- [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 Wheaton Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardens Club.

(upbeat country music) - It's a quiet one.

Good evening.

Welcome to another additional "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus, we call Montana State University, and coming to you over the Montana Public Television System I'm Jack Riesselman, a retired professor of Plant Pathology.

I am happy to be your host this evening.

For those who of you who have watched the program in the past, you know how it works.

It's up to you to provide the questions.

It's up to our esteemed panel to provide the answers.

And we generally do pretty good at that.

Sometimes we may not do as well, but we really have a great panel tonight that we'll have some fun with.

Before we get started on tonight's program, let me introduce the esteemed panel.

On my far left, Clain Jones.

Clain is I like to call extension soil but he knows a lot about other areas of soils too.

So if you have any questions regarding soils, a lot of people refer to it as dirt.

You can't do that in front of a soil scientist.

So questions come in for him, he knows the answer.

Our special guest tonight, I've had Kent here before.

Kent Wasson is from Whitewater or Loring.

And if you're wondering where that is, don't run to your maps, it's just a little north of Malta and a little south of the Canadian border.

He came down to join us.

Kent is also on the Western SARE Board.

He'll talk about some of that and that sustainable Ag.

Happy to have Kent here this evening.

Tim Seipel.

He likes to be called weedicologist.

I call him a weed scientist.

If you have questions about weeds and everybody that lives in Montana knows what weeds are.

He'll answer those questions tonight.

Sitting right next to me is Uta McKelvy.

Uta is our plant pathologist, extension plant pathologist.

Uta knows an awful lot about plant diseases.

So if you have any disease issues in any of your plants tonight, it's an excellent opportunity to get those questions answered.

And answering the phone this evening, Deanna Midland and Cheryl Bennett.

And we thank you guys for being here.

And let that phone start ringing.

That number will be on the screen here in a moment, and you can get those questions in.

Kent, glad to have you back.

Tell us what you do up there in the middle of nowhere.

- Well, we farm in a ranch with my...

I farm and ranch with my son and his family.

We have numerous type of crops, primarily spring wheat a lot of hay barley 'cause we have cattle also, we rotate with some yellow peas, lentils, those type of things.

We do use an oil seed once in a while flax if we need to or if the year's right.

Those type of things.

So it's a family operation that's been built over, my dad came there in '48 and we've split and expanded numerous times.

So, do that.

I'm also on Western SARE Research Board.

I'm on the executive committee.

I've been through the chair two years, going through the chair, incoming chair, I'm now on the outgoing two years a chair.

We've traveled all over the world for sustainable agriculture.

- And that's one of the reasons I wanted you to be here.

And Kent is a firm believer in sustainability, soil health, and he is done a lot on his own operation.

Tell us a little bit about what you've done over the years to improve your operation or your sustainability.

- Well, back in the 80s it was tough years and we started soil sampling.

Our organic matter was a major 0.6, 0.8, 0.9.

We went into no-till farming, chem follow, rotations and stuff.

We're anywhere from 1.8 to 2.1 most of the time now.

So we've gained that.

We still have a fertility problem if we're gonna grow.

We've increased the yields now compared to what we did in the '70s and the '80s.

But we also have done a lot of cover crops.

We have cattle, we have a lot of Black Angus cattle.

I really believe in the cover crops helping the ground, helping my weed problems, helping a lot of things, and then we come in with cattle, and on good years that we have good cover crops, we really enhance those cattle.

- I can believe that.

Clain, I'm gonna jump on you a minute.

We talk about our organic matter.

Why is organic matter so important in agriculture?

- Yeah, it's got a lot of different functions.

So, it holds water, it provides nutrients to the crop.

It helps with what's called the structure.

So without soil organic matter, you have this really loose poor structure with it.

You have these nice little aggregates that are easy for roots to get through, also for air and water and nutrients to get through.

I could spend an hour talking about all the benefits of soil organic matter.

- Yep.

I've been around, probably as long as Camp Pretty closed, but when I first moved up here, we used to use recreational tillage; as plowing, discing, no residue on the soil surface.

Back then, what was the average organic matter content in the state, just to guess?

- I would guess maybe one and a half percent or so.

A little higher than Kent's, but right in that low range.

Now it's probably closer to low twos to two and a half.

- So we're improving.

- With the advent of no-till and more continuous cropping, cropping every year, we're definitely improving, yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

We'll come back to Kent.

I've got a couple questions that have come in via Facebook and also one on email.

Before we do that, I'm gonna ask Tim a question here.

And this one I really found interesting.

If I stop using herbicide, and this came from Columbus, will resistance to that herbicide decline?

And I'm thinking about something like kochia and it's resistance to glyphosate or Roundup.

- Yeah, that's an interesting question.

So when you get down into the Yellowstone Valley of Montana, people have used a lot of glyphosate, Roundup Ready Corn, Roundup Ready alfalfa and Roundup Ready Sugar Beets.

So really a lot of the kochia in that area, the whole population is resistant.

We don't really know about that area, but that kochia is gonna be the way it is.

But in other areas, you do see over a 30, 40 year period.

For example, the Fairfield Bench, they used a herbicide called Treflan a lot for a while, and the roadside populations were still susceptible, but the in-crop populations were resistant.

And once they stopped using it, actually moved more no-till, the gene flow from the wild out on the roadside went back into the field.

And now 30, 40 years later, we see better susceptibility.

So can resistance go away?

Yes, but it's really a 30, 40 year, 50 year time slot that we'd be thinking about.

- So, with no-till and glyphosate, you have a hard time being out of glyphosate for 30 years.

- Yep, you would have a really hard time.

So that's probably, in that case, we're probably not gonna go back up the slippery slope.

- Okay, I found that fascinating because I've not heard that question before and it is an interesting concept.

Juda from Great Falls, "I'm not sure about this for myself.

Their garlic cloves have little brown spots on them, mostly on the top of the clove and sometimes on the side.

Any idea what it is and can you treat it?"

I have no idea.

- Yeah, that's the tricky one.

Well, I'm gonna go with the answer of, I probably have to have a closer look at that garlic clove at the diagnostic lab to just start working on it and figure it out.

Off the top of my head, I can't recall anything.

I feel like what I see a lot on garlic that is coming into our lab is a basal rot or just some form of fusarium rot, which is not to say that it is that.

A lot of diseases can look very similar.

So it's just a tricky one.

- What I do is I cut that little bit up and still use the rest of the garlic.

I mean, it's not gonna be that bad.

Right.

- Kent, from Lewistown, this person is somewhat familiar with sustainability in the western syrup.

He's heard the term three legs of sustainability.

Can you expand on that a little bit?

- Yeah, the three-legged stool is what we call of sustainable agriculture, is environmental, which is mother earth itself.

The other one is economical.

There has to be a dollar number of feasibility to keep everything sustainable.

And the other thing is what we call social or community.

And that's when you get into rural sociology, and actually just rural communities of how the economics of the sustainable...

Being more sustainable, more profitable, will keep these small rural infrastructures alive.

- [Jack] Speaking of rural infrastructure, I mean, you live what, 30 miles, 25 miles from Malta?

- 30.

- 30.

For infrastructure in your area, can you get most everything you need from Malta or adjacent communities or do you have to go out farther to get some of the services you require?

- Oh, you have to go out to get farther services.

There's no farm equipment dealers in Malta, so you have to go Glasgow or Havre.

So you're 100 to 130 miles.

A lot of overnight FedEx or UPS type of shipments to get parts in directly through them.

They may not have 'em, but they'll ship 'em, which doubles and triples and quad ripples your cost of your repairs, those type of things.

Absolutely, no, we're diminishing as the age population on agriculture and land itself.

One part of sustainability is we have to acknowledge that we are losing certain amount of acres every year in the United States to urban sprawl that we need to keep in agriculture.

And sustainability, it's important to start in kids and the grandkids, and it doesn't have it has to be that you have to have a goal in life to maintain that rural agriculture to feed the world.

We're now in a situation we never dreamt we would be in, that Ukraine cannot come up with amount of food.

So, long story short, but yeah, we need to be sustainable.

We need to get after it faster.

- And you need to be a mechanic if you're in a place like where you live too, right?

(panelists laughing) - Somewhat.

Somewhat, yes.

But technology is so important anymore that you have to... That shuts down, the computers shut down and those big combines and tractors, you gotta call 'em.

You're just done until they can fix it.

- Yeah, I've seen that happen quite commonly.

I've seen parts for silage harvester flown down from Lethbridge and got here three hours after the machine broke down, and that's here in the Young Valley.

So infrastructure is, I agree, a big part of sustainability.

Clain, from Butte.

This person would like to know when is a good time to soil sample their garden.

- Yeah, so I would say pretty much any time now until freeze up or a big snow.

And then if you miss this window, which looks great this year so far, then late winter or early spring when the snow comes off.

The main goal of soil sampling is to know what the availability of nutrients is going to be next growing season.

So the later you go, the better chance it will represent that.

The reason I like sampling in late fall is to gives you time to plan, think about what fertilized you're gonna buy, talk to your extension agent, maybe talk to me.

If you wait till may to soil sample and you're eager to get your carrots in the ground, it's a little too late.

- I had a neighbor of mine ask me, "Why do always fertilize in the spring rather than in the fall?"

Is there a reason for that?

- I think the main reason I recommend spring fertilization is there's a decent chance of losses, nutrient losses over winter.

Less of a chance, say in Bridger, Montana, maybe Havre where it rains 12 inches than in Bozeman where it rains 19 inches.

So, I just like fertilizing closer to the time that the crop or the grass needs it.

- Okay, thank you.

Throw this one out and then I have a question for Uta but from Darby.

And I think this is probably the first question we've had from Darby, so thank you for watching.

"Does cold weather affect the potency of Roundup or glyphosate?

- Oh, absolutely, yes.

So we're coming up into a phase of time where people are gonna be spraying Roundup or glyphosate to kill emerging cheatgrass.

After those rains, we had a lot of cheatgrass emergence, I thought, this week.

And absolutely.

So you wanna spray Roundup generally between about 10 and three now that the days are getting shorter, it should be 50, 55 degrees or above, and the plant should be actively growing.

So the sun should be shining and that cheatgrass should be actively growing or any of the winter annual weeds or perennial weeds, thistles that we're trying to spray.

The more active the plant, the better it works.

Yep, if at night it's too cold, it the evenings will be much too cold.

- And probably the same holds true for if you're spraying your yard with 2,4-D and so forth.

- Yeah, I think you want it to be actively grown.

Yeah, and for dandelions this time of year, the same.

If people are putting down applications in alfalfa, should be during the heat of the day.

- Okay, thank you.

Uta, from the Bozeman area.

They think they had dodder.

And you might wanna explain what dodder is in alfalfa or maybe even in other crops.

Does it show up in anything other than alfalfa here?

- I think so.

Well, let's start with the first question.

Dodder is what we call a parasitic plant.

So it essentially latches onto a host plant and then takes the nutrient from that plant, thereby depleting the host plant.

And so I've heard dodder mostly in Montana in the context of alfalfa.

I think it has actually a pretty broad host range, although it doesn't infect or infest grasses.

So I would think most of the crops in Montana are grasses, wheat and barley, et cetera.

And so it's not a big problem there.

So dodder is a tricky one.

Let's see.

So, it attacks your crop because in the context of alfalfa, takes away the nutrients from that plant.

So it decreases the life of the stand.

And I think it also affects, if you use that alfalfa for hay, it would delay the drying down of the alfalfa hay.

So, it's just not a good plan to have.

What makes dodder really tricky is that, the seed of which it produces a lot, lives extremely long in the soil.

So 20 plus years is what I read.

So, I think really what you wanna do to control dodder is essentially deplete the seed bank, but that takes a terribly long time.

So if you have dodder in your field, you gotta try and be rigorous and keeping it from producing seed.

And I think oftentimes, dodder grows in patches.

And so you wanna...

So I heard different techniques, but they talk a lot about flaming, essentially burning that patch where dodder is and burning the dodder with it.

Or if it's alfalfa, cut it really low.

Because what's interesting about this plant is it grows from the soil, but once it has established on the crop, it actually loses its contact to the soil.

So if you cut the alfalfa very close to the ground and then destroy the residue, it's a way to get rid of the dodder.

And I'm sure there are chemical ways of treating that, but we'll leave that to you, Tim.

- Yeah, I think most people use the herbicide Raptor Imazamox in alfalfa.

I've only ever seen dodder in northeastern Montana and as an alfalfa weed.

- Okay.

Kent, do you grow alfalfa up in your area, dryland alfalfa at all?

- No, we hardly don't.

It just doesn't seem to be...

When we can grow two ton on good years, two ton barley hay, the alfalfa would be three quarters of a ton, and the stand doesn't last very long.

So by the time you get established and everything, you maybe get a year or two out of it, and then it diminishes and it's- - [Jack] It's not worth trying.

- It's not worth.

- Okay.

- I wanna throw in two more things because dodder is so hard to manage.

The key is, again, preventing it from establishing.

So here is another argument for why we should use certified seed that is free of dodder seed.

And then also grazing alfalfa, apparently the dodder seed can pass through the digestive tract of your livestock.

So if you have the livestock feed on the alfalfa that is infested with dodder and then have it walk over to the next pasture, there is a chance that's the way you spread that plant.

So, you gotta be really careful.

- Cover crops.

I wanna get both Kent and Clain to talk a little bit about cover crops.

We hear a lot of different stories about cover crops, and they've really become very fashionable, I think, would be the term in agriculture.

In the Midwest, we're using an awful lot of cover crops.

Kent, you're using cover crops and successfully because you replace alfalfa somewhat with cover crops.

Tell us what you do.

- Right.

Well, we seed them in the spring, and as you learn, you know your soil and you know your temperature.

We seed them about the 15th of May.

And when we have good rainfall and everything, we get a phenomenal amount of growth.

and it depends on what your goals are.

Our goal is, we're not gonna go much over the two and a half organic matter.

So we've already done that.

But it will suppress a lot of weeds.

It will cover the ground.

Perry Miller and I discuss this at extensively whether or not it uses more water or less water, whether you lose more in chem fallow.

But I believe on the good years when we have it, and replenish some of that rainfall, it's a great system.

And then, of course, we use cattle to desiccate 'em, and use them up.

And then amount, when we have great years in cover crops, we can turn 'em out in 6,000 acres of fields that have been cut, and 400 acres of cover crops, and they'll stay there for a month and a half.

And they absolutely gain phenomenal, better than you could do, of course that's a great great time of year, September till November, them calves.

We've had it high as, I can't document it, but right close to four pounds a day gain on those calves.

When we don't get rain, we don't get very good cover crops.

It's just the way it is.

But what it does to the ground, and we use it in certain areas closer to water, things like that, some things for the cattle, but a lot for the soil fertility.

- [Uta] What kind of cover crops do you use?

- We generate a lot of different things.

Some for the cattle.

We'll use of course turnips and what do you call it?

Anyway, we put some oil seeds, some chickpeas, some cowpeas with it.

I'll put a flax type thing with it.

We'll put some bras with it, and maybe even some grazable corn, things like that just to cover the whole ground to where those weeds cannot compete with it.

It's 17 species down to a six or seven or eight species, depending on what our goal is.

Sometimes if it's not so great a soil and we're trying to rebuild that fertility and things, we'll go higher into the chickpeas, cowpeas, yellow peas, those type of things and inoculate 'em to get higher a nitrogen.

- Kent, you have the cow, calf, and grain operation.

But if you're just in the grain operation, and you can jump on this, Clain can jump on it, can you make cover crops work just in a grain operation where you're not feeding?

- I think so.

- Okay.

Clain, what do you think?

- Works by Perry Miller and Jinxy Chan have shown, economics are very challenging if you just grow grains.

And the reason is that those cover crops use some water.

We see yield differences compared to fallow between no difference to up to 10 bushel per acre loss.

And so, it's really hard to pencil it out without the cover crop being used as a forage.

So my gut feel is that it can really work well in a mixed livestock-crop situation.

It's gonna be a much bigger challenge and maybe take more years to pay for itself without livestock.

- Let's step it out and look at maybe you got irrigation.

Would irrigation work in a cover crop situation pretty well?

- I think so because the main reason that cover crops don't pay in that livestock situation is the potential yield loss the subsequent year.

You shouldn't have a yield loss because that's mainly due to lack of water in a dry land situation if you have irrigation.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And you could crimp those.

Part of that could be from the usage of that water later in the fall because they're still there.

I'm using 'em in September and October, and they could go on through.

If you wanted to crimp them or kill them earlier in the year, they may have done their thing.

You may regain that fall water possibly without the cattle.

My theory, that's just my personal opinion.

- Jack, and I did wanna mention that my crew put together three different cover crop guides this last spring.

We've been working on these about five years as we continue to do research.

We were like, "Let's hold off, get some of our research in here."

But they cover soil health, soil organic matter, and then also the subsequent grain yield and soil water differences.

So you can get these online through the extension store.

You can get hard copies also through the extension store.

- Okay, good.

Quick question here, and then I've got a couple that have come in through Facebook and email.

But first from Helena, and I'm not sure who can answer this, but do you know if the experiment station is considering doing work with perennial crops like prenza in Montana?

I'm not sure what perza is, you might.

- Oh, they mean Kernza.

- Okay.

- So Kernza is a perennial, it's intermediate wheat grass that people, especially the University of Minnesota has been developing as a grain crop.

There are some Kernza trials that have gone around on a few of the Ag experiment stations.

I can't think of the results right off, but I'm sure that work will continue.

It's an interesting crop.

It would be a major game changer.

It would be basically a perennial grain crop.

So a perennial wheat crop, which could be really interesting.

The genetics aren't quite there yet for really bringing it into Montana or putting the economic leg on that stool.

But it's out there.

- And maybe down the line, it might fit.

- Yeah, down the line, I think it may be an interesting crop.

- Okay, thank you.

From Toole County.

With the topic of sustainable ranching farming, are there new approaches to dealing with alkali issues?

You don't have alkali issues where you're at.

- I don't.

- But Clain some areas where there are alkali, how does that look?

- Right.

Yep, so alkali can mean two different things.

As a soil scientist, alkali means high pH.

It's generally is caused by high sodium, which is generally caused by having groundwater not that far below the soil surface.

And the sodium basically gets pulled up as the crop transpires water, pulls up water.

Alkali can also mean to some people, just saltiness.

And we have a lot of saline seep in Montana.

The Montana Salinity Control Association is really useful and helpful at helping control salinity and saline seeps.

They'll do things like figure out which way the groundwater is moving.

'Cause it turns out that if you have fallow in the area that the water comes from, the groundwater table comes up and with it the salts come up.

And so what they'll do is go in and plant like an alfalfa, grass mix, pull that water up, and make that groundwater drop.

So there's different things that can be done with saline seep or alkaline soils.

Gypsum is sometimes used to help with alkalinity.

Best thing to do is probably contact your extension agent.

They might end up contacting me and I can point them to the Salinity Control Association.

- [Jack] Kent, you wanna say something on that?

- Nope.

- We don't have near the saline seeps that we had 30 years ago.

Why is that?

- Because scientists figured out the cause really, was crop fallow.

And by getting rid of fallow in these saline seep areas, the amount of saline seep went away quite a bit.

I still see it when I drive around the state, but going more towards continuous cropping like up on Highwood Bench, that really decreased the amount of saline seep up there.

- Okay, thank you.

Uta, from Manhattan.

This person says her spruce trees are shedding a lot of needles.

What is it and do they need to spray with something this fall or next spring?

- Well, I guess to really know why the needles are shedding, you need to know for example, where on the tree they're shedding.

There are several reasons.

I've heard a couple of times now.

We think of the seas...

Sorry, of evergreens as trees that never lose their leafs or needles, but in fact even evergreens lose their needles.

They age eventually and drop off.

And so, if you see the needles falling rather on the inner part of the branches, like closer to the trunk of the stem, around this time of year, this could be what we call seasonal needle drop.

So it's a natural thing that happens and it's nothing to worry about.

So they would color right now yellow, brown and then over to winter, drop.

So there's nothing that needs to be done in terms of chemical applications.

If those was season needle drop, the only thing I would caution here is to make sure to water your evergreens until we have frost.

Because often our evergreens become stressed over the winter when they're entering the winter in a drought situation, and then they get these winter injuries 'cause they still transpire water over winter.

- [Jack] I agreed entirely.

- Uta, could somebody send in a photo to the Scutter lab?

- Yes.

- Or how would they go about doing that process?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So I'm sure.

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure everybody knows the Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

If not, they can reach out to me and I can direct them.

So we like to see pictures of the whole tree.

That gives us an idea of if this looks like seasonal needle drop or not.

And then we can go from there.

We would reach out to you and discuss if we need to see a sample or if you should bring a sample to your local extension agent.

I didn't bring a sample today or a book, but we do have this really neat scouting guide that is available electronically through the extension store or you can also get a hard copy in extension store.

It introduces a lot of the trees that grow in Montana and also common issues and diseases.

So it has a lot of pictures, so that might be another good start to compare what's going on in your yard and what's shown in the book and what this might be.

- Okay, thank you.

Question from Cut Bank.

I have to interpret this one.

They said, we had Marsha getting on last week, talking about sustainability, and thinking about moving your operation on to future generations.

They would like to know and ask Kent, because he's been in sustainability.

Do you think the majority of the large farms and ranches in the state of Montana have a succession plan?

- No.

I think in their minds they do.

How they carry 'em out is a little tougher.

Succession is, there's never a right way and a wrong way, and people believe that there is.

And so that you have to try to put things in order and you have to have a goal of turning things over, but have enough money to, whether it's value added, or diversify, to make sure there's enough money for those young people to stay there on the farm.

And so, it's a plan sitting there?

No.

In their minds?

Absolutely, yes.

Every one of them do, but some of 'em are upon death.

Some of 'em are upon... My son, he pretty much runs our ranch.

And he's very good at it.

But you have to step away at times to do that, to let that be gone.

But is it needed?

Everybody needs that plan.

The big thing they have to understand there's not right or wrong.

It's just that you have to have a goal.

At certain time, do you get this or you do this?

And there's IRS, there's the economical stool too that it has to be feasible and it takes a lot of money to keep them kids there anymore.

- Yeah.

Marsha got into this extensively and she stressed that people really do need to have a financial plan, especially in the larger operations in this state to avoid IRS taxes big time.

- Absolutely.

- That's a good question.

Thank you, from Cut Bank.

From Scobey.

Can long trees be damaged by soil application of fertilizer containing broadleaf herbicides.

- Yes.

(panelists laughing) yeah.

The answer is, yes, on that one.

Sometimes you have to be careful when you get around your trees, how you spray them, what suckers you get, that kind of stuff.

If the trees making suckers and coming around and you're putting relatively high rates of 2,4-D broadleaf herbicide, you can certainly injure your trees, especially getting those suckers and they'll take it up into the tree and it'll twist them up.

Yep, fairly common glyphosate as well, it happens.

We have on the MSU extension store website, there's a good publication.

Noelle Orloff, Jane Mangold and I wrote, "Diagnosing Non-target Herbicide Injury."

We have some pictures from lawns in there of people doing just that.

- I used to, when I was gainfully employed, which has been a long time ago.

A lot of the lawn fertilizers contained Banvel.

And that one was specifically a little harder on trees, let's say 2,4-D.

I think there's still some commercial fertilizers that have Banvel with it or dicamba is the other name for it.

- Yep, they probably do.

And then they have some other stuff in there.

And also if you're using Asteraceae or if you're spraying bare ground on your driveway, things like that.

Or if you're using Picloram or Tordon to spray leafy spurge in and around your areas, you can definitely ding your trees pretty bad if you're not careful.

- Okay.

From Fort Benton, which I say every time we get a question from Fort Benton.

That's one of my favorite towns in the state of Montana.

- Mine too.

- This person would like to know the current status of the acidification that's occurring in crop land in the state.

Clain.

- Yeah, so in about 2015, a few MSU researchers along with farmers discovered that they had soil acidity, meaning low pH, low enough that it caused crop yield issue, and sometimes no crop.

It seemed like it was centered in Chouteau County, but as we started getting the word out, we now have identified 24 counties with pHs below 5.5, and that's usually where we start seeing growth issues.

We also see herbicide persistence issues.

We see poor nitrogen fixation on legumes and some nutrient availability issues.

Because we saw this with such a big problem, we at MSU actually hired a full-time professor, Manby Rocker, about a year ago to focus on this problem.

And she's been doing a great job looking at some of our predecessor Rick Engel's lime strip trials, looking at different prevention strategies, working with some of the breeders on variety trials, what varieties do better under low pH issues.

So we continue to see a little bit more of it.

It's a slow process.

The pH doesn't change very much per year, but once you have it, it can be a major problem.

So the farmers I've worked with are like, "You do not want this problem."

Lime spreaders are extremely expensive.

Lime is one way to mitigate this issue.

So preventing by using your nitrogen more efficiently, growing more legumes, growing cover crops, there are ways to prevent it from happening.

And that's what we recommend.

We have a number of documents out, we've given a lot of presentations, and I'm happy to field any questions that people have on soil acidity or Manby can as well.

- It's a fascinating topic.

I would never believe that could have happened as rapidly.

- Right, yeah.

- Kent, have you had any pH changes in your operation up there?

- No, we really haven't.

As we were talking earlier, we're about a six and a half, six seven, and it's just hung there for 40 years, and it really hasn't changed at all that I've seen.

I don't look at the soil samples as much anymore.

(panelists laughing) - One thing I'd like to add though, Jack, is that we see... What crop advisors generally do is they composite soil from a whole field.

And maybe two of those samples have low pH and the rest have high pH.

So it comes back at six, five, producer nor the crop advisor think they have a problem.

But we've identified low pHs on those fields that have a composite of an average of 6.5.

So you really need to get out there, scout, if you see a problem that you're not sure what it came from, sample soil pH in that area.

It's very cheap to sample.

Maybe you don't have low pH, but maybe you do.

- Okay, thank you.

Question from Bozeman.

We actually have two of them.

A quick one, and I'm not sure we can answer this properly.

It asks, "Is crop insurance abuse or problem in Montana?"

I don't think it is.

For instance, deliberately going to irresponsible crop rotations and not following and things like that.

Kent, do you wanna touch on that a little bit?

You're involved with that kind of stuff.

- You occasionally might see it, but I don't think...

There's too many real farmers and they're absolutely not going to do that.

I don't care.

If you have a bad year, they're out there seeding anyway 'cause they wanna see something grow.

They they might do that.

We had a soybean rush here a few years ago.

It wasn't because of crop insurance.

It was different things and we found...

I didn't grow 'em, but some people did.

And it wasn't wrong.

It was a experiment, but I don't think so.

- Nor do I.

And I think you hit it.

Most farmers are not in it for the insurance game.

They take pride in what they produce.

And that's very true, especially in this state.

Now, I will say I've seen in Colorado where you might have 11 adn 12 inch rainfall belts where they're trying to grow grain corn because there was a historic amount growing on that years ago.

And Clain, you guys know that you're not gonna produce 50, 60 bushel corn on 11 inch rainfall.

So nationwide, they're cracking down on it.

But Montana has never really had an issue with insurance abuse.

I think I know where this one came from.

It's from Florence.

And this person would like to know, "Has Kent been involved with various conservation organizations that work to help enhance your farming operations?"

And I think maybe somebody by the name of Bob sent that in.

- Yes.

We actually purchased a ranch, what we call the North ranch or the Wingred Place.

When I was growing up, the Wingreds grew up on it from Ducks Unlimited.

And we worked together with them.

I think it was probably one of the first land transfers of that program.

And it took a little politic and to get it done.

And they had to believe in the way we raise our kids and our crops and our cattle and everything that we do.

And then they did.

It wasn't a wholesale deal.

We didn't get the conservation easement money, Ducks Unlimited did, but we have the land, and it's part of our farming operation.

It's a few miles north of us.

We worked together very closely with them.

The good thing was that they worked together very closely with the Federal Fishing and Game, and they came in and put some pipelines in on a...

I had to pay my share.

And in this drought, the last two or three years, it's a savior to have those pipelines and water lines on wells and stuff.

I think the conservation that they've done and put in place, I'm an old school guy so I had to learn a lot, and so I had to listen a lot.

And it was cooperation, together.

- And actually in your county, Phillips County, there's been an awful lot of conservation work done to maintain grassland.

And not have it turned over into crop land.

It's suitable more for cattle in many of those areas than it is for wheat or barley.

- Yeah, so the answer is, yes, we do.

- Okay.

Uta, from Bozeman.

They have mildew on all the plants in their yard.

Is that a problem?

- Well, I feel like if it shows up now as we're approaching the shorter days of the year.

So if it's a seasonal thing, I'd say, no, it's probably mostly cosmetic issue.

Mildew just likes moisture.

And so, as we have these cooler nights and shorter days, these areas in your yard that are already shady don't have enough time to like dry down, and so that's how you see mildew.

I noticed that yesterday on my lawn when I was mowing for example.

I don't think it's a big issue unless you really don't like it.

But I also don't know if it's worthwhile treating it anyway.

- There's nothing you could do.

I mean, all my lilacs have it right now.

I don't think there's anything you could do about it.

- No, you're close enough to everything falling off.

It's no big thing.

And I welcome it because I had so much squash, zucchini specifically, the once I got mildew, it stopped.

- You get caught about it.

- So it's a good biologic control, zucchini.

- It's interesting though that you say that on your lilac 'cause I heard that a lot of lilac this year had mildew, which we don't really know why, but for some reason this year is a lilac mildew year.

- Yeah.

- Okay, this is an interesting question.

This came in from Bozeman.

This person would like to know if they fertilized their yard and they aerate it and they water it religiously, will that help get rid of quackgrass?

You.

(panelists laughing) - That is a tough one.

It probably depends.

Quackgrass is a risominous perennial grass.

It's pretty drought tolerant.

If you have a good stand or perennial rice, some fescue, some Kentucky bluegrass in there, I think you'll have a good competitive stand and you won't notice the quackgrass as much.

But I don't think it will get.

It won't outcompete all the quackgrass, even if you have a really good stand, I think it'll still be present in there.

I don't know what to tell you to do to get rid of the quackgrass, Jack.

- [Jack] Start over.

- Yeah, I just start over I guess.

Yeah, it's a tough one.

There's not really that many selective herbicides you could use to do it.

It's a very complicated task.

- I've seen a few yards around that if you really do aerate it and fertilize it properly, you're not gonna get rid of the quackgrass, but you can mask it or choke it back a little bit.

So I think- - Yeah, I think this time of year, I've just sewed some grass and I had some pretty good Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue mix, and the quack grass didn't really seem to move in too terribly.

- Okay, thank you.

From Winter Fred.

And a lot of people may not know where from winter Fred is.

It's a little bit North Lewistown.

Beautiful area up there in the Missouri breaks.

They would like to know, costs are up, crop prices are up, is that sustainable?

- It's part of the sustainable.

It's long term.

Yes, it is.

If the inputs happen to maintain that level, and we crash in the commodities in the corn and the wheat and everything, and the cattle are up somewhat, not like the rest.

But yes, you have to manage it every day, that financial, the economical system of that.

But, it is.

For what we use.

A lot of people don't realize in Montana, we don't use the amount of inputs that the corn boys do down in Iowa and stuff.

So, we're pretty lucky.

I know it's 900 bucks of nitrogen.

I know that, trust me.

But it is feasible.

We need to really pay attention to production.

That goes back to the soil fertility, it goes back to going, "Okay, we're not gonna grow 25 bushel crops, we're gonna grow 45 bushel crops, and we're gonna do it on a continuous basis."

As long as mother nature reigns, yes, it's sustainable.

But I'm a die hard.

I'm an old school die hard.

But yes, it is.

- I think for input, if you guys are out thinking about ordering herbicides, being ahead of the game, try to make sure you got a plan for next year and order early.

there's been some shortage of things like herbicides out there, and so I'd say think ahead, plan ahead.

- Did you have issues with getting any of your products that you needed this year up there?

- We did have a little bit.

Early on for pre-plant getting Roundup, they were short.

Two or three shuttles don't go very far.

We need 20.

And so, yes, we were a little shorter.

- What was the cost to Roundup this year compared to the previous year?

- It was about three times higher.

- Three times higher.

- It was about 50 bucks.

And we probably get it a better deal on it because we buy a lot of it.

- A lot of it.

That input cost are really.

Clain, fertilizer cost are they gonna do what?

- They've been up and down.

I mean, last spring almost everything was about $1000 per ton.

And then there was a crash early midsummer and I haven't tracked it lately, but they're very volatile and we don't know what they're gonna be doing this coming spring, unfortunately.

- Okay.

Couple comments, one from Manhattan.

This caller was sharing information about the comments on needles lost on spruce trees.

He has found through research that the fungal disease in Michigan called rhizosphaera needle cast causes needle loss also.

We have it in the state, but that's generally not a fall issue is it?

- No, it's not.

And so, that's again, the needles turn brown and often what gives away whether it's a disease or something that occurs due to the environment or just age of the tree, we just have to have a closer look at it.

So I don't wanna tell you from where I'm sitting right now, it's this or that without having a closer look.

- Okay.

The other comment is from Billings.

It's that caller last week said he loves the show.

He says it's one of the highlights of his week.

All I can say is probably, pretty boring for him.

So anyway, I have a question here for Clain that came in via email.

This person from Choteau would like to know about the chloride that he's been hearing about with winter wheat.

I haven't heard much about that this year.

You wanna explain what's going on?

- Yeah, so chloride's one of the 17 nutrients that crops need.

Since about the '80s, various Montana researchers and occasionally producers have witnessed a chloride deficiency that seems somewhat random.

Primarily, it seems more so in winter wheat than any other crop.

We've sometimes seen it in Durham.

Those are the two main crops we've observed it in.

Certain varieties are more susceptible to the chloride deficiency, or least what's called the chloride leaf spot, physiological leaf spot.

One of the newer release varieties of we saw some of it last year, we saw some at the post farm this year.

And so, it's something to be aware of.

One way to just not have to worry about it very much is to apply a little bit of chloride at seeding.

Most farmers or a lot of farmers apply potassium chloride 0.0.60.

That has quite a bit of chloride.

And so, if they're fertilizing for potassium, they're also getting chloride into the ground.

If they're not fertilizing with potassium, they might wanna consider adding a little bit of chloride, probably as potassium chloride with their seed or as a broadcast application.

- Okay, thank you.

Kent, we have neglected a little bit about the SARE program.

Tell us a little bit more about what Western SARE really is all about and your experiences with that.

- Western SARE it's a USDA program.

It's an innovative, sustainable Ag ideas, and research and education programs.

So we have funding from the USDA Nifa and WeFund.

We're up now to about $12 million.

We'll fund about $10 million of grants in numerous different areas.

Farm and rancher grants, professional research and education.

We give a lot of money away to three year programs, and watch it very intensely.

And it's unbelievable.

And I've been all over the world from Tinian to Washington to Sipan to Guam.

We cover all the islands, Alaska.

There's a lot of problems in agriculture.

The farmers and ranchers and researchers are very innovative and they deserve to be funded for that.

And so, we do the best job of taking the grants, recognizing them, looking at 'em, evaluate 'em , and funding as many as we can.

- Okay, and I'm gonna put a plug in for MSU.

Westerns SARE used to be administrated at Utah State University.

- Correct.

- Currently, their host institution is now Montana State University.

And I tell you what, folks?

That speaks highly of the scientists that we have here on the campus.

- Very much.

- And with that, I tutored our horn a little bit.

Now we'll move on to a couple more questions.

From Livingston, "Is triticale becoming a more popular feed grain here in Montana?"

Anybody wanna take a shot at that?

- It is.

Yeah, go ahead.

- Well, I think as a hay forage too, cut in the soft go stage.

We used it in Moccasin actually to manage wild oats.

And we grew it over winter, planted it with Austrian winter piece, cut it off just before the 4th of July as a forage.

And it actually took the wild oat vegetation with this.

We could then terminate that cover crop then again, however we wanted to.

I think it has a good use as a forage.

And I think there is also a grain market too that maybe Kent knows more about that.

- Nutritionally, how does it compare to some of the other feed grains that you might have?

Anybody have a clue that's a animal science question.

- Yeah, I haven't fed it as much.

I don't think it's quite as palatable as the hay barleys, but I think it grows so much tonnage that it may offset that.

But as far as getting down to bringing things down at 30 below, they're gonna eat something.

And so it's good.

I see a lot of people in our area going to.

- Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more of it here in this valley, but I'm also seeing a lot more corn being grown in the Gordon valley and also statewide, which brings us through something we need to discuss about scab in the future.

But before we do that, Clain, from Carbon County, "Are you aware of any issues in the soils resulting from the floods that occurred in the Fromberg area this spring?"

So you just say general flooded soils.

- Right.

I haven't gotten any calls.

I guess I got one from Livingston, but that was a chemical issue where they were like, "Our shed was upstream and we think we lost some pesticides to our soil."

But no, I have not gotten any calls.

I can imagine a mix of things depending what's upstream.

Probably a lot of it is just that you now have fine sediment in some places in a yard or maybe in a field.

And that can cause more physical issues than say, fertility issues.

But I haven't gotten one call on the floods.

- The soils that are emerged in water for a long period of time, do they become anaerobic or lack oxygen in the soil?

- If the soil is fine enough, so if there's enough clay in there where those waters sat for a while, yes, they could become anaerobic.

That can make that soil lose nitrogen for this past year.

But those farmers had other issues than just fertility.

They had lost structures, they had lost fences, animals.

And so, this year I would expect things to be relatively back to normal.

But if someone wants to gimme a call with more specifics, I'd be happy to try to help them.

- Okay, we're about out of time.

A quick question requires a short answer from Malta.

Kent, they wanna know when it's gonna rain up there.

- Soon, and lots.

- Okay, great answer.

- That's great.

- Folks, we're come to the end of another show.

I want to thank Clain, everybody on the panel, Tim, you.

And especially Tim for driving down 306 miles from Northern Phillips County.

Next week's show will be "Montana Ag Live: And that's B-E-E, with Michelle Flenniken.

You'll find it interesting.

She's very knowledgeable on bees.

We'll talk about pollinators in the state.

With that, folks, thanks again for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Have a good week and good night.

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