- [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 & Landscaping, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(bright music) - If you haven't guessed it, you're watching Montana Ag Live and the annual Halloween Festival that we have here with the panel.

And the questions will mean the same.

We'll answer them, get plenty of them in.

You'll have a good time this evening.

Of course, this is originating from the held studios of KUSM on the campus of Montana State University and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, honored to be your host tonight, retired professor of plant pathology.

And I hate to say it, but this is going to be our last program of this year.

We'll be back next spring with another series, and we're gonna have a very interesting series that we're really already started to work on.

Before we go any farther, let me introduce tonight's panel.

The witch from the left with the big smile is Uta Mckelvy.

See, I told you I'd get you to smile tonight.

Next to her, Marsha Goetting.

Marsha is kind of a little bit of everything.

Family economic specialist.

Tonight's topic is one a lot of people don't like to talk about.

It is mental health, Alzheimer's, dementia.

We'll get into that and some of the things that she's been doing at the university to address that particular subject.

We all know Jane Mangold.

She is, quote, an invasive specialist, plant specialist.

She's a weed scientist at heart.

Nice hat too.

- Thank you.

- And keeps the mask on Abi Saeed, Abi.

Abi is our Extension horticulturalist.

And if you have questions about horticulture, it's been a beautiful fall.

I'm sure there's some great questions that you can get to you tonight.

And answering the phone is Nancy Blake and Judge Bruce Lobo.

And I'm glad they're here.

Get that phone ringing, and we're gonna run it back to Marsha.

Tell us a little bit about your current project.

- Okay, well, I'll be glad to, Jack.

It's been a really exciting one and it's not one that I just did in a week.

This has been a magazine for people who have someone they love with Alzheimer's.

And the idea is to get the information out to people, but particularly farmers and ranchers because they really need the information as other organizations don't have that for them.

- Okay.

And I wanna say this, but I haven't been around Montana farmers and ranchers for almost 50 years, And they're a pretty stubborn bunch of individuals out there.

And they may have some early signs of dementia or Alzheimer's, and they kind of blow them off and that's dangerous when you're operating farm equipment and things like that.

How do you address that?

- Yeah.

And that's one of the we safety issues that we get at in the magazine is it is dangerous and it's not only the large equipment, but it's the large animals.

And when you have perfect memory, you know how the bulls can be, but you may miss the signs as your memory keeps getting less and less.

And then also you can't do any estate planning because you need to be competent, you need to have capacity to be able to do a power of attorney, right and sign your will and some of those kinds of things.

- We'll get into that tonight because I recognize it's a serious problem around the state and especially when you get out in the rural areas of Montana.

We don't quite have as much service for memory care in some of those areas.

We'll get into that and address that tonight.

But before we do, a Bozeman caller wonders whether this warm fall, weather will harm the trees going into winter.

- That's a good question and that's something we think about every year when we have these inconsistent fall temperatures.

But usually, having these slight fluctuations in temperature aren't too big of a deal.

When you have an extended drought period and the heat,, that's when you can impact the health of those plants.

So usually for these smaller warm spikes in temperature, dormancy is triggered by day length and that process starts in the summer.

It starts on the summer solstice.

And so that process of dormancy is usually not interrupted by those slight temperature fluctuations at the end.

But of course, if you have a prolonged period, it could impact your trees.

- I agree.

One question I have, and we probably don't have the proper answer here, but when you have an extended fall like this, what does it do to pest insects like wasp and stuff like that?

- It could mean that they're active longer, and it could also mean that they might be bothering you a little bit more when you have those insects because they're probably starving for food sources.

Once those food sources become unavailable and if they're not going into their different ways of getting through the winter, whether it's over wintering underground as adults, that just might mean they're around longer.

- Okay, before we go any farther, we have this dead plant on the table and it's very appropriately named what?

- Yeah, this is perfect for the season.

This is witch grass, and this is actually a native annual grass, And it is a summer annual, so that means it germinates in the spring, grows throughout the summer, and then at the end of summer, it produces its seeds.

So this is a species that we start getting calls about in late July through late August maybe.

And people wonder what it is because that's kind of when it's hitting its peak.

And it's not really a problem.

it's kind of a nuisance plant.

It likes disturbed areas.

I found this growing on the edge of the parking lot.

And yeah, so this is witch grass.

So maybe pick some and put it on your front porch for the trick or treaters.

(panel laughing) - I think Ut is snake.

- I should have looked that up but I did not.

One thing that's kind of neat about this grass is the seed heads do break off and tumble.

- Okay.

- It's very breakable right now.

So that's how it's dispersing its seeds.

It's breaking and tumbling and spreading those seeds.

- All right, thank you.

Very appropriately named.

I've got a question here of potatoes for you, But before we get there, I wanna run it through Marsha here.

How did you become interested in working and publishing stuff for Alzheimer's?

- Well, it really dates back a few years and part of it was my grandpa was called senile.

Well, that was back in the '60s.

And of course, now look at the same symptoms and say, well, that was Alzheimer's.

And then my mom also was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, And then along the way, I was asked to join the Montana Alzheimer's Workgroup and now we're called a coalition, And this particular group has met, they did town hall meetings across Montana to find out what the needs of the citizens are.

And one of those was rural.

We only have nine geriatricians in Montana, nine for the whole state.

And we've got 21,000 people with Alzheimer's, which is about 10% of our population.

And so there's folks out there that need assistance.

That's what I wanted to do is respond to that.

And then in order of grandpa, a farmer, dry land farmer in southwest Kansas, no irrigation, it was totally dry land.

And seeing him out there walking amongst the maze and the wheat and thinking about...

Even though I was in grade school at the time, oh my, what if grandpa got out there and he didn't know the way home?

So that's kind of how I got started.

- I have another question I came in for you in a minute, but I wanna run one by you.

This person says that she has some potatoes out of her garden that have raised spots on them.

And they try to scrub them off, but they won't come off.

They want to know what causes that.

And number two, can they utilize those potatoes?

- So raised spots can be a couple of things.

So one thing I think we talked about a few weeks ago would be commons gap that can be kind of raised.

And then another thing that we see around this time when we harvest potatoes is what we call black scarf, which would look like black pimples that you can't wash off and that's caused by a fungal pathogen.

It doesn't affect the edibility of the potato.

I would probably peel them, but you could totally eat them.

I would not recommend the plant using those potatoes as seed because that's the way to perpetuate the pathogen.

And in the growing season, this pathogen can cause what we call Rhizoctonia, canker.

So we would see like poor emergence and just vine die off, et cetera.

And so if you have these potatoes harvested out of your garden or beds, I would probably rotate away from potatoes for a few years just to give some time for the pathogen population to simmer down, We'll try not to perpetuate that disease.

- Okay, great answer.

Thank you.

Marsha, this person from Great Falls would like to know what would be some of the early signs that you might see in a producer or farmer that would indicate they have some memory problems?

- Well, early on, it starts as not only for... We forget where our keys are now and then, but when it constantly happens.

And I know me because my mom had it, my grandma had it.

Every time I forget something, I think, oh my gosh, it's starting.

And so just a bit of memory loss.

And then my mom, she put deviled eggs in the freezer.

Well, you don't put deviled eggs in the freezer, but she didn't know anymore.

And one of my colleagues told me his mom kept making the same thing every day for lunch that there wasn't anything different.

And at first, they just thought, well, it was a handy thing.

But as the symptoms got worse, they realized, oh.

And my mom, we went out to the farm from another town, And it was a town that they did all kinds of things in ******, Oklahoma, and she couldn't find her way.

And when I would go visit, she wouldn't remember the paths.

I would for a long time used photographs and those photographs she got where she didn't know the grandchildren.

And then finally, she didn't even know us.

She knew us in person, but she didn't know us in the photographs and the only person she could remember was my dad.

So those would just be some ideas, but there's some great information from the Alzheimer Association.

They have 10 early warning signs just to say, hey, take a look at these and if you feel that you're in that situation, why not?

Ask the doctor for a diagnosis, see if it's medication.

It could be that it's medication and not some form of dementia.

- So I have these senior moments and of course, I am up there in age.

One of the things I have problems with is remembering people's names.

- Well, welcome to the club.

So don't worry about that.

That's been a problem for me since I was in my forties.

I need to visit with people, find out a little bit more about them.

And then as I get that conversation, then I'm better at the name.

And last week, we had Extension annual conference and we had a lot of new people.

And oh my goodness, I was going around, saying you and you, so welcome to the club.

- Okay, I feel better.

Go ahead.

- I have a follow up question from Marsha.

I had heard it one time that there's no test for Alzheimer.

Is that true?

Like, you can't actually diagnose it with a test?

- Yeah, the diagnosis is very, very difficult.

Although we have a lot of things better than we used to, there's now memory test that the doctor can give.

And now with the most recent thing that there is some sort of blood test that can be given.

And everybody is really excited about that.

I got really excited too until I discovered that it's very expensive, it's invasive because it's in the spinal area.

So it's gonna be a while before that gets to us.

And I'm concerned about those individuals that say, "Well, my mom doesn't have Alzheimer's, she has dementia."

Well, Alzheimer's is a form of dementia.

60 to 80% of the cases of dementia is Alzheimer's.

That's the largest amount of the dementia we have.

But there's folks out there that have Lewy body, there's frontotemporal something and others.

And so again, the Alzheimer's Association is the best organization to go to, and it's on the web, but they also have publications.

That's one of the things that we discovered in the town hall meetings is, yeah, everybody's going nuts about computers.

You can always get this on computers, but by gum they want it in written format.

And so that's why I'm glad is Extension still realizes that.

And we've got this new magazine as an example.

I've got fact sheets that also provide that, but so does the Alzheimer's Association.

- Okay, thank you.

Good information.

Abi, and this is an interesting question.

What's the proper temperature from Great Falls to store onions and garlic?

- That's a good question.

I don't know that off the top of my head, but that would be a great question to contact your county Extension agent.

Great Falls you said?

Yeah, so that would be Rose.

Contact Rose and she'd be an excellent resource.

She can look that up for you.

But yeah, you wanna make sure that any kind of temperature storage, it's usually you want it to be stored in a cool, dry place.

But those specific temperatures would be great for your county Extension agent.

- I don't know if this is accurate, but I store my onions in the garage, it does not freeze.

It gets down to 34 or 35 degrees.

Maybe in the wintertime, up to 50 during the day.

And I've kept them through the entire winter very successfully.

I don't know about garlic.

I go through garlic too rapidly.

And it will last a little longer.

- Would it be similar for winter squash?

- Probably.

It probably is pretty similar.

And yeah, that's the below 50 degree benchmark.

But if you're kind of wanting to be really precise to maximize your storage, that's when I'd look more closely.

And especially for maybe fluctuating temperatures, if you're worried about longevity, they may be an issue too.

- I kept potatoes downstairs, I went to the potato improvement association meeting and they had those fancy purple, and yellow, and red.

And I was so excited to bring those home, but there were more than we could eat, and so I put them downstairs.

And then later, oh, they're downstairs.

I went and there were roots or- - Sprouts.

- Sprouts sticking out of them and I thought, whoops.

But they were still fine, still fine.

- Okay.

Speaking of potatoes, we had a question come in and a photograph a couple weeks ago.

We haven't got to it.

I skipped over the week it showed up.

It's about black heart of potato.

So if we can look at that picture and you can explain what's happened.

- Yeah.

Well, first of all, I think black heart is a great name for a pirate ship.

But for this disease, well, it's actually not a disease as an organism cost.

It is what we consider a physiological disorder.

You can see it here in the picture.

I mean, the word is pretty descriptive, right?

You just see a black or dark colored center in your potatoes and these ones looked like they were boiled before they discovered the black heart.

So it's a physiological disorder, and it often occurs when we have anaerobic conditions or a lack of oxygen getting through the potato tuber tissue.

This can happen in the soil as the tubers are forming and maturing, but it can also happen in storage.

So in the soil, often it's when we maybe over water or when we just got a lot of precipitation and the soil is water saturated, and so we don't have a good air on oxygen flow.

And in storage, it can relate to two warm temperatures at harvest and in a process of transporting your tubers into storage, et cetera.

And then knowing that those are the causes just working on improving soil structure so it drains better and really paying attention to the temperatures at potato harvest and during storage can prevent that.

I mean, it doesn't look pretty, but it shouldn't affect edibility.

I would probably not dare to eat the dark parts.

But one way actually to discern this from, for example, a disease issue, like there's something called perfume leak where the inner part of the potato starts rotting.

This would still be firm.

When it's a disease like perfume leak, it will be mushy and it will probably not smell very good either.

So yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

I apologize for not getting that on before.

No worries.

I'm glad we had it for today.

- Okay.

Have a butte caller that recently harvested carrots that are limp and rubber-like right after being pulled from the ground.

What is that?

Then we're gonna get to another carrot question about these.

- Yeah, so sometimes moisture issues can cause limp and rubbery carrots because carrots are a modified root.

And if you've noticed even with your plants, if they're underwater, you sometimes can have really kind of rubbery roots as opposed to firm roots.

It's possible that's the case.

It is also possible it could be something else.

So it might be worth getting, keeping an eye on that and if that happens again to get that sent to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab or go to your county Extension office to confirm it's not a disease issue or something like that.

- We had a sample earlier this year of care that had phytoplasma disease, and they were also limp and rubbery, but they had a lot of other issues.

So you would notice that the aboveground tissue of the carrot plants would just not look normal.

Like could be a bunch of or like profuse growth and then discoloration purple and yellow.

And oftentimes those carrot roots also are very woody and hairy.

So it wouldn't just be a limp carrot.

There would be a lot of other stuff noticeable of it.

- Okay.

So my question is, I grew these in a garden, my garden actually, and this is the only kind of yellow carrot amongst hundreds of orange carrots.

Why did I have one yellow carrot and the rest orange?

- So Jack likes to trick me with carrot questions.

So, I mean, it could be one of two things.

One beta carotene is responsible for that orange coloration in carrots.

And so if possible that there could be a mutation that it's not producing as much beta carotene making it yellow.

Sometimes you can also have maybe a seed that was mixed in that is from yellow carrots that was mixed in with the rest of your carrots.

So you might have one odd carrot coming out of the mix.

But I would taste test and see what you think, see if they taste any different.

- They don't, believe me.

Every other year I get one like this.

But if you look at the top of this carrot, there's been some kind of creature that's been dining on this carrot and that would probably be- - [Uta] Avol.

- They love carrots.

Yeah.

And actually, I used to have a golden retriever that dug carrots and loved them.

He'd dig them out of the ground.

- Why do you let them get so big?

- I just grow big carrots.

- Jack, I would really like to put those here with the witch grass as our Halloween crops because they have like a grotesque spirits about them.

So I think they should be here with our witch grass.

- Beautiful.

- Centerpiece for a table.

- Yes, yes.

- So so be it.

A Missoula caller says her husband was showing signs of dementia.

His doctor did an MRI of the head and confirmed that it was dementia, not Alzheimer's.

Do you want to touch on that at all?

- Well, you have different physicians perhaps calling it different names.

And if it's not Alzheimer's, then is it Lewy body?

Is it one of the others?

If it is a dementia, then what type of dementia?

Because that lets us know, like Lewy body, the individuals tend to get a little upset.

They may call people names, they may get a little aggressive.

And so once we know what kind it is, we can look at those symptoms.

And again, the Alzheimer Association has information on these other diseases as well.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And recently, we now have an Alzheimer Foundation and the Alzheimer Foundation is just getting started nationally, but they've got a couple of children's books that can be read by individuals to help kids understand why maybe grandma or grandpa or the next door neighbor has some of these signs and how they could be helpful.

And I think that's a great idea 'cause kids could get scared if they don't know what's going on.

- Well, I agree.

I have a color wanting to know what this creature is right here and what am I, and this is what I wear six days a week because I enjoy honey ducks.

This happens to be a hooded merganser, a very beautiful bird.

It's a wooden mount, but this is in the spring plumage.

So you wouldn't see them quite that stunning in the fall.

A question about black henbane.

This came from Whitehall.

They would like to know how to identify it and how deadly is it.

And I think it has something to do with Halloween historically, doesn't it?

- Yeah.

This is fun that this question came in, and I have heard that black henbane has been increasing in some parts of the state.

So black henbane is a biennial tap rooted weed.

It gets quite large.

It can be three or four feet tall.

It has very broad leaves with a white mid vein.

We might even have a photo or two on... Yeah, there's a picture of the flowers.

The flowers are beautiful.

They're pale yellow with this purple venation and purple centers.

And then you can see those big, broad leaves with the creamy white mid vein.

And yes, it's a biennial, it has a taproot.

It's actually pretty easy to control.

You wanna keep it from producing flowers.

You can pop that big, thick taproot out of the ground.

So you may see this plant earlier in the summer, it would've had flowers like this.

But one thing that's kind of nice about this plant is this time of year, you can actually see the mature stems from a previous year even.

And they'll be kind of a pale brown color.

They have a capsule that pops open that spreads the seeds.

So this plant is toxic.

It does have some toxicity, but at the same time, there are people who use it for some of its medicinal qualities, but there's a very fine line there.

And I certainly don't recommend using it 'cause we don't even really know what the dosages are to get the medical qualities out of it, the medicinal qualities out of it.

It's a great plant for this time of year because it is associated with... Like, folklore associates it with witchcraft.

So I guess that's a theme for the night is witchcraft, but it's medicinal qualities and it's toxicity qualities and witchcraft.

And I was reading once... Well, we actually have a mont guide on black henbane.

We have some stories in there about the folklore.

And one of the stories is that witches would rub black henbane on their brooms and that's what allowed them to fly on a broom.

- I knew that.

(panel laughing) - I'm glad you didn't 'cause I didn't know that one.

- Well, Uta was just waiting for me to get to that part of the story.

So yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff about black henbane.

Black henbane also was used in Germany in the Middle Ages because one of its properties is it actually alleviates the inebriating qualities of beer.

So you could put a little bit in brews of beer and the beer would not make you drunk as quickly.

- Did you try it out?

- I didn't try that out, but the story goes that after a few poisonings because they put too much black henbane in the beer, they stopped doing that.

So lots of fun stories about black henbane.

It's a really cool plant.

And the good news is it's also easy to kill.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- It is toxic to livestock tool.

Is it not?

- Yes.

I think all parts of the plant are toxic at large doses.

- Okay.

And it's hard for an animal to get that much.

- Yeah.

I mean, it's not attractive to an animal.

It's real hairy.

It's not an a plant that an animal is going to go to and eat it.

It would only eat it inadvertently, like if it got bailed in some hay.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- Well, outside of my witches garden, where would I find like henbane?

What habitat does it- - Oh yeah.

Well, it really likes disturbed areas.

I don't know if you noticed in the one picture with the whole plant, it's kind of growing on a pile of disturbed soil.

So you will find it pastures, disturbed pastures, field edges, parking lots, any place you have a lot of disturbance and just kind of bare soil.

- Okay.

- Well, and I saw it went like that coming down a highway.

And I had my husband stop because it wouldn't take a photo of it as a wildflower.

And it's the only when I looked it up in the book that I realized I shouldn't have been touching it.

- Yeah.

- But I got a good photo.

- It's not toxic to the skin, but it does have a lot of hairs on it so it can be a skin irritant.

- Okay.

- How was your hangover the next day?

- I do that with a lot of flowers and Jane says, Marsha, this is not a pretty wildflower.

It's obnoxious weed.

- All right, let's move on to another one.

And this is one for Abi.

And I actually have had a picture that I wanted to save until this question came in.

And of course, this person has tulips, he also has deer, so he has no tulips left.

Number one, how do you get rid of deer nicely that are affecting your tulip bed?

I don't think you do.

And this is a picture that was sent in that shows if you start training deer very early, they really like the tulips.

A little fawn in a tulip bed.

So have at it.

- So yeah, this is always a tough question.

The first time I learned about deer-resistant plants, tulips were described as deer candy.

And other than a really good fence system, a few ways that you can kind of reduce the amount of deer feeding could be to surround those tulips with other plants that are unpalatable to deer.

And those could be plants that have a really strong scent like alliums.

It could be plants that are toxic like irises, things like that.

So incorporating irises, alliums, plants that have those hairy leaves, plants that might have like prickly spine, incorporating them around your tulips would maybe condition them to not come to that patch very frequently.

So like henbane, basically.

So yeah, potentially, your black henbane.

- Okay, there are other ways, but I'm not gonna get into that tonight.

Marsha, this person hears you talk about a magazine.

What is the magazine they want to know?

Oh yes, we want to let people know about our Alzheimer magazine.

And this is volume one.

And in this particular one, we've got Alzheimer's disease.

We talk about the challenges with agriculture producers because one research project said, you know what, we have 46% of ag-related occupations, et cetera, and that includes fisheries.

But 46% of those have developed Alzheimer's.

Now, we don't know why.

There's certainly lots of research going on about that to think about, what is it?

Is it pesticide?

Is it aluminum?

Is it copper?

Is it whatever?

And obviously, we don't have the answers and there's lots and lots of money being donated to people to do some research in this area.

So if people want a copy of this, we have an order form on the website.

But again, if people don't have a computer, contact your account Extension agent and they will be able to get you a copy of this.

And the order form, we will get to it and we'll send it out as much as possible.

Now, we have one more coming up, I hope by December the first.

And that's going to be volume two, where we're going to look at wandering, we're going to look at safety around the home.

There's long-term care.

And in my area, of course, financial and legal aspects.

What is it we need to do?

Because we're discovering that 18% of our caregivers pass away before the person with Alzheimer's.

- [Jack] Wow.

- Now that makes it very, very difficult.

And when we have a 85-year-old caregiver for an 89-year-old person, 56% of those people have chronic diseases.

So we need to really help the caregivers and that's one of the neat things our specialist in gerontology is doing.

He's got money that next year, he's going to have a memory travel thing.

He calls it herb.

And he and herb are going to travel around.

They will have these publications, and it's going to be like a miniature membrane cafe where people can come in, talk to him about Alzheimer's, pick up some resources.

I think it's just going to be a wonderful program for next fall.

- On that note, Ollie, which is Usher Lifelong Learning Institute, this spring has a series unhealthy aging.

It has not been published yet, but if you get online and look up Ollie, that course will be offered here on campus, probably a small charge, but somebody by the name of Dr. Colts, I think, will be teaching that.

- That's Dan?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, that's a gerontology specialist for MSU Extension.

And he is just a superb specialist, and we're just delighted to have him because of his creative ideas of taking when...

He knows where to find money.

I seem to have problems with that.

But I will say for our publication, when I went around and asked some individual, like AERP, they said, "Oh, this is necessary."

They gave me money.

The Western Risk Management Association did.

Ag West is another one that provided, and I don't want to leave anybody out, but I think I have a logo up that if they put it.

They'll see the people that believed in this project.

Oh, the Gerontology Center at the University of Montana.

So all of these believed in this project and it is just been heart-gratifying to have them see the finished product.

And I'm thrilled to see it as well.

- I think it's great.

And we mentioned University of Montana, and I promised some people that I show this.

This is a student that hails from Amsterdam, Montana, right here in the Gowan Valley.

Colter Stevenson was the first student in 30 years to get a Rhode Scholar from the University of Montana.

And this young man speaks four languages, majors in four different areas, has a big interest in environmental energy production.

A great young man.

Again, his parents Kurt and Andrea Stevenson live out in Amsterdam.

And I know I'm proud of him, and I'm sure they are too.

Now, I have another caller here and this said, "I promised four weeks ago that we would provide the huckleberry coffee or crump cake recipe for those in the viewing audience."

I think we're going to be able to put that on the Ag Live newsletter.

I'll get with Paul, our producer, and make sure that that is included in one of the newsletters.

And now back to Marsha, who helped you with these publications?

- Oh, thank goodness, I had assistance.

Vicki Schmall is a retired gerontology specialist with Oregon State University, and she helped out.

And then we had Dee Jepsen from the Ohio State University.

And she was one that did, way back in 2013, a publication on Alzheimer's and farm safety.

And I thought, oh, I wanna get this gal to help me out.

And then we had some individuals from the McLaughlin Research Center, Brown and...

Anyway, sorry, I forgot your name.

They were very helpful.

I send copies to them, they send them back.

And we revise more than I thought we'd ever have to.

But I also had 20 reviewers that included Extension agents, individuals whose spouse had Alzheimer's, some whose grandparents had it.

And individuals like that look for different things.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- And so while I kind of sometimes it really is helpful to get a finished product that's understandable and meaningful to the people that are going to read it.

- I agree entirely.

You did a great job with that.

I'm gonna open up to everybody here, and we've had two callers on this tonight.

This one was from Helleiner.

They would like to know how long they should leave his lawn grass in the winter and their caller would like the answer in inches, not long or short.

So your opinion, and then we'll ask anybody else that wants to chime in on that.

- Yeah, so my ideal lawn height is usually between three and a half to four inches for healthy lawns.

And if you're kind of worried about any disease issues, so if you are worried about snow mold and things like that or if you have a shady area, I'd reduce that to three inches.

But if you have just a normal lawn landscape that gets plenty of sun, having the taller grass, so above three and a half inches around that height, that makes your root system more robust and healthy.

It allows more insulation of the crowns, which protects those grass plants and allows them to survive winter better.

So I aim for about a three and a half inch to four inch lawn unless I have a shady environment or area where snow would pile up and just sit on the turf for a long period of time.

- I do what Abi says, and I would agree, wherever you dump your snow over the winters where you have to snow mold.

so that's where I would probably mow once over before snow comes.

- Okay, so here's my 2 cents.

I have a lot of trees with a lot of leaves.

and I'm going to mow tomorrow if it doesn't rain.

I should have done it today because we had a high wind.

But if you mow it short and you get a wind like we did today, those leaves kind of disappear into your neighbor's yard so you don't have to rake them.

And it works.

Believe me.

I learned this many years ago when I lived in Lincoln, so... - Another option, Jack, would be to mow your leaves to mulch those leaves onto your turf and then you add those nutrients back into the soil.

- If they all had fallen by now, yes, I agree, but I still have a lot of leaves on the Aspen.

X This is a late fall.

- It is a little bit late.

- Unbelievable.

I actually picked tomatoes this past week, the third week in October.

I had tomatoes near the ground that were still healthy.

- I found strawberries in my backyard.

I'm picking strawberries right now.

- Wow.

- Wow.

- That's wild.

- It is.

And I tell you what, I love these extended Indian summers.

So they're beautiful.

This is a great year.

It's not been that good for duck hunting yet, but that will improve when it gets a little colder.

This person out of Manhattan is planted his winter wheat and it's coming up spotty.

He says the seeds have sprouted but will not break through the ground.

Any clue what might be going on?

- Could be all sorts of reasons.

Coming up spotty might be a question like how extended those areas are and where in the field they are.

The first question I would ask is probably, did you use a seed treatment or not?

So if you didn't use a seed treatment, then my guess would be it's probably a seed or seedling pathogen that is just kind of attacking the seedling and weakens the plant, so it's having hard time breaking through the ground.

If you do use a seed treatment, well, one option is that maybe the pathogen is resistant against the fungicide, but let's not go there.

It could be related to cultural practices, like maybe there are areas where they planted a bit deeper so the plans are taking longer to come up and break through the soil surface.

We had one case in the diagnostic lab earlier this year where it turns out that there were areas where the soil pH was a lot lower.

And I actually observed the symptoms of low soil pH damage on the seedling.

So typically, what you see is kind of swollen root tips.

And so in that case, I think that's what was...

I mean, harming the plants and slowing them down.

So the soil pH usually causes nutrient imbalances or even toxicities that are obviously impairing the plant's fitness and the speed at which they grow.

- Okay, yeah, thank you.

Most of the winter wheat is in, and I've been out around a little bit and was out in eastern Montana last week and most of the winter wheat I've seen really looks pretty good.

- Yeah, yeah.

- They've had just in most areas enough fall rain to get the crop growing and a pretty good.

So I like it.

It looks good so far.

Jane, this person from Bozeman, has been told that Roundup no longer contains glyphosate and that's the active ingredient in Roundup.

Is that true?

- Yeah.

Yes and no.

So Roundup, the trade name has been around a long time.

And historically, it's been the active ingredient glyphosate.

And the two terms often get used interchangeably, Roundup and glyphosate.

Well, more recently, within this year, the Roundup trade name has been starting to be used with a variety of products from the same company, some of which do not contain any glyphosate.

So more than once on this show we've talked about Roundup for lawns.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- And Roundup for lawns actually contains four different active ingredients, none of which are glyphosate, which is good because glyphosate is non-selective.

And if you spray it on your lawn, you will kill your lawn.

So it's tricky and it's very confusing.

There have been lawsuits against the company that produces Roundup associated with glyphosate.

So glyphosate is disappearing from some products, but the trade name is still being used.

So this really emphasizes the importance of reading labels and knowing what herbicide active ingredients are in the product that you're buying.

You will come across products on the shelf that say Roundup, but there is no glyphosate in them.

And you will come across products that say Roundup and it might be nothing but glyphosate.

- Okay.

- So it's confusing.

- It is confusing.

- And it's all the more motivation and reason why it's so important to read the label.

- I have a good friend in West Chicago who decided to do his own lawn care for a while.

He had a big yard, and he used Roundup with glyphosate to control his dandelions.

And an acre and a half had to be resorted, so you really do have to be cautious.

No doubt about that.

From Jordan.

Marsha, at what point do you decide that long term memory care is necessary for someone with Alzheimer's?

- Oh, that's a difficult one because it's so individual.

I think bottom line is the safety issue and the caregiver.

If the caregiver simply can't do it anymore, then what are our choices?

And if we don't have an a rest home or nursing home in the community, what are we gonna do now?

Because we had 12 that ended up closing down because of COVID.

And so I don't know the situation in Jordan, but sometimes I've heard of people having to drive four hours to get to where their loved one is now.

And so you really got... And asking friends, asking other people, what have you seen the person doing?

If they're out there all the time and they're getting lost, they're riding a horse and getting lost, they're driving and getting lost, there's some things we can still do, take away the keys, et cetera.

But it's really safety for the caregiver and safety for that individual.

And of course, the concern is cost.

The average cost of Montana is over $8,000 a month.

And that is tough for people to meet that financial responsibility.

So one of the things I have in this second one is, what are the alternatives?

If we don't have enough money, what can we look at doing and qualify for?

So I get into some of those issues in volume two.

- Good job.

That's excellent.

- Question for Marsha.

I imagine the having a conversation with the affected person about transitioning, for example, to assisted living or something like that can be quite difficult.

Do you have any guidance in one of your publications on how to approach that kind of conversation?

- We do have and the Alzheimer's Association does too.

And we are so blessed in Montana to have an Alzheimer's association that has several people here in the state.

And what they do is go out and they give educational programs.

They've done some training with some of our Extension agents as well.

And so yeah.

But you've gotta remember that when you're talking with someone from Alzheimer's, they're going to possibly disagree and say the sky is black.

And what you've got to do is say, well, I hadn't realized that instead of getting into an argument with someone about that because it's not their fault, it's the brain.

And one of the things the Alzheimer's Association has is a photograph.

And I love it because it shows a normal brain and it shows a brain with Alzheimer's.

And once you see that brain, you have a better understanding.

It's not their fault.

I mean, people wanna argue about some of these kinds of things.

So yes, there's going to be a conversation.

And certainly, we did with our mom before we finally made the decision, but our decision was to take mom back from where she was living with my sister back to the hometown because we had a great rest center there.

And we hoped that there would be individuals that would go visit her.

And they did early on.

And the thing is, sometimes people say, "Oh, they don't know me anymore."

- [Jack] Yeah.

- Yeah.

Well, mom put her finger on my nose and she said, "Who are you?"

And although I knew it was coming, tears were starting to form and I go, "Hey, I'm just somebody that really likes to play balloon volleyball with you."

And the rest home has the balloons and these things you use in the swimming pool and you do that.

And then we work some other people in, and they played it too.

And so even if they don't remember you, the research shows they have good feelings about having a visit.

So I encourage everybody out there, go ahead visit.

It doesn't matter that they don't know you.

The Alzheimer's Association has things that you can do while you visit a person.

I had mom sorting my wildflower cards into yellow piles, purple pie and blue.

And she felt like she was doing something.

And it made her feel good and it also made me feel good.

So we can all make those kind of contributions and that includes friends.

Let's keep those friends in mind and still be available for them.

- Great answer.

This is an interesting one.

I'll throw it to Abi.

This person has some bovine residue that her neighbor's cows left in her yard and they want to know whether or not that she can put that into a flower pot and utilize it as fertilizer.

- Usually, using like fresh animal waste is often a tricky subject.

I wouldn't recommend that.

And it could be for multiple reasons.

One of which means could be that it has a lot of nitrogen, which could burn those plants.

So letting that age for a while, I would probably let that age for a while before doing that.

But any kind of fresh animal waste, there are some challenges and risks associated with using those in your flower gardens.

- Okay.

- Something we talk about is that there might be herbicide residue in there too.

- That's a good point.

- Some funky-looking flowers potentially.

- Well, and that's very true.

You never know what your neighbor has sprayed on their weeds.

We've seen that many, many times through the years.

I've got you up.

This person from Helena has a lot of problems with elm leaf beetles.

She injected a tree with insecticide.

Do you recommend that?

- Usually, for a leaf-feeding insect, I think using an insecticide that's a systemic, which means you inject it in a tree, can be pretty tricky.

A lot of times, that chemical doesn't translocate as well to all of the tissue.

For a lot of insects that are feeding on leaf tissues, often people recommend contact insecticides, so something that's going to hit the insect itself.

For more specific kind of information, it'd be good to know just the extent of damage.

Most trees can withstand a good amount of feeding damage just on the leaves themselves.

And so maybe there are other IPM practices that you can incorporate that would reduce the population of these insects or keeping your tree overall healthy can also help with that.

So this might be something to follow up with me on and we can talk a little bit more about what your specific issues are and what might be the best strategy.

- Okay.

Thank you.

And I almost forgot to bring this up, but we had an email question this week about a farmer who has a fair number of skunks on his property, and they want to know whether or not they should control these skunks or not.

Are they doing any damage or do they help in suppressing rodents?

And I called Stephen Vantassel of Department of Ag to answer this question and his response was, "They don't really do much to control rodents, maybe a few volts and that's it.

They don't stink unless they are protecting some of their space, but they are pretty devastating on eggs from nesting birds and water fowls."

So my response is, "Do what you want to do, but I know what I do when I say them."

Okay, we have another question here for Uta, and this came in also via email.

And they want to know if they have diseases in their chickpeas on the foliage.

Will that cause a problem with the grain?

- Hmm.

It could very well be a lot of the foliar diseases, the fungal ones anyway of... Actually, also the bacterial ones.

A lot of the foliar diseases on pulse crops can transfer onto the seed.

And so you may not observe actual symptoms on the seed itself, but it could still be there.

So if you are thinking of using that grain as seed in the future, you may wanna consider sending a sample to the regional post crop diagnostic lab and they can test for the presence.

The most commonly requested test is the Ascochyta-Plus test that tests for the five most common fungal diseases that we observe on post crops.

And yeah, that's where I would start with that.

But yeah, can very well be on the seat and cause an issue in the future.

- Okay.

Tell us about this book.

I'm holding it up for the camera to take a quick look at it.

Tell us what it is and what people can do with it.

- Sure.

This is what we call the scouting guide.

It is a very long title, but basically it's about insect pests, diseases, abiotic disorders, and also just an identification guide for shops and trees that we commonly grow in Montana.

That's a resource that is produced through MSU Extension and can be acquired through that, or maybe your local Extension office has some copies available still.

Yeah, it's a great resource that I honestly use a lot of the time to get some quick information on a disease or abiotic disorder issue.

Yeah.

- It's a great book.

Yeah, I've looked through it many times.

The photographs are excellent.

We're getting down.

I'm gonna ask Marsha.

Anything that you want to leave with the audience in a few seconds that has to do with Alzheimer's and the care of people?

- Okay.

Well, in case you didn't know, my costume is the Walk for Alzheimer's.

And in many of our communities, we have a walk in the summertime and you have the opportunity to help raise funds for the Alzheimer's Association.

It's something that many of us are going to experience either with family members or friends.

And so this information can be helpful to all of us because many of us do know someone.

And so how could I be a good friend?

How could I be a good daughter?

And that's what we want people to know and that's why MSU Extension and the Alzheimer's Association has the information available.

And we have these little flowers that people can get.

And on these, you put the name of the persons that you're walking for.

So I had three names, my grandpa, my mom, and a very good friend, Rod Bruner, who passed away here in Bozeman.

- Thank you.

And, Marsha, thank you for being here.

I like the costumes.

This will now be an annual event at Halloween.

Folks, we will not be back next week because this is our last program for the fall.

We'll be back this spring.

Enjoy some reruns.

Meanwhile, stay safe and have a good week.

Good night.

- [Announcer] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(bright music) - [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 Wheaton Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.