- [Presenter] "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, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music) - You are watching "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM on a very exciting campus of Montana State University.

And coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host.

I want to thank Darren Boss for stepping in for me last week.

I couldn't make it last week.

Darren stepped in, he came here as a panel member.

He ended up sitting in this chair.

I appreciate what he did and thank you Darren.

You did a great job.

You know how this program works.

You provide the questions and we'll make our best guests to answer them.

Actually, this panel is really sharp, so I think you'll get some pretty good answers tonight.

So before we go on, let me introduce the On my far left is Uta Mckelvy.

Uta has been here many, many times.

She's a plant pathologist, and if you have any questions about diseases of plants, house plants, garden plants, crop plants, good chance to answer those tonight and we'll get to those as much as possible.

Our special guest tonight, I'm glad to have her here.

I met her last year.

Her name is Nicole Karwowski.

- You've got it.

- [ Dan] Pretty close.

She is an ag economist and she's really very interested in wetlands conservation among many other things that we'll also get into.

I happen to be a big proponent of the wetland conservation, so I think we're going to have a nice discussion regarding that this evening.

Tim Siepel, he wants to be called an ecologist.

I won't do that.

He's a weed scientist.

And he will answer all your weed questions tonight.

And of course, Abi.

Abi Saeed is a very knowledgeable horticulturalist.

If you have questions about anything, there'll be a phone number on your screen.

Keep the phone operators busy tonight.

And by the way, our phone operators are Nancy Blade and Cheryl Bennett, so they're not talking on it the phone yet.

So get on that line and get your questions in.

Nicole, tell us what you like to do here at MSU, a little bit about yourself.

- Well first of all, thank you so much for having me be on this show.

It's been my dream to be on PBS, so thank you for making that happen today.

I am an economist and I am an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics here at Montana State.

I've been here about two years.

I'm in charge of teaching the ag business kids.

So you can see me teaching farm and ranch management or agricultural marketing when I'm not doing research or teaching.

I also like trail running.

I also recently got a new cat, Theo, who's been keeping me on my toes.

You can also find me enjoying local restaurants and hanging out at the breweries.

- [Jack] Okay.

And what is your big interest in ag econ?

- So something that really drives me is how we can make our agricultural systems more sustainable as well as more profitable.

So a lot of my work has been looking at conservation agriculture and understanding how these types of best management practices can impact producer bottom lines as well as the risk that they take on.

- [Jack] And conservation practices are becoming bigger and bigger every year in agriculture.

- Yes, we can see that the adoption of different conservation practices ranging to things like wetland restorations over time really ever since the 1990s.

A large part thanks to different USDA programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program or Wetland Easement Programs.

- Okay, we'll come back to the Conservation Reserve Program because I see a question already on that.

We have a question left over from last week.

It's an interesting one.

This called says that they have ground that's contaminated with glyphosate and they wanna put barley straw over it so they get rid of the glyphosate.

Jim, you wanna touch on that?

- Yeah, so glyphosate is a molecule that is around after you spray it, but it's so tightly bound to the soil that it is no longer available for the plants for uptake.

And so glyphosate, the molecule, one of the advantages and one of the things farmers have liked about using it is you can spray it and in the next day you can come back and plant something else behind it.

So it usually, it does not affect the soil and a long residual half life in there.

So you could plant something back in there now without covering it up with barley straw.

And the grass should grow and things should happen.

If you happen to spray something other than glyphosate, then you might check into that a little bit and then we could discuss maybe what the molecule would be or something like that.

But if you're not getting anything to grow in there, it's likely not because of the glyphosate.

- Basically, I've been told the minute it touches the soil, it's inactivated.

- Yeah, it's pretty...

It's interesting, it has a low leaching risk, not because it's not water soluble, it's actually pretty water soluble, but it binds so tightly to a piece of organic matter that you can't get it back off.

You can, yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

Nicole, I've looked over over your dissertation and I found something in there that I really found fascinating.

So I made up this question myself.

I'm responsible for this one.

I have read in your dissertation that over a 100 countries have pledged to conserve around 30% of their land by 1930 or 2030.

- [Nicole] By 2030.

- Yeah, the US currently has about 15% of its land conserved.

We have five years to conserve the other 15%.

Is that gonna happen?

- Most likely we're not going to reach our 30 by 30 goal, but I am hopeful that we can start moving towards that goal.

I do think that maybe some of our public conservation is going to slow down, but I think there are a lot of other really wonderful private organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, that can help us reach that goal of trying to conserve some of the beautiful ecosystems that we have in Montana and in the United States.

- So I'm gonna take liberty to plug Ducks Unlimited a little bit.

Last year in the year 2024, Ducks Unlimited conserved in North America, over 1 million acres of wetlands and associated pastures next to it, which is pretty impressive.

I just have to bring that out because I've been a big supporter of that organization for a long time.

Tim, current status of resistant kochia in the state.

- Ooh, yep, so this can tie back into ag economics too.

So kochia is probably the most infamous weed in Montana maybe, probably our grain farmers and pulse farmers would say that.

It has developed a lot of herbicide resistance, evolved herbicide resistance in Montana.

because of some complaints that came outta Saskatchewan that came out of North Dakota.

We went on a kochia geocaching tour this fall and we went out to the big towns of Antelope, Raymond, Dooley, Outlook.

- Which exit at Antelope did you take?

- We took the first one in Antelope.

Yep.

And we collected 42 kochia populations from roadside, railroads, farm fields, a lot of places.

And we screened them for different types of herbicide resistance.

And I will say we found resistance to dicamba.

That'll be not the first time it's been documented in Montana, but one of... And we found it to be foot relatively widespread.

We found resistance to fluroxypyr which is Starane.

And we also found new cases of resistance to Sharpen, which is a molecule called saflufenacil, really important to our pulse producers.

So it made the landscape of kochia management a quite a bit more difficult as we go into the future.

And we work with all the producers, but you know, when I talk to some of the agronomists, the costs that are involved in it go from up five to $10 an acre in terms of kochia management.

And that becomes difficult when commodity prices are relatively low and input costs are high.

- I agree entirely.

- Two questions, Tim, do you have an idea of what proportion of your population sample had like resistance to at least two active ingredients or even three?

- Yeah, there was a few populations that were resistant to dicamba, fluroxypyr and Sharpen, which makes it really tough.

Lots of dicamba and fluroxypyr resistance, which is widely used in Durham.

And so really the resistance makes Durham management a little bit harder, yeah.

- And so what would you recommend to a grower if they wondered about whether they have resistance in their kochia population?

Like do you think they should assume it's there or do you think they should test and then should they send it to you or how would they go about it?

- That's a really good question.

I think there's some things we might assume glyphosate resistance in kochia now, I think it's safe to make assumptions.

You know, in the Yellowstone River Valley, I can't find much susceptible kochia anymore to glyphosate dicamba less so, Sharpen less so, unless you have a lot of reasons to suspect it.

But then I say, talk to your agronomist, talk to your local ag agent.

We have really awesome group of extension agents, especially in Northeast Montana.

And they do a great job, talk to them, get in contact with me and we can get seeds and test those seeds in the greenhouse.

Unfortunately, there are no really rapid tests that are available except for one out of the National Genotyping Center in Fargo.

But there's not a lot of quick genetic tests that are really available.

So you have to laboriously test it, yep.

- Thank you, I've got a quick one for Abi and then Nicole, I've got an interesting question that came in from Malta.

When's the proper time to put out wasp traps?

I know you're not an entomologist, but you know the answer to that.

- Yeah, well I would say probably early May.

It's okay to get them out a little early too, but you wanna catch the queens for those yellow jackets because once those queens have built their nests, they're gonna take off and you can catch as many as you want.

But I would say early may would be a good time to put your baited wasp trap out.

- [Jack] Which wasps do we actually have here in Montana?

- We have the western yellow jacket, that's the most common one that is responsible for most of the negative interactions that people have.

The ground nesting yellow jacket.

So it's the western yellow jacket.

- [Jack] They carry a toxin, right?

- Well, they're venomous, so.

- Okay.

- [Abi] Yeah, yeah.

- Venom.

- [Abi] The stings are very, yeah, unpleasant.

- Yeah, my dog got one in his mouth.

- Yeah.

- They don't like that.

- Yeah.

And the little bait should be heptyl butyrate.

That's the chemical that you need to attract those specific ones.

- Okay, thank you.

Nicole from Malta, Interesting question.

And this person wants to know if we are increasing conservation easements around the country, and particularly in Montana, does this negatively affect crop production and also the reduction in livestock numbers that we're seeing in a lot of areas?

- This is a really good question.

Thankfully I investigated some of these issues in my dissertation.

And what I find at the national level in counties where we're seeing increases in things like wetland restorations, we're actually seeing increases in your average yields.

What does that mean?

Well, we're actually taking the most marginal lands out of production.

So it's these lower yielding fields that we're losing.

Usually these wetland easements are pretty small, so like 50 to a 100 acres on average.

So we're not really losing a lot of crop land to these types of programs.

In fact, we actually see beneficial spillover effects on the fields that are around these wetland easements.

So those fields are actually going to see reductions in indemnities or crop insurance claims from things like excess moisture, flooding.

So we're actually seeing reduced risk in the places that have more wetland easements.

- Okay, that makes good sense to me.

And on a lot of these wetland easements, you can still pasture your cattle, is that correct?

- That is not true.

So what is a wetland easement?

So an easement is basically a contract where you're giving up the right to crop or graze on that land.

In exchange for a lump sum payment, there are some special types of authorized actions that you can get on your easements.

So there's some cases of bison grazing on your easements or goats.

So there are places where you can do small amount of grazing, but usually you can't use it like pasture land.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Uta, a question from Flaxville they had poor lentil yield last year and the county agent there suggested that they had a root rot.

Do you think that's true?

And if so, what would you do about it?

Before I go on, I'm gonna ask the audience out there.

And whoever gets the correct answer within the next couple minutes will get a free mug.

What's the original name of Flaxville?

And you can call that in and the winner will get a mug tonight, But go ahead Uta.

- Yeah, so I mean it is possible that that was root rot last year, obviously from a distance and you know, retroactively, I can't, you know, confirm, so let's just assume it was root rot because they probably have a good reason to suspect that.

So there's a chance that, oh, okay.

So there are different root rot pathogens, some that are more troublesome than others.

The biggest one of those is the aphanomyces because it can persist in a soil for a really long time.

And so if we assume that that's the one of the agents that caused the disease, like they should take good care managing and preventing root rot.

And so what does that mean?

So the biggest thing is crop rotation.

So we recommend in fields where there is aphanomyces root rot confirmed to rotate out of peas and lentils for at least four better six years.

If it's really bad, you may have to go even longer than that.

- [Jack] Wow.

- What do you plant instead?

- Yeah, so that's a great question.

So basically peas and lentils are susceptible to aphanomyces root rot, but like small grains, even flax, safflower, things like that are not, so those are good rotational crops, but it is true that if you are looking at an eight year rotation, you will be struggling to find enough crops to put in there.

Maybe one good thing is that chic peas are actually not very susceptible to So that's another pulse crop that could go in that rotation.

And then if you're planting peas or lentils, again what we recommend specifically for fields with aphanomyces root rot issue is to plant rather early rather than later because that particular pathogen prefers warmer soil temperatures.

So if you're planting early, you're basically trying to escape or get the crop as developed as possible before that pathogen hits.

And you also want to use a fungicide seed treatment that protects against those other types of root rods, especially pythium and rhizoctonia.

And on the topic of varieties, I have some moderately good news as it...

Okay, so the bad news is there is no totally resistant variety available, but recent research, especially out of North Dakota, has come across a few varieties that have shown pretty good tolerance to root rot caused by aphanomyces and pythium.

So hopefully in the next few years we'll have availability of some varieties that can hold up under root rot pressure.

- Alright.

- Yeah, lengthy answer.

It's a complex topic.

I can talk an hour for it, yeah.

- So I have a caller here.

They don't know the original name but they want to know where Flaxville is.

Yeah, a lot of people, it's a town of I think 60 or 65 people in the extreme northeast part of the state.

And honestly it was at one time called the paintbrush of Montana, well of the northwest part of the country because they grew over a 100,000 acres of flax up there and nobody's got the right answer.

The original town name was Boyer and it was renamed Flaxville in 1913 when they started growing all that flax.

Anyway, a little bit of- There's a famous soil type too in Montana, the flax bill gravels.

- That's true, so little bit of trivial.

- One thing I'm sorry, about the, so for anybody out there who's growing post crops and is wondering about if they have a root rot issue there, my research program and then also some collaborators we're conducting soil tests to check for the presence of these root rot pathogens.

So if you are interested in getting your soil tested, just reach out to me and we could come out this season, have a chat and we'll dig up some soil and test the too.

- Okay, thank you.

Nicole, two questions.

Number one, what is a wetland?

This person has no clue exactly what constitute a wetland.

I know it doesn't have to be wet all the time, I don't believe.

- Yes, that is correct.

So this is a good question.

And I think there's some debate about this in the scientific literature.

So one characteristic that wetlands need to have is they have to have hydric soil.

So they have to have the ability to hold onto that water.

So it can be partially inundated for part of the year.

There's also some different native species that you're going to see on these wetlands like cattails.

There's also different types of wetlands.

There's herbaceous, there's forested.

So it depends a little bit on where you are.

But generally a wetland is going to be wet for part of the year and it has really unique abilities that other types of ecosystems can't serve.

So they've often been called nature's kidneys.

They're really good at filtering out our waters.

They're really good at tackling some of the surface runoff issues from nutrients and non-point source runoff from agriculture.

So wetlands are really my favorite kind of ecosystem.

- I can tell you get excited about.

Here's one you won't get as excited about, future of CRP.

This person is from the Lewistown area.

What do you think in the future do you see on the horizon for CRP acres?

- This is a good question.

So CRP has been around since 1990.

It's gone through different changes.

It's gone from just the general program to including continuous types of agriculture and it is a beloved part of the farm bill.

As an economist, I'm asked to sometimes predict the future.

I don't know how stable the CRP is going to be down the road because of the current administration's policy goals.

In the previous administration, we actually saw increases in CRP from policies like the Inflation reduction Act.

And so we've seen in the past few years actually new interest in CRP and I think that a lot of farmers are interested in going towards some of these land retirement programs to try to improve their soil health.

So I think the demand is there on the farmer side of things.

What will the supply side look like?

That is a good question and I wish I could have a better answer for that.

- [Jack] It's a guess.

- How would things change in Montana if there were no CRP?

When I think of traveling from Plentywood to Scobey through Flaxville, you think about the number of CRP acres out there.

What does CRP do for rural parts of Montana?

How does it contribute to the economy?

- I think this is a great question.

So Montana is a huge enrollee, especially in general CRP acres.

And what this does, it's basically like a rental program.

So the USDA pays you an annual rental rate each year for the acres that you put in the program.

So it provides an alternative revenue stream for farmers or ranchers who are putting this land aside.

Some of the benefits that includes it it also provides benefits like carbon sequestration.

I find that it also acts as a really nice nutrient mitigation strategy, especially for things like phosphorus because it lets the land sort of heal and the soil is able to hold on to some of those nutrients that otherwise can run off into the water.

So CRP has a lot of benefits.

And if we were to lose that, I think we would see impacts to producers bottom lines who've depend a lot of times on these programs.

Especially we see farmers and producers who are a little bit older who are starting to think about retirement go towards these kinds of CRP programs.

So one thing that could potentially happen that you hear a little bit about is that, well if the CRP lands suddenly become available, it might be easier for younger producers to try to get on some of that land.

So that might be a benefit that we see from less acres in CRP, but it does provide a lot of benefits to Montana communities.

- Okay, thank you guys.

Abi, a question from Lori in Duck Creek on Fort Peck Lake, she's tries to grow tomatoes up there and kind of in the middle of nowhere, which we would probably agree with, although I love that country up there.

They've tried Oregon spring one year does well.

The other not so well.

Any idea why there's so much fluctuation in whether or not they're successful - Yeah, I think it can just depend.

So one of the things if you're starting out tomatoes and if you're talking about you're having lack of success this year, one of the issues that I've seen would be probably like the quality of the seeds that you get if you're starting those seeds that could impact it.

If you're having trouble with your transplants.

Lighting is an issue that I see most often when I'm trying to start my tomatoes is I'm often low on the amount of light that I give them.

But we have a really great MOT guide through the MSU extension store that you can download that has a list of some of our early maturing varieties that work really well.

And just a few examples of ones are like New Yorker, Northern exposure, those are some examples of some of our earliest ripening tomato varieties.

And that has some really great troubleshooting tips as well.

In terms of what might be going on.

And if you wanna talk in more detail about your tomato issues with me, please reach out to me and I'd be happy to discuss.

- And if not, if they're in Glasgow they can go see the county agent in Glasgow and pick up that MOT guide.

- Absolutely.

- Oregon spring is a pretty hard tomato to beat in this state.

- It's a great one, yeah.

Tim you were saying you grew that- - Yeah, Oregon spring and early girl.

- Yeah, early girl is another great one, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay, the other question concerns both Uta and you, they wanna know about pruning now they've had fire blight and I've had three questions on that tonight.

They have fire blight, they wanna know when to prune out and how to recognize branches that are infected with fire blight bacteria.

And the other person would like to know when is a good time to prune trees in general.

So you can start and then you can finish.

How's that?

- Yeah, so in general for healthy trees, my favorite time to prune them is in the dormant season.

So late winter, early spring, like January, February, March, it would be my favorite time to prune.

The exception to that would be our early spring flowering trees and shrub.

'Cause you can prune out those buds.

So things like lilacs, don't prune those out in the early spring.

You'd wait until right after they're blooming within the two week period and that's when you'd prune them out.

And so currently in terms of certain places in the state, we had a really warm week last week in this area of the state.

And I live in Livingston, and we're having a lot of things already leaf out and a lot of buds kind of swelling and getting ready to pop basically.

And so at this time of year those trees are putting a lot of energy into that new growth.

So pruning can set them back a little bit in terms of that successful healthy growth.

So this time of year I wouldn't prune if you're already starting to see that growth form - In most areas of state that's probably true.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, the buds broke on my apple tree this year.

- Yeah.

- My aspen are very happy right now.

Uta, fire blight - For fire blight this is high time to prune.

So I actually, because that's like such a timely question I brought some pictures that we can have a look at.

So last fall we talked about fire blight and one thing we recommended is maybe find a way to mark the branches that showed symptoms of fire blight.

So if you know which branches to prune, that's great.

A lot of times they also keep the foliage.

So you might still have those old leaves from last year or you wanna be looking for twigs and branches that have these sunken dark cankers.

And so those are the ones you wanna prune out and you wanna go at least 10 to 12 inches below that infected area and take really good care, disinfecting your tools between every cut because you do not wanna spread the pathogen further in your tree as you're pruning.

And then so you wanna be pruning or I guess the critical time window when like the disease spreads is when the flowers or the blossoms are opening.

And so we wanna cut out that infected tissue now so that by the time we have those flowers come out they're protected.

And you can consider using a copper treatment to protect those blossoms when it's time for those.

- Okay, thank you.

This fire blight, if you have a branch that's infected, you have a bunch of dead leaves that kinda hang on through the winter or not?

- They can, yeah, so I've actually seen this past winter in trees that had fire blight.

They have this like shepherd's crooks of thing and then because it's a blight right, the leaves die suddenly.

They just don't drop like normally leaves and nesting leaves so they might be retained all winter.

- Okay, thank you.

Every time we have an economist on this time of the year or currently, there's questions about tariffs.

And I have a lot of questions about tariffs, but this person from Livingston would like to know, how tariffs are gonna affect our consumers in Montana and then also they're concerned about our producers.

So you want to touch on that a little bit?

- This is a very timely question.

I know it's at the top of everyone's mind at the moment.

Considering recent tariff policies as well as retaliatory tariffs that we've been seeing.

So what is a tariff I think is a good place to start.

Basically it's just a tax on any goods that we're importing from other countries to the United States.

You might think that it's the foreign countries who are paying for these tariffs, that's not true.

It's the importing companies that are in charge of paying these increased tariff fees and those are usually going to get passed down to consumers.

So what does that mean for consumers is higher prices for the items that we buy.

So what does Montana import?

So we get a lot of our fruits and vegetables from Mexico.

We get our tequila from Mexico for those- - [Jack] That's important.

- Oh my gosh, very important.

So you can expect to see higher prices at the grocery stores for some of those essential items.

From Canada, we import a lot of our fuel and our energy.

Crude oil, petroleum.

This could also be reflected in higher prices at the gas bill when you're paying to fill up your tank.

And we're also going to see higher lumber prices 'cause we get a lot of our lumber from Canada as well.

What does that mean for a town like Bozeman who's in the process of trying to keep up with a new housing demand?

Is it's going to continue slowing down how fast we're going to be able to build housing, potentially exacerbating some of the rent issues that we've been seeing.

So that's sort of the consumer side of things.

Let's think about how tariffs are going to be impacting our agricultural producers.

So we can do this in a few ways.

So let's think about the producer as a consumer.

What are some of the things that they're buying that now are they're going to be faced with higher prices?

So I mentioned from Canada we get a lot of our fuels.

We also get a lot of our fertilizers from places like Canada.

We import from Mexico, different steel machinery such as our tractors.

So some of the costs of productions we Let's think about the outputs.

So producers in Montana are really big in cattle, wheat and lentils, right?

And the fear for some of those products is the retaliatory tariffs.

So for wheat specifically, we actually export 80% of our wheats to other countries in the Asian Pacific.

So places like South Korea, Japan, and to some extent China.

So if these countries put into place retaliatory tariffs, that means that it's more expensive for our goods to be on their market.

We can expect, if you're thinking of economics 101, the demand curve is going to shift down.

That's gonna mean lower prices for our commodities as well as less quantity sold.

We're going to see that for pulses as well.

We export most of our pulses to Canada.

They've already put retaliatory tariffs in place, which means that we're not going to be able to sell as many goods there.

For beef the story is a little bit trickier because cows cross the border quite a bit.

We bring in a lot of our cows from Canada to raise here.

We finish them, we take them back to Canada and then we bring them back here to process them.

So these cows are gonna face a lot of tariffs.

So we might see higher costs for our beef producers as well.

The story on how beef prices are going to be impacted is less clear.

Some analysts think they might be increases, some might think there's decreases.

But that's sort of how I think tariffs are going to be impacting the US economy.

- Do things like herbicides or pesticides also travel the border across the Canadian border?

Do we use a lot of things that...

I know some herbicides are produced in Europe, for example, that we use as chemical inputs.

Where do most of the herbicides and pesticides come from?

Are they part of taxes or tariffs too?

- Yes, they're going to most likely be facing these tariffs as well.

So again, since the US has just introduced tariffs on places like the European Union on those imported herbicides and chemicals, we're going to expect to see higher prices on those inputs as well.

- Okay, interesting.

A lot of wait to see what happens.

But I'm a little nervous at times about it.

There's no doubt about that.

Tim, you mentioned herbicides.

This caller watched the program last week and said people on the panel said you could put vinegar on weeds to kill them.

She said that the panel member said you had to use a special vinegar.

What vinegar is it?

And will it damage other plants in the area?

- Yes.

So what is the vinegar doing to kill the plant?

Vinegar has acetic acid in it, and that acetic acid, when I take a sip out of the vinegar bottle at home, it's 5% acidity that's relatively low.

You can buy cleaning vinegar that is 10% acidity and I think you can get herbicide vinegar, which is 30%.

- [Jack] It is.

- 30% acid or acidity basically.

So what's it doing?

It's acid burning that plant.

You are pouring acid on there and you are basically burning that plant with acid.

Will it affect all plants?

Yes, it absolutely will and it will burn down the tops of the plants.

But if that's a perennial plant like Canada thistle or something else, then that root is just gonna regrow from below.

So is vinegar useful as a herbicide?

Maybe sometimes.

But you want to be spraying very small weeds in your garden and they should be annuals and they might die.

I wouldn't spray field bind weed not Canada thistle.

It's just not gonna affect the plant.

- That's not a huge endorsement that I'm hearing.

- Yeah, no it's, you know, I'd rather just use a hoe in all honesty in that way.

Scuttle hoe on some small annual plants I think would be easier.

I had a call this week about someone who was, they said, oh, can I mix Epsom salt and vinegar together to put onto the plant?

And they were trying to kill a legume.

Well Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate.

And so really what they were doing was fertilizing the plant with magnesium sulfate.

They were burning off the top of the vegetation and then fertilizing it with magnesium sulfate, so.

- Okay, I will add that when you start looking for that 30% vinegar, you're going to be shocked at the price.

- [Tim] Well I'm, yeah.

- That they charge.

So I think a good, very safe herbicide would be a better choice for most weed control.

- You would get more value or efficacy out of it.

- Or with the current tariffs, just that hoe if it's not coming from Mexico, you know?

- Uta, question here from Choteau, they had a little bit of stripe rust last year.

You might tell people what stripe rust is.

Do they have to worry about it this year?

- Hmm, good question.

So stripe rust is a fungal disease that affects wheat barley.

It's actually pretty easy to identify, you know, it's like the name suggests, it causes these stripes and they're yellow and if you walk through a field or rub on a plant and your finger is yellow or orange-ish afterwards, that's probably stripe rust.

If in doubt, send a sample to the Schutter Diagnostic lab, or you can send a picture to me in an email.

So yeah, we did have some stripe rust last year in Montana.

Last year was actually a pretty good stripe rust year across the nation.

There were several states that were hit with it pretty hard.

So what's the stripe rust risk for this year?

It's lower than last, like this time last year basically.

And we'll just have to see how it progresses.

So basically stripe rust typically doesn't over winter in Montana.

It could, so if you have seen stripe rust on your winter wheat, like the fall planted winter wheat last year, there's a chance we are having an issue this year.

If you didn't see it last year, it must come in from out of state.

And so in Montana we get stripe rust either from the Pacific Northwest and in a Pacific Northwest the stripe rust risk currently is relatively low risk predicted.

Alternatively, stripe rust can come in from basically the southern US and then it moves the great plains up north and into Montana.

Typically by the time it arrives here, our winter wheat especially is that much mature that it, even if the crops that gets infected, it's not gonna have a huge impact on our yield.

So to my knowledge, stripe rust has been detected as far north as I think North Carolina.

So it's still down there.

So this is good.

I think they've also started seeing it in Kansas.

So it's moving its way up.

It will just really depend on how the disease develops in those states and how soon our growing season progresses.

But I'll keep an eye out on it and we'll send out ag alerts if we see stripe rust come into Montana or into our neighboring states.

But for now I would say it's a relatively low risk year so far.

- That makes sense.

Thank you.

I have a couple questions here.

One that is kind of interesting and we're not gonna get to them all tonight.

We'll have some leftover for next week.

But this one is for Nicole.

This caller was wondering if wetlands are so beneficial to producers, wildlife and the economy.

What can we do to assure wetlands survive Should we call state representatives, federal administration to protect them?

Suggestions how you go ahead and encourage wetland protection?

- This is a really good question and we've seen some changes in the policy space.

Previously, under the Clean Water Act, wetlands used to be protected and if people were going to develop over it or farm on it, you'd have to get a special permit.

In the ag space, you weren't even allowed to drain these wetlands.

You might lose access to some of your crop insurance programs.

So recently after the Sackett versus EPA court case, the protection on wetlands has changed.

So now it's only the wetlands that are contiguous to the US waterways.

So if they're touching the surface waters, those are the only ones that are protected.

These wetlands that are isolated.

Now you no longer need to get a permit after the Supreme Court ruling.

So what we're seeing is more of our wetland ecosystems at risk because of this change in Supreme court policy.

What can we do to change that or to protect some of these wetlands?

I really like your suggestion Jack, of calling your local representatives, for changes to protect some of the wetlands that we see.

If you have land and you're a landowner that you know that land floods often, the soils are hydric, you might qualify for a wetland easement.

In Montana I think the payment is a $1,000 per acre.

So it's a pretty nice chunk of change.

So if you're interested in going towards something like these wetland easement programs, it might be worth checking out.

- Okay, excellent answer.

I appreciate that.

From Bozeman, while I have you up, have you heard of the Indreland wetlands here in Bozeman?

- I have not, tell me more.

- Well I know a little bit about this having worked with DU, but the Indreland family donated 18 acres right off of the interstate where the old train trestle used to go across, it's wetlands.

And a variety of different conservation organizations are making a wetland show park out of it for wildlife and waterfowl and songbirds.

So it's a project ongoing by, you know, several different agencies.

It is located right here in Bozeman and if you want more information on it, yeah, get ahold of me 'cause I can direct you to the people that are actually involved with it.

Enough said about that.

Western Salsify at Gallatin Gateway, they don't like it.

What's it look like?

And they want to get rid of it.

- Oh yeah, so this time of year it looks like a grass, it'll be a little ball or it's a dandelion, it's related to the dandelion plant, but the leaves will look very grass like they'll have a center core and if you pull one of those leaves off, you'll see that it makes latex, like a dandelion would.

And so that's the best way to identify this year, depends on how you want to get rid of it.

You could spot spray it, you could it out below the surface before it starts a flower and that'll kill it pretty well too.

It doesn't grow back.

It's a biennial.

Unlike dandelions.

Dandelions are a perennial, so it'll only grow two years.

You could spray a broadleaf herbicide on it like Roundup for lawns or something like that.

If you have a good grass stand and that should actually take care of it pretty quickly.

- [Nicole] Is that a good candidate for the vinegar?

(Jack laughs) - You know.

- Can you make a salad with it?

- You could actually, that would make a rather tasty salad.

You can eat some versions of this species.

It's called black root sometimes people used to eat it as a peasant food.

Yeah, put some vinegar on it and you could eat it if you wanted to.

- Does it have a taproot as well?

- It does have a taproot, it has a- - I find the dandelion fork is my favorite tool for those taproot plans.

- Yep, I think, yeah, dandelion fork.

I was talking to someone this week about curly dock in the hay pastures and the big industrialized dandelion fork came up because they were trying to get curly dock out of their pasture, and- - [Jack] That sounds like a lot of work to me.

- Yep, it does, curly dock is a hard one to manage once it becomes established within a hay pasture though it has a deep root system.

- Is that toxic to livestock?

- It is a little bit.

It makes milk sour.

It has OAA in it, oxaloacetic which in really high doses can be toxic to cattle.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, this is one that's kind of interesting because I've had several people over the last couple years asked me about this, the caller is from Great Falls and they planted onion sets last year, but her harvested onions were very small.

What should she do to get big onions?

- Ooh, that's a good question.

So with small onions, one of my first kind of thoughts when you have a veggie garden and you're not seeing any obvious issues but it's just not as productive as you want it to be.

My first thought is maybe the nutrients, there could be maybe a fertilizer issue potentially.

And my first step for anything like that is to get a soil test.

And so in Great Falls reach out to Rose Malasani, talk to her about getting a soil test and that will give you a baseline understanding.

Other things kind of with onions they like nice, you know, soils maybe like the loamy soils.

So maybe adding a bit of compost could be helpful, but I think it could be a nutrient issue that could be why you just don't have really slow, robust onions.

- [Jack] How far apart should you plant them?

That makes a difference.

- That does, yeah, if you plant them too close, you're gonna have like the little stunted ones.

- How deep do we plant our onions?

If I'm putting in onion bulb sets, how deep should I have those?

- I mean you don't plant them that deep with the onion upsets.

I would say like probably like a couple inches into the soil.

They're not one of the deep planted ones.

- So to get a nice ball on the onion, should it be sitting on the surface so that you can, yup.

- Yeah, you should be seeing them like right up on the surface and usually by the end of the year nice big juicy onions ideally.

So checking out those nutrients.

- So if you plant them close together, you harvest every two outta three and you use them as scallions, which are really, really tasty.

- Yeah, that's a great way to thin them out.

You have your green onions are scallions.

- Okay, Tim, quickly, this person wants to know if there is resistance to Canada thistle known in this area?

- No.

- [Jack] Okay.

- But there isn't, but Canada thistle is a really difficult weed to kill and manage because you have...

If you look at a Canada thistle patch, remember there's as much biomass above ground as there is below ground and all that biomass means that it often survives herbicide applications, makes new shoots and comes up.

Most perennial weeds are not resistant to herbicides because they don't have the same selection pressure.

Annual weeds like kochia make up seed every single year.

So you go through a lot of generations.

Canada thistle, the patch may live for a long time.

You don't have the same sort of selection pressure that you do on annual weeds.

So there are many fewer perennial weeds that are resistant to herbicides.

- Okay, thank you.

Quick question for you Uta, does it pay to use a fungicide on your bluegrass yard, quickly?

- [Uta] Your what?

- Bluegrass yard?

- I'm not sure.

Depends on what your concern is.

I don't know.

- So I would say like for Kentucky bluegrass, that's the most common turf grass yard that we have in Montana.

I would say unless you have a known fungal issue, which contact the Schutter diagnostic lab to confirm that.

But a lot of our fungal issues in common home yards are a result of soil compaction and other issues including moisture management.

And so you might address some of those cultural practices, how frequently you water, making sure that you don't have really dense clay compacted soils, which you can help reduce by aerating adding a little bit of compost.

But that would be my suggestion.

- I think we worked on a case a few weeks ago that where it was possibly summer patch that was like, that would be one of the diseases where a fungicide might be something the owner could choose to do.

But yeah, like you said, you- - [Jack] Get it identified before you spray.

- Yeah, that's what we were working on.

But yeah.

- Okay, let's move on quickly here.

Getting rid of stinging nettle in a field near a creek, Livingston area.

- Stinging nettle, we just had this conversation before the show started.

I saw a great recipe for stinging nettle dumplings today.

Super delicious.

- I'm worried about you a little bit.

- If you can't beat them eat them.

You can manage it with the broadleaf herbicide.

I would spray it really early, but I have to say stinging nettles I have great affection for it, it's a nice plant.

If you read the "Ethnobotany of Britain," they used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

by hitting their joints with stinging nettles.

- I've heard about that.

Does it work?

- My arthritis is not bad enough yet.

I'll let you know later.

- Sounds good, Nicole, from Choteau, Quick question here.

Are there tax advantages to retaining wetlands?

- Well, if you put them into an easement, then yes, you can get different tax advantages for putting your land in easement.

You're no longer using it for agricultural production, so it's going to be taxed differently.

- Okay.

Sounds excellent.

A question from Scobey, this person's read in the "Wall Street Journal<" that China is balking at importing grain from the Great Plains because of vomitoxin I have not heard of any serious outbreaks of vomit toxin or scab.

Have you heard of any in the Great Plains that would possibly affect our exports to China?

- I mean, so vomitoxin is a mycotoxin that is produced by the pathogen that causes Fusarium head blight And so in the last few years I think that fusarium head blight was certainly not last year, it was not a big issue.

I know that many other Great Plain states they're dealing with it much more so.

But then I also know that they have a pretty rigorous program to screen for that, so.

Well I haven't heard about that either, but I would say vomitoxin or fusarium head blight in general is a bigger concern in those Midwestern states.

And the Central Great Plains.

What really drives it is moisture around flowering, which typically we don't really have in Montana unless we have irrigated fields.

So it's more of the off odd years where we have a fusarium headlight issue.

It can be managed with fungicide applications, but timing is really critical.

And so, yeah, I know if that answered your question or not.

- I haven't heard of any, but you know, years ago when I was still gainfully employed, North Dakota had a serious issue with scab and it cost them a billion dollars in reduced grain exports in one year.

So it can be serious, but you're right.

I don't think we have much of it around here anymore.

- Well they have made a lot of progress in terms of developing varieties, and you know, really figuring out which fungicides at what time, so.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, and these bother me because I am not real good with scientific names.

This person wants to know how you can remove campanula rapunculoides if you want to read it.

- [Tim] Oh, Campanula rapunculoides.

- That's it.

- Yep.

Yes.

- Tim, tell us what that is.

- So that is creeping Bellflower.

- Okay.

- And creeping Bellflower is in the Bozeman Livingston around the urban areas it is a pretty difficult weed to get rid of.

It's a half crop kind of plant to actually, the story of Rapunzel with the long hair is related to this is the plant that the witch has.

And it is really difficult to manage even with glyphosate around houses in Montana.

What did we do at our house?

We had a whole bunch of it.

I actually did some pretty good pick ax, cultivation in some flower beds and pulled out fairly large chunks of roots that are three four inches long and an inch in diameter and they just keep regrowing and regrowing.

So you could put some herbicide on there at some point you're probably gonna have to combine it with some cultivation to really get those chunks to rise them out soil.

- So creeping Bellflower?

- Yep.

- I like that name because I can pronounce that one a lot better than this one.

Caller from Columbia.

What is the Montana Wetlands Council?

I don't know.

Have you heard of the Montana Wetlands Council?

- I'm not familiar with it, but I would love to learn more about them.

So please reach out to me, caller, and we can figure it out together.

- That's a good idea definitely.

Abi, mushrooms in a yard.

- Yeah, so mushrooms are often a moisture management issue and when you see mushrooms in a yard, it's usually because there's some organic matter in there and usually that just means you could maybe have some compacted soils that you might wanna address, but they're harmless.

They're not going to be doing anything to your turf specifically.

It's just like a, you can wait and see and let them disappear or you can remove them from there to reduce the amount of spores there.

But in general, waiting for whatever organic matter they're feeding on to disappear, eventually break down, that will help in reducing moisture.

- [Jack] And do they go good with my steak?

- I wouldn't recommend eating mushrooms that you are not a 100% sure on the identification.

- [Jack] But we can do that at the Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

- That's correct, he scattered diagnostic lab can help with mushroom identification however, so if you're concerned about a mushroom in your garden, that's totally fine, but please don't go forge in the forest and then bring us your whole basket.

We are gonna limit it to like three five specimen at most for identification.

- Okay folks, we're running down a little low on time.

I'm gonna throw a quick one to Nicole.

Can wetlands be restored?

- Yes, they definitely can be restored.

So the NRCS is really good at restoring wetlands.

What do they do?

Well, it depends, basically they're just trying to get the water back onto the land.

So if you have any tiling, they might get rid of that.

They're going to be planting native species.

It does take a few years though for the wetland restoration to be considered complete.

There's special contractors out there that can help the wetland reach its original state.

There is some discussion about whether those restored wetlands are as good or as effective as the original ones.

But my studies have shown that these restored wetlands can still function like a normal wetland to filter water or to mitigate flooding.

- You know, I grew up in the rainwater basement of the Midwest and when I was a kid I'd weighed those wetlands and try to jump shoot mallards.

They all disappeared to become cropland, but they are bringing a lot of them back now and it is a tremendous project to bring them back.

It's a lot easier to save them than to bring them back I think.

- I think you're definitely right.

So I think trying to put those funds towards protecting the wetlands would be even better than restoring them.

- Okay folks, next week we have the Critter Ritter with us and that's Steven Vantassel, with the Montana Department of Agriculture.

We've had a lot of questions about voles, ground squirrels, snakes, all these critters.

He will answer those next week or in two weeks.

Next week is Easter.

We will not be on.

So join us in two weeks.

Meanwhile, I hope you have a good week.

I enjoyed tonight's interaction.

It's really been a good fun program.

So with that, Nicole, thank you everybody else.

We'll see you in two weeks.

Goodnight.

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

(gentle music) - [Presenter] "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, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

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