- [Narrator] Montana Ag Live is made possible by The Montana Department of Agriculture; (upbeat music) 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) - You are watching Montana Ag Live coming to you this evening from the studios of KUSM on the campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana Public Television system.

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

Happy to be your host this evening.

We're gonna have a fun program.

What's really gonna make it unique, I finally found an entomologist to be on the program this evening.

So if you have a bunch of stored up questions about bugs, (panelists chuckling) and believe me, there are a lot of buggy questions in this state, call them in tonight, and we'll do our best to answer those.

Other than that, I will say that this is our last program of the spring.

We will start up again September 7th this fall, and stay tuned, we will have a nice series this fall, and I hope you come back and watch us at that time.

But now let me introduce this evening's panel.

Way to my left, Mac Burgess, actually, pardon me, it's Macdonald Burgess.

(Mac chuckling) - That's right.

(Tim chuckling) - Mac is a small farm specialist, there are a lot more small production farms in the state every year, and that's his specialty.

So if you have questions concerning call them in this evening.

Our entomologist, we finally found one, Chloe Rice.

(panelist chuckling) She's our insect diagnostician here at MSU.

Very, very sharp, knows a lot about arthropods, and that's another name for insects.

So we'll get to some of the questions that we've stored up, but also if you have some questions this evening, please feel free to call me.

There'll be a phone number on the screen shortly.

Tim Seipel, (Tim chuckling) that's gonna come up as a weed ecologist.

The reason it's ecologist, he can't spell weed scientist, (Tim and Chloe chuckling) he keeps calling himself an ecologist.

But if you have questions about herbicides on any crops, lawn, and so forth, good chance to answer those this evening, or other methods of weed control, there are things that you can use other than herbicides.

Abi Saeed, Abi is our horticulturalist.

We always keep her busy, she's happy to be here, (Abi chuckling) and she's almost a regular, almost every week we have her here (panelists chuckling) because she's so knowledgeable when it comes to horticultural questions.

Answering the phone this evening, Judge Bruce Loble and Cheryl Bennett.

So get that phone busy- - Mm-hmm.

- And we'll start with questions here in a minute.

But Chloe, tell us a little bit about what you do here at MSU.

- Thanks, Jack.

So I work in the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, which is located on MSU's campus in Bozeman.

And I work as an insect diagnostician, so people send me insects from their home and their gardens, and public places too.

And I identify those bugs and then I provide management recommendations.

And as a member of the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, I work with a really great team, and collectively we diagnose any kind of plant problems from the agricultural and the non-agricultural settings.

That includes identifying weeds, visual assessments of herbicide damage.

As I mentioned, I do the non-agricultural insect diagnostics, and we have an agricultural insect diagnostician.

And then the lab also covers plant disease problems from agricultural settings and the home garden settings too.

- Thank you.

And I guarantee you they're busy in the summertime.

(panelist chuckling) And I do remember this number because I used to run that lab many, many years ago.

(panelists chuckling) The phone number is 406-994-5150, which will get you to the diagnostic lab.

(Tim chuckling) And then there's a litany of specialists that you can contact personally, if you have some questions via phone.

A lot of times it's easier to send a text message, or so forth and so on.

Abi, I have a question for you that's left over from last week.

I found this kind of humorous, we talked about it ahead of time.

This person here in Bozeman had a kind of a pet and cottontail in their garden, and he noticed that one evening it ate the top of a kohlrabi, and the next day the rabbit was dead in the garden.

They wanna know, is kohlrabi poisonous?

- No.

So kohlrabi is not poisonous.

I think that is a coincidence.

There could be many reasons that the rabbit could be dead, but I love kohlrabi, we were having a conversation about it too.

- Yeah.

- We like to eat it as apples, Tim mentioned.

- Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah, not a poisonous plant.

- Just (mumbling) yeah.

I mean, Brassica oleracea is an amazing thing.

It's broccoli, it's kohlrabi, it's cauliflower, it's brussels sprouts.

All the same species, and it's bread to just, selected for each of the different ones.

So not poisonous, but if they want to know a good kohlrabi recipes, we have some good salad recipes- - Mm-hmm.

- We were discussing.

- You know what you should do- - Mm-hmm.

(chuckling) - For the Ag Live newsletter, since you like to promote recipes, (panelist chuckling) talk about using kohlrabi.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

(panelists chuckling) - You were hired to do that.

- Yeah, that's okay.

(panelists chuckling) Look for my kohlrabi salad recipe on the newsletter.

- And I like steam kohlrabi with hot Chinese mustard.

- Ooh, yeah.

- Yeah, that's not bad either.

Okay, a question I came in via Facebook from Helena.

Chloe, your first time up.

They're finding brown, about a quarter inch long fuzzy worms crawling around in their basement.

Any idea where these are coming from, or what they are?

- So the most likely candidate would be a carpet beetle, and the scientific name is a domestic beetle, and they're found probably in almost everybody's home.

So if they're found in low numbers, that's not really something to be alarmed of.

But if you're starting to see a lot of them, especially in some rooms, you might want to, for example, I'm seeing a lot of them in my kitchen, the first place to check would be any dog food or cat food, they love dry pet food.

So I'd start there, and then make your way out.

Are there any other stored foods in the kitchen area where they might be coming from?

And they have a huge feeding range.

So I'd say, if you don't have any, look in the kitchen finding where they're coming from, anywhere that the vacuum doesn't hit too frequently.

So anywhere that lint is building up, any organic matter can provide a food source.

And actually personally, I've had issues with carpet beetles, and in my case I found that they were coming from my window egress in the basement.

So it was almost like the egress was a pitfall trap and they came crawling along, fell in, and they would appear in my basement.

- Hmm.

- So sticky traps are really good for finding the source of them in the home.

- Is that a pretty common problem here in Montana?

- Yep.

We get a lot of samples of carpet beetles in each year.

- Okay.

- And like I say, generally if you're seeing a very small number of them, only one or two per week a month, that's not something to be alarmed about.

So when you start seeing the high numbers, it could indicate you have infested food.

It could indicate as well that you may have a dead animal near or in the house, for example, in the attic.

- Okay, thank you.

Mac, a question from last week.

Are there more truck gardens?

And you might explain what a truck garden is.

- Yeah.

- This person obviously knew.

Starting here in Montana.

- Yeah, the term "truck garden", I think of that as something bigger than a home garden and a small farm, it would be another word for it.

Somebody who is growing primarily vegetables and using a small pickup truck to go sell them at the farmer's market or something like that, and then there's other alternative marketing types for people growing vegetables on a small scale like community supported agriculture.

And yeah, that is on the upswing, for sure.

- And this is a tough question 'cause it's gonna vary with people.

Say if you had a two-acre truck garden or vegetable garden- - [Mac] Yeah.

- Can that be profitable for an individual?

- That definitely can be profitable, whether it makes enough money to make a living for a family, that'd be a pretty exceptional situation, but there are many folks in that, two, five, to 10 or so acres who are doing well enough to have some employees and grow food for their communities.

And it could start really small, a person might have extra garlic and just sell that at the farmer's market.

So not everybody selling food at the farmer's market is making their living from it, but it's still an important- - No, I really (mumbling) - Component of the economy.

- But we are definitely seeing more interest in small farm operations in the state.

- Oh yeah, yeah definitely.

- No doubt about it.

Okay, I'm gonna shift over to Tim.

This is also from last week, it came from Cardwell.

And whitetop is a big issue, and alfalfa around the state.

And this person would like to know if there is a good control method for whitetop and alfalfa.

And you might explain what whitetop looks like.

- Yeah, whitetop is, as it's described, it has a white flower that kind of ends up looking flat on the top.

It's in the mustard family.

So it being in the mustard family, it's not an annual mustard.

So flixweed, field pennycress, those are annual mustards, whitetop is a perennial species that has underground root rhizomes.

So when you hear underground root rhizomes, you automatically are like, oh, that's gonna be a harder weed to manage than just a small annual weed.

It's also a very early growing, early flowering species, so it's one of the first things that flowers that you see it around, if you head down the Frontage Road between Bozeman and Belgrade, there's a lot of it down the road, some of the first stuffed flower.

So using that information, you can kind of do a little bit, you can do pretty good managing in an alfalfa.

So when alfalfa is dormant, there are a number of herbicides that you can put down as a dormant treatment.

So that would be something like Metribuzin or Chateau, which is also sold as Valor, that's what pulse crop producers know it as.

It has an active ingredient, flumioxazin.

Then after the first cutting, you can also apply a Group 2, the group of herbicides, Group 2, a herbicide called Pursuit, great alfalfa safety, widely used in alfalfa.

- Okay.

- And you can apply it after the first cutting, so you can really wear it down.

I will say, it's not gonna be a spray at one time and the weed is gone, you're gonna have to follow it up multiple times, I think.

- That's probably the most dominant problem weed in alfalfa other than dandelions.

I have a question here, we'll get to later on.

- Yep.

(chuckling) Yeah.

(panelist chuckling) - Yeah, okay.

Couple of things from last week.

From Missoula, they want to know how to get involved with 4-H as volunteer.

And I can answer that very simply, get ahold of your local county extension agent, and they'll put you to work, I promise.

And you'll have a good time doing it because you get to work with a lot of great kids.

And the other thing is Darrin Boss and I have been going round and around about which field day has the best meal.

(panelist chuckling) - Mm-hmm.

- So before we get there, if I can show the audience the various field days that we're going to have around the state this year, we have a listing of them.

And if you're in that area, I'm gonna encourage you to attend one of these field days.

So would we please pull up that list?

There it is.

Now I've always voted for Moccasin (panelists chuckling) as being the best meal.

And I go to these field days for years, and I was always impressed at which ones serve the best meal.

- Mm-hmm.

- Darrin says, the steak fry at Havre is now the best.

So if you're in the Havre area, take a chance, go up there, join the field day, sample their steaks, and next fall call in (panelist chuckling) and tell me how well you like the northern field day.

I have to admit, if we could have a picture of Darrin and his crew cooking steaks up there, it looks like I might have to go back up there one of these years.

(panelists chuckling) I will say, one of the times I was up there, I met a rattlesnake that I didn't particularly like (panelist chuckling) in field day.

And Luther Talbert, our spring wheat breeder at the time was spooked by the rattlesnake so much that he was able to jump from the ground up to the carrier for all the people (Chloe chuckling) in one bound.

(Chloe chuckling) So he didn't like them anymore than I did.

- Jack, I've gonna put in my plug for Corvallis, the Western Ag Research Center there.

If you're a person who likes to have some vegetables on the side of your burger and maybe some haskap ice cream when you're done, then that's where I go.

- Hmm.

- Put it this way, all of them do a pretty good job- - Yeah, they all do that.

- Of entertaining their guests and you will learn a lot- - Mm-hmm.

- At the Ag Experiment Station field days.

You meet a lot of interesting people, it's not all producers, a lot of business people show up.

It's a fun time, and I thoroughly enjoy still going, even though I haven't been actively doing much with agriculture for about 20 years.

Okay, let's move on.

Emerald ash borer, we've had questions all fall, or all spring I should say.

Do we have emerald ash borer in Montana?

And if not, are we gonna have it?

So I'm gonna let you answer that one.

- That's a really good question, Jack.

And we receive questions about this all the time in the lab.

And currently, emerald ash borer has not been detected in Montana.

However, last summer we had a few updates in its distribution in the US.

For example, it was detected for the first time in North Dakota, and it was also detected in Brookings in South Dakota.

It's also present in Oregon where the quarantine zone has been expanded, and therefore it is likely that emerald ash borer will be detected at Montana at some point in the near future.

But when, we don't know that yet.

- I anticipate it will get here.

And one of the recommendations that people should pay attention to now is, when you're planting new trees- - Mm-hmm.

- You might not want to plant as many ash as we did 25, 30 years ago.

There are numerous other trees that are very adapted to the state.

Abi, you might mention a couple of those that you- - Yeah.

- Think are really great.

- Yeah, we have a variety like locust, a few of our maples, some of our birches.

We have a lot of really great options.

One of the best ways to prevent kind of major pest issues is to have a diversity of planting.

So diversify the plantings, have a wide variety of trees, if you're interested in terms of what trees you can plant in your landscape, that's a great question for your county extension agent to answer specific to your site conditions too.

So plant a wide variety.

- Okay, thank you.

Mac, a question from Bozeman.

They are very interested in starting a truck garden, a small farm.

- Yep.

They wanna do it organically.

They'd like to know who certifies organic production in small gardens.

- The Montana Department of Agriculture.

- Mm-hmm.

- And do you have a contact that they might be able to reach out to?

- I would go to the website there and look for the current links as far as getting the application in for that.

And just keep in mind the organic process or certification process is essentially an audit of business practices.

So it's gonna be production practices, inputs, you'll need to think about the time span over which you've not used prohibitive substances, but it's just every bit as much about what you do do as far as addressing the problems of agricultural production.

And it's a record-keeping audit of your production as well.

- So you have to be out of- - Mm-hmm.

- Normal production for two or three years, I believe.

- Yeah, you'd need to not use any prohibited substances for three years before the harvest- - Okay.

- Of the crop.

Yep.

- Last week I got so involved with so many other questions here that I forgot to mention some of this stuff that we have sitting in front of us here.

So first thing I'm gonna do is pull that twig up that doesn't look quite normal.

- Yeah, this one here?

- Yeah.

And Tim will talk about what's going on there.

- Yep.

So this is a lilac twig that came off a lilac hedge, and lilacs make big deep roots that go underground, right?

They may spread out well much further than the lilac hedge, and you could see, it doesn't look super-nice, right?

You see this cupping up here, you see the leaves look pretty bad.

Here is the stock that was next to it, you can see it's trying to make a lot of leaves and grow out of it.

And this is herbicide damage onto this lilac shrub.

And it was most likely caused by someone spraying a herbicide to keep bare ground open.

Maybe they had rocks or gravel in their driveway, and the roots of this lilac went under the tree, and it damaged by it.

I suspect what they sprayed was a herbicide called Roundup 365, which has no glyphosate in it.

So Roundup used to be sold as it was just glyphosate.

That was the active ingredient.

They've since rebranded it, and now most products that you go to at the hardware store shelves do not have any glyphosate what was the Roundup product.

- Roundup product, yeah.

- And so now they have things like Roundup 365.

One of the things of glyphosate, Roundup, was, oh, you sprayed it, and it was bound, and it was never there, and it didn't cause any carryover issues.

This was a issue where someone sprayed, it got into the roots, was translocated up, and it injured the whole rest of the plant.

So if you're spraying a herbicide like a bare ground herbicide to keep the gravel in your driveway clear or rocks around the house clear, be very cognizant about applying that herbicide because often the roots will be underneath where you expect them to be.

And we see a lot of injury samples come in to Schutter Diagnostic Lab that look like this.

- Okay, and that's very common- - Yeah, it happens quite often.

- And even 2,4-D on a plant like that could curl it up.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it would look a little bit different if it were 2,4-D.

The 2,4-D causes a cupping symptom.

- Cupping.

Okay, and while we're at it, I see something in front of Chloe there that almost looks like herbicide damage, but I think it's probably some kind of a bug that's attacking whatever plant that is.

Chloe, what is that?

- So this is a sample I picked up actually earlier today, and you can see that this is from a plum, and on the leaves we have these long finger-like projections.

And these can be really alarming for home gardeners when they first see these on their plants.

They're actually created by a type of mite that's called an eriophyid mite.

And generally, actually no treatment is required that the tree is able to keep or the plant, these finger mites can be on a wide variety of plants actually, but generally the plant's able to keep photosynthesizing, and it doesn't tend to affect the overall health of the plant.

So this is one of the ones that looks really alarming, but actually isn't a need for much concern.

- The one I remember that was often mistaken for a disease was eriophyid mite gall.

- Mm-hmm.

- That's kinda red on mountain ash leaves.

- Mm-hmm.

- Are you seeing that now too?

- Not on mountain ash at the moment.

I did pick up this one, which is from a willow.

- Okay.

- And in this case, it's actually produced by a type of sawfly, so it's closely related to a wasp.

But in the case of a mountain ash or any plant generally, galls on the hull are not something to be too concerned about if they're on the leaves.

Now sometimes galls occur on the stems of the plants or on the roots, and they can do more damage.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So we've seen some wheat streak mosaic virus in Montana again this year after maybe not having much for a few years.

And wheat streak mosaic virus is actually transmitted by the wheat curl mite, which is a tiny little eriophyid mite.

- Mm-hmm.

- Do these sorts of eriophyid mites also transmit diseases, or is there any risks like that associated with- - Yeah.

- Trees and shrubs?

- For trees and shrubs, not that I'm aware of.

If anyone had a question about that, they should reach out to me specifically.

- Hmm.

- But as far as I'm aware, they tend to just have an aesthetic problem for the plant rather than a disease issue.

- [Tim] Oh, okay.

- So like Tim's experimental garden, you can consider that a cool science experiment- - Oh (mumbling) - In your backyard.

- Yeah, (chuckling) yeah.

- Yeah.

- We're gonna have a good plum year this year.

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, this might be the first year we've had plums in a really long time.

- Good.

- It's been a perfect... And even apricots- - Mm-hmm.

- I've seen some apricot bushes here in Bozeman.

I call them bushes, they're supposed to be trees.

- Yeah.

(chuckling) - Yeah.

(chuckling) - But they're more of a bush, that actually may produce wild plums.

- Mm-hmm.

- The amount of- - Mm-hmm.

- Blossoms setting on wild plums this year is pretty incredible.

I think we're past the danger of frost, but historically we have had frost in mid to late June.

- So they're done and blooming, we've got small fruits on.

- Yeah.

(Mac and Jack mumbling) - I think they're on pretty good- - Yeah.

- Shape this year.

From Helena, caller is wondering if the amount of herbicide he uses to kill sagebrush is too harsh for other uses.

He's using 2,4-D. - Yes.

Well, it depends on what his other uses are.

- [Jack] Right.

- If you're gonna... You can put a low rate of 2,4-D, like LV6 in your yard, or do not spray Grazon on your lawn.

Some of the things that people use to manage sagebrush can be pretty harsh 'cause you're killing a relatively large woody thing.

So you have to be very careful in your yard situations.

It's really probably not labeled for that.

I don't know specifically what 2,4-D he has, but you do have to be careful not to injure your yard.

I have seen where (chuckling) people have put down CRP rangeland herbicides in a watered cemetery that was Idaho fescue, orchardgrass, and smooth brome.

And those grasses weren't as tough as the CRP crested wheatgrass, and it did do a lot of...

It turned everything very yellow, and put some injury out there.

- I can believe that.

- Yeah.

- Definitely.

All right, thanks, Tim.

A question from Hamilton.

I wanna throw this one at Mac.

This person wants to know if there's any certified organic hard cider being produced in Montana?

Are you aware of any?

- I am not sure of that.

I am aware of some people getting started with the apples, and I'm not sure if they're in production or making it into the cans yet or not.

- [Jack] So we can probably ask somebody in the Department of Ag.

- Yeah.

- Call Zach Miller.

- Mm-hmm, yeah- - Yeah.

- Zach would know.

(Tim mumbling) - Yeah, Zach Miller.

- In Corvallis at the station.

- He would (mumbling) through that.

- Yeah.

- Good question.

- Or just go look in the store and look for that.

- Yeah.

(chuckling) - Yeah.

- Right?

I know there are a number of small scale producers who are putting cider in cans, and that's available- - Hmm.

- Grown in Montana, and I'm just not certain if any of them are certified, and that's making its way all the way through.

- Okay.

- Mm-hmm.

- We answered that best we could.

From Bozeman, Abi.

Caller wants to know if it's too early to start trimming and shaping bushes.

Interesting question.

- That is interesting.

- Mm-hmm.

- So it depends on the type of shrub or bush that you're talking about.

So for our early flowering shrubs, like our lilacs, those you can start trimming right after they're done blooming.

So that two week period after they're done blooming is the best time to do that.

In terms of others, usually the later flowering ones, I like to wait until the dormant season to recommend, so like maybe fall or late kind of winter, early spring can be a good time.

And in terms of how you can revitalize them and make them look bushier, if they're thin and spindly is to take some of the older-looking branches and cut them back to the base, and do that only about 1/3 of the total branch volume per year.

And that should help produce new growth from that root system and fill that out a little bit.

- Okay, excellent.

Glad to know that.

We got a lot of questions tonight.

We're gonna get to as many as we can, so don't stop calling them in.

We're gonna go through- - Hmm.

- And I'm gonna cut the panel short one of their answers today.

(Tim chuckling) - Yeah.

(chuckling) (Mac chuckling) - This one is from Paradise Valley.

Caller's carrots have excessive root hair, and would like to know why, and how to avoid it, if possible.

- [Mac] It could be aster yellows.

Yeah.

- But sometimes when I see excessive root hairs, it's often a moisture related- - Yeah.

- Thing, so if - Mm-hmm.

- There's a lot of moisture maybe, if there's been a lot of precipitation or you might be over-irrigating, I often see a lot of root hairs, if you have a lot more moisture than usual in the carrots, so.

- I'm impressed they can see root hairs on carrots already actually.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- They're digging them a little early, (Tim and Chloe chuckling) and they're not sweet.

I'd like a frost- - Yeah.

- Before I dig mine.

From Sydney, this is a question that came in via Facebook.

They've heard that there is a new tick in Montana that spreads Lyme disease.

What can they do to protect themselves?

You might mention that what this tick is, and so forth.

- Yeah, so recently we did detect the blacklegged tick in Montana.

It's also known as the deer tick, and it is a vector of Lyme disease.

To protect yourself when you're outside, it's the same kind of precautions you would have for the wood tick and the dog tick too.

So long sleeves, long pants, tuck the bottom of your pants into your socks, even though some people think it doesn't look so cool.

(all chuckling) And then you can spray a repellent too, like ones containing DEET.

And then another, probably one of the most important things actually is after you've been outside, when you come back in to do a tick check.

And the areas that ticks like to hide are in the hairline, ear, the cracks and crevices, anywhere they can hide, you check there for ticks.

They can be as small as a poppy seed, and then you want to remove them promptly because in the case of the blacklegged tick, you have that timeframe where it's feeding for the first 24 hours.

If you can get it off your body when it's feeding, then that really minimizes your chance of developing Lyme disease.

- So what's the best way to remove them, Chloe?

- That's a really good question, Abi.

You want to use a pair of tweezers, and you want to grab the tick as close to its head, so as close to the surface of the skin as possible.

And you pull directly upwards gently.

You don't want to just grab the tick because then you risk actually pushing the contents of the tick into your body.

- [Mac] Hmm.

- I'm aware of this new tick, but the old ticks- - Mm-hmm.

- Which I think are deer ticks and wood ticks or whatever they are.

I was out at Glendive a few years ago in May fishing- - Mm-hmm.

- And I had my golden retrievers along.

- Yep.

- And it's incredible, in an hour how many ticks- - Mm-hmm.

- In that area of the country that a dog can pick up, and even a human.

We had many on our bodies.

Is there anything you can do with dogs?

This is a tough question.

I like to throw curve balls (all chuckling) at you guys.

Anything you do with dogs that might protect them from ticks?

- I'm not aware of any products.

There's potentially a type of collar, but I've not looked into the effectiveness of that yet.

So for now, I would say, do the same as you would the human.

So as soon as a dog comes inside, do the tick check on the dog as well and remove the tick straight away, in the same way you would on a human's body.

- Okay.

- And another thing, like contact your veterinarian- - Yeah.

- If you live in an area where a lot of ticks are present, and you might be concerned, they'll know what the latest products are.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- Mm-hmm.

- All right, Tim.

- Yep.

- This is a question that comes in from Three Forks, and one of the most predominant and actually partially noxious, or toxic, not noxious, toxic weed that we are seeing more and more of in the valley.

And this person says, he has tons of it, is hoary alyssum.

Why is it become such a prominent weed?

And what can they do to get rid of it, or to minimize its effects?

- Yeah, it's a tough weed.

It's another one that's in the mustard family, and it's not an annual, it's a biennial to short-lived perennial, one plant to live two or three years.

It'll germinate early in the season.

I haven't quite seen any flowering just yet.

It is toxic to horses.

I don't know that much about the toxicity, and it is a toxic plant.

It's been around the Gallatin, around Bozeman as long as I can remember.

It is a major component of urban lawns in Bozeman where no one has done any broadleaf weed control usually.

- Cool, yeah.

- There's things you can do to (indistinct) it and water good grass stand, and things like that.

And it can be a really tough thing to manage.

The seeds are small, they'll stick around for a long time, and it never stops flowering.

It'll be the last thing flowering in it's still making seeds.

I would, in alfalfa, again, I think this dormant season, you really have to manage the weed during the dormant season.

So in pure alfalfa, I would probably think about something like flumioxazin, which is Valor or Chateau, these two herbicides.

And they also work really well on dandelions actually in the dormant season application.

That's really when you can wear those species down.

Other than that, again, I mentioned Pursuit before, super alfalfa safety.

It's a Group 2 herbicide, which tends to work better on the mustards than a synthetic auxin, something like 2,4-D or MCPA don't work very well on mustards.

- Okay, thank you.

- Yeah.

- We had a question last week, and a viewer sent in a picture.

And the question was, how can you improve composting?

And we discussed a little bit.

If we could pull up a picture of a compost pile where people actually were composting wood, and it was breaking down quite rapidly.

And their secret to success, they claim was a special product given to them by their neighbor.

And that special material was pigeon manure.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it really does, it's probably very high in nitrogen, and their neighbor had homing pigeons.

So my question to this panel, how about chicken manure to enhance composting?

Mac?

- [Mac] Yeah, that would work too.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, for compost to happen, you need a carbon and nitrogen ratio of about 25:1 of all the stuff blended together.

And a lot of the brown things that people would like to compost, wood chips would be a real tough one- - Mm-hmm.

- But even crop straw would be more like 300:1.

And so you need something that's got a lot more nitrogen than it does carbon.

- Mm-hmm.

- So any kind of manure would be great, and really any green plant material can also contribute to that.

So even grass clippings are pretty hot.

- But chicken manure, bird, poultry manure tends to have more nitrogen in it- - Mm-hmm, yeah.

- Than cattle or horses or- - Especially if those cattle or horses have been bedded in wood chips or straw- - Yeah.

- Then they've already got quite a bit of that mixed in.

Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- Anything you can get that's fresh, if it smells like ammonia, then that's- - Mm-hmm.

- I can remember having chickens on the farm when I was really young, and cleaning out chicken coop and putting on a garden, and you could burn garden plants- - Yes.

- Real rapidly- - Mm-hmm, yeah.

- Because it is so high in nitrogen.

- [Mac] But if you compost it with leaves- - Yes, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Or straw, or even wood chips are gonna take awhile to decompose.

There are definitely lignins and things like that that are gonna take a fungal, a fungal- - So you should never put raw chicken manure onto your garden, right?

- Yeah.

- It should always be composted first- - Hmm.

- Yes.

- And then put onto the garden.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- We got that taken care of now.

(all chuckling) Okay, let's move on.

And this is an interesting question.

I'm not sure we're gonna have an answer.

It came from Plains, and this caller wonders why, or if there's a decline in crickets in Montana.

When the caller was much younger, there seemed to be a constant sound of crickets at night, today not so much so.

Do we have less crickets today, Mormon crickets?

- I'm not aware of a decline in crickets.

I mean, personally I have been hearing crickets around myself, but that's something I'd have to look into if there's been an overall decline.

- I heard some this morning, I was on a bike ride out in- - Mm-hmm.

- South of- - Yeah.

- Red Lodge in the Elk Basin, and they were going pretty good this morning.

- Yeah.

- I kinda have to agree with her because I can remember where, they were loud enough when I was a kid that- - [Tim] Huh.

- There was a constant sound at night.

Now yes, you'll hear occasional one, but not as many, and I have no clue why.

- Mm-hmm.

- And a lot of biodiversity is linked to the habitat loss, so the reduction in just habitable areas for a lot of these insects can be a big factor, so- - I think you're onto something.

- Mm-hmm.

- I can think- - Yeah.

- Of places I go where there's lots of crickets- - Yeah.

- But if the habitat in their immediate area, if they've manicured their lawn and cleaned it up and- - Absolutely.

- And mowed it tightly, and then they didn't used to, that could be a big change.

- I can relate to another one.

Being a native mid-westerner out of Nebraska, when I was a kid, all kids collected lightning elateroid bugs.

- Mm-hmm.

- Mm-hmm.

- And you put them in a jar and they'd illuminate.

I've been back in Nebraska now, and at dusk you seldom see a lightning elateroid bug anymore.

- Mm-hmm.

- And why they've declined, probably had- - Again, habitat.

- Yeah.

- Habitat's the number one contributor to the loss of biodiversity.

- Yeah, that case as well, it could be light- - Mm-hmm.

- Pollution too.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Great.

- Okay.

Well, just a few tidbits for the audience to discuss.

(panelists chuckling) Facebook, from Bozeman.

This person's ash tree has round holes in the bark.

- Mm-hmm.

- And they're curious, they think it might be an emerald ash borer.

And we also had a similar question from Missoula, so have at it.

- So it doesn't sound like the emerald ash borer.

As I said before, we've not detected it in Montana yet.

We do have another pest, which is a kind of clearwing moth, and in the bark it'll leave an exit hole that is a little larger than the one that emerald ash borer leaves, but it's perfectly round.

So just clearing them off, it might be called the lilac borer or the ash borer, it has a couple of names, and that's more likely to be the case right now.

- Okay.

- But with emerald ash borer, which is what the color is concerned about, you are looking for D-shaped holes that, you're talking very small, you can see on the bark here, and it'll have one side to it, that's just slightly flatter than the other.

- Mm-hmm, hmm.

Okay, thank you.

From Ulm.

And I think- - Mm-hmm.

- This might only be our second call from Ulm.

And by the way, there's a great steakhouse in Ulm.

(panelists chuckling) So I kinda equate some of these small continuities (panelist chuckling) with dining establishments.

(Chloe chuckling) So if you're in Ulm, you might consider that steakhouse.

But here's the question.

Caller's lawn was a former alfalfa field, there's still some alfalfa that keeps growing back.

How can they get rid of the alfalfa?

If necessary, caller is willing to sacrifice the lawn in hopes in getting a new lawn without alfalfa.

- [Attendee] Yep.

- Hmm.

- Hmm.

- Yep, well, you can spray broadleaf herbicide like 2,4-D actually, will do pretty good when the alfalfa is in full bloom.

So if you've ever dug up an alfalfa root stock before, which I've dug up root stocks.

They can be quite large, they can be two or three inches in diameter, the crown of a alfalfa stock, and it can go down into the ground a foot deep.

- Yeah.

- They have a lot of stored nutrients in there, they pull water from there very deep.

It's hard to kill old alfalfa plant.

You could chop it well below the root crown, if you wanted to.

That would be a very hard task.

Or you could apply a broadleaf herbicide to it, and that's probably the easiest way to go in that sense.

If it were a couple of root crowns, I might go out there and chop them out, and I've actually chopped out some old alfalfa before.

It's a pretty hard task.

- Yeah, you have to keep at it.

- [Tim] You have to keep at it.

- A lot of work.

- Yeah.

- Now, Tim, a lot of the 2,4-D products for homeowners are granular.

Are those as effective?

- No.

- Yeah.

- No, you would want a spot, you would want to have a liquid, and you would probably wanna spray that alfalfa, and put a relatively high rate on there 'cause you're not gonna harm the grass.

You might harm the grass and stunt it a little bit, but it'll grow back, and you're gonna have to work on that alfalfa a couple of times.

- Mm-hmm.

- So while we're on alfalfa- (Mac mumbling) - [Mac] That would help too, and putting a little more in.

- If you cultivated it maybe and re-smoothed it, but that's like a really big undertaking, I think.

- [Mac] Yeah.

- I don't know, I would try to get rid of the alfalfa first, if your grass stand is pretty good because establishing grass in Montana isn't always an easy thing.

- Okay.

While on alfalfa, we had a question last week, I can't find it, but I'm gonna paraphrase it.

This person lives in Bozeman, has noted that a lot of the alfalfa in the Bozeman area is about 50% dandelion, 30% grass, (panelist chuckling) and maybe 20% alfalfa.

(panelists chuckling) - [Panelist] Yeah.

- They're wondering is that nutritious enough for cattle feed?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- It depends on what your goals are, right?

I was just up in Malta, Chinook, Havre this weekend, we were talking about forage production, and sometimes you just wanna cut forage regardless almost of what it is.

And you wanna have that to use.

Alfalfa or dandelions, nothing toxic about it.

Cheatgrass was another one that came up, nothing toxic about it.

Actually pretty good protein, you don't wanna wait till it's too pokey- - Yeah.

- And spiny.

But if you would cut this year a little bit early, you can reduce alfalfa weevil pressure, and you can cut the cheatgrass off before the seed is viable and you bail that, and it's not too bad.

- Mm-hmm.

- So if you have 50, 60% dandelions, you think it's time to start over?

- Yes, yes.

- And how many years out of alfalfa and dandelions would you want to be?

- I would do two to three, and move into something like a hay barley, a triticale, a winter wheat forage, a forage wheat, a cereal, something like that.

You can work the field- - Right.

- You can cultivate it, smooth it out, reset, get your stand filled in there, reduce the weed pressure.

It can be quite... Yeah.

There's a lot of 10 to 15-year-old stands of alfalfa in Montana.

- Yeah, it's gonna be my question is, how often do you need to do that?

I think in other climates it's a thing, you just do every six or eight years.

- Five years, yeah.

It depends on what your management goals are.

If you have a grass alfalfa mix, and it's producing reasonably well, and you're getting the forage off of it that you want to- - You see alfalfa stands in Montana, they're 25 years old or more- - Yeah, 10, 25 years old.

10, 20.

- Mm-hmm.

- But they're not producing at what they could be producing at probably.

- Right.

- Yeah, so 10 to... Yeah, 10 years is usually at the latest.

If you're in clean high production, you may do five or six years, and replace it.

- Okay, a question.

(chuckling) I love these.

We always have these disputes between husbands and wife.

(panelists chuckling) So the question is for Chloe.

My wife says that spiders are not insects, and the husband says they are.

Who is correct?

(chuckling) - As always, maybe I could say that the wife is correct.

(Jack chuckling) Spiders are not insects, they are arthropods.

As you mentioned before, but they're not insects.

Insects are a type of arthropod that has three pairs of legs.

And as we know, the creepy, creepy spider has (Abi and Chloe chuckling) eight legs in total.

(Tim chuckling) - So there the answer is given.

(all chuckling) (Jack mumbling) Okay, from Billings, for Abi.

Blossom-end rot their tomatoes last year, quickly what can they do to minimize that problem?

- Yeah, so although blossom-end rot is a result of a calcium deficiency in your tomato plants, it's not caused by limited calcium necessary in the soils, it's more so an issue of inconsistent watering.

So when we have kind of those really warm summer months, and you may not be getting consistent enough watering, you maybe adding a lot of water one day, and then a little bit less you the next week or so.

That's what causes the mobility of that calcium to be stopped, which causes the blossom-end rot.

So making sure that you're consistently watering your tomatoes, your peppers, that's the way to prevent blossom-end rot, not adding calcium in any way or eggshells.

- [Jack] Most of our soils have plenty of calcium in it.

- Yes.

- I've got you up.

We missed this last week too.

- Hmm.

- I was not very- - Hmm.

- Paying attention last week, so tell us- - Mm-hmm.

- What's going on here.

- Yeah, so this has been a big year for powdery mildew, so this is Tim's experiment garden, (Tim chuckling) it's his crab apple.

And you see a lot of these kind of, it looks like baby powder or talcum powder kind of coating the leaves.

And it's usually the younger leaves, those are more likely to be affected by powdery mildew.

This is caused when we have moderate temperatures and high humidity, which we've seen in a lot of pockets in the state in the spring.

And so we've seen kind of a lot of issues associated with powdery mildew.

In terms of how to manage this cultural practices, so pruning, increasing air circulation, good sanitation, removing any fallen leaves away from your garden could be helpful.

You can use certain products like sulfur products and neem or azadirachtin to prevent this issue in the future, but a lot of that cultural practices can be really helpful.

- And it is not generally an every year course.

- It's not usually.

- Yeah.

- This is a bigger year for in terms of the intensity.

- [Tim] So will this hurt my crab apple tree?

- It's gonna kill it.

(Tim, Abi, Jack, and Chloe chuckling) - It's not.

It might impact its overall vigor- - Mm-hmm.

- And growth, but usually this is not a pathogen that we worry about in terms of being really dangerous for plants.

- Right.

- So this tree that I have, I would say that it sometimes looks stringy or the branches can tend to...

It'd be real long, you don't have a lot of branching to it.

Is that because you get this infections at the end or is that- - Sometimes it could be, but it could also be a pruning related thing.

- Mm-hmm.

- So a lot of times when you have kind of spindly or thin-looking branches, if you do a little bit of pruning to remove some of those sparser branches, that can increase branching, and allow it to fill out a little bit more.

- Yeah.

- So maybe we'll come over and prune your crab apple.

- Yeah.

- Summer break, the kids are outta school.

If you guys are listening- - Yeah.

(chuckling) - You can do some tree pruning.

(Jack and Tim chuckling) - Absolutely.

- All right, we've had this question every week, and I can attest to the fact that the wasps are now very active.

- Hmm.

- We did some lamb burgers Saturday night on the grill.

And boy, I tell you, the hornets or whatever they are, love the smell of ground lamb cooking.

- Mm-hmm.

(panelists chuckling) - What should you do to get rid of some of these pests?

- [Attendee] Thank you very much, have a good day!

- So if the wasps are yellow jackets, probably most likely to be the case- - Yeah.

- Then there are traps that you can buy, and you hang them up in an outdoor area, and they'll trap some of the yellow jackets, but of course, they won't be able to trap them all.

And a lot of it's actually about moderating our own behavior around wasps.

So if you can't locate the wasp nest actually on your property, then there's not really that much you can do at that point other than using these traps, and then not swatting them away, that makes you more likely to get stung, and covering the food wherever possible.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- They were hungry this weekend.

- Mm-hmm.

- And they go for meat.

- Oh boy, do they ever.

- Yeah.

- You don't wanna sit (panelist chuckling) outside with a lamb burger (panelist chuckling) open on your plate because you'll get added protein- - Yeah.

- In a hurry.

(panelists chuckling) Okay, a quick one, Havre.

Caller's lilacs are done blooming, when is the good time to trim away the old blooms and prepare for next year?

- Now is a great time.

If they're done blooming, it's the best time to prune those lilacs.

- Okay.

From Hamilton, Mac, this caller grows as veggies in straw bales.

He adds nitrogen before planting, and something I think called feather meal.

I'm not sure what that is.

He is wondering what else in our organic product he can use to get high nitrogen without using urea.

- Yeah, so organic sources of nitrogen, feather meal is one, it's literally just from chickens that are being processed for meat, and that's available to 13% nitrogen.

A very similar product would be blood meal, and it's the same nitrogen test 13-0-0.

There are some plant-based organic nitrogen fertilizers made from alfalfa.

They're basically alfalfa pellets or soybean meal, they're a little bit lower in concentration of nitrogen.

They're growing in a straw bale.

That's an interesting thing.

I've never done that myself, I've heard folks doing it.

The potatoes do pretty well growing in straw, but I think they've gotta have roots into something that does have quite a bit of nitrogen and all the other plant nutrients.

- Years ago I tried that.

And if you like mice, (all chuckling) that's a good way to grow mice, they love.

- Yeah, I've heard of it working pretty well for folks.

- The first year it did, the second year, I mean, I needed three cats to really keep the number of mice down.

(panelist chuckling) Mice really enjoy nice straw bale.

- I would say, if you've got soil that can grow a lawn, you've got soil that can grow vegetables as well and- - So do you use straw bales to make like a raised bed or you actually put the plants in the straw bale?

- Plants in the straw bale.

- Oh!

- Yeah.

- And you put nitrogen in there- - Mm-hmm.

- You basically make compost out of it pretty quick.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

- The roots permeate it pretty well.

- Here's an interesting question that I've not heard before, but came from Bozeman here.

The caller put a queen wasp trap out four weeks ago.

- Hmm.

- She just caught about seven of them.

- Hmm.

- Is there any way that they can find out if they got the queen?

- If you think you have the queen, they're welcome to send it to me.

Normally the queen is a little larger than the other wasp, but if they do want that checking, just send over to Schutter Lab, and I can take a look at that for them.

- Yeah.

- So is it a crown that you look for to tell if it's a queen?

(panelist chuckling) - No, unfortunately she doesn't have a crown on her head.

(chuckling) - Mm-hmm.

- Now we'll use the word "wasp" or "yellow jacket" or some people even say "hornet."

Is that all the same thing or do we have more than one thing here that- - Yeah.

- Someone might call that.

- So actually hornet really refers to a European species that's found in very few places in the US actually.

But we use the word "hornet" for things like the yellow jacket, or we say the bald-faced hornet, but technically that's a wasp.

I think it's just become a word that is applied to any kind of large, scary wasp actually.

(panelist chuckling) - Okay.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

Abi, a quick one.

This person from Fort Benton often have really healthy squash plants with a lot of flowers, but barely get any fruit.

Why, and what can he do to improve that situation?

- Yeah, so I had an email question about this recently.

So I have an image of this.

So in issues where you have really healthy plants and you have a lot of flowers, but lack of production, it could be a pollination issue.

And especially if you're growing things in high tunnels or low tunnels or in greenhouses where pollinators may not be able to access them, you may need to hand-pollinate some of those plants.

- Mm-hmm.

- Hmm.

- And the way that you do that, it's not very tough, you need just a Q-tip and you need to be able to identify the male versus female flowers.

The males have a really skinny stem, and the females look like they have a miniature version of that fruit right at the base of that flower.

So you take the pollen from the anthers in the male flower and you put it on the stigma of the female flowers, and then you can eat those male flowers.

- Mm-hmm.

- And Tim can (panelists chuckling) also include some of his favorite recipes.

- Yeah.

(panelists chuckling) - We were talking about the male flowers stuffed with ricotta, and then- - Oh yes.

- Fried with a little bit of flour or breadcrumbs on the outside.

- Mm-hmm, delicious.

- It is tasty.

- It is tasty.

- Yeah, I've had those.

Not here in Bozeman, but- - Mm-hmm.

- Another question here about wasp, it must be really active right now.

Callerr has a wood fence and an infection of paper wasp infecting it.

The wasps are now burrowing into the gravel beneath the fence.

Can the caller spray wasps on the fence or the ones hiding underground, and they won't respond to a spray?

Any suggestions on how to get rid of paper wasps?

- So since it sounds like this caller has actually located the nest, that gives him a big advantage that...

It sounds like in this case they're borrowing under the ground.

You can buy pesticide products to treat the nest itself, and they are actually very effective.

And there are other treatments that when you can't locate the wasp, it's like a bait, and they take it back to the nest, and the hope is they'll get to the queen and kill the queen that way.

But in this case, they should head to the hardware store or their local garden center and actually treat the nest itself.

That'd be the most effective way.

- Are they pretty common here in Montana?

I hadn't heard of them before.

- Yeah, we get a lot of calls about people having issues with wasps.

Normally they don't cause any issues for us, but it's when they're actually in somebody's yard, and there's the fear of being stung by them.

- Okay, thank you.

Tim?

- Mm-hmm.

- When is... And this caller has come in a couple of times, we haven't really got to it.

Best time to spray broadleaves and spring weed, at what stage of spring weed?

- Yeah, you really... You don't want the spring weed to be too tall because you wanna get good coverage on the broadleaf weeds, and you really only want the broadleaf weeds to be maximum of six inches tall really.

So in most of our cases in probably spring weed, it's getting a little bit late.

I was trying to think of what stage our spring weed is in.

Spring weed gets much more sensitive when you start to throw out that flag leaf, that becomes important for yield, right?

- Yeah.

- And so, you don't wanna damage that flag leaf.

So really you want to get it before flag leaf when the weeds are three to four inches tall, and ideally before the weed canopies closed up too much because then you get better coverage on those broadleaf weeds that are in there.

And you can't kill Kochia when it's above eight inches.

- Okay, a comment.

(Tim chuckling) And folks, I always love comments.

Bozeman caller comments saying, she puts a plate of meat far away from them (panelist chuckling) while they're eating, and the wasps leave them (panelists chuckling) (mumbling) a diversion.

So that might work.

(panelist mumbling) - (chuckling) Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- What we need to figure out, Chloe, is what meat they prefer, (panelists chuckling) so you serve them that, and what you're eating.

- Yeah.

- So your job next time you're on is to find out what meats these wasps like best.

(panelists chuckling) Tim, this caller last week asked about puncturevine out at Miles City.

They'd like to know a little bit more about it.

They said that you promised that you would look up (Tim chuckling) more information about puncturevine.

- Yeah, so- - Did you?

- Yeah, I did, I did.

Yes, I was.

So puncturevine, it's also called goathead.

It's a really warm season weed, it came from the Mediterranean, from the Middle East, and it really likes to grow in gravel, open bare soils, and you'll see it germinate, and it has a compound leaf that looks a lot like an Astragalus or a chickpea leaf, and it'll grow flat prostrate on the ground.

It can flower three weeks after it germinated.

I looked it up.

- Okay.

- So you need to be out there.

Best way around your gravel, your driveway is to go in there.

If you have a few scattered plants, hit them with the hoe.

If not, both 2,4-D and dicamba work really well on them in the gravel situation.

- Why don't we have those here in Bozeman?

- It is too cool in the Gallatin valley.

Puncturevine is really a warm season weed, so you don't really encounter it until you get to Billings, to Miles City, out to Sydney, along the Yellowstone, and then actually you see it up north and you see it around, but it's really a warm, warm season weed.

Really common in the Mediterranean, California, those sorts of areas.

- Midwest very much.

- Midwest, very common, yeah.

- Yeah.

No doubt about it.

- And it's just too cool in the Gallatin valley at night for these warm season things.

- Okay.

I have another question while I have you up, and this is interesting.

What about spraying Roundup on asparagus on the stems?

Will that kill the asparagus?

- Yes.

- Even the stems?

- Yep, even the stems, yep.

That stem is a growing living stem, and it will translocate that.

- [Mac] But before the asparagus is up.

- Yeah, before- - If you got a problem weed.

- Yeah, if you have a problem weed, and it's dormant and you can just spray over the top of it, you won't affect the asparagus.

But if you hit one of the green stems that is open and leafed out now, it will absolutely kill the asparagus.

- Okay.

We have several questions about grasshoppers and grasshopper management, and I don't think we're going to be doing grasshopper surveys this year.

I think that was one of the federal government cutback, I got this information with the Department of Ag the other day.

And the shared cost of rangeland production, controlling grasshoppers, I don't think will be present this year.

That's the best we can offer.

We will look at that a little bit more.

With that, folks, we're done.

We'll see you next spring, June or September.

Have a good week!

Good night!

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(upbeat music) - [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.

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