- [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(uplifting music) - You are watching Montana Ag Live, originating today from the studios of KUSM, on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Reesman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

This is gonna be one of the fun programs.

We have a guest that always elicits a ton of phone calls.

So, when you see who he is, you'll find out what his specialty is, you will be on the phone asking questions.

There's very little doubt about that.

So with that, let me introduce everybody.

On my far left is Uta McKelvy.

Uta is our extension plant pathologist.

Always comes with a great smile.

I like to tease her about it.

But she's very knowledgeable in plant diseases, especially in cereal crops, but everything else too.

Special guest tonight, our critter ridder, Stephen Vantassel.

Stephen is with the Montana Department of Ag.

He's an invertebrate pest specialist.

If you got voles, moles, skunks, raccoons, anything like that giving you a hard time, he has the solution.

So get those questions in tonight as soon as that phone number shows up on the screen.

The more questions we get, the livelier this program will become.

Filling in tonight for horticulture is Nina Zidack.

Nina is a retired professor of plant pathology, was with the Montana Potato Improvement Association for a long time.

Has a wealth and knowledge and horticulture because she practiced that for a living for several years with a truck farm over by Billings.

And our weed ecologist, known as a weed scientist, Tim Seipel.

Tim, welcome.

Glad to have you back.

Tim will be hosting next week.

I'll be out of town.

So, get questions ready for next week because I like to challenge him.

Answering the phones tonight is Judge Bruce Lobel and Evan Martin.

Thank you for stepping in this evening.

Get the phone number on the screen and get the calls going.

Stephen, tell us what you do for Department of Ag.

- Well, I teach people about handling vertebrate pest problems through presentations, publications, and consultation.

- Okay.

And we have the first question that came in.

This person has been inundated with emails talking about a product called Vamoose that is supposed to keep mice out of cars, the wiring.

How do these repellents work?

- [Stephen] Well, I would probably say that a lot of repellents don't work as well as the public would like them to work.

Although, I'm not familiar with this particular item.

I would just want people to be thinking about what kind of literature and research has been done on it.

There are ways to handle mice around vehicles, typically putting them inside of a garage, making sure you're keeping weeds down, controlling rodents around the property.

There can, sometimes what we confuse is, people put out a product and they think that nothing happened, and then they have the fault causation/correlation problem.

I'd love to learn more about it, but if people keep pushing for the research.

Because some of these things, I think, are more magic than actual reality.

So, I'd love to learn more about it though.

- Yeah, I've had the same email.

It's a mass email blast on this product.

That kind of scares me a little bit.

We don't know for sure.

- It does need to be registered though.

So it does need to be registered with the state.

So make sure it's registered product with the state before you can use it.

- Okay, thank you.

While I have you up, a question from Cook City, and they wanna know how to deal with wood rats.

- Yeah.

So if the wood rats are getting into a structure, the first thing I would be suggesting that they do is look at hardening their structure, finding those openings that the rat is getting into.

But before you seal up the house, you wanna trap it first or use a rodenticide, you wanna use a rat-sized trap.

Of course, that's something similar to this, except it's larger for rat size.

Control those rats.

If you have an opening that you think the rat is using, roll up some newspaper, cork the hole.

And then, if you catch the rat and that hole no longer gets reopened again, then you can seal it off.

You'd wanna seal it off with something here, like a quarter inch hardware cloth, flashing would also work, or some sort of fabric that has stainless steel in it, or copper.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Good information.

Nina, let's go back to your horticulture years.

It's supposed to get down to 28, 27 degrees here in Bozeman this evening.

This person wants to know, if they cover their tomatoes, will they survive?

- Well, if you cover them with a heavier blanket type thing, they will survive.

But what I have found through all of my years of raising tomatoes, especially the last 25 years raising them in Bozeman, is, covering them, you really don't retain much quality.

You're better off to just go ahead and pick 'em green and ripen 'em in the house.

If you keep covering 'em, you can keep 'em alive, but they never really ripen anyway.

So, at your first opportunity, I would just suggest, just get 'em all picked and put 'em in a fairly warm place where they can ripen.

- They better be picked by now.

- Yeah, they better be picked by now.

- I picked mine today, and I noticed that it was warmer in the garage than it was outside, so I thought I was taking 'em out of the refrigerator.

- Yeah, yeah.

No, you don't really... You can keep 'em alive sometimes, but you really don't gain much.

- So on the tomato issue, I had some tomatoes this year and some kind of creature, and I know this is hard to guess, but they take one bite out of it and then they move on to another one.

Any idea what that might be?

- You have squirrels around?

- No, we do not have squirrels.

- No squirrels around.

And was it a clean cut, or was it a jagged cut?

- [Jack] Just, they kinda take a gouge out of it.

- So you're gonna hate to hear this, Jack, but when we had a vegetable farm on the Missouri River years and years ago, we had pheasants that would come in and peck, and they would take like one bite out of the tomato.

- Oh.

So I can get a depredation permit.

- There you go.

There you go.

Okay.

So you actually would like to be attracting pheasants, but it could be a bird or something too.

- Magpies might do it.

- Yeah the magpies.

- Magpies... - It's not a clean cut, it's just, and then that tomato rots.

- Oh, dear.

Yeah.

- All right.

Uta, we have a question here from a grain grower in Big Sandy, and they planted their winter wheat in early September, which I've been against for a long time, and they think they have wheat streak.

Is there anything they can do about it?

- Well, nothing that could cure the crop at this point.

It's a viral disease, and so, there isn't really no treatment to cure it.

I think at this point, with the infected crop, they can expect that they will likely have some yield loss in the next season.

So I would recommend not adding more inputs, like fertilizer, et cetera.

Especially nitrogen has been shown to actually favor viral replication, and so, just kind of make the disease spread more.

And so, I think the consideration now should just be for the spring and summer.

As far as they have control over it, avoid planting further cereals around that infected winter wheat crop, because the wheat termite that transmits the virus is now living on that crop and then it can spread onto other cereal crops.

So, spring wheat, also barley, rye, basically everything that's a grassy crop.

And so, then moving further ahead as we're looking at harvest, et cetera, I think the key will be good volunteer control, green bridge control, to really eliminate everything where the mites and the virus can live on so that we break that disease cycle and prevent the disease from moving onto the next crop and the next crop.

- There's amazing, after going on the Golden Triangle Crop Pest Management tour this week, there is a lot of volunteer wheat out there in the Golden Triangle this year.

- I do expect a wheat streak, I don't know epidemic, but definitely a lot more cases of wheat streak this next season.

- Is there a point where you make it?

Actually, this was a producer's question they had this week.

When would you say, okay, I'm gonna spray it out and maybe plant spring wheat or plant something else?

Is that something anyone ever does, or when do you really, how do you think about that?

- I think the spraying out part is probably a conversation with their crop insurers more so, 'cause it's an economical decision.

So spraying out is an option, but so, the risk is, so if you spray it out, you terminate the crop, the mites and the virus, or especially the mites on the crop will be like, "Oh, my host is dying.

I better move on."

So if we spray out, say, the winter wheat crop, next spring, just as the spring wheat crop in the environment is emerging, we're basically just pushing the problem onto our neighbors or the adjacent spring crop.

So you can spray it out, but I would recommend spraying it out if there's no spring cereals around or other cereal crops, which is probably hard in an environment like Big Sandy, or at least wait until those crops around are at jointing or later growth stages, because a later infection usually has not as big an impact on yield as an infection during early growth stage.

- Okay, thank you.

We got a lot of questions coming in, Stephen, so we get prepared.

Before we get there, from Manhattan.

This person has a serious wild oat problem in barley.

What's the best wild oat herbicide to be using?

- Well, that's an interesting question.

So, there are some wild oat herbicides out there, like Axial Bold, that people would use in barley, and that's been our go-to for many years.

The question is, how effective is that herbicide on the wild oats?

And that, I think they have to understand a little bit what kind of resistance that they have.

So Axial Bold, for example, in many situations may not work, especially in the Fairfield Bench area.

I know it's a different area, but I do know there's some resistant wild oats around the Gallatin Valley too.

So unfortunately, you need that information before you can really make a clear choice of what to go for.

- Okay, thank you.

Stephen, from Hamilton.

This caller wants to know, "Are there any new products or developments to get rid of pocket gophers without poisoning or harming any of the other critters?"

- In terms of rodenticides, no.

In terms of traps, there's a relatively new trap.

I mean, relatively.

I've been familiar with it now for about a year or so.

It's called the Gopher Hawk.

I'm a kind of a big fan of it because of its ability to, it's pretty user friendly, and it allows you to see the trap, whether it's sprung or not, without having to dig everything up because it's above ground.

And so, that's something that I've been kind of... I've talked to one producer, he's the one who introduced me to it, and he loved it.

So he was controlling pocket gophers on I think 40 acres of alfalfa and having really good success with it.

- Okay.

Speaking of traps, I know you brought a bunch of crazy looking mouse traps along.

That black one fascinates me there.

- Yeah, so these are mouse traps.

And again, they can come in rat size as well, but the beauty of this is, you can shake off the mouse without getting your hands dirty.

It's gonna cost you more.

As opposed to this one, where you have to kinda get up in the mouse's business.

But make sure you wear gloves when you're doing that.

But always wanna make sure you're purchasing expanded trigger traps, not those thin metal ones.

These are much better.

And make sure you don't over bait.

So, you always wanna be sure you're baiting right here.

And then of course, only halfway up into the tube.

We Americans like to over bait our traps.

- On that note, I used to be a great mouse trapper.

I always used cheese because that's what mice were supposed to eat.

- [Stephen] That's what the cartoons say, yeah.

- Yes, and I was a big believer in cartoons.

So, what's better than cheese?

- Peanut butter.

And you can try cotton, because nesting females who are about ready to have young like cotton.

So, cotton would be another bait.

You can try, caramel is another option for you.

And sometimes you can even play with some other baits as well.

And then of course, the expanded trigger, you can also use them without bait.

If you know where the mice are running, you just simply set the trap, let's say, up against a wall or something, and catch the mouse as he's just stepping on it so you don't have to have any bait at all.

- [Jack] Which is more effective?

- Well, you wanna use a combination, either/or.

But most people are going to use bait because they don't know where the mice are moving.

- Okay, thank you.

A question from last week.

this person from Billings has wild violets in the yard.

So, between Tim and Nina, is it too late to control these in their yard?

In fact, let me rephrase that a little bit.

We're gonna have a statewide frost right now.

Is it too late to control broadleafs with, say, 2,4-D or things?

- No, next week will be a perfectly... The dandelions aren't gonna mind it being below freezing tonight, neither are a fair number of the weeds in our yards.

And actually, a couple weeks ago, I noticed that there was people putting down a fair amount of 2,4-D in Bozeman, and it was still quite warm during the day and you could smell the volitalization.

And so, as it gets colder now, you'll actually have less volatilization.

And if you put down 2,4-D for things like dandelion this time of year, I don't know about the violet, the violet tends to be a little bit of an earlier season plant.

If it's still green, you might have some efficacy on it, but yeah, no, it's not too late.

And for Canada thistle, spot spraying the new rosettes on the ground, this is the best time of year to do it, because they really start to translocate the herbicide into that big root system that's below the surface.

- So, I know Nina and I were talking prior to the program that the Gallatin Gardeners have some Canada thistle in their garden.

What would be a good product to go out there at this time of year that would not carry over into the spring and cause issues?

- Just plain old glyphosate.

So, glyphosate.

Previously, I would say Roundup.

But now, Roundup that you go by at the store, don't just go pull the Roundup jug off the store shelf and not look at it.

Because actually, most of the formulations of Roundup at the general hardware store do not have the product glyphosate, the active ingredient anymore.

So you actually need to pay attention.

But glyphosate, relatively... There's explanations for how much goes in the backpack, like two to 4%.

And you can just go out there and just literally spot spray those rosettes, and this is one of the best times of year to do that.

- You got that, Nina?

- Yes.

So, on the violets.

So, we have some of those in our yard and sprayed them this summer, and it didn't do a thing.

And so, we have been doing a little reading on it, and it says that a fall application is kind of the ultimate time to get 'em.

But the summer application with the dandelions, didn't touch em.

- You fertilized 'em.

- [Tim] Yeah, you're not gonna touch 'em.

- Okay.

I've got a question for Uta that came in, but before we do that, one from Ballantine for Stephen.

This caller is wondering if there's an organization for trappers in Montana.

They're having trouble with voles, raccoons, many other creatures, wondering who might they get in contact with to help them get rid of these?

- Well, I have a list of people that are wildlife control operators.

There is a trappers association in the state, but that's typically for fur trapping.

But they can try the Montana Trappers Association.

But if they're looking for someone who does wildlife control, in terms of vertebrate control, they can reach out to me and I have a list of individuals.

But of course, they can also do a lot of this work themselves if they're interested in doing that as well.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Crab apple, Uta, fire blight.

We haven't touched on fire blight this year yet.

- [Uta] Really?

- So, quick answer, is this a good time to prune for fire blight?

- I would say yes, because it's fall.

Maybe not today, as it's quite moist.

We wanna... Okay so, fire blight, bacterial disease.

You might notice it now, especially as the leaves are dropping from the trees, those infected branches often hold onto the leaves, so they're brown, and scorched looking, and stay attached.

So you can consider pruning out those infected branches eight to 10 inches below that canker.

You don't wanna do it when it's moist because that just increases the risk of spreading the pathogen further.

So maybe wait until tomorrow or the day after when it looks to be a little sunnier and drier again.

But I do think this is a good time of year.

I would caution to take good care sanitizing or cleaning your tools in between so you don't spread the pathogen from one tree to another or one plant to another.

So your household ethanol or something like that will do, or Clorox wipes.

- Sounds good.

It would be a good time next week, no doubt about it.

You don't wanna prune in the middle of the summer because you stimulate new growth.

Dylan.

And this call was edited, so they obviously have a serious problem with a badger infestation.

How would you handle that?

- Get rid of the food that the badger's going after and the badger will move on.

So if they're going after pocket gophers, control your pocket gophers.

If they're going after ground squirrels... Although, most of your ground squirrels are probably in hibernation right now, so it's gonna be tough.

Then if you need to get rid of that badger 'cause you can't control your ground squirrels right now, then you might need to get a hold of a trapper that wants to trap them.

But badger trapping can be a little time consuming and tedious.

- [Jack] And they're nasty animals.

- Well, I like badgers.

- [Jack] They're cute, yeah.

- I think they're kind of, they're predators.

- They're controlling other.

- They're controlling other animals, yeah.

So yeah, badgers can be mean, and of course, they need to be, in their business as a predator.

- Believe it or not, and this was on back roads of Montana, there was a gentleman in Roy Montana that had a pet badger that he actually had, and this was on PBS, he had a leash on this badger and the badger would go with him just like a dog.

- Wow, okay.

- They can be nice too.

- Not recommending that.

- Not recommending.

- Not recommending that.

- What's the badger eating?

Are they hibernating over winter?

What's the badger eating once the ground squirrels start to hibernate?

- When the ground squirrel's hibernating, it's easier for the badger to catch the ground squirrels, 'cause the ground squirrel's not gonna run away as fast.

So, yeah, they'll dig that right up.

So they actually, it's very helpful for them for sleeping ground squirrels for them to go after.

- Okay.

So I learned something.

- So my parents had a badger, in Berlin, Germany, they had a badger move in their yard and they were very worried about it.

And then my mom found a bottle of perfume that she didn't like too much.

She dumped that in there, and it also took care... I mean, he just moved out.

He was like, no, I'm gonna deal with that.

- But she knew exactly where that badger was living.

So obviously, if you know exactly where that badger's living, because they can move from hole to hole.

So if you know where he's actually living, then yeah, you can certainly trap that.

But most people don't know where they're living, and it can be difficult to trap.

- [Uta] What's the range of a badger, do you know?

- I do not know, but it can be probably 20, 30 acres at least.

But the will shift.

'Cause once the food population declines to about 20 to 30% of what it was prior, they move on to better hunting grounds.

So they may not even be there very long once the food's diminished.

- Okay, makes sense.

Moving from badger to raspberries.

- Nice transition, Jack.

- From Bozeman, this caller has raspberry plants which have lots of blooms and some small fruit right now.

Should caller prune these, or not worry about them?

- Go ahead and prune 'em off this fall.

We had the same situation both this year and last year, and I was worried that those primo canes from this year, the canes that came up this year, if they had fruited, that maybe they wouldn't fruit next year, but they did.

We had the best raspberry crop we've ever had.

But I think as we've kind of been having some warmer Septembers, we're actually kind of getting a bloom on those primo canes, on those vegetative canes are becoming prematurely reproductive about the end of September.

- So I bought some raspberry, I won't mention the name, but it's a big company out of Watsonville, California, and those raspberries are about this big and they're absolutely delicious.

Our raspberries in Montana are about that big, and they're delicious, but they're nowhere near as large.

Why is there such a difference between commercial raspberries and homeowner raspberries?

- Well, I think a big part of it is variety.

And I honestly don't know anything about any of the varieties that they grow down in Watsonville, but I'm sure it's varieties.

I mean, we've got two different varieties, and we've got the old Lathams, which, they have a smaller berry.

They're absolutely delicious, and they're very prolific.

And then we have a variety called Nova, and it's got bigger, like a true thimble-sized berry that is a lot prettier and a little bit bigger.

But the quality of what we have is phenomenal.

You just spend a little more time picking 'em.

- That's true.

Tim, from Three Forks, they wanna know, "Why was purslane so bad this year?"

(Tim laughing) - Purslane.

Well, as the summer went along, it got a little warmer, and it got a little warmer, and we had a nice dry, warm summer, and it worked really... We had a lot of green crops that grew in there, and so, we had some... So it was a good late-season purslane year, lots of warm, sunny and dry.

- Enough for you to pickle.

- Oh, absolutely enough to pickle.

- So, Tim practices what he preaches.

He eats the weeds instead of spraying and them.

Not many people pickle purslane, and I wanna show you something.

I know, Tim, that most of us enjoy a pretty good bloody Mary here and there, and most people will either put a pickled bean in, or celery or, I even have add an asparagus to it.

But no, not Tim.

Tim uses something entirely different.

So, I'm gonna show you what Tim does when he makes his bloody Marys.

He puts a little ice in his glass, water it down a little bit.

And then he puts in his bloody Mary mix, pre-made.

And this is for Tim.

Now, what he does to finish it is pretty amazing.

He takes his jar of pickled purslane, and takes a little bunch of the purslane out, like this, and dumps it in his bloody Mary.

There you go.

- Okay.

Cheers.

- [Uta] Cheers.

To your health.

- Beautiful pickled purslane right here.

- I haven't tried it yet.

I will.

- It's still crunchy.

Still delicious.

- How's the bloody Mary?

- Oh, it's delicious.

You know, it's perfect.

I put some garlic in there.

It's got a little spice to it.

It is ab, yep.

It's, yep, great.

- I knew I couldn't get ahead of you tonight.

- [Nina] So we'll have to get the recipe for everybody.

- Yeah, you'll have to get the recipe.

No, it's very nice, young pickled purslane.

It's still, it has a good... It has a good crispiness to it.

It's actually pretty tasty.

That was Jack's birthday present.

He had, no gifts on his for his birthday, is what was written on the invitation, so I brought him pickled purslane.

- And now he's regifting it.

- No, I'm gonna keep the rest.

I have to try it.

- You better put that recipe in the newsletter.

- Oh, yes.

- Now, I know that some plants, if you consume too many of them, there's sometimes some health consequences for that.

Is there any concerns with?

- That's the vodka part.

(all laughing) Eating excessive amounts of purslane?

- So if you do eat purslane, there is, you can have OAA accumulation in it, but really, which is oxaloacetate, but it's also in spinach, it's in some other things too.

You shouldn't have too many bloody Mary's, and then you'll limit your purslane consumption, and then I think you basically have no problem.

- So is that the acid, you're concerned about gout?

Would that be the acetate there?

- No, it's an oxaloacetate.

We would have to get someone that knows more about the chemistry in to talk to us about it.

But I do know that people maybe who have kidney stones, or in certain situations like that, the OAA can affect them.

But you shouldn't eat too much sauerkraut anyway.

You shouldn't eat too many pickled things in general.

- So we can get off the food now?

Okay.

Enough of that.

From Havre.

This person lives on the city limits and deer are eating vegetables.

And that's not only in Havre, that's statewide.

The caller is wondering what vegetables deer will not eat, besides onions?

So anybody have a clue on that?

- We have a publication on deer resistant plants from Montana State University, one of our Mont Guides.

I was helping that.

So I can't list them off hand, but that would be my first thing.

But I would just suggest to people, fencing your garden is really the way to go.

And if the garden's small enough, you only need to go up six feet.

You don't have to go all the way up to eight feet, if it's a small enough garden.

If you start getting to something where it's 20, 30 feet wide, you might have to go up to eight feet to keep them from jumping.

But if it's small, six feet will work.

- Unless there's tulips in there, then there better eight foot.

Yeah.

They love their tulips.

I think they eat onions.

- Do you?

I don't know.

I'd have to look at that sheet again.

- Something has gotten into mine, not this year, but in previous years.

I don't think there's a garden vegetable that deer.

- Yeah.

If I had the choice between eating crested wheatgrass or eating something out of the garden, I think I'd choose the garden every time.

- Oh absolutely.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Question from Great Falls.

I'll throw this one to Nina.

"Is it too late to seed grass and expect it to survive the winter?"

It's pushing it.

- It's pushing it for sure.

- Okay.

And with that, let's move on to Dutton.

The caller has Richardson's ground squirrel problems.

Caller has some strychnine oats.

Can caller pour the oats down the gopher holes, or will this cause problems for neighbors' dogs and other animals?

- Yes.

Please don't use strychnine.

Strychnine's only allowed for pocket gophers.

So, don't.

There shouldn't be any problems with ground squirrels right now.

A lot of them should be already well into hibernation at this point.

But strychnine is not allowed for Richardson's ground squirrels.

This is one of the reasons why you don't hear me use the word gopher, because it causes confusion between pocket gopher, where strict nine is permitted for pocket gophers, but it's not permitted for ground squirrels.

So, gopher sometimes confuses people.

And also, you have a product that, I think it's called Gophercide.

And so, they will actually use it on ground squirrels.

So wait till year.

Wait for them to come out of hibernation.

That'll be, the males come out first.

Two weeks later, the females come out first.

So you basically get a two weeks head notice.

And then look at controlling them then to prevent them from establishing on your property.

- Okay, thank you.

Another one for you, Stephen, from Butte.

Caller has mice.

Almost everybody in the fall can have mice problems.

Is there a poison that will kill the mice but not hurt the neighborhood cats?

And I have another cat question after that.

- Yeah, so the answer is no.

No pesticide is gonna be safe.

All we have here is lowered risk.

So if you're concerned about secondary poisoning, which everyone should be, then you really wanna look at controlling the mice with traps.

And so, aggressively go after your traps.

I recommend 24 traps in a 1,200 square foot house.

More traps are like money, more is better.

Trap aggressively.

My publication available from the Montana Department of Ag website will detail some trapping strategies for you.

But also look at hardening your house to prevent mice from getting in.

Think about finding those gaps.

Anything that a pencil can fit in, a mouse can get in.

And so, caulking, using hardware cloth, using some excluder fabric.

I don't recommend Brillo pads because the steel wool rusts.

This doesn't rust.

Copper Stuff-It it as another product.

And of course, quarter inch hardware cloth or something solid like aluminum flashing and you'd be surprised how you're able to limit the amount of mice they're able to get in.

But trap aggressively.

- Okay.

Definitely.

Tim, this person has Hoary alyssum, and they've tried to use glyphosate, not Roundup, but glyphosate to control it.

"That's been fairly unsuccessful."

Do you have some suggestions, in their 40 acre pasture, how to get rid of the Hoary alyssum?

It's becoming much more of a problem in this state.

- Yeah, Hoary alyssum is a weed.

It's a mustard, it's in the mustard family of weeds.

And when we think of managing mustards, you generally think of what we call the mode-of-action group two, and that is things that end in uron in the name.

So chlorsulfuron, mesosulfuron, things like that.

I'm not super aware of a homeowner product So in a 40 acre field, I would think about a product called Plateau.

You can also use some other things like Landmark as a herbicide.

And it's generally gonna have a group two written at the top right, and those just in general tend to work better on our mustards.

So people are putting down stuff for cheatgrass and mustard right now in wheat, and it's a real similar process.

That generally works better.

So, 2,4-D or glyphosate are different modes of action and it just doesn't work very well on Hoary alyssum.

- [Jack] I use an SU herbicide in my pasture.

- Yep, SU.

Which stands for sulfonylurea herbicide.

- And it's very effective.

- Yep.

Very effective.

Much better on mustards.

- Okay.

- Can I ask a tricky question?

- Sure.

- Maybe, what's the risk of weeds like Hoary alyssum developing resistance to those SU herbicides, if you say that they work so good and people might focus on those?

- Yeah.

In general, when you have a perennial, or in this case, a short-lived perennial to biennial plant, usually you don't have this same sort of pressure that you do when you have an annual plant, especially something like kochia or palmer amaranth that's forced to outcross, or is encouraged to mix up its genetic diversity all the time.

And so, when you mix up that genetic diversity, you essentially give the plants more opportunity to develop a resistant mechanism.

And so, with that, I wouldn't worry about it too much, often because we don't manage Hoary alyssum very much, and we don't... Once you spray one or two times and you can kinda get control of that Hoary alyssum, you're not gonna have a big problem with it coming back in there in a lot of situations.

But it can be a real problem of parking areas and gravel areas, and things like that too, which make it be a little bit harder to use.

- So, a lot of people probably don't know what Hoary alyssum looks like.

So very simply, would you describe a Hoary alyssum plant?

- Yeah.

So Hoary alyssum this time, it has a real long taproot.

So if you pull it out this year, you'll find a super long white taproot.

And it's a mustard and it'll have some hairs on it.

Actually, I looked at it yesterday or even today, it's still flowering, it just keeps flowering.

It has these little bitty white flowers on it.

And even if you've mowed it 10 times this year, it's probably six inches tall again right now and it's still making seed.

The fruit pod on it looks like a little circle with a little tip on the end of it.

- That's pretty good.

I'm impressed.

- It probably was your bloody Mary that... - Dictionary.

- Are you sure it wasn't the purslane?

Stephen, this caller from Billings lived and has some sort of animal, potentially a raccoon, digging holes in land in the summertime, in their yard obviously.

Caller is wondering how to keep it away in the summertime specifically, and if it's a raccoon, how would you handle that?

- Yeah, so we call that, if it is raccoon, we call that grubbing.

And so, it's just basically a term we use when animals like skunks and raccoons are going after worms and grubs in the soil.

Typically it occurs late summer, July to August.

So the only real solution you're gonna have is either control your grubs well in advance, or trap that raccoon and remove it from the landscape.

You could use some chicken wire and lay that down on the surface of the ground to prevent that type of digging.

Raccoons can really shred up soil when they're doing that grubbing, where skunks are very precise.

So skunks are the gentleman on your grass, they only target the spot, where raccoons just shred it and they tear everything up like a bull in a China closet.

But those are your basic options.

There's no real repellents that are gonna work.

I guess you could tie a dog in that particular area, and to kinda keep the raccoon away, but the dog's gonna have problems with So, you don't have many options.

- Could it be a bunny too?

Could it be a cottontail rabbit?

Do we get burrowing, do cottontail rabbits burrow a lot?

- They'll burrow to create a form, where they raise young, but it typically doesn't create extensive damage on the landscape, where raccoons will just shred it up.

And for people that have rolled grass, the raccoons will sometimes re-roll it back up.

So if you roll it out, they'll sometimes just roll it back up and they'll pick off the worms and grubs underneath.

It's kind of an interesting thing to see.

- [Jack] So, I have a question.

- Sure.

- When I was a young kid, a lot of kids had raccoons for pets.

And in Nebraska... You know that routine.

Is that legal?

- Many states would make it illegal, yes.

And it's certainly, if they haven't made it illegal, it is certainly not wise.

Raccoons can carry an infection known as raccoon roundworm and that can be very troublesome if you ingest some of those eggs, and they can shed a lot of those eggs.

- I follow that up with another question.

When I first moved to Montana, which is not the ice age, but close, we didn't have a lot of raccoons in the state.

Have they moved all the way up to the Canadian border?

I know they're in the southern half extensively.

- Yeah.

Raccoons, I don't know about in terms of the Canada side over here, but certainly over in the Montreal side of Canada, they have it.

They have even possums up that far north.

We're just too cold for possums, it seems, right now.

But raccoons have, they're here.

And of course, the way people keep trapping 'em and moving 'em to kinda translocate 'em, that's just giving me more job security.

So, thank you, and you shouldn't do it.

But nevertheless, people do it anyways, but that'll give me more security down the road.

- Okay, thank you.

Nina, a question from Toston, and we haven't had many from Toston.

But this person says, "With the advent of corn being a very predominant crop in the western half of the state, are grain growers familiar with the risk that it poses with scab if they grow grain after the corn?

- Yeah, I mean, certainly, if we are adding corn in our rotations, corn is a host for those Fusarium species that can cause head blight on a small grain such as wheat and barley.

And so, that's something to be mindful of as you're incorporating corn in your rotation.

So I don't have... There are plenty of studies done.

Fortunately, head blight is not a new disease.

So, there's plenty of research done, especially in the Midwest, and I would have to reread some of that literature on the details.

But extending rotation and taking measures to basically break down that corn stubble, which is where those Fusarium causal agents can survive, would help.

And then there's a lot that you can do in season as you're growing your barley and wheat crop to manage the risk of head blight.

So the biggest thing is, grow a resistant variety.

And then, if it's irrigated, if you can manage the humidity around flowering, which is when that infection happens, that would help a lot too.

- It's a risk.

You gotta watch out, there's no doubt about it.

Stinkweed, and this is from Froid.

And Froid, for people that don't know, is way out in the eastern part of state.

Beautiful area out there.

Full of pheasant most years.

- [Tim] You'll be there next week.

- I'll be there next week.

So, anyway, this caller is wondering, "the best way to control stinkweed," as it was a big killer in their farm this year.

- I'm wondering if they're meaning stink grass instead of stinkweed.

Stink grass is a late season, warm grass.

And I do get some complaints about it from up in the Froid area and the Plentywood area.

It comes on really late in crop, and that's been the most difficult part And I would imagine it's more in pulses maybe than it was into wheat.

It doesn't seem to like wheat quite as much.

It's really hard to manage.

I'm just gonna say that right now, because you can't spray a grassy herbicide onto your pulses because your pulses have started to flower and then it kills the bud or the flower of the pulses.

I would suggest they give me a call and we can talk about a few things.

I do know people have used Assure II, which have some plant (indistinct) into the next year.

But there are a few, we can kinda run the gauntlet a little bit if we talk about it.

But it's so hard because it really doesn't start growing until July and August.

- So I have a question.

I'm not familiar with this weed at all.

So does it stink?

- Yes.

- That was my question.

- It does actually.

Someone called and asked me about it when I was giving a talk in Chester this week and I went and pulled some out of the garden at the Baptist church in Chester, and I brought it into the producers, and it did, it does have a smell to it.

It's almost like a little bit, if you ever smelled Ceanothus, which is kind of like a, grows up in the mountains, it has kind of a tar, coal tar smell to it.

Yeah.

It does actually have a fair smell to it.

It's called stink grass, and it comes on late.

You'll see it in Bozeman growing in the cracks of all the concrete boulevards when it gets really hot later in the year.

- So speaking of stinky things, Nina, is it too late to plant garlic in this area?

- Oh no, no.

Actually, we've got a couple of good weeks left to plant garlic.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because right now, we're just getting all of our gardens cleaned up and everything.

So if you can get it tilled and get it planted, really, the third week of October, in our area, I would say, would be good.

- Okay.

Tim, last week you guys had a nice little vacation around the state.

I think it's called the Pest Management Tour.

I think, Stephen, you were there too for some of 'em.

So, tell us a little bit about what the Pest Management Tour does.

- Yeah.

So once a year, we go to different districts that are governed by the pesticide.

- Recertification?

- Pesticide stations.

I don't know how it's divided up.

I think there's five different - License renewals.

- And so, there's five different ones.

And this last week we did it, and we went to the Golden Triangle.

We started in Chinook.

We went Chinook, Shelby, Chester, Cut Bank, Conrad, down to Choteau, back to Great Falls, and ended in Fort Benton.

So we went across the whole tour.

We had people talking about new pesticide regulations.

I was talking about weeds.

We had a pathologist.

We had Stephen talking about vertebrate control.

And it was really great.

So we had the local extension agents organize it, and we met with a lot of local producers and heard about what's going on all across the state.

Yeah, it was great.

- It's kind of fun.

We used to call those crop protection clinics when I was working many years ago, and you get to meet a lot of great producers.

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

And they give you a lot of good feedback.

It's a give and take.

And we talk about what issues they're facing and what's coming up.

- Exactly.

All right.

Back to Stephen.

This is an interesting one.

This is challenging.

I like these challenging ones.

It's from Ennis, and this caller is wondering, "What kind of animal would strip both hollyhock and rhubarb in one night?"

Boy, they're not related.

- Strip?

- Strip.

In other words, probably destroy it.

- Yeah.

I have no idea.

- [Nina] So, deer love hollyhock.

- Deer and elk.

- And I don't know that they would necessarily like rhubarb.

- Yeah.

I haven't heard of any problems with that?

- But yeah, deer absolutely love hollyhock.

- Well, in the darkness, you might confuse them.

- Yeah, exactly.

Big brown leaves.

- You know, rhubarb can have a lot of OAA and it too, like purslane.

- That's what I was thinking.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Don't know.

- Okay.

We got that one figured out with a best guess.

From Granite County, caller has an acre of land on the edge of the wilderness and it is infested with mice.

Caller is wondering if the solar powered sonic mouse repellent is effective at keeping miles away.

- No.

The answer is no.

Can I save you the 19.95 plus shipping and handling?

So no, no.

Put the money into hardening your cabin.

Again, we've talked about this before.

And then also aggressively trap, and there's rodenticides that you can use as well.

So that's it in a nutshell.

There is not gonna be, no.

- Does mowing it or keeping the vegetation down around your immediate dwelling help?

- Absolutely help.

Yeah.

We call those weed-free zones, and they absolutely help, because they provide a psychological barrier.

Mice don't wanna cross open terrain because everything eats a mouse.

And so, when you have that open terrain, it provides that psychological barrier.

Of course, it disappears when it snows.

But it also reduces the amount of food because every time grass goes to seed, that's food for your rodents as well.

So absolutely, a weed free-zone is highly recommended.

- [Tim] I don't eat mice, I only eat purslanes.

- There you go.

Good.

- Okay.

Thanks, Stephen, I like that.

From Bozeman, this caller has an established grapevine which has been infested all season with small gnat-sized flies.

Aphids maybe?

I don't know.

What might these flies be, and how would you eliminate 'em?

Might be fruit fries too.

- Yeah, possibly.

I think aphids because.

- I had bad aphids this year.

- Yeah.

And later in the season... At first, they're non-mobile and they colonize the undersides of the leaves.

And then later in the season, they'll start to produce wings and then they do look like little flies.

So I would bet it would probably be aphids.

- Most likely, yeah.

And if you're not sure, send 'em in to the diagnostic.

- Yeah, send them into the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, absolutely.

- And we can figure out what they really are.

But you better hurry, because they'll probably freeze to death tonight.

- Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

- We have Chloe on next week, Chloe Rice.

She's gonna be talking about insects.

- And I tell you what, I'll tell the audience right now, we have a bunch of insect questions.

I apologize for not getting to 'em tonight, because this panel doesn't know anything about insects.

So, we'll have Chloe Rice on next week.

- I've already planted a question with Chloe.

I said, Chloe, I had really bad aphids this year.

Let's talk about it next week.

- And just to note, if this caller is considering to send in those aphids, ideally they would collect them in a small glass vial or something.

Certainly not a Ziploc bag or something like that.

And also, they should be dead as you ship them in.

So you could have a little bit of ethanol in the jar, or you put the container in the freezer for a day or two, and that should do the trick too.

- [Jack] Would vodka work?

- Yeah, but do you wanna waste it on them?

I dunno.

- Yeah, good point.

Nina, caller from Havre has a mountain ash, and they wonder what the best time to prune a mountain ash would be?

- It's gonna be pretty similar to any tree, whether it's a fruit tree or an ornamental tree.

After the tree has basically dropped its leaves and gone dormant in the fall, or in the spring, before the buds have started to break, is gonna be the best time.

And mountain ash also can get fire blight.

So, that's one thing to consider.

If there is any dead wood in a mountain ash tree, it could be fire blight.

So, the same tips that Uta gave for pruning an apple with fire blight would also go for mountain ash.

You wanna go eight to 10 inches below any canker.

And then also too, whenever I prune something for fire blight, I always look at the wood too and see if there are any brown stains.

And then if there's a brown stain, then just keep going.

- Keep going down.

- Okay, thanks.

We have a question about Dahlia plants we'll get to next week with tarnished plant bugs because we have an entomologist then.

But I wanna go back to Stephen, because this caller wants to know, number one, what the vole forecast is for this year.

They are cyclical.

- I would love to know what that vole forecast would be.

And so, I had trouble finding vole damage this year, and I was looking for it.

I know that's probably gonna shock some of the audience, but I was looking for it.

We didn't have a lot around where I was looking anyways.

But yeah, I don't know what that forecast is.

- Can we get a photo up of a vole of some kind?

- We do have, I did send one in.

- Okay, well maybe we'll show people what a really cute little vole does to the lawn.

That's the damage they do, but what's the creature look like?

I think we have a pet vole too, don't we?

- [Stephen] Not a pet vole.

- If we can find it.

- We do have a photo of a vole though.

(all laughing) - [Nina] There's a pickle.

- There it is.

- Aw.

- So to identify a vole, you wanna look at the ears.

So Mickey Mouse, big ears.

Voles have hidden ears, and so, you only see basically the top half of those ears.

And they also have typically a tail shorter than half the length of the body, where mice have a tail longer than half the length of the body.

- Okay.

We're getting a little low on time.

I'm gonna throw another one at Stephen, because this one I'm curious about.

It came in from Belgrade.

A caller's corn stocks was being broken down, and he's wondering if there's a way to tell if it's a raccoon or a skunk based on how the stalk is broken down.

If the animal is a skunk, what's the best way to get rid of it?

- [Stephen] So what was broken down - The stem of the corn plant.

- Of the corn?

Oh, that would be raccoon.

Skunk wouldn't be interested in the corn.

So it's definitively a raccoon.

Raccoons will also peel the husk of your corn as well.

So that's raccoon.

- And they take one bite out of each ear and leave the rest.

- Well, they might, yeah.

Animals do damage more than they feed on.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Nina, is there a lot of cover crops being used in the potato industry?

You've retired, but you may have an idea about that.

- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

One common practice that the growers will utilize is, after they've taken their grain, or harvested their grain crop, in summer, late summer, they'll plant a cover crop and get some good growth.

They'll use a mixture of Brassicas.

So, radishes, and turnips, and things like that, and also different grasses, vetches.

And sometimes they'll plant those in the fall, and then in the spring, then they'll till those under.

We've actually got a grower who is, instead of growing grain as a rotation crop, is growing a cover crop.

Because with the price of grain right now, looking at the potential benefits of the soil, using a mixed species cover crop to open up the soil profile with the different rooting depths, and also with nitrogen fixing plants and things like that, you can get a lot of benefits.

So yeah, they're being very extensively used.

- And actually, if they have access to grazing cattle or sheep, that pays better than winter wheat right now.

In fact, Nina mention that, and Uta did too.

Winter wheat right now is, yeah, if you get $4 a bushel, you're doing pretty good.

You can't afford to grow winter wheat for that price.

And we had a call last week with a question about paying more for a loaf of bread, $4 and 95 cents, than this grower was getting for a bushel of wheat.

So, things are a little out of kilter sometimes there.

- But there's a lot of sorghum, sudan, and millet grass that's also being grown as a warm season forage out there too.

- Stephen, this person has found that skunks are very tame.

They're not aggressive, and they don't shy away from humans very rapidly.

- No.

Well if you had that kind of firepower, would you be afraid of people?

No.

And that's very unusual.

So typically my experience has been that skunks in urban areas are much more familiar and comfortable around people than those in more rural areas.

And so, how do you tell a skunk is upset with you?

Well, you're gonna listen to the thump thump.

That's one of the clues they give you if they're upset.

The other clue, you'll smell it.

But nevertheless, yeah, skunks are very docile creatures, and I'm told they make great pets when they get desacked.

- I once went out to get a dog bowl, when I had a golden retriever that lived in a kennel, and I reached down for the dog bowl and I felt something furry and wet, and the dog was inside.

So, I got a little concerned.

I backed up and a skunk was finishing what my dog didn't eat, and he let me actually touch him, and I survived without... They are pretty docile.

- They can be, yeah.

But when they're not, it's definitely a different experience.

- [Jack] Yeah, I would agree.

- They've probably heard of the saying, don't spray the hand that feeds you.

(all laughing) - I was afraid you'd say that.

Okay, we're down to one minute left, folks, but I wanna get this quick question in from Billings, goat heads.

- Oh yeah, goat heads.

Duper difficult weed, also called puncturevine.

You really start to see it, Billings, all the way out to Miles City in the warmer parts of the state.

It's a tough thing to manage right now.

Wait till early next spring and you can apply herbicide or scratch it out.

It has very little roots.

- Okay.

Folks, you hear the music.

That tells me I gotta get outta here.

Stephen.

- Yes.

- Thank you for coming down.

- Thank you for having me.

- It's always a pleasure.

I learn a lot and we have a lot of fun.

Uta, Nina, thank you for stepping in.

Tim, great, and you'll be hosting next week.

Next week, we're gonna have an interesting program.

It's Dan Clark, Director of Extension Government Center.

So join us next week.

Meanwhile, have a good week and good night.

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