- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by...

The Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, The Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, and The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(upbeat acoustic music) - You are tuned to "Montana Ag Live," originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana Public Television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, Retired Professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

We're gonna have an exciting program.

We have a gentleman from Whitehall who's done a lot of work in biocontrol of weeds and if you live in Montana, you know we have plenty of weeds to go around.

But before I introduce tonight's panel, I'm gonna say a couple other housekeeping things.

First of all, this is kind of hard to believe, but tonight or this week is the 30th anniversary of Montana Ag Live.

We started this program in the fall of 1994.

The original panel consisted of Pete Fay, George Evans, horticulture.

Pete was a weed scientist, Greg Johnson, an Entomologist who our guests that night.

And I sat over there as a plant pathologist and Hayden Ferguson was the host for this program for the first 10 or 12 years and he did a wonderful job.

They told us that program wouldn't last the first year, 30 years later we're still here.

That first evening we had over 35 phone calls, which reminds me, what really makes this program interesting is you out there who are watching this program and have questions for this panel.

If you have those questions, call 'em in this evening because that's what really sells this program.

And I do like tough questions because I do like to challenge the panel.

There's no doubt about that.

Another housekeeping note, Montana Ag Live loss a very good person.

Don Mathre passed away this past summer just about a month ago.

Don sat in this chair many times as host, sat on the panel.

You'll hear more about Don as we go through this year, but I will tell you this, there was nobody that did more from Montana Agriculture than Don Mathre.

And I'll explain that later as we go through this fall series.

Tonight's panel, you all recognize Uta McKelvy.

Uta wasn't here much last year.

She has a young daughter, she had maternity leave.

Eleanor is her name, cute as can be.

So we welcome you back.

Our guest tonight, Todd Breitenfeldt.

Todd is an interesting individual, an MSU grad in Entomology.

Always had an interest in Biocontrol, taught high school over in Whitehall for a lot of years, but his claim to fame is "Bugs with an Attitude" and he'll tell you a little bit more about that when we come back to him.

Jane Mangold.

Jane, welcome back.

You weren't here last year much either.

- That's right.

- Jane was on sabbatical.

Good day have Jane back.

She's a noxious weed expert.

And you know, if you got any kinda weed questions, you know, she'll take a shot at 'em.

And of course, Abi.

Abi Saeed, horticulture.

Answering the phones tonight, Nancy Blake and Cheryl Bennet.

With that, Todd, tell us about your projects over at Whitehall.

It's fascinating to me that you get kids so involved with something like this.

- Sure, as a science teacher, I wanted my students to solve a real problem, work on a real problem and try and find a decent solution.

And a nice way to do that was to use insects that eat noxious weeds.

So I started communicating with the people at MSU, ended up doing a master's degree, cooperating with all the weed fighters in the state and ended up getting noxious weed trust fund grants and funding from all sorts of sources, MDT and on and on.

Then hired students and we collect insects, educate landowners, distribute these insects.

We have thousands and thousands of release sites if we had sold the insects.

Instead of just giving them away, we have collected and redistributed over $1.3 million worth of insects.

So it's been a great program.

- You know, I've read a little bit about it and I'm somewhat impressed, very impressed with it.

We'll get into the details in a little bit, but what I wanna know, how do you get high school kids away from this device and get 'em interested in insects?

- You know, anybody who hunts for morel mushrooms or crystals or anything like that.

Once you are starting to try and find an insect, the interest is just the same.

Whether they're handpicking knapweed root boring weevils or sweep netting leafy spurge insects, or pen-tapping Dalmatian Toadflax insects, they just get into it and they know it's for a good cause and they're seeing it work over and over again.

- Just outta curiosity, all the students that have been employed and worked with you on these projects, any of 'em become entomologists in training afterwards?

- None of 'em have become entomologists, but they've been everything from doctors to dentists, to fish and game, teachers.

None have followed exactly in my footsteps.

And who wants your kids to do that, right?

- Okay, that's interesting.

Before we go any farther, you mentioned noxious weeds and one of the questions that has come in many times from many different locations in the state.

What is the difference between a weed and a noxious weed?

I mean to me, mal is an obnoxious weed 'cause I can't control it in my yard, but it's not a noxious weed.

How do you determine what's a noxious weed and what's just an obnoxious weed?

- Well, a weed is any plant that grows where you do not want it to grow.

So I like to use the example of a dandelion.

A dandelion in most people's lawns they consider that a weed.

Over in Europe, dandelions are actually grown for their greens, which are good in salad and quite nutritious.

The flowers make wine, the root can be dried and makes a coffee-flavored drink without caffeine.

So it's really pretty useful plant, but when it grows in your lawn, it's a weed.

- Absolutely.

And I have plenty of 'em in my lawn this year.

Moving on, Jane, you have a plant there and this question did come in and you brought a plant in to illustrate it.

That is white bomb... - Briany, B-R- - I can't pronounce it.

B-R-Y-O-N-Y.

And this is a vine.

You probably, hopefully, we can zoom in on this.

You can see the tendrils that wrap around things.

This has been called the Kudzu of the West.

So kudzu is a real invasive vine of kind of the southeastern US.

This likes northern climates.

It does like it a little wetter than, it is a noxious weed, which means it's on a list that says you should control it because it's particularly invasive in It is not a noxious weed in Montana, but what's most concerning about this species is it does look like a grape and it gets purple berries on at this time of year that also look like a grape.

But they are highly toxic and it's been reported that even a handful of the berries can kill a person.

So, you do find it in certain places, I've seen it in Bozeman on the north side of town.

It tends to grow at the base of shrubs, and then climb up the shrubs.

And I've seen it in some of the alleyways and I don't know where else it is in the state, but it is in Bozeman.

And we have had samples come into the Schutter Diagnostic Lab before where people were considering, they wanted to know what the berry was because they were considering making jam out of it.

So be cautious if you see something that looks like wild grape, double check and make sure it's not white Bryony before you would do anything with those berries.

- And nightshade, it can be confused- - Nightshade, it is similar to nightshade.

It's a little bigger, more robust plant and it feels a little rougher that it almost feels like, it reminds me of like a squash leaf to the touch.

It feels similar to that, it's kinda rough.

And to get rid of it, you'll wanna sever it 3 to 4 inches below the ground, so you'll wanna follow the vines down to where it's coming out of the root, you know, coming outta the ground, sever that, this is a good time of the year to do it because the leaves are dying back.

Sever that and then you'll wanna follow up next year and the year after 'cause it's probably gonna try to sprout back.

- Do you think it's gonna become more invasive in the state?

- Not necessarily.

- Okay.

- We first found it in the Bozeman area probably 10, 12 years ago.

And I don't feel like I see it more places than what we were seeing then.

- You do see a lot of nightshade?

- You see a lot of nightshade.

This likes more water than what most of Montana has.

- Okay, good to know.

- Yep.

- Uta from Four Corners, this person had a light hail on their pea crop, really didn't do much damage.

A few little bruises, but within a week or 10 days a lot of it turned black and then brown and died prematurely.

Any idea what might have happened?

- That sounds like our bacterial disease, which is often what we see in response to or as a consequence of hail damage on a crop in peas are specifically or especially vulnerable to bacterial agents.

So the bacteria, they basically are just present on the plant surface and they wait for an opportunity.

So when we have hail that injures the plant tissue, that creates a wound where the bacteria get in, and that will be my best guess.

And yes, I've seen a few samples this year from research fields and crop fields that got hit by hail and it look pretty bad.

Yeah, it can be quite devastating.

- It really does knock it back afterwards much more than the hail does.

I've seen that many, many years.

You mentioned water, I'm gonna go back to Abi here.

I've always been a believer that you water plants in the spring and early summer, but as fall progresses you want the plants to start going dormant.

Should people still be watering their trees and perennial plants?

- I'm really glad that you asked that.

The answer is yes.

Originally, a lot of publications, a lot of kind of extension publications and people would advise about tapering watering in the fall to get your plants to get ready for dormancy.

But right now, what the science is showing that that doesn't really do anything extra to help that plant get ready for dormancy.

But in fact, it can set it up to become more prone to winter-related injuries because it's getting really dry going into the fall.

And we see this, especially, we've seen this with a lot of our evergreen trees in the past couple of years in the spring and summer where they're very, very brown coming out of winter.

But this also happens to our deciduous trees in the fall.

So yes, we've had really warm temperatures in a lot of the state up until even now in Bozeman we've had into the 90s temperatures.

And so with those warm temperatures, those trees are still losing a lot of moisture, you need to keep adding that moisture.

I usually tell people for deciduous trees, you should continue to water them until the ground freezes and you can even continue after until the ground is pretty well-frozen, because even if the top of the trees are dormant, the root system is still alive and growing.

And if it gets too dry it can hurt those root hairs which can impede those trees' ability to then take in moisture.

So continuing watering into the fall.

And for some of your evergreens you might consider watering in the winter as well.

- I'd like myself, would I go back to 1983 when we lost a lot of trees that were over-watered.

We had a sudden frost about 15th of September that dropped down to about 12 to 15 degrees and trees that had been watered into the fall died.

Those that were mistreated survived.

So I'm a believer that you gradually knock that water back so those trees don't want to grow anymore.

You cut the hormones back a little bit.

- Yeah, and so what the tapering water is doing is stressing those trees out and making them start to go into dormancy early.

But generally, it's not recommended anymore.

- All right- - Can I ask a follow up question, Abi?

- Sure.

- Is there like an air temperature that is helpful to look for like a certain air temperature like at night for two weeks or something?

'Cause I think a lot of people might not pay attention to when the ground is freezing.

- Yeah, I would say when the air temperatures drop, when you're getting your nighttime temperatures into the low 30s, because our daytime temperatures will still be in the high 50s around that time, around that time is when you consider scaling back.

Maybe, especially, if those trees are already starting to turn color.

But right now, some of the trees that are turning color earlier are the ones that weren't watered yet, you know, into the fall.

- By the way, that question came from Garniel, and that's the first caller that I can ever recall from Garniel, so thank you for that question.

- Can I just throw in, just to ride a little bit longer on this one.

So like, you know, I noticed the irrigation systems and back and front yards being winterized already, right?

And by calendar seems timely, but by weather seems untimely and I suspect that part of the problem trees and lawn not getting enough waters because of that.

- Yeah.

- Do we have any guidance like when should we stop like winterize our irrigation system?

Maybe we can, I guess it's a gamble, right?

But maybe we could wait a little bit longer?

- It's hard to say, but you know, with temperatures in the past few years being still warm, you know, into October, I would advise at least through September you should still have a way of irrigating, especially your younger trees and shrubs, they need a lot more moisture.

- Todd, we have a bunch of questions that have come in and we're gonna start from a call from Browning.

They want to know about control of knapweed.

They have heard a type of control that attacks the flowers and another that attacks the roots via insects.

You wanna touch on that a little bit?

- Sure, sure.

We actually grow those insects in Whitehall at our insectary, which you can see right by the freeway as you drive by.

So there's a knapweed root boring weevil, Cyphocleonus achates.

And it is quite successful if you're patient and willing to wait a decade or so.

It kills the larger plants and it eats the roots.

And if we can pull up a picture, maybe we can show some people what they look like.

- We'll do that.

- And my students are, there's the adult weevil there and I brought some adult weevils with me too.

- Can we get a picture of 'em by chance?

You got 'em here?

- Sure, sure.

I can pull 'em out of this contain.

- Up for cameras too here.

- There's a hundred weevils that were collected by my students who worked for the program.

I can pull some out here.

They're gonna crawl over the studio now.

And there's some on my hand.

So these guys are laying eggs right now.

And the larvae are gonna hatch and eat the inside.

Lemme hold my hands still here, and eat the inside of the roots all fall, winter and spring.

Pupae in the roots and come out again starting in late July next year and do that over and over again until the plant is killed.

And I also brought a root that was damaged by one of these larva.

So as a lot of people probably know, knapweed is a tap root, like a skinny carrot.

And these larva eat the inside of this root completely.

And you can monitor your own property by taking the tap root and cutting it.

- That's a tap root.

- When you cut it in half, you'll notice that there's a dark area.

An uninfected root is light-colored like the bottom of this picture.

And an infected root has darkened, it's either black or brown and you can even see the holes.

And in spring and summer you can find the pupa inside, the white grub like pupa of these insects.

And so that's how you can tell if you have them on your property.

- [Jack] They are pretty successful you say?

- Yeah, we're seeing huge areas where the plant density's going way down.

The plants are shorter, sicker, and over the course of 10 to 15 years, knapweed just sort of peters out and becomes just another pretty flower in the environment.

- Todd, this call came from Browning.

Could you comment on how widely distributed these weevils are in the state?

Could you find them in Browning, do you think?

- Yes, actually, my crews have released in that area, so I bet if you in Browning itself, you could probably pull up some knapweed or slice 'em open and find them.

- Good, follow that up from Bozeman.

And they're talking about the city flower Canada thistle and they want to know if there's any biocontrol available insects-wise for Canada thistle.

- There are a couple insects, they're not very effective.

There's a stem-galling fly and a stem-mining beetle weevil.

There's also an experimental fungus that's being worked on.

It's not really available yet in the state.

It's not doing as well east of the divide, it's doing better west of the divide that fungus is.

- Moisture?

- Yeah, we think it's moisture, but we're not sure.

- Okay, and one last question before we go to the other panel members here.

I like this one, from Helena.

This person has field bindweed in his garden.

How do you eradicate it or control it without chemicals?

(panelists laughing) - There's a mite, doesn't work well in Montana.

Works a lot better down in places like Utah.

I've actually dug four feet down and had it sprout from the roots that are in the soil.

The seeds also apparently stay viable for up to 50 years in the soil.

So herbicide and dig, dig, dig, pull, pull, pull.

Year after year after year, don't let it flower.

- I'm really glad Todd is here tonight so he can answer that question instead of me, but, yeah, try everything on field bindweed, I've also heard of people like in a garden setting, putting the like black plastic or cardboard, or some sort of light-blocking material down to kinda starve out the plant.

I don't know if Abi if you have any experience with that.

- Yeah, I think that the plastic kind of, sheet mulches for veggie gardens can try and keep it back a little bit, but it can poke through any kind of little hole, yeah.

- [Jack] But it takes more than a few weeks to do that.

- Oh, it can take a couple years of doing that.

- Exactly.

Yeah, I know that's a tough one.

And we don't have it as bad as say in Colorado where that's the state flower down there, but.

- Okay.

- Okay, I just thought I'd throw that in.

- Ours is spotted knapweed.

(panelists chuckling) - Caller from Bozeman.

They saw a lot of trees being cut down and they think they're American elms in city park.

Is that due to Dutch elm disease?

Did we have an outbreak here in Bozeman this year?

- It could very well be.

We did have a couple of cases in town this summer where we confirmed Dutch elm disease and we know that those trees were taken down.

Now, it's not a reason to panic.

Dutch elm disease has been in town for a long time.

So we think that, I guess, we suspect that the past years were, you know, the summers have been rough, hot and dry.

The winters have been rough, cold and then hot and then cold.

They've just put a lot of stress on the trees like we discussed, and stress always brings out disease and other issues too.

And so that might be a reason why we're seeing more of trees now showing no symptoms.

And just for those who don't know, Dutch elm disease is a fungal disease that is transmitted by several beetles, they're called Elm Bark Beetles.

And these beetles are feeding in infected trees or already dead trees and they pick up this fungus that creates a disease and spread it that way.

The fungus can also spread between trees by what's called root grafting.

So roots kind of touching each other, that's how the fungus spreads.

And essentially, it's a wilt disease.

So it gets in the water conducting tissue of the tree and interrupts the water supplied to the branches.

And so the first symptoms we will see are is what we call flagging.

So the branches at the top of the tree and outward canopy of the tree will start turning, the leaves will turn yellow and start wilt when it's not a time for the tree to show wilting.

So in June, July, that's what we wanna look for.

And so if any of the viewers have noticed that this summer or noticing it next year, just reach out to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab or the city forestry division.

We wanna confirm that this is really Dutch elm disease and then discuss options of what to do.

- You know, Bozeman's lucky we didn't have a lot of American elms there.

This is a city of Green ash, Great Falls had a ton of American elm and they've had Dutch elm disease for years up there.

So enough with trees.

Here's an interesting question that I really want a good answer to.

This person from Bozeman wants to know why Dixon Melons taste so much better than any other melon?

Is it due to varieties or the place that they're growing?

- Ooh, that's a tough one.

I mean, I agree Dixon Melons are absolutely delicious and I've gone out of my way to get some this summer too.

I think, I mean part of the thing is, a lot of places in the state can't really grow melons really well because the season's too short.

And in Dixon, you have those really fertile soils and the bitterroot and stuff.

And you also have a really nice growing season.

You're in zone six, so you have a really nice extended season.

And also I think on top of that, produce just tastes better if it's local and if it's harvested when it's ripe.

- I agree with that.

- Yeah.

And so you get it fresh instead of something that's been shipped for thousands of miles.

- And that rolled artificially ripened.

But I also know that there's a place in Colorado called Rocky Ford produces specific type of melons that are supposed to be every bit as good.

They are nowhere near as good as the Dixon Melon.

So is that a variety, do you know if the Dixon Melon is a specific variety?

- I think it is a specific variety, but I'm not sure what variety they grow in Rocky Ford.

- I don't either.

- I'd be interested in looking into that.

Maybe I'll report back next time.

I'll do some research.

- You know what, we'll remember that when come back to you.

Jane, a message via Facebook from Missoula.

What is the best way to control Canadian thistle, is that right?

Or is that Canada thistle?

- It's Canada Thistle.

Our neighbors to the north do not like when we call it Canadian thistle.

- Yeah, I know.

- It's Canada Thistle or - Canada Thistle.

- creeping thistle is another common name.

- And they also throw in buying wheat.

Is there a good time to treat with herbicides and what herbicides are recommended?

They have a few spots in their yard where they don't seem to go past that area, so.

- Yeah, we're coming into the time of year where treat it's a good time to treat Canada thistle in the fall, sometimes even after we have a light frost.

The idea there is that at that point in the year, Canada thistle is moving all its sugars, carbohydrates down into its roots to survive the winter and be ready to grow quickly in the spring.

So if you treat it with a herbicide, the idea is that herbicide gets down into the roots.

Canada thistle has a very extensive root system and you'll see better control.

As far as, I'm guessing this is kind of a lawn setting- - Most likely, yeah.

- Yeah.

I've actually been using the, I know we're not supposed to...

I'm not endorsing a product, but the Roundup For Lawns is actually quite effective on Canada thistle.

I've been using it at my own place.

Now, be very careful to not get just Roundup because non-selective glyphosate.

Roundup for Lawns has no glyphosate in it.

- That's right.

- It's quite confusing.

But be very careful about reading that label and give that a try.

- You know, I have seen one lawn on a friend of mine in Illinois when my recommendation to get Roundup for Lawns, he didn't listen and he bought Roundup.

And he had somebody resod his entire yard, which is not a small yard.

And so you gotta be really cautious.

- When that product first came on the market, I actually brought it on the show because I thought it was such an interesting concept to call this product Roundup for Lawns when it was not, I think it's three different active ingredients with no glyphosate.

So yeah, be very careful that you're getting the right product 'cause otherwise, you will be killing everything.

- I agree.

Caller from Missoula has 80 acres of land that has had knapweed since the 1970s.

It was treated for 30 years with Tordon to try to control it and Tordon is a persistent herbicide, nonselective.

For the last 15 to 20 years, it's been treated with insects, both flower and root type.

It is still the predominant species, though slightly less than initially present.

What does Todd recommend in this situation?

Tough question.

- Yeah, let the insects work, be patient, but control your edges, your roads, your neighbor's boundaries so your neighbors are happy and you're not spreading seeds.

They're probably probably noticing that the plants are getting smaller and producing less flowers, which is what the red insects do.

But in that area, knapweed's been there so long, the seed source is so dense and knapweed seeds last over 10 years, you're gonna keep getting some seeds even though the seed head insects are killing a lot of those seeds.

So because knapweed's been there so long, it's gonna take the insects a really long time.

They should also try and reseed with native plants or whatever plant they want and tip for their management of that land to help out compete new knapweed seedlings.

- Okay, so it is not an overnight and I - I was just gonna add on to what Todd was saying there towards the end of his answer about the importance of seeding something desirable.

And what's really interesting about knapweed with the weevil is, you know, instead of being waist high or thigh high knapweed, you get knapweed about this high.

So it's still there, but it's probably not nearly as competitive as it is without the weevil.

So being able to go in there and do some seeding, if they can drill seed, that would be great with some desirable, maybe some forbs.

We've done some research south of Missoula in the Bitterroot Valley where the area was, it was spotted knapweed infestations and 15 years after seeding, the drill rows of blue bunch wheat grass and pubescent wheat grass were nothing but those grasses.

There was still knapweed on the outside of those drill rows.

So you know, the insect was there and knapweed lead was still there, but where you could integrate the biocontrol and the seeding was very successful.

- Okay, thank you.

Uta, what is that ugly-looking, sick-looking plant over there that you've been staring at?

- Yeah, it's another case of what did the pathologist bring, huh?

Yeah, I just wanted to bring this show and tell from the diagnostic lab.

This used to be a tomato plant and we diagnosed that it passed away from bacterial canker, which is not like a super common thing in Montana, but it's just presented such nice symptoms that I couldn't help myself and I needed to bring it.

So it's a bacterial disease that causes a wilt or like clocks the water conducting tissue again and even causes a canker here.

And that's what you can see in this picture.

So like Todd said earlier, the inside of a plant should be nice and white or light-tan colored.

And here you can see that it's like dark brown.

And so the vascular tissue has been clocked and then kind of died off from these bacteria.

And so subsequently, the entire plant died where you can see here all those branches died back and there's not much left in terms of leaves, et cetera.

And yeah, so that came from somewhere in Montana this season.

Bacterial wilt really likes warm and humid conditions and depending on where you grow your tomato in the state, you could have had that this year.

- Absolutely.

- And so, yeah.

- You know, that's subject to tomatoes, I'm gonna throw this from kind of your way.

Last year, not this year, last year I was growing indeterminate and I was harvesting in early to mid-August.

This year, I started in early September, so we're about 2 to 3 weeks later, but yet, I think the temperatures have as that early cold spring that we had affect the ability of a tomato plant to produce later or earlier?

- Yeah, I think it certainly does because you know, a lot of the time just the accumulation of those temperatures over the course of that growing season, so what we call degree days, they can impact how quickly it grows.

So, but there is also kind of a temperature sweet spot when it comes to tomatoes.

So when you get above the 90-degree mark that can slow down the active growth and that can impact the fruit production too.

But we've had a lot of those kind of really warm temperatures over the past couple of months.

So it might, you know, it wouldn't have been as fast, but it's been slow down.

- Yeah.

My tomatoes are not as nice this year as they were last year, but there's still plenty of 'em.

Question from Manhattan.

This person would like to know, number one, what is an insectary and then how do you start an insectary to raise these type of insects?

- It's a neat concept.

First used in Montana, I believe by Jim Story at the ag experiment station in Corvallis.

You transplant the weed very carefully or grow it by seed.

You water the weed, fertilize the noxious weed, weed the weeds so that then you infect it with the insect that you want to kill the weeds.

Once you get the insects being produced, you collect them from the insectary and let them go on people's land who want to control their weeds.

So so it's a garden to grow insects to kill weeds.

- Okay, is it difficult?

I mean, to me, you know, I came from kind of Midwestern, I spent some time fishing in the south and everybody had cricket insectaries because they made good crappie bait.

That wasn't difficult.

It was noisy, I'll say that.

(panelists chuckling) But is it pretty easy to grow these insects?

- For some plants it is.

Spotted knapweed if it's not infected with the root bore already and it's getting harder and harder to find places that aren't infected transplants pretty easily.

And then you can get the insects from another site.

Your county weed coordinator can almost always come up with these insects if you request well in advance and put them on that.

But we're going away from using the insectaries because there are more and more places throughout the whole state where you can collect these insects.

- In Montana, one of the only states doing this or have you worked with adjacent states?

Utah, North Dakota, Idaho?

- All the states are, but Montana was and continues to be one of the leading states working with weeds and biocontrol.

Idaho's doing a great job also.

The other states in the west are all working on it, but I'm kind of proud of what a good job Montana did in the past and continues to do now.

- It's always been a number one priority in this state.

One of the number one priorities in weed control.

And that goes back to a lot of people early on, Pete, Jim Story, some of the people that were predecessors.

Bob Nowierski.

So a lot of people had an interest in it and that shows with the effects that we're seeing today.

- And good people in government.

- Pardon?

- Good people in government who support that.

- You're absolutely right.

And the noxious weed trust fund.

- Yes.

- Yeah, the State Department of Agriculture and a group of legislators that came together decades ago to establish the trust fund.

- So that's been a real benefit for this state.

Now back to tomatoes.

This person wants to know why they're cracking.

- Yeah, so tomatoes, most of why tomatoes will crack the fruit themselves is water-related.

So usually if there's too much or too little water or heavy fluctuations in water, it can cause the fruit to crack or split.

Usually that's more common when you have full sun.

And so when there's really high sun intensity, so adding a little bit of shade can reduce the likelihood and then some varieties of tomatoes are also more prone to that cracking.

- Okay, and while we're on the subject to tomatoes, I have an indeterminate variety of tomatoes that is about as tall as I am.

A little over six-foot, does not have a ripe tomato on it.

I do not think it will have a ripe tomato before frost.

So I don't wanna grow any more indeterminate varieties.

- I usually grow determinate tomatoes.

They're more contained- - Come back.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Okay, Todd, I have not seen this.

Tell the audience what this is and where they get one of these.

- Well this is, the second edition of the State Noxious Weed Biocontrol Guide.

And I've been the co-author of the first and the second edition.

You can get these from your county weed coordinator.

You can stop by Whitehall in our program and get 'em from us.

The Jefferson County Weed District has them also the State Biocontrol Coordinator, Melissa Maggio in Missoula has them.

So, but each county should have copies of this guide for you if you're interested.

- I think I just thumbed through it and I had not paid a lot of attention to it before, but a lot of useful information in there.

No doubt about it.

- Well, if I may?

- Sure.

- You know we always talk about reading the label on herbicides and always read the label on your herbicides.

Well, this is what kind of our label for insects in the states.

- That makes good sense to me.

Uta, a caller from Antelope and how many people know where Antelope is?

- Somewhere northeast.

- Yeah, it's in the northeast.

It's the only city of 10 people that has six exits off the highway going down there.

(panelists laughing) Great, great community.

- Hi, Jeanie.

(chuckles) - They have some beans in the garden that are turning yellow.

Not all the plants, but Orchidaceae plant.

Any idea what that might be?

Probably Cymbidium, but.

- I would say that depends on the kind of yellowing that's happening.

Where the yellowing starts.

I could think of numerous reasons.

I mean, to start with, it could be some kind of wilt disease, it could be a viral disease that if it's individual plants, some seed-transmitted virus could play a role here.

I don't know, other things.

(chuckles) - You know what, it could be a virus, being common most likely.

So anyway, submit a sample then we can tell you with a lot more confidence what it is.

Question that came in via email, ones of Uta.

From Richland County, they noticed quite a bit of stripe rust showing up in spring wheat this season.

Should they be worried about winter wheat that's planted this fall?

- I think there is some reason for concern.

We did have, yeah, stripe rust fairly late in the summer.

And so if it was able to over summer in some green grasses in the environment, it could, you know, jump onto the winter wheat.

I think the best thing that one can do is to plant a stripe rust resistant winter wheat variety of Montana winter wheat breeding program has done a very good job at incorporating those resistances in a variety, so pretty much all the Montana varieties that have been released over the recent years have very good resistance.

So Bobcat, Yellowstone, Loma, Montana Workhorse, FourOsix, they all have very good winter wheat resistant.

And so planting a resistant variety is really the best way to manage stripe rust.

So that would be my recommendation.

And then considering planting a little bit later in the fall and also doing good volunteer management, which is where the stripe rust might be hovering, waiting for the next host, so.

- I'm gonna add to that, and I like to give credit where credit is due, our winter wheat breeding program in Montana for the last 30, 40 years has been absolutely excellent.

And I go back in history, there was a variety that was released in the 1930s called Yogo.

Yogo was one of the first varieties that became winter hardy in the state.

We never used to be able to grow winter wheat successfully because of winter damage.

Through the ag experiment station they released yogo and that added 300 miles north of the traditional area.

Now we have all these varieties that have good winter hardiness and it's very rare to see winter damage anymore.

Great job there.

Now back to Jane and Todd.

Caller from Helen is wondering, is there a biological control for creeping bellflower?

Number one, what is creeping bellflower?

Is it a big problem and then you can answer the question.

- Yeah, so creeping bellflower, we often get calls about creeping bellflower.

It's more of a yard and garden weed that has kind of aero, it creeps, it has aero-shaped leaves and kind of purple bell-shaped flowers.

There is not a biocontrol for creeping bellflower.

It's not a noxious weed in Montana, creeping bellflower, I believe we only have agents for our noxious weeds.

And there's quite an extensive effort that goes into developing these insects that will feed selectively on a species.

And my guess is creeping bellflower is not a big enough like economic or ecological problem like our noxious weeds are that there would, I'm not aware of any active biocontrol research on that species.

- How do you get rid of it if you have it?

- I put it in the class with field bindweed, try everything, cultural, you know, think about how you're watering and Abi, maybe you can chime in here, but you know, good fertilizing, good watering, not too much watering, catching it early.

Once it's well-established in a lawn or a garden, it's almost impossible to get rid of without just completely renovating the lawn - And having competitive plants that we're using mulches, if it's a new garden setting to prevent just bare soil that's gonna let it kind of creep in to that.

- So I have a question about Houndstongue, but I also had one earlier that I kind of skipped over, but I want to get to it.

We talked about the nutritional value of dandelion.

This person wants to know the nutritional value of purslane and I don't like purslane because I don't like the looks of it in my garden.

And once it gets there, you're stuck with it.

Do you have any clue as to the nutritional value and if not, somebody needs to look it up on Lancer next week.

- All right.

- I think that would be a great one for Tim because he's talked about eating it here.

- He loves purslane, so.

- He does, yeah.

- Tim and I had- - And he is on next week so you know, we'll stick him with with that one.

- I used to feed it to my parakeet.

(panelists laughing) - Parakeet?

- Yeah.

- Do you know parakeets are pest in South America?

(Uta and Jane laughing) They a few down there they expect you to rid a few parakeets.

Just I'd let you know that.

- [Jane] They're probably sending them all up here.

- Yeah.

Back to the houndstongue, this is from Browning.

There's several questions from Browning, I like that.

He heard a few years ago that there was a biological control of houndstongue being used in Canada, but it was not a lot in the US.

What is it, has it changed and is it being used here?

Any clue what that might have been?

- [Jane] Do you wanna take that Todd?

- Sure, it's an insect that was approved in Canada, was not approved, it was studied for houndstongue in worldwide as a biocontrol agent.

It's extremely effective.

It's one of the more effective biocontrol insects I've ever seen.

But because in the lower 48, there are some threatened and endangered borges that are related to houndstongue that it can occasionally spill over and chew on and maybe damage.

It has not been approved.

However, it has moved into Montana and is spreading everywhere.

A horse pasture that I kept my horse in three years, the houndstongue was gone.

It was a true silver bullet, it was amazing.

It's a really good insect, but it's not approved so we shouldn't be moving it around.

But it appears to be moving itself around pretty well.

- Yeah, they don't stop at the border crossing.

- They only know ecological boundaries, not political ones.

- It wouldn't surprise me if it's in northern part of the state where the call came from.

The other, what I'll add to that is we are doing some research on, Melissa Maggio, who Todd has mentioned already.

She's the state biocontrol coordinator.

She's actually working on her online masters in the Land Resources and Environmental Sciences Department right now.

She's working on her final paper where we have actually looked at, we have found sites that have this biocontrol.

They have houndstongue and they have some of our native borages.

And we're looking at any non-target impacts of that insect on our native borages like Bluebell or stickseed.

So we're hopeful that the information we learned through Melissa's project will, could potentially be submitted to APHIS for consideration.

Like to repetition the species as a biocontrol agent.

- As a long time owner of Golden Retrievers, I hope that we can get that approved because there's no more obnoxious weed than houndstongue for long-haired dogs.

And you can't brush it out.

Uta, question about canola.

This person is showing a lot more interest in growing winter canola.

He wonders about are there diseases that there should be concerned about and also how is the yield of winter canola doing right now?

I can tell you Perry Miller said it's up to 100 bushel per acre here at Bozeman, but I don't know about the diseases.

- So I'm not gonna comment on the yield.

I mean, there are certainly a few diseases of concern.

I don't know if there is a distinction Or I can't comment on winter canola versus spring canola.

One disease of concern is clubroot.

That's a big issue in Canada and they've confirmed it in North Dakota as well.

I don't think it has been confirmed in Montana yet.

That's something that I guess, if we grow more and more canola here, we should be looking out for.

Let's see, white mould is also a disease problem in canola.

White mould actually likes colder temperatures So that might be something to be considering for fall-planted canola.

- I saw an area, well, in fact, to tell you it's on Valley Center here, a field of canola that is so dense that I'm surprised if they don't have white mould in it because it's irrigated and I don't know if they're gonna be able to mature it.

I mean, it is just that green, so.

Canola is becoming much more accepted in this state and we're going a lot more of it, so you're right, we're gonna have to keep an eye on it.

Abi, does zucchini fruit has discoloration at the end?

Do you want to say why quickly?

We got a few more questions.

- I've got a couple of questions this past week about zucchini with the ends of it where the blossom comes out turning black and that's blossom end rot.

It can happen in zucchinis.

So mostly you might be familiar with this in tomatoes, but it can happen in peppers and other squashes, eggplants as well.

But in zucchinis, so what blossom end rot is, it's a calcium deficiency where the calcium can't move properly inside the fruit of the plant.

So that doesn't mean that your soil is low in calcium necessarily, but it means that the calcium can't mobilize well in the fruit.

So a lot of times that's because of inconsistent watering or really excessive high temperatures, excessive nitrogen input, things like that that can interrupt that calcium flow.

So consistent watering, adding some mulch around the base of your plant so it conserves that soil moisture so it doesn't get too dry that can help reduce the likelihood of that.

- Abi, does it affect the, the quality of the fruit?

I mean, can you just cut it off and you're fine?

- Yeah, you can cut it off but a lot of times by the time you notice, even if the outer side only has a little bit, if you cut into it, the inside of the fruit is you see the blackened thing that can go half of the fruit or more even.

So it kind of wastes a lot of that fruit.

- Sometimes you don't mind if some of your zucchini- - You got it.

- You have, yeah.

If you have 50 pounds of zucchini a week, like some of us do.

- Okay, we're getting down a little bit on time.

We got a couple other things.

While we were talking about tomatoes earlier, Stevensville caller said that her dad recommended that for unripe tomatoes, pull the whole plant, hang it upside down in the dark and the tomatoes will ripen.

Does that work?

- I haven't heard of that specific strategy before.

- It does.

- It does?

- It does.

Yeah, it takes time, but I think you don't have to do it in the dark.

You just don't want someplace where it's gonna freeze.

And it's a slow process and they're not as good either.

- Yeah, I can imagine that plant's diverting its nutrients into whatever its survival strategy is.

So the fruit and seeds.

- Todd?

- Yes.

- This person would like to know, does your group in Whitehall interact with a lot of the other biocontrol people at the universities and so forth and so on?

- We work with everybody, yes.

- Okay, and the other question that has come in after the houndstongue question, how far into Montana has that insect, this person's interested, they probably have Golden Retrievers too.

- Yeah, it's pretty much across the north half of the state in big patches.

It's also in northern Idaho and northern Washington.

(sighs) You know, if people are taking it around illegally, which they shouldn't be yet, until we can hopefully get it approved.

But it's also very strong flyer.

So you know, it's all around Whitehall.

I've found it all the way to Missoula it, it's easy to tell, it looks like someone shot the plant with a shotgun because the weevils and then make little holes and then you can also, I didn't bring a root as an example because it's not technically a biocontrol insect.

It's not approved in the lower 48.

But you can slice the stem and see the larvae damage, just like I showed you with the knapweed.

- Okay, good to know.

From Clinton, this person wants to know, what to do with flower heads.

He removes from knapweed so they don't end up germinating.

- Yeah, I would just pile them and burn them when we have some cool wet weather.

- Okay, from Wolf Creek, they have Kochia in one area, but is slowly spreading.

How can it be controlled or killed without damaging the grass?

And from Miles City, earlier we had a question, can you feed Kochia?

- What would you feed it?

- To cows.

- (laughs) I'm just kidding.

- Troublemaker.

- Maybe these weevils.

I don't know that, yeah, gimme a call or we can talk to Tim.

Yeah, I think Kochia's not toxic at all.

I don't believe it has any toxicity.

- You know, I think if I not mistaken, it wasn't Kochia originally brought into some areas as a cattle feed.

We'll ask Tim.

- Yeah, I mean, it gets prickly later in the late in the summer, so I think you would wanna be feeding it earlier than later, but, yeah.

- Okay.

Todd, first of all, we appreciate you being here.

And a number two is, getting high school kids involved with programs like that is absolutely incredible.

And you know, this is kind of an anniversary panel here this evening.

So we do have an anniversary gift for everybody here.

So could we have the anniversary delivery of our anniversary cakes?

All right, bring 'em on in.

Okay, so it's not a big fancy cake because we're not a big fancy organization, but we are going to celebrate and all the people here in the studio, all the students that go into making this program happen.

In fact, all the camera operators, a lot of the people here are mainly students that are in the film and TV building.

So with that, Todd, anything else you'd like to add?

The foreseeable future, what do you see in bio weed control for the state?

- I foresee the weeds that we are using biocontrol on, which means we've given up trying to eradicate them and we're just trying to learn how to live with them.

The biocontrol agents are gonna continue to diminish.

People are gonna continue to find more biocontrol agents and we're gonna continue to increase the spread of these biocontrol agents as fast as we can.

- You know, looking forward to say many, many years from now if we, oh, we got one crawling around here- - A couple of them.

- If they kill all the Canada thistle, all the knapweed, what happens to the insects?

- Well, they're never gonna kill it all.

- Okay.

- Because they didn't in Eurasia where they came from, the weed came from Eurasia, these insects came from Eurasia.

So the goal is to make the noxious weed just another pretty flower.

- Perfect.

Hey, we appreciate it.

I wanna thank the panel this evening.

Uta, good to have you back.

Todd, thanks for coming over.

Jane, as always, Abi is always.

Jane, it's good to have you back.

- Thanks.

- You're back to work.

Next week, we're gonna have Shane Parker with Fish and Game, talking about Montana's Block Management Program and how it helps agriculture.

Thank you.

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