- [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, 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 Gardeners Club.

(bluegrass music) - Welcome, everyone to Montana to Montana Ag Live.

I'm your host, Tim Seipel, sitting in the chair for Jack Riesselman tonight.

We have an excellent panel of MSU extension specialists for you focusing on weeds, horticulture, beef extension, and forage crops.

So if you have any questions about beef, horticulture, weeds, or forage crops, please give us a call and send in your questions.

The panel tonight consists of Sam Wyffels on the far end.

He's an MSU beef extension specialist.

We have Hayes Goosey, he's MSU's extension forage specialist.

In the middle we have Jane Mangold, MSU invasive species specialist.

And then we have Abi Saeed, MSU's horticultural specialist for gardens, bugs, pests, and trees.

And I'm Tim Seipel, cropland weed extension specialist.

So if you have any questions about crops and weeds, please let us know.

Tonight answering the phone, we have Nancy and Jordan on our phone lines, so give them some questions to send up here to us.

So Hayes, we'll let you go, tell us about what you're doing in your research at MSU and in forages around the state.

- Sure.

So we've got quite a few different projects that we have.

A lot of 'em relate to soil fertility.

Have a couple graduate students that are working on nitrates, soil nitrogen availability, and it's relation with sulfur, also alfalfa and some phosphorus, working with some of the research centers Also on some perennial grass and nitrogen needs, depending on times of year that we would fertilize those.

We've got a project I've got set up with Sam, let him talk a little bit more about that.

He was kind enough to allow me to hop on board with a great project and a great idea.

So we'll let him talk a little bit about that.

We're working on alfalfa weevil and some of the drone imagery.

There's insecticide resistance to some products that's popping up.

So we're looking at alternative products and ways of looking at damage as decision support tools using drone technology as as ways of that, working with some other great researchers on forages and how they fit into soil acidification, biomass accumulations in the soils.

And last but not least, we're getting the project going on dung recycling and the recyclers, the dung beetles that contribute a lot to moving that dung below the soil surface.

- Excellent.

- Where it's beneficial.

- So this was a long cold winter, Hayes.

Did we end up with a lot of alfalfa killed in the state?

And then if we did, what can producers do about that?

Can they reseed into it now?

What do you recommend that they do if that happened?

- We did in certain spots, certainly, even here in the Gallatin Valley, Helena Valley, certain places, and again, it's a lot of places.

It was a long cold winter, had heavy snow pack for all the winter, certain warm periods actually caused that to melt and form ice and then that ice just was a real disruptor.

So short answer, we did have a fair amount of alfalfa damage.

There was even a fair amount of vole damage around the state.

Interestingly enough, we've got a sainfoin cultivar trial with an alfalfa check in that and the voles really took out the alfalfa but didn't touch the sainfoin.

So it's kind of interesting.

Interesting observation on that.

They can't interseed.

You wanna hold off on interseeding alfalfa straight back into that 'cause of auto toxicity issues.

But spring annuals, barleys, triticales can be interceded into those with varying success depending on how much of that forage is actually killed.

There may be some grass still in there.

The more open space, the better that will take in those seated areas.

- So Sam, we're coming out of a couple years of drought in Montana.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing beef cattle producers in the state of Montana now?

- Yeah, there's actually, you know, a lot of challenges in the beef sector at the moment, but I think one of the biggest ones that is more of like a perpetual type thing is just Montana is primarily a cow calf producing state.

We rely a lot on grazing and that's why the drought had such an impact.

Montana itself has, depending where you're at, somewhere around a hundred, 120 day growing season.

But most of those forages that we're grazing those beef cows on is growing and done growing within probably a 30 to 45 day window in the springtime.

So what that really means is that the majority of the year as beef producers are grazing their cattle, they're grazing a forage that probably does not meet those animals nutrient requirements.

And so in the past it's when we'd probably give some supplement or provide some hays, some other things, but hay is getting really expensive.

So one of the biggest challenges, in my opinion, is looking at how do we adopt some grazing management strategies or just management strategies where we can meet those animals nutrient requirements while getting the best benefit out of the forages available as much of the year as possible and try to reduce some of that reliance on harvested feeds.

- Great.

Abi, question from Bozeman.

Codling moths on their apple trees.

Is this the time of year to spray, and how do we deal with codling moths in apple trees?

- Yeah, that's a good and timely question for now, around now.

So you wanna aim for the degree day model and so our Western Ag Research Center's website has a really good link to that degree day model and it talks you through how you use that.

That's the best way to determine the timing of spray application because you wanna time it for when those eggs are hatched and when they're kind of traveling up to the leafs and the fruits of your apples.

So I would reach out to your local extension office, they can also tell you what that degree day model tells in terms of that spray window.

That timing is pretty critical, but there are also other strategies that you can incorporate for codling moth management, and some of those include IPM practices like sanitation, making sure you're cleaning up any debris or any fruit that fall off and removing them.

You can also do things like fruit thinning, which is gonna reduce the intensity of that infestation.

And there's also something called trunk banding where you can use burlap or cardboard around the trunk.

And as those larvae are traveling down to find a place to to pupate, they're gonna find kind of little cracks and crevices and bark normally to do that.

And so that cardboard or burlap can trap them and then you can destroy that and that'll reduce those local populations a little bit.

So using a combo of those strategies.

- Great.

- Tim.

I have a follow up question for Abi.

So, you know, we talk a lot about degree days, but I wonder if some of our viewers don't know what that is.

Could you maybe tell us more what that is and why it matters?

- Yeah.

So degree days is that kind of heat accumulation from the beginning of that spring season.

And the way that it's important for insects is that their activity begins based on these environmental conditions, not specifically a date.

So based on how warm it's been is going to predict when they will emerge.

And so from what we know about them, and the best way to pair this is with pheromone traps.

So when you see that first indicator of that insect, for example, a codling moth, that's a term called biofix.

So that shows that first presence, and then based on what we know about their life cycles, that degree they will tell you that, let's say within 12 to 18 days is when they're going to, for example, start to hatch, and that's when they're gonna be most susceptible to insecticides.

So using these models is a much more accurate predictor than time windows, which can change from year to year based on just that accumulation of those warm temperatures as the spring started, which we've had a pretty warm spring in our kind of May period.

We've had a pretty intense one.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, thanks.

Sam.

For kids teenagers who might want to get involved in beef cattle production, what opportunities are available for youth to be involved in beef cattle production across the state of Montana?

- Yeah, that's a good question, and the first thing that I usually say is get involved in your local 4-H programs or your FFA, take some ag classes through your high school FFA programs.

But one interesting program that I just recently became aware of is the NILE Livestock Show Heifer Merit Program.

I was recently contacted by a participant in that program where students or youth can apply, I think they need to be enrolled in 4-H or FFA, but they can apply to the NILE Livestock Heifer Merit Program and essentially they'll be given a heifer calf that they then need to feed, develop, breed, and do all the normal record keeping, chores, things that are in involved in the general livestock management programs.

And then that heifer then is required then to come back to that following year's NILE Livestock Show and Billings as an exhibit, as a bred heifer.

And then I believe at the end of that whole program that bred heifer is then donated to the youth that raised it that following year.

So there is some pretty cool programs.

And for those viewers out there that'd be interested in this NILE Heifer Merit program, I believe the application deadline to apply for this is the end of June.

So it might be a good time to look it up online if you get a chance and see if this is something you might be interested in.

- Great, thanks.

Okay, so this one's for Hayes and Jane, out from Billings, I've controlled the weeds in my pasture and now I want to do some seeding.

I've heard I should seed in the spring, but I haven't done it yet.

Is it too late?

And then if they want to know, even if they haven't seeded it, is it okay to keep their horses in that pasture?

- I'm assuming they're wanting to seed a perennial forage because it is getting a little late probably for that.

The soil temperature just, we're getting to that time where the cool season, most of the forage perennial species that we use are a cool season.

So they're more spring oriented.

It's not too late for a warm season forage crop, annuals are things like millets, and sorghum, sorghum sudans.

It's getting to be about the time to seed for those.

They just need the soil moisture to come with that.

As far as itself, if it's a dry land, it's more risky.

Dry land, meaning that it's not irrigated, it's rain fed.

But if it's irrigated, seeding now, as long as you, what your concern is is running out of moisture about the the seedlings started to germinate and then we go into that hot dry period in July and they don't have that root system set up to go through that dry period.

So it's a short answer of saying it's a little risky right now, but depending on soil moisture, it could still could stand the species they were looking at, the seed could still work out out.

As far as the horses and management.

- Yeah, I would probably say kind of the rule of thumb we give if you're doing a re-vegetation project in a weed infested pasture is to defer grazing for two growing seasons.

So if they were to seed this spring, which I agree with Hayes that it's getting a little late, it's too late, I would say, unless they have irrigation.

You wouldn't wanna graze this year 'cause you need to let those seeded grasses get established and then ideally you would not graze through next summer as well, just to let those species establish their root system, perhaps produce some seeds and get those seeds into the ground.

So two summers, maybe grazing in the fall of that second year.

- Yep.

And then for weed control, what would you guys do for weed control in a pasture situation like this?

If maybe you didn't get the seeding in, we might consider a millet, or a sorghum sudan, a warm season grass.

But if that didn't work out, which I'll be honest, I've failed at growing millet and sorghum sudan a lot of times.

What will we do for weed control after that if I were thinking through that, because I often fail at getting things established.

What's my backup plan here for managing my weeds?

- Yeah.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, Tim, I usually fail too when I try to grow things.

Well, you know, in a lot of situations, like if you're doing a chemical application, you wanna gear it towards the weed that you're trying to control.

In a situation like this, one thing you can do is just use glyphosate, which is non-selective.

And the beauty of glyphosate when you're thinking about seeding is that it doesn't have any activity in the soil.

So you could spray weeds and seed into it directly.

Is that what you're talking about?

Or are talking about after?

- I was thinking about, when you have a pasture and maybe you don't get establishment through the year, what do you do with it?

And I think, yeah, glyphosate or glyphosate and dicamba maybe combined to spray it out and try to keep the weeds down so that, could you plant a cool season forage in the fall, or could you plant perennial grass in the fall?

Would that be an alternative?

- You can.

Your best success, again, is gonna be a dormant seeding.

So after soil temperatures have dropped, because again, what you don't want to have happen, a lot of times in the fall you'll get enough moisture in the soil that you'll get good germination, but they don't get a root system established.

So you'll get real high levels of winter kill.

So you're better off to do a dormant seeding in the fall and then the seed's there and when spring hits it gets an early jump on that.

Some of the weed management sounds like they have horses, but it could also, depending on the weeds, some selective grazing with sheep or goats.

They're pretty good weed managers.

If a neighbor may have a number of sheep or goats that could turn onto that weed pasture and graze that during the time, that might be a cheaper way of doing that.

But it may not too.

And so the, the herbicides, the glyphosate's always a good choice with that too.

And like Jane said, it's very, very, easy to seed back into glyphosate pastures.

- Yep.

So we have a question from Broadview.

What kind of alternative forges are available out there for cattle?

Maybe Sam and Hayes, you guys could talk a little bit about this and then I have a couple of follow up questions of my own when we think about what are the alternative forages that might be these alternative forages that are out there?

- Go ahead, Sam, take a stab.

- I'll go ahead and get a stab on this.

So when we talk about alternative forages and a grazing system for beef cattle, a lot of times as we're trying to find what kind of forage is available maybe outside of our traditional grazing range lands to kind of supplement those.

And so the two two scenarios that I think about in an alternative alternative forage system would be providing something in a springtime to maybe delay turnout, stockpile some of that range forage, delay turnout so we can maybe extend that grazing season a little bit on the range land.

And in that instance, Hayes and I are actually working on a project coming up here soon where we're gonna be looking at some different winter annuals that we could put in, and I'll let Hayes talk about species.

But what we hope for is we put these winter annuals in that they should be available and ready to graze and then maybe even potentially be grazed, turn cattle out, and maybe there'll be enough regrowth for either coming back and grazing again or potentially haying that or harvesting that as well.

The other big time period where folks are looking for some decent good quality forages to graze would be in the late summer fall time period.

There's been a lot of interest in maybe grazing cover crops that have some warm seasons in there as well to get some really nice late season good quality forage that meets those animals nutrient demands.

But from the producers that I've really talked to throughout the state that are doing that, if they're successful, they either have irrigation, or they got kind of lucky.

It seems to be a real gamble with those warm seasons.

If it's a dry land like Hayes was talking about and they get some really good seasonal precipitation that helps jumpstart, it can really pay off, and folks could get through the winter without feeding any hay.

But on the flip side, if they don't get that summer precip, it's kind of a bust is kind of the experience.

With that being said, if you do have some irrigation, those warm seasons can be a pretty good source.

- With these warm season forages that we're trying to grow, so first of all, for those listeners who might be at home going, "What's a warm season, "and what's a cool season plant?"

For the plant nerds who are sitting up here, it really where a warm season plant is something that grows during the hotter drier portion of the year and really doesn't grow in the coolest part of the year.

There's a whole suite of cool grasses, which wheat, barley, all our cool season grasses, and then most of our forage grasses are all cool season grasses.

So adding these warm season in are something new to us.

Corn is really the warm season grass that we grow the most of in the state of Montana.

So when we have these warm season cool seasons, nitrates in forage, and nitrates on the range has been a big topic.

Nitrates, if cows eat too much of them, they get a version of blue baby syndrome is what it's called in humans.

Does that happen in these warm and cool season forages?

And do we have to worry about that when we think of the alternative forages?

- I'll take a quick stab.

I know Hayes deals with this quite a bit on the forage side and the answer in the short essence is yes, that these plants can accumulate nitrates, especially in kind of a cropping type system and that it can cause some potential issues, especially if we take animals that have been say on range land or or grazing and then we throw 'em just directly into some high nitrate containing pastures.

But I'll let Hayes take it from here cause I know he does quite a bit of work.

- [Tim] Hayes, we have a nitrogen deficient pasture up on the photo now, so maybe you could contrast between those two.

- [Hayes] Sure.

So nitrogen deficient pastures, you can see just looking at this pasture, I get questions about how do I tell, and the best way to tell is with a soil sample, but just visually looking at a pasture, it's a little lighter green color, but you can see the clumps of darker forage and taller forage in that field.

That's pretty characteristic of a nitrogen deficient pasture.

We sampled this one in the top two feet of soil.

It has about 25 pounds in nitrogen, which is about half, maybe even not quite a third, but about half of what it's gonna need for that.

Those darker green patches were associated with animal manure droppings.

And that's kind of where that beetle processing comes in, the dung beetle, because they're moving that manure below that soil surface, and we can see how that influences pasture nitrate availability based on getting that, 'cause manure is, dung is pretty high levels of nitrogen.

So get that down below.

But then on the flip side of that, if we have too much nitrate in the soil, especially our winter annuals, here we have one of the dung beetles roller species from Montana that we've got here.

He or she is doing their job and moving that down below the soil surface where they put eggs on that, the female does, and the larva develop on that.

And the process of trillions and trillions of these critters moving that below the soil surface you get a lot of organic matter, a lot of phosphorous, potassium, sulfur and nitrogen below the soil surface for free rather than it sitting up on top and not available to the plants.

So starting a project on that.

But things like barley, oats are very high in nitrates, barley, any of the spring annuals, we don't worry about 'em much as in the perennial crops as we do the annuals, but both the cool and the warm season.

So barley, oats is particularly bad.

triticale are all nitrate accumulators.

Same with the millets, sorghum, sorghum sudans in the warm seasons in that.

And so yeah, what happens get too much nitrate in the soil that animal eats that and the microbes can't break that down fast enough and it ends up as nitrite, which it cleaves off an oxygen, ends up in the blood system as nitrite, that bonds to hemoglobin, and we all know what hemoglobin does, moves oxygen.

So you get varying levels of suffocation.

- So I've had millet in the field until pretty late in the season, and we were growing the millet for weed suppression trials, and it had really high amounts of nitrates in it, so it wasn't appropriate for a forage.

So can you wait till a number of freezes or frosts come through?

Does the amount of nitrate then drop once the plant kind of freezes and dies?

- Yeah, unfortunately not.

So you'll get a little bit of drop off with nitrates with maturity of the plant, and some people say, well let's wait to cut, in the soft dough of some of these forages.

Soft dough, the forage quality has dropped so much that you're losing quite a bit just in fiber and digestibility and proteins.

So short answer is the nitrates that you have going into either a harvest or into the freeze is what you've got.

They're very stable.

It's not like prussic acid, which once it cuts, it's very volatile, so it disappears out of the plants within week or 10 days with that.

So the best thing you could do is soil test, 'cause high soil nitrates lead to high plant nitrates.

So soil test, you can send the kids out on a four-wheeler with the soil probe.

They cost $150 online.

Most of the extension offices around the state have one you can borrow.

Take that and, and get those kids out, get some soil samples, send that in.

$30, you can get a report back on the nitrate and all the other nutrients in the soil too, and minerals.

And instead of just applying nitrogen on what you think the field needs, you're actually applying on what the field has.

So we bring those up to a certain level.

For every ton of forage in the annuals, we look at about 35 pounds of available N. So you'll know that, you can add fertilizer up to that point, and that'll decrease pretty substantially the chances of nitrates.

And then I've got a graduate student that's working on sulfur and the sulfur interactions with those plants and how that accumulates nitrates.

- Thanks.

- I was gonna throw on too.

There are some, if by chance you test your forage and it is high in nitrates, depending on how high, if it's not too extreme, there are some opportunities for some management strategies to still utilize those forages.

If it's not too high, you can usually graze those forages or feed those forages to non-pregnant livestock.

So, you know, steers or non bred heifers, things like that, dry cows.

If they're getting a little too too high for even then, then there's also some opportunity to just dilute those forages.

So cut it as a hay and then feed it as a mix where you dilute the nitrates in that animal's overall diet so you can still feed it.

But there are several examples where the nitrates are just so high that they're not appropriate for animal consumption, as well.

- Yeah, and one thing I'd quick add to that, we had a case couple years ago where a lot of reports come back as either nitrate or nitrate nitrogen, and the values are different.

And we had a case a couple years ago where an individual read the report, it was reported in nitrate, and he read the nitrate nitrogen column, 'cause the MSU guidelines, the NDSU guidelines have both of them listed.

He looked at the wrong column, in which case he fed a forage that came back as a 50% limited to pregnant livestock, and he looked in the wrong column, and it was actually extremely toxic.

So he fed out a do not feed level forage because he looked in the wrong column of that and ended up with quite a few animals that died out of that.

For those of you that get forged tests, understand that nitrate nitrogen, that N03-N and N03 columns are not the same.

You need to to make sure what your report comes back as.

- All right, thanks.

So Abi, Jane, maybe me, we have an interesting question here that was sent in.

Their HOA recommends using dish soap in water as a non-toxic way to manage dandelions on my lawn.

Is this really effective?

- Yeah.

I couldn't imagine how that would be effective.

Any thoughts?

- Yeah, I don't think it would either.

You'd get some very clean dandelions.

But I don't think it would kill the dandelions.

- It might wash the aphids off the dandelions.

- You'd have healthier dandelions.

- I mean, sometimes dish soap is used as a surfactant.

So what it does is it's used like if you have a solution with herbicide in it, it helps the herbicide penetrate the leaf tissue.

So I don't know if there was some confusion there, but I can't imagine dish soap and water.

- Even if you use vinegar to try to manage your dandelions, you might burn the tops off, but they'll just grow right back from below the surface and they'll be back again.

I've been digging some dandelions out with taproots that are almost a foot deep and in some instances, so it takes a lot to really get those dandelions, and dish soap's not gonna do it.

- Even in terms of that, like household vinegar, just the percent of acetic acid is so low that it's probably going to be far less impactful on any weeds as opposed to horticultural vinegar, which is about, I believe 20%.

- Yeah, maybe even 35%.

Where I think like table vinegar is like 5% acetic acid.

- In a lot of places in the world they sell cleaning vinegar that's 10 to 20% acidity and I think that's about the same that they're using.

Okay, e have a caller from Great Falls who has a question.

A gardener that has juniper trees in their third growing season is trying to control what his neighbor calls wild morning glory, which I'm gonna be guess is field bindweed, commonly called field bindweed.

Also wild morning glory is not a bad common name.

Is there any chemical that they could use to get rid of these morning glories without harming the juniper trees?

- It's climbing into the juniper trees?

- Yep.

- Yeah.

- And I've seen this around town quite a few times, so this is not a new problem.

- Field bindweed, I've seen it climbing up smooth brome.

- Interesting.

- It's a really tough weed.

- Yeah.

I mean you could wipe glyphosate or wick glyphosate onto the leaves.

I was wondering about Triclopyr products.

Can you spray Triclopyr under the drip line of trees?

I would wanna look at a label.

- Yeah, I would have to check the label of Triclopyr.

- Triclopyr is an active ingredient that is sold in some different types of herbicides that are approved for turf and ornamental.

But I would certainly wanna check that label and see what it says in terms of herbicide under what's called the drip line of a tree, which is basically how far out the branches are extending from the tree.

- Okay, we have another caller from Bozeman who has said, "I have a lot of problems "with flea beetles in my garden last year.

"What does Abi suggest to control the flea beetles?"

- Yeah, I mean there are contact insecticides that you can use on your plants that would be labeled, but I like to use a combination of IPM strategies as well.

And so what I would recommend, trap crops work fairly well, and they really like eggplants and radishes.

So if you're not a fan of one or either of those, planting those a little bit early before your desirable plants so that they're kind of the taller ones in your garden, they'll go for the taller plants first, the bigger plants, and then kind of just doing some cleanup if you have weedy areas around your garden beds, removing those weeds, 'cause that could just be extra habitat for those insects.

So using a combination of those strategies, you can also screen your plants with kind of row covers because a lot of times the damage can be pretty significant even in a couple of days.

So using row covers over your desirable plants to physically prevent those insects on there.

Again, if you have plants that need pollination, you'll need to remove those for when they're blooming.

But row covers can be a good strategy too.

- So are you sacrificing those trap crops?

- Yeah, you're basically sacrificing those trap crops.

Yeah.

- Interesting.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Okay, we have another call from Big Fork.

Two years ago he logged 40 acres and got an influx of Russian thistle and mullein.

How would you go about controlling these plants?

- Is that for me too?

- I think that one's one for you, Jane.

- Yeah.

I'm thinking about the Russian thistle.

So the logging operation is a disturbance.

Weeds love disturbance.

Both the invasive noxious weeds and, you know, the little nuisance weeds.

I would put Russian thistle in that category of kind of this nuisance weed that's going to show up after soil disturbance, and you've removed the canopy cover and all that vegetation that was using the soil, water, and the nutrients.

So now it's wide open for something else to grow.

I would be a little bit patient with the Russian thistle.

I mean a lot of times after disturbances like that you'll see two, three years of maybe a lot of annual weedy stuff while it's waiting for the perennial plants to kind of come back and occupy the space again.

So Russian thistle, I think, maybe just be a little patient with it.

I'm guessing it would decrease over time.

The mullein, maybe decreasing over time, that might stick around a little longer.

- So do you think the canopy has to close over the forest, after he is logged, he's kind of opened it up a little bit.

Do you think really before the Russian thistle and the mullein move on, the really the canopy of the forest, or the shrub layer is gonna have to recover.

- Maybe not the forest canopy, 'cause that may be decades.

Right?

Depending on what sort of logging was done, if it was thinning or if it was just clear cut.

But I think even with the perennial grasses and the perennial herbaceous plants coming back over time, those weedy plants, especially the annuals, will be less problematic.

I mean, fingers crossed.

But I wouldn't give it a little bit of time.

- Hayes hays has some pastures out east, east of the studio here, and they looked pretty weedy for a couple years, but then they had some of that beautiful sainfoin in the picture that we saw later and they really came back.

- I agree with what Jane's saying.

It's pretty similar situation in seeding forages.

That first year, especially if you have a mixed, like an annual legume and a grass, your herbicides are limited when you have those, you can't select for a broadly for a grass.

In that situation you're kind of at the mercy of the weeds that come up.

You try to get in, get seeded, you know, maybe you put on a glyphosate application first or something seed into that and then it's that first year where you really deal with the annual weed problems.

But once those perennials get established, they really choke out and shade out the future annual problems.

Might last a little longer in this case just because that doesn't sound like they're gonna, if they're logging it's probably steep hillsides.

They could broadcast some native seed of grass seed and forbs that would help rejuvenate a little quicker, maybe in that.

- Yeah.

The other thing I was thinking about too, and it's probably not possible, like Hayes said, it's probably a little steeper situation, but if you could do anything to stop those plants from producing seed this summer, I don't know if mowing would be an option, but mowing before seed production or weed whipping, Again, I don't know how big of an area this is.

- 40 acres, he said.

- Also, mullein is a taprooted biennial.

If it's a situation where there's just scattered plants and you know you have the energy and I don't know, maybe your kids or grandkids are looking for summer fun, you could go out there and pop that out of the ground with a spade.

It's got a very pronounced taproot and you could take it out of the ground before it flowers and produces seed.

- Okay, we have another question from Corvallis, Montana.

This one's probably for Abi.

He has yellow and bare spots in his lawn, which are getting larger.

When he dug down to reseed, he found small ants and white eggs.

What is wrong and how might he fix it?

- So that is complicated question.

So it'd be hard for me to kind of make a recommendation in terms of what's wrong without really taking a look.

So this might be a really good one to contact your local extension agent and bring in a sample so they could test it for any potential pathogens that might be there or kind of see whether it could be a nutrient deficiency or a nitrogen injury from your pets or something like that.

This would be a good one to reach out to your local extension office and get a sample to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab to kind of rule out any pathogens.

- Great.

- Can ants do that?

Would the ants below ground be?

- I don't think so.

And depending on what size of the eggs, it could be the eggs of the ants themselves.

So there could be other types of insects that are in there, but I don't think that ants could do anything to damage your turf grass.

- We have a caller from Sidney, Montana who loves Montana Ag Live and has a bad hawkweed infestation under his cherry and apple trees.

Well it's not in pulse crop, so that's not my.

What should he do about this infestation?

So for those listening out there in the rest of the state, narrow leaf hawksbeard is a weed that is really kind of common in the northeast portion of the state.

It's a little hawksbeard, yellow flowers, and it can be super weedy in a number of different crops.

But myself, Jane, and Shelly Mills have written a MontGuide about it and I bet Jane actually probably remembers what's in it.

- Not really, but.

(laughs) Yeah, actually Shelly Mills did her online master's program on narrow leaf hawksbeard.

I was thinking hawkweed, which is a different species.

This is under some fruit trees.

Is that right?

- Yep.

Mm-hm.

- I would just try a combination of mowing it again to keep it, when you see flowers take that plant off with a mower.

It does rely on seed production to reproduce.

It's not rhizomatous, there's no creeping and crawling, so trying to stop the seed production.

So probably a combination of mowing and maybe just some hand pulling if that's feasible.

- You know, narrow leaf hawksbeard has a super shallow root system.

It's almost one you can get with a hoe really easily without too much effort and chop it out.

I think when you mow it, it kind of sits there in that low rosette and always just waits to reflow.

- Yeah.

When it comes to mowing weedy species, noxious weeds or other, you know, we tend to wanna start mowing it as soon as we start seeing it grow up.

But the trick with mowing weeds to control them, weeds that reproduce by seed only, is to let the plant grow up, get that bud that's starting to open up and then come take it off with the mower.

Then you don't get the plants that only grow this tall and still flower.

So you need to be patient if you wanna use mowing to control weeds that reproduce through seeds only.

- Okay.

So Sam, well I talk a lot about precision ag with a number of different people.

How does precision ag, and this is a question that came from the Gildford area, how does precision ag get combined and used in cow calf production and what are some of the ways that precision ag can be used in cow calf production?

- I've actually found myself in this position of talking a lot about a technology and technological advances in beef cattle production systems.

So it's a question that's right up my alley actually, but always when I talk to producers about this is that when you think about the context of precision agriculture and monitoring on an individual basis or building a management plan on an individual basis or crop field basis in the agronomy world, beef cattle producers have been doing some of this for quite some time.

You know, you start thinking about breeding programs, artificial insemination, embryo transfer.

So we've been doing some things that I would deem as precision ag for a while.

I think some of the things that are really new to the beef industry is the use of sensory technology and sensors and equipment.

And so probably one of the biggest popular things right now would be the virtual fence system where you basically have a GPS functioned shock collar, similar to like what you'd have for a dog or something.

And you can get on an online platform and you can designate where these cattle go, when to move 'em, opening and shutting virtual gates, things like that.

So I think that that is one of the big things that's been really pushed in the beef industry and I think it's got some real potential I think for allowing for crop livestock integration.

So maybe grazing some crop aftermath or grazing some cover crops or things like that where the agronomy side doesn't want to put in a bunch of fencing infrastructure.

So I think I had some application there.

There's a couple other things that are coming up in the beef industry that's really interesting and the use of activity sensors and GPS similar to like what would be in a Fitbit or your cell phone, things like that.

And so some of this has been done in the dairy industry and they're starting to move it towards the beef industry.

But these would be like an activity sensor ear tag and what the hope would be would be to monitor animal activities so that you could tell maybe if an animal was becoming less active or getting sick.

The other things that they're using these for, or hoping to use these for is for heat detection.

So they have been able to do it in the dairy systems to identify animals coming into heat and get 'em to breed.

I know that there's a lot of companies that want to take this technology and use it for calving detection so that you'd basically, rather than having to night calve all the time, you basically get a cell phone or a notification on your phone saying cow 2037 is in the process of calving and then you can go check on that individual.

And so that's coming.

I think there's a lot of people interested in that.

Though, the one that's here now that's kind of interesting as well is there's a couple companies now that are producing solar powered GPS ear tags that you can put on your cattle.

There's a couple different brands.

Some communicate through a LoRaWAN radio receiver and some through cell towers.

But it's a way that you can get real time information on GPS tracking of your animals and then look at how your animals have tracked across your pasture and look for different distribution patterns.

I actually talked to a company who, in their ear tag, is also putting a Bluetooth transmitter.

Their hope is that if you're bringing a group of cattle in, you can put your cell phone or a receiver on a fence post and as you push 'em through the gate, it gives you a count and tells you who's present, who's not, things like that.

So there's a lot of cool things coming down that could be really helpful.

Some of those solar powered GPS ear tags are actually commercially available now.

- How does the cost compare, you know, I barely know what a mile of fence cost anymore, but I know some of the questions I can see coming up is what does virtual or electronic fencing cost compared to a structural fence?

- So the numbers that I last read about for the virtual fence is, you do need a LoRaWAN radio antenna receiver and those can be kind of spendy at least for this virtual fence program.

So those have been running, I think somewhere in that 10 to $12,000.

And then the company, Vence, that's kinda, I think, the leader in the virtual fence right now leases you an individual collar for a year round.

And those lease costs are, they were $35 a piece, and I think they might have jumped to 40 or 45.

Which I know that all sounds really expensive, but the last fencing quote I got for a mile of rangeland four wire would pay for all of this.

- Especially with the labor shortages that we have now.

It's hard to get for fencing.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Not even just to mention, depends on where you're at, if it was cover crop, as soon as you put in a fence, you've got weed management issues because you can't get either the equipment or something to that fence line, or a seeding, you've always got a bare patch.

So I can see a lot of applications for that.

- Yep.

Abi, we have a question, and this is, I've seen this around Bozeman quite a bit too.

The tips of a young maple tree that was planted in front of their house three years ago was not greening up very quickly this spring.

Do they need to prune it?

What's the best time and what might be the best method?

- Yeah, so we have seen a lot, we had a really, really cold and long winter and a lot of, especially it was three years old, I believe you said, a lot of our young trees as well, but all of our trees, even if they're mature trees, have seen a lot of winter damage or winter kill.

So whether that's die back in the tips of branches, that's possible.

Sometimes they could just be slow to leaf out.

So if you're not sure whether or not those tips of the branches are alive, I would do a little scrape test to check if there's living tissue underneath, whether it's white and green underneath, or whether it's just brown and dry.

That'll tell you if it's alive or dead.

If it's dead, you can remove those branches back to living tissue.

But overall, we've seen kind of a lot of these winter related injuries this year because of our really long winter.

But for issues like pruning and information about kind of managing some of these tree issues, we have this gardening workshop coming up next week.

And so our spring gardening workshop in Bozeman, it's gonna be at Museum of the Rockies.

There should be a phone number that pops up next to it.

So if you want more information you can contact that phone number.

That's the Gallatin County Extension Office.

And the topics that we're covering are zeroscaping, vegetable gardening, pollinator conservation, and commentary issues.

And we have great speakers including Dr. Mac Burgess from the plant Science Department covering veggie gardening.

And we have Sarah Eilers, who is our master gardener coordinator and she's a certified arborist who's gonna be talking about tree issues.

And so a lot of great topics that can help answer some of these types of questions.

- Good.

Great.

I'm sure it'll be a great workshop.

Jane, what did you bring with you?

You have some show and tells in front of us here.

- Yeah, I always like to bring a show and tell.

There's no shortage of show and tell right now, everything's growing.

So today I brought with me, it's actually a native annual plant, it's called nyctelea.

One of the common names is Aunt Lucy, which I wonder where that comes from, or water pod.

And this plant, it is an annual, so it has that taproot that's very easy to pull out of the ground.

It has these pinnately compound leaves.

It's got some hairs on it, kind of curls a little bit.

And then this one, it whiteish blue flowers.

This one, the flowers are all gone but it's now getting its seed pods, which are, hopefully you can see those.

But the reason I brought this in, it's not a weedy plant, but it has been showing up in the Schutter Diagnostic Lab this year.

It tends to like disturbed areas.

I found this growing in the fairgrounds in Gallatin County, just in an area that they did some construction last year and the ground has been disturbed there and it does look weedy.

It kind of reminds me of like sandbur or Tim help me out with, you're such a good botanist, but it is not weedy, it's native.

It's probably just having a good year.

- Even if you sprayed it with a herbicide and wanted to kill it for some reason it wouldn't work, because the seed pods are already formed.

It's already been in flower.

- It's past the stage where you would wanna control it.

I learned this plant just this year, so it's the first time I've ever noticed it.

And Noel at the Schutter Diagnostic Lab kind of helped me figure out what it is and shared that it's been coming into the clinic this year.

- [Hayes] Is there a part of the state you see that more in?

I looked on the natural heritage program and it looks like it's native to about seven eighths of the state.

The little part of the state that it didn't look like it was common to was kind of the northwest corner, Missoula up to Eureka and Lincoln County.

- It's pretty common out of Fort Ellis, actually.

- I've seen it when I was sitting there.

I didn't know for sure what it was, but I've seen it.

I was like, uh-oh.

- Tim's really giving you a hard time about your plots, how weedy they are.

- They were.

The only thing that's weedy out there anymore is Tim's stuff.

- That's true.

Okay, so we have a few more questions for tonight.

So between Ovando and Seeley Lake, they have red sorrel, sheep sorrel.

How could they control it in a pasture, a dry land pasture?

I'll let you two maybe answer that question, Hayes and Jane.

- Go ahead.

I'm struggling.

- Yeah, that's one I'd have to go to the resources and look for some herbicide, if it's a herbicide.

- You know, quite a few people have asked me about that.

A lot of people out towards the Plains Thompson Falls area about managing it in pastures.

I think it can be pretty hard.

It likes acidic soil, I can tell you that much.

It's much more common in acidic soil.

If it's a dry land pasture with a mix of grass and forbs in there like alfalfa or something like that, I think it's pretty tough to focus on it.

But call Jane Mangold on Monday and she'll look it up and tell you.

- I will look it up and I might ask Tim to help me out.

- That's a good one.

Okay, another question.

We have a question from Bozeman.

Is it safe to spray glyphosate under mature trees like spruce, crab apples, to control weeds?

Most of the trees are mature, but one is one year old.

- Abi, maybe you and I can.

- Yeah.

- So if you don't get any glyphosate on the tree, you should be okay.

The exception to that, I think, would be if you're spraying a tree that might have any suckers.

I'm thinking about aspens or I've seen the red chokecherry, anything that suckers, if you're getting glyphosate on those suckers, it could be translocated then up into the main tree.

- [Abi] Yeah, I would agree with that.

I would say you'd be fine as long as it doesn't touch any parts of that tree.

- Okay.

We have a call from East Helena, trying to manage cheatgrass in her horse pasture.

What is the best stage to mow it at, and how might she get rid of that cheatgrass and improve the pasture?

- Yeah, I'll take that one.

Jump in if you want to, Hayes.

The time to mow it is just before it's getting that reddish purple color.

So like in Bozeman now would be a great time to mow it.

We're usually a little bit behind the rest of the state in terms of cheap grass development.

So I'm not sure what it looks like in Helena, but I think we're hitting that stage in quite a few places in the state where it's getting too late to mow.

Once you see it turn that reddish purple color, you have viable seed.

- Yeah, that's what what I was gonna say is just make sure before it gets to the viable seed and the old kind of joke is that cheatgrass as a forage is good for about 15 minutes in the spring and about 10 minutes in the fall.

So I can understand why people would want to get that out of their pasture.

- Yep, absolutely.

Let's see, what else do we have for questions here?

Abi, we have a question coming in.

Moss is taking over my lawn along the fence.

Why is this happening, and is there anything that they can do about that?

- Yeah, so moss usually likes really high moisture areas and then shadier areas.

So it's just an opportunistic organism.

It's gonna take over places where your grass isn't necessarily doing well.

So if you have a really shady section next to that fence, that could be where your grass might be thinning out and the moss is kind of taking over.

So in terms of that, what I would say is depending on what type of turf grass you have, if you haven't tried a more shade tolerant turf grass, like fine fescue is our most shade tolerant type of turf grass, you can try that in that place.

But if it's getting too much shade, grass is just not gonna grow well there and any kind of opportunistic organism is gonna utilize that.

So you can change that into a small landscape bed with more shade loving plants incorporated in there.

- All right.

So we have just about a minute left.

This caller has a quick question, Jane.

Poison hemlock, they know it's poisonous but is the entire plant poisonous?

Will it hurt if their dog runs through it?

- Yeah, the entire plant is poisonous.

You do have to ingest it, it doesn't have dermal toxicity.

So if your dog runs through it and you know, doesn't get juices on its body I guess and lick itself, it would be okay.

But ideally just keep your dog out of the poison hemlock 'cause it is a highly toxic plant.

Yeah.

- All right, thanks.

And thank you to tonight to everyone on the panel, Sam, Hayes, Jane, Abi.

Thank you guys for all being here tonight.

Next week's show, Sunday, June 11th, healthy and happy ponies, Amanda Bradbury, equine nutrition and physiologist.

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