- Montana Ag Live is made possible by, (upbeat music) The Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, The Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, The Gallatin Gardeners Club, and The Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

- Welcome to Montana Ag Live.

My name is Darrin Boss, Associate Director of the Montana Ag Experiment Stations.

We welcome you to Montana Ag Live today, coming to you from Montana Public Television in Bozeman, Montana, from the beautiful and dynamic campus of Montana State University.

Today, our panel is wonderful, and we have some distinguished people all on that.

And we're very excited for today's action.

To my far left, Dr. Perry Miller, a cropping system agronomist who's worked with oilseeds and pulses his entire career.

Needing no introduction, but I'm going to do it, is President Waded Cruzado, 15-year President of Montana State University.

Welcome, and we're so happy you're here tonight.

- Pleasure to be here.

- [Darrin] Dr. Jane Mangold, extension weed rangeland specialist.

Close, Jane?

- That's good enough.

- Perfect.

Thanks for being here, Jane.

Dr. Abi Saeed, our extension horticultural specialist.

So we're really excited for a great show tonight.

I'd like to introduce Nancy Blake, who's on our phones.

Thank you, Nancy.

And we're super excited tonight to have Candice Lamour, a senior graduating in Ag Communications.

Go Ag degrees, right?

Who's going to be graduating in May in just a few years.

Congratulations on your graduation, and thank you for being here this evening.

A great night tonight.

I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Cruzado for a few opening comments, if you don't mind.

- Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

Thank you so much for the invitation.

Always a pleasure to come to Montana Ag Live.

I was trying to think.

I think I have been here for five, maybe this is my sixth time in the 15 years that I have been serving Montana State University.

And I love it because I get to hear from many constituents, but also I love coming to Montana Ag Live, Darrin, because I always learn new things.

So thank you for having me here today.

- Outstanding.

We're so happy to have you.

As you can tell, Jack's not here tonight.

We're missing Jack.

So you have a fill-in of a rookie panelist.

We'll do the best we can.

We'll make it.

I do have another public service announcement.

Jack wants wanted me to tell Joe to get better.

He has six broken ribs.

Tell him don't let a fence fall on him.

The lady at the airport told me he's one of the biggest Montana AG Live fan.

And Jack was going to wish him his best.

So with that, let's jump right into some questions.

Jane from Kalispell.

At coffee this week, my friend was talking about Phragmites invading Montana.

What are they talking about?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So Phragmites is a very large-statured grass, and it kind of grows in wild and natural areas.

The grass can grow six to eight feet tall.

And it's an interesting species because we have a native Phragmites, and then there is a subspecies of Phragmites that is invasive, and they look very similar to each other.

It takes a very detailed eye looking at very detailed parts of the flower head, mostly of the two different subspecies, to tell them apart.

And they like riparian areas.

So we do have a, there's native Phragmites all across the state.

You'll see it pretty common, but then the native Phragmites, it's only present in a couple places in the state.

It is on the state noxious weed list, and we are trying to be very proactive to keep it from establishing here in any large quantities.

If you go east into the Dakotas, Nebraska, you'll find it.

It's a pretty invasive species along their river systems.

There's a lot of it down around the Salt Lake, the Great Salt Lake.

And we're doing our best to keep that from becoming problem in Montana.

And our riparian areas are so critical.

We don't have a lot of riparian areas in Montana, and they're so critical for our wildlife, our livestock, our water systems, and keeping them from being invaded by this large-statured plant is important.

It is difficult to tell the native from the non-native.

So if you think you've found Phragmites, the best thing you can do is get it into your local extension office or weed district office and they'll take a look at it.

More than likely it'll get sent to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, because it does take a very discerning eye to tell the invasive from the native.

- Jane, generally, what does it look like?

Does it have a big, feathery seed head?

- It does have a big feathery plume, kind of like pompous grass, but not that feathery, if you're familiar with that.

- Is that an ornamental?

- That's an ornamental that has become invasive in certain parts of the country.

But yeah, it's a grass that'll be six to eight feet tall, real leafy, and then it'll have this big plume on the top.

Yep.

- Outstanding.

Thanks, Jane.

President, from Dillon, thank you for supporting the Wool Lab.

Please tell people how important and why it was such an initiative.

- Well, the Wool Lab has a very special place in my heart, not only because we have extraordinary individuals in that business, but also when I first arrived back in 2010, we had just closed the Wool Lab at New Mexico State University, leaving only two wool labs in the nation, here in Montana, and Texas.

So we're very proud of our Wool Lab.

It's still in the same wonderful building and location.

So it was about time for us to grow with the times, right, and give them the technology and the access to the equipment that they need.

And that's exactly what we did.

And thanks to the Montana legislature and thanks to an extraordinary group of wonderful donors, including alumni producers, we have been able to fundraise the necessary funding, and then to partner with the Vet Diagnostic Lab.

And so we're going to be coexisting under the same roof, and it's going to be located on 19th Street, and we can hardly wait.

And hats off to our wonderful wool producers in the State of Montana for a very high-quality product.

We're very proud of it.

- It's very exciting.

And some of the wool products made in Montana and the people, how we're expanding the fine wool market in Montana.

So thank you for that.

Appreciate that.

Abi, I'm hearing about people receiving seeds in the mail.

What should I do if I get to these seeds that I didn't order?

- Yeah, that's a really great question.

And this came up yesterday as well at the Gold Country Master Gardener Symposium.

So if you guys might recall, a few years ago, people were getting unsolicited seeds in the mail.

It's never a good idea to plant anything that you don't know the origin of.

So if you are receiving any seeds like that, any unsolicited seeds, please contact your local extension office or contact the Montana Department of Agriculture.

And don't put them into the ground or anything, because you can have different pathogens and pests or invasive plants that can come in this way.

So make sure that you turn them into Montana Department of Agriculture or your local extension office.

- So should they just throw them in the trash where they could go to the landfill, or should they burn their little packet, or, I mean, what are we seeing?

What are you talking about, Abi?

- I mean, I would bring, so people have been getting kind of randomly mailed to their addresses, seeds from unknown origin.

So if you have it, just leave it unopened.

It'll feel like a seed packet.

Just bring that straight to your county extension office.

- Outstanding.

Okay, thank you.

- Can I have a follow-up?

Abi, when that happened a couple years ago, if I remember right, it was more of an attempt to get people's credit card numbers and whatnot.

It was not like a bio-terrorism type.

- More of a phishing kind of scam.

So, yeah, we're not concerned about anything like that, but with anything that you don't know, it's never a good idea.

- You never know.

I would add, too, that a lot of people want to seed native, native wildflowers or wildflowers around And I would really encourage people to read the label of seed they purchase, because sometimes there's species in there that might be a little aggressive in our environment.

I always encourage people to go to their local store, their local garden nursery place, and see what sort of seed mix.

They might be making a custom mix that will do well in that area.

And then they're more alert to actually getting species that are native to our area.

- Absolutely.

And local conservation districts are also often a great partner.

They also create these really great seed mixes that would be a better option than purchasing them online, where you're not sure where those seeds may be native.

- Outstanding.

Perry.

'Tis the season.

60 degrees in Bozeman, Montana.

Getting warm all over Montana.

Fire up the drills?

- Yeah.

So there's such a payoff for early seeding in Montana that sometimes there's tension between, hey, is the soil too cold to seed?

And yet we know what our precipitation It's gonna turn hot and dry at some point.

So the more growth you can have done before that Fourth of July, usually the better off you are.

And so if you've got seed that's properly treated with fungicide, it should be able to stand quite cold soil temperatures.

Sometimes you hear this magic number, "Wait till it's 50 degrees."

50 degrees at what time of day, at what depth, for how long?

And so we've done research with a lot of different crops over the years, and the base growing temperature for everything, almost everything we grow in Montana, is 32 degrees.

It actually literally can start developing at that temperature.

And so if you've got proper seed treatment, I'm not concerned at all.

Now, if you're an organic farmer, that could be a different story.

You want to try and get that seed emerge very quickly in case there are any pathogenic issues.

But generally, I'm not too shy about early seeding.

- Outstanding.

Thank you, Perry.

President Cruzado, from Great Falls, do you have any legislative updates?

- So the legislature is coming to a close pretty soon and what we understand that we have is the package that the office of the Commissioner of Higher Education put together in terms of the pay plan, including some opportunities for the Montana university system.

I want to give a big shout out to Llew Jones.

Llew last week made a move to grant us $320,000 in one-time dollars for two faculty positions in precision ag.

I think that will be a start of something that is very, very good.

As you know, the College of Agriculture has been doing headway.

We have great plans.

Our vice president, Sreekala Bajwa is an expert in precision agriculture.

We have all the components, all the pieces and being able to attract two faculty members will be important.

These are one-time dollars, but of course there is always another opportunity to go back to the legislature and justify the continuation of those funds in the future.

- Outstanding.

Like proof of concept.

Give us a little bit and we'll get her done, right?

- [Waded] Absolutely.

- Outstanding.

Jane, from Anaconda, is houndstongue an and could you talk a little bit about that, please?

- Yeah, I don't have a houndstongue with me today, but houndstongue is a very common species across the state.

It's on the state noxious weed list.

It's actually biennial.

So they asked, "Is it an annual or perennial?"

It's actually a biennial.

So the first year it's gonna be a rosette of just green leaves.

It's building mass there.

And then the second year, so then it dies back, and then the second year it actually comes up again, shoots up its flowering stem and flowers and dies.

So most people are familiar with houndstongue because it has the little seeds that look like a wood tick called beggar's lice, that stick to your socks, your hiking boots, your cows.

I saw a recent picture of a bison that was just covered with houndstongue, your dogs.

And that's how the seeds spread and how the plant gets around.

It is a toxic plant.

It's toxic to livestock, particularly horses.

But it's actually a biennial.

So you want to make sure you're treating it when it's that rosette stage.

So it's just, this is not houndstongue, but it's just a base with a bunch of leaves and that's when you'll get the best control.

It's also, it has a very stout taproot, kind of like a carrot.

So it's an easy plant to pop out of the ground with a spade.

- [Darrin] Okay, thank you, Jane.

- I'll bring one in later in the season when I'm on.

- [Darrin] Outstanding.

- When it's growing, yeah.

- Look forward to that.

- Next show and tell.

- She brought several things that I'm so eager to see.

- Oh, I did.

(laughs) - Right, yeah.

From Poplar, President Cruzado, what is MSU's Reimagining Rural, and how do people get involved with that?

- So Reimagining Rural is a wonderful initiative from MSU Extension.

And one of the things that we have been doing is work with a number of about 12 rural communities in Montana in order to, as we say, to reinvigorate their economic drivers in those communities.

If you want to get involved with it, we welcome everybody.

Come and join us.

Cody Stone, as MSU Director of Extension is the best person for you to reach out to.

So Cody, is cstone@montana.edu, or pick up the phone and give us a call at Montana State.

Happy to help, thank you.

- Perfect, thank you.

I'll throw this out to the group, because there may be some more opinions about this.

From Helena, a caller has property with well-established sagebrush.

How do they get rid of it and get the grass to grow back?

- That's probably gonna fall on my shoulders, isn't it?

(laughs) - I think so, yeah.

There's gonna be a lot of digging, I would - Yeah.

So sagebrush, it's a native signature shrub of some of our grassland systems in Montana.

It can increase.

It's a long-lived shrub.

It can increase particularly if there's heavy grazing, because animals don't like to graze sagebrush.

They like to graze everything around it, especially the grasses.

So sometimes over time it can increase.

It also increases without fire.

One of the ways sagebrush is controlled across the Western US is when we have wildfires, and that kills the sage, it does not re-sprout.

As far as getting rid of it, it's typically a fairly intensive mechanical control.

You might be doing mowing, plus you have to get the roots out of the ground to kill a sagebrush.

I guess you could mow it as well.

Fire, prescribed fire.

Herbicide applications.

But it is a challenging species to get rid of, and I always encourage people if they do want to get rid of sagebrush, or it might be more of an approach where you're trying to decrease its abundance rather than completely get rid of it, because it does have some value.

Kind of depends.

I don't know what the viewer's land management objectives are, but it does provide some cover.

I mean, we have some iconic grassland birds that use sagebrush.

So it's probably trying to decrease it.

You will see an increase in your grass if you're trying to grow forage for livestock, but it's challenging and it's fairly disruptive.

So I'd be happy to visit with the person in a phone call and get a better sense of what their management goals are.

So, yeah, my name's up there on the screen now.

So give me a call and we can talk more.

- That's your phone number, and I'm sure that email will pop up just accordingly here in a second also.

Musselshell County, the caller has leftover inoculant from their cover crop last spring.

It has frozen due to winter, and the caller wants to know if it's still viable, Perry?

- Hm.

So inoculants do have a shelf life.

I actually don't know if freezing does any damage.

I don't think it does.

But if you need that inoculant, it's not that expensive.

I would get a fresh supply.

You might throw on the old supply with it just to get rid of it or something, but I just wouldn't trust it if it wasn't from a fresh source.

I can't actually, I'm not a rhizobium expert, so I couldn't tell you for sure whether it would survive or not.

But I guess if it was me and I really wanted that symbiosis to take place, I wouldn't take a chance.

- [Darrin] Fair enough, thanks, Perry.

- Perry, I have a follow-up question.

Perry, what's the purpose of an inoculant?

- That's a good question.

So inoculants are applied to legume species to introduce a bacteria that interacts with the legume roots that allows us to take nitrogen from the air.

Like the air we're breathing right now is 79% nitrogen gas, and yet it's the most limiting nutrient for plants.

Well, these particular bacteria figured out an energetic pathway to actually take that largely unavailable nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form that plants use.

- So while we're on cover crops, Perry, caller from Fort Benton.

Have you had any thoughts on grazing cover crops and their impacts in the State of Montana?

- Well, I know you're going to have some input here.

So we've done quite a bit of research with cover crops, but mostly in not, well, actually all of it in not a grazing.

We had one small trial with grazing, but most of it not with grazing.

And it was hard for us to make it make sense economically.

But I know you've done some work with grazing cover crops at Havre.

And it as long as you've got fence, perimeter fences and water sources, it probably does make sense.

So I don't think there's any economic way that you could have cover crops in Montana without grazing, though.

- Fair enough.

And we did the trial in Montana, up in Northern Montana, where we did graze cover crops with livestock, predominantly beef cattle.

And when we talk about this and a producer asks me about grazing cover crops, I ask them what forage hole they're trying to fill, whether it's a spring, a summer, or a late fall.

And I can give you an example.

And that would dictate what species we want to be growing.

If it's a late fall, we want to put our calves out there, put some bloom on it, or we want to winter our calves without hauling hay out there so much, we can grow a sorghum Sudan grass, for example, and then swath it late in September, leave it in the windrow without baling it, because we know in Northern Montana we have not enough daylight to get it dry.

And those big heavy windrows, if we windrow it, it'll capture the nutrients, keep it in place.

And then them cattle, if you distribute it throughout time, can eat that and might need a little protein source, but had some real success with the producers trying that this past fall.

But economically, when we tried to replace cover crops with fallow in an intensive system, the only thing that really cash flowed was putting cattle on there and replacing the AUMs.

That's going to be the deficit of that water use for the next cash crop.

- And that is the great thing about cover crops, right?

You've got tremendous versatility as to when you harvest them, when you need them.

So they do bring a nice aspect to a system for sure.

- Outstanding.

We have some show and tell.

Abi, do you want to start?

- Sure, yeah, I'd love to.

- [Parry] I'm wondering what that is.

- So, yeah, this is a very interesting thing.

And as I'm driving down the road anywhere, I pull over at all given spots and think this I might find something cool to show on Ag Live.

But this is the oak rough bulletgall wasp.

And they create these galls and if you have heavy enough galls, so usually at the start of the kind of mid growing season time, the galls are dark-green, and then over time they turn woody.

So they're looking woody right now.

This is from last year, likely.

And in terms of how to manage them, often with some of our galls, we would prune them out.

But we wouldn't do that for this type of pest.

And that's because natural enemies help control these pests really readily, so parasitic wasps can be a really good source of control.

And you shouldn't prune these out in the late winter, early spring, so around now, because that's when we have our parasitic wasps that would already probably be inside these galls, so they would be emerging in the spring.

That can help with natural control of this.

There is a way that you can control it with a chemical method.

There's an insecticide called emamectin benzoate, but that needs to be applied by a certified arborist.

Other than that, yeah, this is something that you can see on quite a few of our oaks here in Montana.

- So we're not gonna see these shoot out of there right now, are we?

- No, probably not.

- Probably not.

- I see there's little holes in some of them.

Is that the parasitic wasp?

- That's a good question.

So the holes that we can see here, that's the actual pest itself.

So that's the rough bulletgall wasp.

They emerge in the fall and they lay their eggs on the branches.

And then there's the second generation that emerges from those eggs in the spring, and those are the ones that will lay their eggs in the newly developing buds.

And that's how we'll form the new galls.

- It looks like it, I think you should bring that back for the Halloween show.

(show members laughing) It looks like a really good wand for your witches.

- Yeah, exactly.

That would be perfect.

Yes, I'll be ready this time.

- Perfect.

President, from Three Forks, Montana, can you comment, and is the College of Ag still the largest granting group in Montana?

- The College of Ag is the second-largest one.

It's followed after the College of Letters and Science, College of Ag, College of Engineering.

Those are our three heavy lifters.

But what we have noticed is an incredible growth in all our colleges in terms of research.

Nursing, for example, has been doing some extraordinary things in terms of externally sponsored research.

So, where you have seen an incredible growth in the College of Agriculture is in terms of our student enrollment.

It has grown by leaps and bounds.

And I am very proud to say students are choosing Montana State University.

They're staying here.

They're doing wonderful things.

- Outstanding.

We always use more graduates, just like our phone operator today.

- [Waded] Yep, absolutely.

- And I guess if I don't take just a second to brag on all the faculty in the College of Ag and Montana State, it's $54 million of research expenditures that's happening.

And what that means to me as the associate director is that our faculty are out there doing an outstanding job supporting our number one industry in Montana, in agriculture and natural resources.

So let me just put that PSA out on my behalf, because I'm really proud of that and really excited that that's happening.

So, thank you for the lead-in.

Jane, you have some show and tell.

- I do.

I'm gonna grab a couple things behind me here, too.

They were too big to have in front of the on the table, but I was like, what can I take for show and tell?

I mean, it's 60 degrees in Bozeman here today, but it was snowing like last week, so not a lot is growing.

But I was like, you know what?

You can learn a lot by looking around to see what was growing last year.

And at the base of what was growing last year is probably what you're gonna find the same weeds this year.

So this is common mullein right here.

I have common tansy in the middle.

And then this towering plant, which is really only like a third of how tall it really is poison hemlock.

So these are out there right now.

I saw them on a walk out there this morning.

And then if you really want to treat weeds, if you go to the base of these three to eight feet tall plants, you're going to find that they are greening up.

So this is poison hemlock.

There's a lot of leaf tissue there right now.

We also have the common mullein, a little rosette, and then the common tansy.

This you can see one of the stems attached from last year is also greening up.

Now, what I think is neat about looking at these plants now is these plants are typically growing in settings, especially the poison hemlock and the tansy, where you just have a lot of other species growing.

They're like in the understory of deciduous areas along riparian zones, but if you go out there this time of year, this is like the only thing that's green.

So it's actually, if you want to use herbicides to deal with these species, it's actually a very good time to treat them.

I mean, maybe you'd give common tansy a little bit longer to get a little bit more green material, but you can be very selective with that herbicide, because these are the only thing out there greening up and actively photosynthesizing right now.

So that's kind of my show and tell, is that we can actually use last year's old stems to direct us to where these new noxious weeds are growing already this spring.

- And don't tell nobody, that's how I find the asparagus.

The wild asparagus is, I look for the carcasses, and then I'm not very bright, but I can follow the big ones when they get down, right?

- Yeah, the wild asparagus.

Same story.

- Absolutely.

Outstanding.

It's my understanding, Jack in Montana PBS has a function they want to do right now, so I'm going to give that just a little bit of thing.

Do we have that moving?

In the meantime, come on in, students.

- [Waded] Oh.

- Dr. Cruzado.

- [Waded] Oh, goodness gracious.

- Someone said they're yellow, but those look like gold roses to me.

- [Waded] They're gold.

(show members laughing) - [Student] President Cruzado.

- [Waded] Thank you.

- We really appreciate all that you have done for us.

This crew is composed mainly of students.

And we just would like to thank you for all your years of service to Montana Ag Live, Montana PBS, the College of Agriculture, the Montana Ag Experiment Station, (students laughing) the Extension Service, and Montana State University as a whole.

Most especially, we'd like to thank you for your concern, love, and dedication to the students at Montana State University.

We really appreciate all that you have done for us, and we're gonna miss you, but we wish you the best of luck in your future.

- [Waded] Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

- [Waded] Just beautiful.

(everyone applauding) - Thank you, Daisy.

Thank you so much.

Mr. Thayer.

- Thank you.

(Waded laughing) - Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That is, that is beautiful.

Thank you.

- Way more pretty than these weeds.

- Look at this!

- Yeah, exactly.

- The best show and tell.

- This is my own show and tell now.

(laughs) Thank you so much.

You know, the students of Montana State University are absolutely the best.

I say this when I interviewed for the job.

You know, it's a very full day.

You meet with the faculty, you meet with staff, you meet with alumni, but when I met with the students of Montana State University, I was blown away.

And you saw it.

You saw it right there, impromptu.

And there's not a day that they don't recognize me as I walk around campus.

And they go, "Good morning, President Cruzado!"

"Can I walk with you, President Cruzado?"

"Can we take a selfie?"

I just love the students of Montana State, and they go out and they do extraordinary things.

So, thank you so much.

And I forgot to tell them, "Go Cats!"

- And what a legacy to have such a linear increase in student enrollment at Montana State University facilities, dorms, and just an outstanding legacy you're leaving in just the students alone.

So thank you very much.

- [Waded] All of us working together.

- That's right.

- For sure.

- Perfect.

Abi, can you talk a little bit about your Montana Guides available to people, "Can I Grow that Here?"

- Yeah.

So Montana State University Extension has a lot of great publications, including our MontGuides, which are on the MSU Extension store's website.

And we have a really great MontGuide called, "Can I Grow That Here?"

And it has a list of all of our vegetables, times for when to start the seeds, when to transplant them.

Lots of great information on there.

And it's one of our set of MontGuides where we have a lot of great information if you do want to cover any topics that we cover through MSU Extension, which runs the gamut.

So that's a really great resource.

If you're considering vegetable gardening, starting fresh, or if you're newer to Montana and you're not sure how the climate might impact what you can grow here, that's a really great MontGuide, so I appreciate whoever brought that up.

Thank you for doing that.

- Outstanding.

Great.

Perry, do you want to take a whack at one from Great Falls?

Person here wants to know, when should he reseed winter-killed winter wheat?

- Now.

Before I answer that, though, I promised my granddaughter that I left the barbecue to come here and sub, that I would say hi.

Hello, Nora.

I hope you're watching.

- [Darrin] Hi, Nora.

- Yeah, no, sooner is better, because you want the spring version to try to catch up with the winter wheat, so the sooner it gets in the ground, the better chance it has to develop and mature about the same time so that it's harvestable altogether.

- Perfect, thank you.

President, from Bozeman, ironically, is there anything that you didn't accomplish that you really want to accomplish in your last few months?

- Oh, goodness.

- [Perry] Wow.

- There's always one more project.

There's always one more thing that you want to do.

And that's why I feel so grateful that I look back and I can tell you, even to this day, after 15, almost and 15 and a half years, I come back to the office so excited every day because there are so many wonderful things to do.

But here's the calculus I try to use in making the determination to retire is, pick the moment where the university is at its strongest.

We are very strong in terms of student enrollment, in retention, in graduation rates.

We're very, very strong in terms of research, as you know very well, Darrin.

We are very strong in our commitment to extension.

Very strong with the, there are many wonderful new construction projects going on right now around campus.

If you come, it's kind of a little bit of a maze.

And then, of course, we're very strong in Bobcat Nation.

So it is a good time for me to just hand this wonderful baton and I'll be happy to share with the new president some of the things that I would have worked on and just keep running.

It's a wonderful thing.

- Tough question, but thank you.

And I'll just say thank you from the people I work with, the producers of the State of Montana, from never ever wavering from the land-grant mission.

And we hit it all tonight.

We hit the students, we hit the research, and we hit Extension.

And that was through your leadership.

We put that first and foremost under the 15 years we're here.

And I'm proud to work here because of that.

And so I sure appreciate that effort that you made.

And from day one, it's never been, never been.

- People always know that if I was going to talk, they were going to hear three things.

First, welcome to your university, Montana State.

Then the history of the land-grant university and its importance.

Finally, in closing, go cats, go.

- Absolutely.

On that note, are you going to have any times to, this caller is from Great Falls again.

Are you going to have any time to visit any of the field days on a way out, or do you know?

- So right now my calendar is pretty packed.

I was in Great Falls in January and had a wonderful, wonderful time there.

So I'm trying to visit and to spend some time with as many people as I can.

I want to sear all the wonderful memories in my mind and in my heart as I walk out of Montana State.

- Outstanding.

And on that note, I think we have a graphic to show when the field days were coming in the summer.

I think there's one also on there that's not listed for Post Farm.

So these are all the off-campus research center field days.

And then Post Farm here in Bozeman.

And I would encourage, whether you're in production agriculture or not, if you live by Post Farm, you're in Bozeman, come out and see what the university's doing.

We are so excited and so proud to see how we feed the world what we're doing to be totally sustainable yet profitable for our producers in the State of Montana.

So please come out.

Everybody's invited.

Usually there's a meal involved.

You get to hear speakers like Jane and Perry and Abi at various ones, and they're all a little different.

So I would encourage everybody to come out to our field days and just spend some time with our researchers.

There's nothing more satisfying too than sitting next to a producer or sitting somebody that has no idea of agriculture who's sitting with a producer who's grown wheat for 57 years and explaining to that person what it means to do and be a part of agriculture.

So it's really good.

Good segue.

Thanks for bringing us into that one.

We appreciate it very much.

Abi, there's a caller from Anaconda.

I think this, well, maybe it'll go to Jane.

Caller wants to know how to eradicate Japanese knot root.

They've tried salt and vinegar on the leaves and the stems, but don't seem to work.

- I'm imagining they're talking about Japanese knotweed, and I'd love to let you take the lead on that.

- Well, it could be, or there's also, like a prostrate knotweed that's like more of a lawn and garden weed.

Well, I think we need to figure out what this species is.

If it's the knotweed, the perennial knotweed, oh, wow, that's, call me.

Let's just say call me.

(Darrin laughing) And salt and vinegar will not work on that.

If it's the prostrate knotweed, like in a garden setting, is that an annual?

- [Abi] Annual, yes.

- So vinegar is a contact herbicide.

I mean, if you use herbicidal-strength vinegar, which is like 35% acetic acid, it will burn the top off knotweed or any annual species, but it's not necessarily gonna go into the roots.

So it could be that that's why the viewer is not seeing a lot of success.

If they're just using standard vinegar from your kitchen cupboard, that's only 5% acetic acid, and that's not going to do anything to a weedy species.

- And then adding salt is usually not a good idea in a garden landscape, because those salts can build up and they can impact anything else you might want to grow there.

And then if this is in a lawn setting, a few things to keep in mind is to look at your general lawn care practices.

If you have a really healthy and competitive lawn, you have fewer weedy issues.

And if this is in a vegetable garden setting, consider using mulches, possibly to help kind of prevent these weeds from germinating.

Or if you pull them out, it can help suppress them a little bit.

So using some of those other integrated pest management, or IPM strategies and multiple tools to try and manage some of those persistent weed issues.

- If it is the prostrate annual, it usually likes to get going on really compacted soils, right?

- Yeah.

- I notice in my lawn it's where dogs have runways or where we have walkways, that's where it's the biggest problem.

And I've also seen it around research plots too, where we've got extra compaction, it seems to be one of the few things that can really flourish in that situation.

So I don't know if that makes it easier or harder to control, but it sure does, it deals well with soil compaction.

- Yeah, and working on your compacted soil.

So ways that you can reduce the compaction is to aerate.

You can add a little bit of compost, about a quarter inch top dressing of compost.

And that can help loosen up your soils and make them more conducive to the ideal plants to grow there.

- Wow, traveling through Canada, Perry, I would have thought that was just for potato chips, salt and vinegar.

(show members laughing) Crazy!

Things you learn on Montana Ag live.

- Exactly.

- Perry, do you have any comments about winter canola and its status in the State of Montana?

This is from Fort Benton.

- Sure.

So a group of us have been doing some research with winter canola.

Pat Carr at Moccasin, Kent McVay at Huntley, myself.

And we've got a, the trick with winter canola is to get it to survive the winter, and we don't have the best batting average going, but you'll be glad to know with this previous winter, with the good snow cover, we actually it looks like all three sites did pretty well.

And so we're excited to get some data collected off that trial.

I just happened to see the state acres of winter canola in the last few days, and it's something that's still in that potential phase.

I really think this is a crop that could occupy 50 to 100,000 acres in Montana one day.

And because it's such high yield, high value, I think that could be an interesting aspect.

There's one genetic change that we'd like to see happen and that's there's an anti-shatter pod trait in spring canolas.

And once that gets transferred to winter canola, I think that's going to be a game changer, because you can have variable stands which leads to variable maturity.

And you know, how do I harvest this field when it's still flowering here, and I've got ripe pods over here.

And so I think once we get that anti-shatter trait, I think it's going to be, it's going to be a bigger possibility.

And the demand for oilseeds is doing nothing but going up.

So there's I think an opportunity and a desire for Montana to play a bigger role in the oilseed world, so it'll help us do that.

- Producers, you're asking for a broadleaf, winter broadleaf to go with their winter wheat regular or get away from that, you know they were looking for a rotation.

- Yeah, rotation wise.

But you know, our precipitation pattern is such that winter crops do so much better than spring crops, especially the closer you are to the mountains in Montana, so last year we put a number of 100.4 bushels on the board for winter canola, which is a huge yield.

- [Darrin] That was where?

- That was in Bozeman.

- Okay, let me make sure, Bozeman.

(Perry laughing) - I think Pat Carr had a number that was 37 at Moccasin.

That's much shallower soils and not maybe quite as wet as us.

So it shows you the potential.

The yield potential is enormous.

- And then I got a flash from right online.

Perry, what do you mean by anti-shattering for people that don't know?

- So there's canola plants were naturally, they dehisce once they ripen, or they become easier to shatter once they ripen, I guess.

Some of that dehiscence has been bred out of it.

But there was some genetic work done a few years ago now that that really makes those pods hold intact through disruptions through wind.

I've heard of examples where farmers are combining in the fall and get snowed out and come back in the spring, and they still got the same yield.

So it shows that that anti-shatter trait really works.

I don't know if I'm explaining that exactly right.

- So the seed pods aren't bursting open, - Exactly.

- Seed dropping to the ground instead of being harvested, right?

- Yeah.

- So that's shattering.

- The shattering was always kind of a problem with canola, and so this has really been a solution, but we just need to get those genetics in the winters.

- Outstanding.

Not realizing I was going to be a guest host today, I did bring a miner show and tell with some pictures.

We did have a producer talk to me about what we call our shark cage.

So I thought it'd be interesting to see.

Northern Ag Research Center has been collecting phenotypic data on cattle for several years, not quite a hundred.

We've been with established for a little over 100 years, but we didn't have cattle right off the bat.

This is how we used to weigh and take phenotypic cattle of newborn calves out in the prairie when Northern Ag Research Center was still starting.

And you got to believe that's a pretty ingenious way whether you know, you have a burlap sack, you have a scale.

And it just goes to the fortitude of what we'll do to do research in Montana to flash to a modern day what we do now.

And we call this our shark cage.

When we built this, our cowboys that do all the tagging and they vaccinate, they tag, they weigh, we collect amazing amount of data when we do research because you're just never there.

So we give them some Alpha-7 or an appropriate vaccine, we tattoo, we give them an EID tag.

We have an ATV winch right there behind the gentleman in the blue and it lifts a calf up.

We get a digital weight into a digital scale through an EID and it's electronic records is already in the thing, less than 24 hours old.

This has a couple factors, is one, the cows are obviously not afraid of the unit.

We can pull it in every little pasture, every nook and cranny, and it adds to the safety of the cow and the safety of the calf.

If you ever tag calves on the ground, and you have, you're working the calf up and trying to get some weights or whatever and you have a little tingle in the back of your head and it's a cow breathing on you or maybe doing something else, it gives a little uneasy feeling.

And so we weren't really positive this was going to go, but the guys are tagging cash twice as fast as we used to.

I'm actually seeing some seedstock producers producing very similar things like that because their digital records are uploaded immediately to the cloud.

They get back to the end of the day, they plug your scale head in, boom, everything's there, move right into registration, which brings me to a little bit of the question of, Dr. Cruzado, you mentioned about precision agriculture, and from Fairfield there's a question of how are we doing in precision agriculture and do you feel like we're in a good direction?

- We are in a very good direction, and we have received some support, as I mentioned, Llew Jones, and then also internally from the college and also some additional funding from the university as well.

We have in the queue a project for the Montana legislature asking the state to help us build a lab, a precision ag lab, that's the next stage.

And so I look forward that in future sessions that we will gain that support in order to make sure that we do that.

It is amazing, Darrin, the phone calls that we field, the companies that are interested in working with Montana State University, and many of our local producers that are eagerly waiting for that next generation of agricultural research that will allow them to be more efficient, expand profit, reduce the waste that we can have.

So we are very excited about the future of precision ag at Montana State.

- Yeah, we are super excited.

From everything from farming to the livestock to fenceless grazing, what we're seeing in technology.

And it was ironic that we kicked this question off with what we're doing in just the phenotypic records of cattle.

But technology is going to be the Norman Borlaug leap in our generations.

Maybe not Perry and mine, but maybe Jane and Abi's.

You know, they're not as long in a tooth, Perry, sorry.

But that's where it's going to drive agriculture.

And I'm really excited about it.

And it brings me just a quick comment about our students.

And we comment about how proud we are of their students.

And the graduating people of Montana State University are not afraid of technology and they will embrace it and lead the next generation.

And I'm super proud of our undergraduates and all of our graduate students.

- And Darrin, if I may ask, I think that you're absolutely right.

And one of the things that we are working on right now is remember when we used to have agricultural engineering?

- [Darrin] Yes.

- And then that faded into the background, and now there is this new generation that is asking us to look for novel ways of bringing back engineering technology plus the best scientific knowledge that we have in agriculture and marrying them and preparing them for the marketplace and for the workplace.

- Yes, that is a very exciting thing, Perry.

- Without doubt, precision ag is the future, and this will happen or help the future come sooner.

But I'm curious about the shark tank.

Is it patented?

Who holds the patent?

- Actually it's not.

The shark cage we call it for tagging calves is not patented.

- [Perry] I guess that made me think of "Shark Tank."

- Actually, do you remember, you're probably old enough to remember John Wayne sitting on the edge of an old pickup truck in "Daktari" where they were collecting the animals, remember?

- I don't know if I saw, - And he was sitting on the fender of the truck going across the Serengeti catching all the wild animals, and they had a little cage.

That's what made me think of this.

And it was just out in Canada they had a little one that they'd pull up on a calf and then put a little cage around him is how we designed it.

But yeah, this one, it was pretty good size.

But yeah, it's not patented.

It's not here to make money.

We're here to help the producers of Montana.

Thanks for the question.

(show members laughing) There's another one coming up here.

Sorry, do you have any experience in plant.

Well, let's go to another one.

I apologize.

From Troy, caller used weed-free straw in their garden, but unfortunately appears to be or have an herbicide carryover and the garden is producing poorly.

How do they ameliorate the soil?

Great word, caller.

Ameliorate.

Nice.

- Yeah.

Yeah, go for it, Abi.

- Yeah.

This is a really challenging topic, and without knowing what type of herbicide you're dealing with, it can be difficult, because some of these herbicides can be very persistent for years.

So, unfortunately, without knowing what herbicide, it's tough to manage.

But maybe potentially trying to dilute it, watering it down, potentially maybe incorporating a little bit of compost, depending on what type of herbicide it is.

Do you have any additional thoughts?

- Well, if there was any way that the person could somehow get in touch with whoever sold the straw or if they got it from a friend or a neighbor, get some information on what herbicide was used, because yes, some herbicides have a half-life of 14 days, and others are 120 days or 180 days.

So I would say as much information as they could get about where the straw came from and how it was treated would be really helpful.

- Jane.

So time is going to help, right?

And so I'm thinking about if you can keep that soil moist, most herbicides are broken down via microbes, right?

- [Jane] Microbes in sunlight.

- Warm and wet is probably gonna help speed that decomposition process.

- [Jane] Yeah.

- [Perry] But again, it depends what herbicide it is, I'm sure.

- Right.

I would also suggest, like over time you can do your own bioassay.

So take some soil from your garden with some of that straw, put it in some pots, plant some vegetable seeds in there, like bean or pea.

Do the same in a pot with some potting soil from a bag that you know isn't contaminated, so you can actually kind of do your own experimenting in terms of figuring out if the soil is contaminated enough that your garden plants are going to be hurt by it.

- That's a great point.

And there's a really great publication through MSU Extension that talks you through doing a bioassay.

So if you're not sure how to go about that, go to MSU Extension, and you can type in bioassay, I'm sure, and it'll pop up.

- Yeah.

- Outstanding.

President Cruzado, from Fairfield, does MSU have a water well testing program to help the people in Montana?

- I'm not aware.

Do you know if we have any?

We have services in Extension.

- Yeah, I think they might be referring to Adam Sigler's, he's our water quality specialist, our extension specialist in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Ag.

And I'm pretty sure that they might be referring to Adam's program that he works.

He has partners within that program that can do the well water testing.

- Adam does an amazing job with that program.

So I would get Adam Sigler's contact information to whoever that caller is, I would say.

- You should be able to Google that on Montana.edu.

And I also would say that your local county agent would be happy to also make those connections for you, because that's quite often I refer to them as our people, our boots on the ground in all of Montana.

And they're our first line of defense and a first cry of help.

They get there, and they'll help you out.

So I really encourage you to talk to your local county agent.

They'll hook you up with either Adam or whatever program they can establish.

Jane, is it safe to plant?

It's funny, sagebrush is coming up tonight.

Nice.

This is from Miles City.

Is it safe to plant sagebrush plugs?

And please explain what a plug is.

I mean, I'm thinking hair.

(show members laughing) - See, right on there.

- [Jane] Kind of the same concept.

(laughs) - Okay.

Into air treated with indaziflam.

- Indaziflam, yeah.

So some people wanna get rid of sagebrush, others wanna plant it.

So a plug would be, it's like a baby plant or a juvenile plant that's growing like in a long cone.

And sagebrush is really hard to grow from seed.

So sometimes people grow 'em in these cone-tainers and then they'll pull em out of the pot and stick it in the ground.

Now indaziflam is a herbicide that's very persistent and it's pre-emergent so it kills any seeds in the ground.

But what you can do with like a sagebrush plug is if the area's been treated with indaziflam, you can put plugs into the ground because the indaziflam stays in about the top inch of the soil, and it kills roots.

So if you can get the plugs, if the plugs have roots 6 to 8 inches long, you can plug it into the ground below the part of the soil where the indaziflam is.

- Outstanding.

Well, thanks, Jane.

We have just a few minutes left.

I want to push next week's show for Montana Ag Live.

We'll have Nicole Karwowski on, talking about the economic value of wetlands, nature's filter.

You know, a couple things we kind of think about when we think about wetlands.

An applied ag economist from Montana State University Ag Econ and Econ Department.

We have just a few minutes left.

Dr. Cruzado, is there anything you'd like to say as we wrap up our show?

- Yeah.

Adam Sigler's email address.

- Nice, Google!

- Asigler, A-S-I-G-L-E-R, at montana.edu.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most during this last year was that we, during this year, was in the summertime to go out of Bozeman and have a bus with about 50 passengers with all deans, department, and directors, and we learned about Montana.

So thank you, Montana.

This has been the honor of my life.

- [Darrin] I hear they welcomed you all over the state with fire trucks, with.

- [Waded] Plentywood!

- [Darrin] That's right!

And you visited the last two counties two years ago?

- [Waded] Yep, two years ago.

- Visited every other county.

With that, I want to thank our contestants here at Montana Ag Live.

Perry Miller, always appreciate sharing stage with you.

President Cruzado, I'm not sure what I can say other than thank you for 15 years of dedicated time.

You mean a great deal to all of us.

- Pleasure.

- We'll miss you drastically.

I'm very fortunate I'll get to work with you at APLU.

Such a wonderful time.

Jane, thank you.

Abi, thank you again.

And we look forward to next week.

Jack, I'll have kept your chair warm.

Have a good evening.

(Perry chuckles) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

- [Narrator] 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 and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and The Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music)