of that nutrient cycling anyway.

So typically in most situations, unless you have a soil test to verify, we don't usually recommend adding - [Jack] Okay.

Thank you.

- Jack, and I'd like to just mention that MSU just put together three extension guides on nutrient management, and soil health effects of cover crops.

Anybody can find those on the extension publications store site.

- You mentioned the term soil health.

- Yeah.

- And I wanna know how cover crops increase soil health.

I'm curious, because I really don't know.

So have at it guys.

- Okay.

I'll go first and then Kate can follow.

So we're finding in research that's between eight and 18 years old, mainly we're growing cover crops in place of fallow.

That's kind of a good fit in Montana for them.

And what we're finding is organic matter increases, because the amount of residue that's being returned to the soil increases.

And when soil organic matter increases, generally, biological activity increases, physical parameters like infiltration rate, the amount of aggregates, which are small clumps of soil, they increase.

And often fertility increases.

So it's a long term process, but that's the direction that cover crops will help with.

Anything to add, Kate?

- So, I was just gonna say, when we're looking at soil health, we kind of look at there's some principles that they've kind of set some guidelines.

And cover crops fit several of the principles.

So they look at adding diversity to that system, so you can feed a different plate of microbes.

Even add some diversity from a weed standpoint, or disease standpoint into your cropping rotation, 'cause you're changing some of that timing, like you said, by getting some cover.

So not only does it provide the organic matter, but that cover is going to help capture more water in our limited water situation, so you're not losing as much to evaporation.

So that next crop is going to help grow a little bit more.

And then also you're feeding those bugs throughout a longer period of time.

So normally where there's nothing growing, there's been some studies that show that plants actually leak carbon out through their roots.

And so if you have something that's growing out there through photosynthesis, it's actually feeding those soil bugs, which is keeping that whole system cycling, building aggregate structure, like Clain said.

And so it kind of fits some of those principles, and then grazing can help cycle that back through.

So they can now, four of the five principles they can really hit on some of those things.

- Okay, thank you.

We've had this question a couple times this spring.

I'll throw it to Laurie since she's here this night.

Codling moth, it's a problem if you try to raise apples in the state.

- It is, and we're getting towards codling moth, we're getting close to the time where we will be thinking about treating.

So it depends on where you are in the state, but there are codling moth traps that you can put up that will attract the male moth.

So you can use to figure out when they're gonna start laying eggs.

Usually we start seeing activity when the apple trees are in bloom, and that's when we first start seeing the males.

And then we could use degree days, and some other calculations to know when to spray, but never, ever spray during bloom.

And if you need help with calculations, or when to spray, you can contact me, and we could figure out where you are, what a good time spray is.

- There are some models that have been developed for codling moth control.

- Yes.

- And they're pretty accurate if I'm not mistaken.

- Yeah.

What you're talking about are the degree day models.

And then we have several temperature stations that are set up throughout the state, so that we could figure out what temperature is... As long as you're accurately recording the temperature, have a good way to record the temperature.

We can figure out when the best time to spray in your area is.

- Thank you, Laurie.

Tim, two part question, number one, they want to get rid of cutleaf nightshade in the pasture.

And they also want to know what herbicide is best for Kochia.

- That's a difficult.

So for cutleaf nightshade in your pasture, I would say, you know, it's a nightshade.

It's gonna be 2,4-D should work fairly well.

Sonalan actually would work, it works very well, is another one that would work very well.

So I think, the nightshade's also a warm season crop.

So making sure you have some biomass left in the field when things get hotter and drier later in the year to be a good competitor with it.

'Cause the nightshade likes an open kind of rocky dry spot.

And so the more grass you have in there, the better competition you'll get out of it.

Best herbicide for Kochia?

That's a really good question.

It depends on probably the situation.

If you're trying to control something in bare ground, if you're trying to control it in pulses, or if you're trying to control it in crop in cereal.

More and more, we have glyphosate resistant Kochia in the state, I don't find... 50/50, it's a toss up whether I find a susceptible population to glyphosate- - Right - in the state.

So that's a tough question.

If they wanna call me, I can provide a little more information.

- And I think your phone number is- - 994-4783.

- There it is, okay.

All right.

From Libby, we talked about this, this came in last week.

This person has some what they consider poor soil.

They would like to rejuvenate it a little bit.

They are considering a cover crop.

Your opinion of that.

- Yeah.

We talked about this a little bit before.

I think it depends on what is in that, what is in that field right now?

So if you're in a perennial situation right now, I'd say you can do a lot of management with grazing.

A lot of times, a perennial's your best bet to build that soil.

tap roots that are going to grow through a longer period of the season.

If you're dealing in farm ground or something like that, then I think looking at species that are gonna put a lot more organic matter in.

So high carbon stuff, that's gonna give you a lot of residue is gonna be your best bet.

- Okay.

Thank you.

This is an interesting question.

I suspect a lot of people are facing this.

It's from Glendive.

And this producer has already fertilized, but they fertilized lightly.

And I just mentioned the drought.

Now they've had a lot of moisture in that area.

What are their options to go back in and re-fertilize?

Do you think it's necessary?

- Yeah, so it would depend a lot on soil tests.

I'd wanna see the soil tests, and the producer can contact me.

But yeah, that area's gotten a lot of snow, so they probably fertilized for a low yield goal, or yield potential, and now that went up.

Unfortunately, two nutrients phosphorus and potassium stick really strongly to the soil.

So if they go back in and fertilize with phosphorus and potassium, that's probably not gonna make it to the root zone this year.

Nitrogen will though.

And it's not too late at all to either broadcast apply nitrogen, or go in with like a cleaned out herbicide sprayer, and spray some liquid foliar nitrogen.

There's things called streamer bars that can stream between the rows.

So I would, yeah, refigure what the yield potential is and probably increase that nitrogen based on the precipitation you've received in the last three weeks.

- They've had good precipitation out there.

How about you?

Have you had good precipitation?

- Yeah, we've been pretty lucky this last.

We got 14 inches of snow a couple weeks ago, then about 9/10 last Saturday.

And then this last week we got 4/10.

- It's improving, and we're still in a drought situation around the state.

But overall I think we should- - Hopefully prime the pump.

(everyone laughs) - Good point, that works.

Let's see.

(chuckles) This, I'm familiar with this one.

From Gallatin Gateway, Laurie, this person has a new construction house and barn, and has an infestation of house flies.

What are they?

Are they normal house flies, and what can they do about them?

I think these reside in some of the wood that they probably used, am I correct?

- I don't know.

I'm thinking that might be cluster flies.

- [Jack] That's probably it.

- And they wouldn't be associated with the wood.

So I'd be happy to look at a sample, but yeah, I'm trying to think of what other flies would be associated with the wood.

But those are the most common flies that we have, that are infesting dwellings.

They actually are, they're parasites of earthworms, so they have a little bit of different biology than most flies they don't feed on organic matter.

So yeah, please, my number is 994- 5704, and I'd be happy to look at a sample, or follow up with you on identifying that fly.

- So I've seen it happen before that people have used recycled barn timbers in their house.

And those recycled barn timbers then emit, have flies in them for really long periods of time.

And the flies come out and for years afterwards, is that something that?

Or how do people manage or control that?

Or do people who use reclaimed timbers do some sort of management for that?

- I don't know.

I feel like I'm out of the loop.

(panelists laugh) I haven't heard about flies in wood.

I feel like I'm gonna get home and realize that I'm thinking I'm not remembering something.

- Yeah, I did not build a new house, but moved into a two-year-old house one time.

And for about two years we had a fly problem.

I was told that they survived in the wood, so I don't know what they are.

But whoever told me that was probably wrong.

- Oh, I don't know about that.

I need to find that storage in my brain somewhere.

(laughs) - This is a question that I find interesting.

They came in again from the Billings area.

This person moved to Billings from the Midwest.

And what they saw with cover crops in the Midwest is that they were used after corn was harvested, which we harvest corn earlier than we used to.

And then they'd plant a cover crop.

Are we using any cover crops in the state, following harvest at all?

- We are in some situations.

Definitely it seems to be more irrigated, so that we can have a little bit more control of that moisture.

And then in the areas of the state where we have a little bit longer of a growing season, I'd say most crops are used, most cover crops are used kind of in a full season situation.

Or the potato guys use it kind of previous to a crop sometimes, as like a natural fumigate for some pest species.

But most of it's probably full crop, not necessarily after crop, just 'cause we have a shorter growing season.

And then our moisture after crop is pretty questionable.

- Good stuff.

And we talked a little bit about some other crops that are moving into the state like winter canola, and they're seeded in the basically late summer.

And also winter peas, they're seeded late in the year.

How do we do with those in the state?

- They're kind of, Clain can probably talk about this some too, but they're starting to come on a little bit.

They're becoming more common.

I wouldn't say they're full mainstream yet, but those do plant like in August or maybe even earlier.

And you might have to do some mid-season management, or something like that, mowing or grazing in order to keep them from going to seed.

But they need a pretty established route in order to make it through the winter.

- And they're yeah, they have a much tougher time than winter wheat.

So the places that grow winter wheat have a chance to grow winter pea and winter canola.

But winter pea, winter lentil, winter canola are gonna have less a chance, unfortunately, of surviving the winter than winter wheat.

Which has been bred for a much longer time to be cold tolerant.

- And winter wheat needs to vernalize, so it needs that cold.

- Right.

- Where the canola and the peas, they just have to be hardy enough to withstand the cold.

- Okay.

Sounds good, thank you.

Tim, from Drummond.

We haven't had a call from Drummond in a long time.

What's the best thing, or best herbicide, to kill cheatgrass in a pasture?

I think there is a new cheatgrass herbicide out.

- Yeah, there's this new cheatgrass herbicide that's called, Indaziflam.

Well, the active ingredient is Indaziflam, the product name is Rejuvra.

It's a somewhat expensive herbicide, but it really, if you have a good stand of perennial grass in your pasture, and you use that, it'll not harm the perennial grass, and block the cheatgrass from germinating for a couple years.

Which will usually wear it down pretty well.

But if you want to go and rejuvenate your stand, you're gonna have to wait awhile if you apply that herbicide, first.

- Okay, thank you.

This caller chuckled about our discussion about soil testing.

But they would like to know, how do you soil test a garden?

- So soil testing a garden, the first thing I would probably do is call my county extension agent.

I would say the vast majority own what's called soil push probes, or augers.

And they can usually loan them to you.

They also, generally, have contacts with laboratories and can guide you on how to do the soil testing.

So talk to your county agent.

If you don't say, don't have a county agent, or you want to do it yourself, I have two documents, a Mont guide and what I call a soil scoop, on the steps to take.

How many samples to take, usually I'd probably recommend, five to 10 on a typical home garden, top six inches.

Mix that up, send it to a laboratory.

I have a list of laboratories.

And I can tell you what I would have analyzed in that soil, but first, try your county agent.

- Okay, sounds good.

This is an interesting question.

I don't think we have an answer, but I'll throw it out there.

This caller wants to know about research into what plants might be toxic to pocket gophers.

I haven't heard of any anybody?

Anybody ever heard of that?

- We get questions about that a lot when people calling in for cover crops.

And I can say nothing's been necessarily researched.

I don't have any sound information.

But I know that some of the species that have high glucosinolates.

So some of the things that they're still using for bioremediation in potato rotations, or whatever, may have a chance or have an effect.

There's no research out there.

So sorghum sudans, sorghums, some of your mustards, all have really high glucosinolate concentrations, and they might be something to try.

I wouldn't say that they're going to work.

(panelists laugh) - That's a better answer than anybody else.

I appreciate it.

From Chester, and I don't know what this particularly means.

It says what implements are used to terminate cover crops at the end of the season?

And I'm assuming that's if you plant them after harvest.

The regular cover crops, do you terminate those?

Spray them out?

How do you get rid of them after a fallow year?

- So some people do terminate, they're terminating for moisture.

But then some insurance is requiring some termination, depending on your specific cropping insurance.

People can spray them.

Some of the other guys do incorporate them, like especially a more on irrigated situations, or organic situations.

A lot of people just let them frost terminate, but there's some concern.

Certain people have concerns with certain species might go to seed, and might become a weed in the next rotation.

So back to planning and figuring that out.

But I'd say most common would be grazing, frost, and you know, maybe some incorporation, spraying.

- Okay.

On that note.

This person from Lewistown would like to know what the economics are.

Is it beneficial to graze cover crops?

Is there any data that would suggest that you can financially do that?

- I know that there's been some studies that MSU's done, but I have a lot of producer feedback.

For example, I had one guy this year who actually sent me all of his numbers.

He had not planted a cover crop before.

He put it in about 140 acres of cover crop that would've normally been fallow.

He was able to pasture 75 cows for 100 days.

So he ended up running all of numbers, and that was in January, he held it off and did it as a, so he was able to run all of the numbers.

It cost him about $121 a cow to graze that cover crop.

And at $200 a ton feed, it would've cost him $300 a cow.

And so he came out about $175 ahead per cow for that 100 days.

So that's just one example, but there's several out there.

- [Jack] That's pretty good data.

- We've used cover crops, like a triticale, Austrian winter pea mix, and a spring barley spring pea mix.

And when you have herbicide resistant wild oats, and you would like to manage those wild oats, you plant that spring cover crop, you go in and you hay it off or you graze it off.

And then you can terminate that cover crop, and what's left in there.

In June when the wild oats going to seed you kind of stop seed set and then you come back in and terminate it.

And there's certainly a value in being able to manage herbicide resistant wild oats that way too.

- Okay, Clain, does that add any nutrients, these cover crops, to the soil?

- Yeah, especially we find when there's a legume in the mix, we see large increases in nitrogen availability, especially if people are patient.

After one time, maybe not that big, but then after the second time, and third time, fourth time, we're seeing large increases in nitrogen up to maybe 50, to even 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre.

So that has a lot of value, but some patience is required.

- While I have you up, this call came in from Chester again.

Is there a fertilizer shortage for cereal producers this year?

- You know, I've just, I've heard little things.

I don't keep up to speed as much as I should, but that there is some availability issues.

The bigger issue seems to be cost.

So people can find the product, but the cost is, like I said, two to three times higher than it was a year ago.

- Are most of it urea-based nitrogen now, or?

- Almost all nitrogen in the state is urea.

- Is urea?

Okay.

- There's not much else.

- From Noxon and here again, it might be the first call from Noxon.

The caller has large black ants, perhaps carpenter ants, how to identify them and how to get rid of them.

- Yeah.

So if it's a large black ant, it could be either field ant or a carpenter ant.

So it would be good to know what it is.

You'd probably see sawdust in your house, if you did have a carpenter ant.

And so it'd be really good to know if you have a lot of ants, usually if it's a field ant or mound aunt, like we were talking about before, you usually just see one or two.

But if it's carpenter ants you'll probably see several.

But it would be good to figure out what ant it is, So we could get you there, figure out what to do.

If it's a field ant, don't worry about it.

Some just kind of pop in, in and out.

But if you're starting to see sawdust, and any areas of damage inside the house, then yeah.

But please contact me.

My easiest email is insects@montana.edu, and we could try to figure out what type of ant you have.

- Okay, thank you.

From Gold Creek.

And here again, we're getting some calls from places we normally don't get calls from.

Could you please repeat the name of the herbicide for cheatgrass?

- It's called Rejuvra is the name of that new herbicide for cheatgrass, and - Okay.

Thank you.

I'm not sure about this one from Billings.

What's the economic value of fumic acid as a fertilizer supplement?

Clain?

- Probably humic.

I'm guessing that's humic acid.

- Okay.

- Yeah, so humic acid is something that's mined.

It was organic matter.

It was basically from like peat bogs maybe that burned.

People extract that, and it's what would be considered amendment.

I've only done one study on humic acid.

And when it was applied at label rates, which are pretty low, like one to two pounds per acre, I saw no increase in phosphorous availability, or metal availability.

But we know humic acid that occurs naturally in the soil in high amounts is very valuable for nutrient availability.

I think it's just the amounts that we can afford to put on often aren't enough to have value.

- [Jack] Okay.

Thank you.

- The person can contact me for that article if they want.

- [Jack] And your phone number again is?

- 994-6076.

- Okay, thank you.

This person is interested in, he says, from Central Montana, is interested in cover crops.

But they're curious, how many different types of plants or seeds are normally utilized in a cover crop?

- It's variable.

So it's going to be back to dependent on your goals of what you're trying to achieve.

You know, cool season ones tend to be a little bit more limited.

We don't have as much diversity, especially if we're looking at fall planting, some of the cool season species are gonna be a little bit different.

So I'd say it's gonna vary usually anywhere from three to 17, 20.

So pretty wide variability.

I'd say on average when I'm making a mix, or any of us are making a mix, I'd say they're on average, probably seven to 12.

It's probably closer to what they are, but it really varies a lot.

- What's the most used cover crop mix?

Yeah, name the four or five things that would go into a cover crop.

- In the warm season species, we usually see sorghum sudans, millets.

We see some sort of brassica.

A lot of times those are forage collards lately, just because they have a long period of growth.

It takes zero degrees to freeze them out, so they can offer a lot of grazing late season.

And then I'd say some of the legumes.

A lot of time, we've been working a lot lately with like fava beans.

They're a cool season legume, they can handle some of the temperature through the middle of the summer, and they fix a lot of nitrogen.

And then they're not gonna necessarily interfere as much with a pea/lentil rotation.

Cool season mixes, I'd say they're a lot of oats, peas, barley, and a brassica in with those.

- You mentioned the sudan grass.

And if you're using that for pastures, there's quite a bit of danger of, I think of cyanic acid poisoning cattle.

- Yep.

- How do you avoid that?

- So, yep, sorghum sudans.

It's kind of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears I like to kind of joke about.

So sorghum is Papa Bear, it's gonna have the highest risk, sorghum sudans are gonna be that Mama Bear, and then sudan grass alone is kind of Baby Bear.

The youngest leaves accumulate the highest concentration of prussic acid, which is cyanide.

And anytime that plant is, you know, basically, above two feet tall is the kind of the rule of thumb, you have enough diversity in that plant to kind of mitigate some of the risk.

Also at frost, so whenever those cells rupture, it creates that cyanide in the plant, and it takes about a week for that to volatilize off.

So you're looking at grazing between two feet and before frost and then post frost after that plant is completely dead.

- Okay, good answer.

Thank you.

I throw the nasty ones at you.

(panelists laugh) From Fishtail, this person would like to know how to control turkeys coming into the yard and porch other than shooting them.

(everyone laughs) - Whew.

I have no idea.

I would go with the latter, that they weren't interested.

I am not sure how to keep turkeys out of your yard, actually, other than fencing.

- Call Jared Beaver, and he's a wildlife extension specialist.

he probably as some good ideas.

- And we may have to have Jerad on here, because we have a lot of animal questions like that.

- Or give them to Tim, anyways.

(everyone laughs) - I was gonna say the three inch magnum.

- By the way, wild turkeys really do eat well.

There's no doubt about that.

Kate, do you foresee a big growth in cover crops throughout the state of Montana?

Or is it just going to be in the areas of the state that have quote, poorer soils?

We definitely see it's easier to adopt them in the areas of the state that have poorer soil.

So when you're looking at, you know, we were talking about this earlier, continuous cropping, your poorer soils don't have as much water holding capacity.

It's better to crop each year, because you're gonna capture as much water as you're gonna grow.

Fallow only stores about 25% of the water that it catches in that period, so that means you're losing 75%.

So in poor soils, you can't store much anyway, so you're better to grow a crop year after year.

I think, personally, I think cover crops are gonna start to grow I think, as we start to see more issues with saw fly, and soil acidification, and other things.

Adding something that's in that rotation that's diverse is going to definitely help.

In a lot of areas of the state we can't grow a warm season crop to harvest.

And so it provides that opportunity to put a warm season species into rotation that might not be harvested traditionally through a combine, but maybe through an animal.

Or even just used as a green manure.

- You know, you've seen the growth.

You said you provide seed for roughLy 85,000 acres.

Three years ago, what was it then?

- Probably like 50,000 acres.

- [Jack] So it is growing.

- It is definitely growing.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Tim, this caller has a perennial bed, and I assume flowers, they don't say for sure, that have been invaded by grass.

They would like it to get rid of the grass without harming the perennials.

Any suggestions there?

- You could use a grassy herbicide in your perennial bed, I think, probably not when anything's flowering.

And I'm not the expert of managing weeds in perennial flower beds, but grassy herbicides, are sort of group one herbicides.

It would be what we would spray wild oat with in peas, or lentils, or something like that.

I'm actually not sure if there's a homeowner product that's available- - Post or something like that?

- Yeah, Post is a common grassy herbicide.

Tomorrow I'm gonna go spray cheatgrass out of some wheat that I've already have sewn in tomorrow with a grassy herbicide.

- Okay, sounds good.

- Yeah.

- You can try it and also, check with your nursery man.

They probably have something.

- [Tim] Yeah, they probably know.

- Okay, comment here.

Jared Beaver's phone number, he'll love this, 406-994-3709.

And he will answer all these questions about turkeys and other pests that you have like that.

And his email is jared-beaver@montana.edu.

Apologize for not answering that question, he will do it.

And don't tell him where you got the information.

(panelists laugh) Okay.

I got a question coming in, but before we do that I have another one for Kate.

Do you do things other than selling seed for cover crop?

What else does your company do?

- So we do site visits so that we can look and kind of make some recommendations.

So we make recommendations from a perennial standpoint of from grazing, or looking at the soil.

We do agronomy consulting, too.

So we do scouting, soil sampling, and then we also sell perennial seed, also.

We offer, try to do a lot of the educational events.

So we do tour and get asked to speak at some things, but then we also try to do field days, and other workshops throughout the year to provide education for all of the things that we do.

- [Jack] Sounds like you're busy.

- We are busy, yeah.

(chuckles) - It's fun, too.

Laurie, this person lives out in Belgrade area, and they have a serious mosquito problem every year.

Any suggestions how they can reduce the mosquitoes around their dwellings?

- That's a good question.

I don't know if we have a local mosquito district.

But if you get in touch with me at insects@montana.edu, I'll try to get you in touch with the best person there.

It would be I think someone from the weed and mosquito district.

I'm not sure if there's one in Gallantin, or not.

But they would be the best person to help you with that.

- All right.

For Clain, this is a good question.

We're in a drought statewide, and it's not as severe as it was, but we still are very dry.

They wanna know any tips that you might have to reduce water usage in crops.

- Yeah.

That's a good question.

Crops are kind of pre-programmed, they're gonna take about the same amount of water.

There are some things that you can do, like Kate has mentioned things like no-till leaves more residue on the surface.

So therefore, there's less evaporation.

Residue management is super helpful.

Growing legumes, so legumes are very shallow rooted, two and a half to maybe three feet.

So they won't suck as much water out of the soil, as say a deep-rooted alfalfa plant, or maybe winter wheat plant.

And so those can really help use, store more water.

So those are a couple ideas that I have, but unfortunately, plants are really regulated by this process called photosynthesis.

They need a certain amount of water to grow.

- Kate, any suggestions on that?

- I think build, you know, building up that residue cover like Clain said.

And then as you do transition to no-till, and build some of that residue, you can build more aggregates that are eventually gonna hold more water, but it's not gonna happen this year alone.

It's gonna take some time to improve that soil.

- Okay.

I said, we'd only answer this one time, but I want say it, box elder bugs.

We answered it one other time, but we've had three questions about it.

What do you do for box elder bugs?

- Well, if they're really bad, I mean, you can usually use the ShopVac, which I've talked about before.

But if they're really bad, you can use any sort of insecticidal soap or something on the outside of the house to cut them down, yeah.

- And a big vacuum sweeper.

- And a big vacuum sweeper.

Yeah.

- That works pretty good.

You know, last week Diemna Heiken was down here, and she brought us all T-shirts.

And I really want to promote this, long live the family farm, Triangle Ag last week.

It's kind of neat.

We need more people involved with agriculture.

We're getting down to the end, folks.

Kate, thank you so much for coming down.

Clain, everybody else, it's good to have you here.

Next week, we're gonna look at county extension agents, Shelley Mills from Valley County will be here.

I've known Shelley for a long time.

It'll be an interesting program.

So please join us again next week.

Have a good week, thanks for watching, and stay safe.

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