- [Narrator 1] "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.

(bright upbeat music) - You are watching "Montana AG Live" originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very exciting campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over the Montana Public Television System It's your public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

We're gonna have a great program tonight.

Had a good program last week, I'm gonna get into that in a little bit.

But let me first introduce tonight's guest and our panel.

Way to my left, Kelsey Larson.

Kelsey is a relatively new extension economist here at Montana State University.

Very knowledgeable, wide variety of topics.

If you have economic questions tonight, and we always do, Kelsey's here to answer 'em.

Our special guest, Joao Souza.

Did I pronounce that pretty close?

- Yes sir.

- I normally butcher names when I'm not used to 'em.

He is a recent, what, two, three years you've been here on campus?

Soil fertility specialist, and we have a lot of issues with soil fertility this year, particularly the cost.

And we'll get into the cost a little bit, but also to some degree the availability of some of the nutrients.

They're much more expensive than they were last year.

I pulled Nina outta retirement, Nina Zidak.

She was our potato specialist here at MSU for a long period of time.

She also very good horticulturalist.

So if you have horticultural questions tonight, Nina can answer 'em.

I will go back about 30 some years when they ran a truck farm in the Billings area.

Very successful truck farm, and you could grow tomatoes over there before a lot of us in Montana figured out how to produce a tomato.

Tim Seipel, Tim's our wheat scientist here at MSU, I should say crop line weed scientist.

But if you have questions about weeds in your garden, throw 'em his way.

I love to stump him on anything we can get him with.

Answering the phones tonight, Carl Whitmore and Carol Pfeiffer.

And as I've always said, get those phones ringing because the success of this program is based on the questions that you as viewers provide.

And you can try to stump 'em, I enjoy those type of questions too.

So get those phone questions in, and you can also do it via email and YouTube, various other methods.

Before we go on, Tim, I wanna thank you for really hosting a great program last week.

It had to do with mental health issues here in Montana, especially with producers who are facing extreme costs of energy, fertility, and low commodity prices.

That's not the case for ranchers, the beef cattle market's very solid.

If you missed that program, you can find it on the PBS AG Live Station.

If you Google "Montana AG Live", you can find that program on mental health.

It was a great program, and I really encourage anybody that's interested to watch that program.

Joao us a little bit what you do here at MSU.

- Sure, it's a pleasure.

First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity of being here.

Really appreciate to put the word out, especially what Clain and I have been working on in our programs.

I've been here for two and a half years, and we are mainly looking right now at soil (indistinct) issues in the state due to very high nitrogen application over decades.

Also, we are working with phosphorous fertilizer recommendations, pretty much everything around it.

How deep should we sample it, especially no-till environment, and what extractions should we be using in the laboratories, in mainly post crops too in the state, which are not that old, rotation.

And several other projects, but these are the main two things that I'm doing right now in the program.

- It sounds like you're busy.

So while I have you up and Kelsey over here, fertilizer costs, and I got a bank loan when I got my lawn fertilizer this year.

It really wasn't that bad but they're putting it in bigger bags for efficiency purposes, and I'm not as efficient as hauling 50 pound bags as I used to be.

Between the two of you, what do you foresee for fertility costs in the near future this fall coming into next year?

- All right, so I'd be happy to start taking this one first.

Basically, so first let's step back and say like what we've seen this last year.

So in Montana around March, we were talking about $700 a ton for urea fertilizer.

After the start of the Iran war, it jumped up to about $1,000 a ton for fertilizer.

Now that's a lot.

It's not as bad as, for example, the Southern United States, which is more closely connected to some of those impacted markets where they saw as much of a doubling as fertilizer prices.

And now that things seem to potentially be settling down, the fertilizer prices are starting to fall again.

We've gone from 1000 to about 860 a ton here for urea in Montana, but that's still not where we were before the war, and most agricultural economists are not expecting it to go back to pre-war levels in a year or more.

Because essentially what we're in is sort of a domino cascade reaction across the market, and it takes a while to stand those dominoes back up again.

So I would expect we're probably gonna continue to have higher for larger prices going into this next year and next set of production decisions than they were facing the spring.

- Can I ask the kind of question?

- Yeah.

- I was gonna say my ignorant question.

Why does fertilizer depend on energy?

How do we get fertilizer?

Where does it come from?

- It's a good question, Tim, do you mind if I jump in this?

- Oh, absolutely, you know more about the science than I do.

- Around the World War II, there is a Nobel Prize given to some researchers back in Germany, Haber-Bosch.

They figure out how to fix nitrogen in the atmosphere.

Just the gas that we have, like 78% of our atmosphere is nitrogen, right.

But these are in forms that plants cannot actually use.

So they found out how to make plant available forms from the atmosphere nitrogen, and it consumes a lot of energy and that's why the prices are so high.

And that's mainly for nitrogen, if we look at phosphates, phosphorus, potassium, micronutrients, a majority of them will come from mine and chemical treatment to make them more soluble and available to plants.

- And on the phosphorus side of things, about 25% of the planet's phosphorus is mined, extracted from China.

But one of the things that's impacted phosphorus prices in the last year is that China, because of their own geopolitical concerns, decided to restrict exports of that phosphorus fertilizer.

And so having a little bit less of that normally big flow that comes into the world markets pushes prices upwards.

- Okay.

My question is, yeah, I know our spring wheat producers, our winter wheat producers use about theoretically three pounds of nitrogen per bushel of grain, someplace in that area.

I'm not a soil fertility.

Have you seen the usage of nitrogen in our cropping systems dropped this year based on prices or not?

- I don't actually see any data about it, Jack, but I've been in Haver around the few days, I haven't got the chance to talk with some producers.

What they're doing, they're kind of, they won't stop applying it but they'll certainly reduce it because the risk right now considering the price is extremely high.

And the the deal with especially cereals in wheat, you want to go for that premium protein.

So it's too late now to think about any other fertilizer pretty much for cereals unless top dressing nitrogen.

So after heading, the very easy way to think about it, before heading you're trying to get more yield when you're applying nitrogen, after heading you're trying to get more protein.

And I think the idea for producers that think their yield will will be really good is to certainly top dress because there is a dissolution effect when plants accumulate too much starch in the grain.

The yields go up and that protein So that would be the case for this year when considering applying or not nitrogen, I would say.

- Mm-hmm.

- All right.

- And it's also worth noting that MSU has a small grains nitrogen rate calculator that's published online.

So if you say, "Hey, I wanna hit 14% protein and I also wanna maximize my profits," you can put in some information about your current nitrogen application, can put in some information about the nitrogen prices you're seeing, and that'll help tell you what some of the recommendations would be of how much extra yield, how much extra protein you might get through using just a little bit more nitrogen.

As economists would say, you always wanna be thinking on the margin.

It's not, you know, just do I apply or not.

It's do I scale back just a little bit if that's not quite gonna pay off, and this calculator might be helpful for figuring that out.

- [Jack] Okay, good information.

- Thank you.

- Do you mind if I show this?

- [Jack] No, that's fine.

- This is from Dr.

Clain Jones.

He's the soil fertility specialist, and this gives a pretty good idea on how to manage this protein in the cereals for this state.

Comes from several studies, and it's summarized here by Clain, Catherine.

So I would certainly take a look in this.

- All right, thank you.

Before I get to you, I have some dandies for you, and you can't read 'em yet.

Nina, you worked with potatoes a lot.

Let's go back to the home garden situation.

I know potatoes like lots of nitrogen.

How do you fertilize?

I know you still probably put a potato or two in your garden.

- I can't help it.

- I know, it's a disease.

- I have to put in just a few.

Yes.

- So how does a homeowner apply nitrogen for potatoes?

- So I have to be 100% honest, I don't actually calculate how much I'm putting down.

- Neither do I.

- But what I do is I always hill my potatoes when they're about eight to 10 inches tall, and that process can be done in a home garden by basically just taking your hoe and pulling up soil around the base of the plants.

What this does is it covers any of the potatoes that are going to be growing on the stolens, which are the underground stems where the potatoes are produced.

It covers them with soil so that they don't turn green, green potatoes aren't good to eat, they're not not good for you.

So it does that, and then it also kind of stimulates a little bit of extra tuber formation by doing that.

So what I do right before I hill my potatoes, I sprinkle a little bit of, sometimes I use all purpose garden fertilizer like a 20-10-20.

If I have a little bit of the lawn fertilizer that's a little bit heavier to nitrogen, I'll just sprinkle a little bit around the edges of the plant and then hoe it up and hill it up around them, so- - Okay, so something... Yeah, I have to throw a curve ball to you.

- Okay.

- All right.

So I've always been curious.

If you plant a pound of potato seed, how many pounds of potatoes will a pound of potato seed produce?

- So it can be anywhere, five pounds is a very reasonable amount that you could see from a pound of potato seed in a home garden, up to 10.

In commercial production, you figure you're gonna get about a tenfold multiplication factor.

In the home garden, you know, I know I eat a lot of my potatoes early when they're young and before the skin has set but, you know, easily five pounds, 10 pounds is totally realistic.

- Okay.

New potatoes, green peas, cream sauce with fresh dill.

You can't go wrong.

- [Nina] No, you can throw a few carrots in there too.

- [Kelsey] Oh yeah, I'd sign up for that.

(everyone laughing and chattering) - Okay.

Here's your question.

From Great Falls, caller wants to know if there's poison ivy in the area of Great Falls to Billings.

Do we have poison ivy in the state?

- Absolutely, we have poison ivy in Montana.

You often see it in the Cooley's from Great Falls to Billings.

You kind of have to get down into the Cooley country, and then you tend to find it.

I do know there's some round Gray Falls, yeah, down below the dams.

Walk in those north facing Cooley and you'll find it.

- So people vary in their response to poison ivy, do they not?

- Yes, they absolutely do.

- I've touched it and it doesn't bother me.

Others just, you break out immediately.

- My sister breaks out immediately, even if she stands next to it.

I can be there and it doesn't bother me either, actually.

Yeah, there is a difference.

- [Nina] Yeah, doesn't bother me either.

So I mean, I lived in the south for a while and- - We'll knock on wood real hard.

- What's the difference between poison oak and poison ivy?

- They're in the same genus.

The genus is called toxicodendron, and there's a bunch of them in there.

And poison oak is the viney one, and it basically grows in a viney form up the sides of trees and over on tops of trees.

- Can you spell that genus?

- Yes, I can.

(everyone laughing) - Just thought I'd ask.

Joao, a question that came in, it's a good question.

How often do you need to do soil testing if you're a producer?

- Very good question.

And I know costs, producers especially now are trying to avoid costs.

And I wanna just a brief point about this, there's some nutrients on the 17 essential nutrients that we have that are very dynamic and very mobile in the soil, and they have a lot of relationship with the soil organic matter.

Those are more difficult to predict responses, and so the more constant that you're doing that, it's better.

One example of those are is nitrogen, right.

Nitrogen, the majority of the nitrogen in the soils are in nitrate forms.

The available forms for the plants is nitrate, and it changes constantly and it's very variable across the field.

Some others like the immobile nutrients, let's say potassium phosphorus, I would do at least two to four years.

I think it's a good plan because they're unlikely to change as much since they're mobile.

- So you, you bring up the term nitrate, and the fertilizer I used to use was called ammonium nitrate.

It's difficult to find anymore, if you can.

Nowadays we use a lot of urea.

So let's take a homeowner situation.

It's 85 degrees in May when you fertilize, and you put that urea on.

How much of that are you going to lose?

Because I know urea volatilizes over time.

- Exactly.

(indistinct) has some really like excellent work done in urea volatilization in Montana.

What breaks down urea, it's a enzyme called uresis, and it's coming mostly in the soil from the organic matter.

And that organic matter, especially no-till fields, is very high.

And if you have high, you need moisture to that, so it's a hydrolysis reaction, and that you can lose up to, Rick found up to 50%.

Some others I've seen 80% ammonia volatilization, so imagine 80% going down.

But there are several ways that you can reduce this loss.

For example, using some uresis, there are some fertilizers that will come with uresis inhibitor and nitrification inhibitor.

And always, if you can get some water plan to have some rain and you had one inch of rain, probably is gonna reduce that volatilization close to zero.

I would say ammonia nitrate is great because it doesn't volatilize as much.

Half of the nitrogen in there, it's ammonium form and the other half it's nitrate form.

But the urea, if you spread on top of soil organic matter, if you have some plant residues there you're probably gonna lose a lot.

If you can irrigate in your garden if you're applying urea will be great.

- At $860 a ton, you don't want to be losing very much.

- Yes.

- Yeah, so always be cautious when you use urea.

Good question.

This person has heard a lot about carbon credits, it comes from the Haver area.

Are there places that you can actually receive dollars for carbon credits here in Montana?

- Yes, actually there are.

Initially, a lot of the first programs that sort of came out for this were really focused on the Midwest because there's a lot of agronomic research that made it much easier to predict what kind of carbon storage we were gonna have.

And increasingly these places have been expanding out to Montana.

So there are ones that are gonna pay you for like reducing some of your fertilizer usage in some cases, improving your nitrogen management is good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that can sometimes be carbon credited.

And in addition, for things like potentially changing your rotations to include things like lentils or in some cases switching to perennials might be able to get credits.

There's also a few options that are available for different range land programs as well with changing rotations.

So it's something that's worth keeping an eye out for.

That said, it's a relatively new market, so I would strongly encourage farmers, for one thing, to read the fine print.

All these programs are gonna have some requirements for different lengths of time.

They're going to require some data sharing.

They may have restrictions on what other programs you can participate in while you're part of a carbon credit program, so you wanna make sure you understand those before you're signing up.

But some of these I think have real potential for an extra income stream for farmers.

- [Jack] Okay- - Who buys the carbon credits and who resells the carbon credits?

- Yeah, it's gonna be... So basically if you're a farmer considering participating in one of these programs, you're gonna be dealing with an intermediary who's gonna be a program where their job is to essentially measure and track how much extra is getting stored because of your actions.

And then they're going to turn around, take that measurement, and say, "Hey, we can tell you that Montana farmers, you know, stored an extra 2,000 tons of carbon because of our program."

And then they'll sell that to maybe some company that has let's say a zero emissions goal or is trying to meet their own emission standards.

Generally it's gonna be voluntary, they might also sell it to private individuals, and those people can then essentially take credit for the carbon storage and say, "Hey, our actions by buying these carbon credits from that intermediary caused there to be 2,000 fewer tons of carbon emissions."

And so they kind of count that in their own accounting spreadsheets for - You see that with a lot of transportation companies are purchasing carbon credits now.

- Oh yeah, a lot of airlines in that market.

- Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it.

Clover is taking over the lawn, how do they get rid of it?

And that comes from Bozeman.

- I think they probably have some compaction issues if it's- That's a good question for Abby.

This week, I believe there is a turf grass webinar that's being run by the master gardener program, so you could check that out.

I think when you tend to have, in the areas where I have more white clover I tend to have more compaction, I think.

And as that compaction decreases or you aerate, I think you get less clover over time.

- A lot of people like clover- - And a lot of people like clover.

If you really want to get it rid of it, Roundup for lawns from the hardware store will actually has some herbicide active ingredients that are really effective on clovers.

- So another thing too is some people also have black medic in their yard and they'll call that clover, and black medic can be tougher.

You know, just with your standard 2,4-D lawn treatment, clover knocks it back pretty good but black medic- - Yes, black medic is a tough, tough plant.

And those seeds of black medic, those things will live 20 or 30 years.

- Wow.

- As a slightly terrified new homeowner, how can I tell if what I've got is clover or black medic?

- Black medic right now is flowering with these little yellow flowers.

It's growing super prostrate, and it looks like a clover but it has a little yellow flower on it right now.

- Longer stems and inner- - Yeah, longer stems and inner nodes too, yeah.

- Okay, I've got a problem then.

(everyone laughing) - You and a lot of other people.

- Me too, don't worry.

You're in good company.

- So this past week, Shelly Mill is the county agent up in Valley County, Glasgow, sent in a sample of mushrooms that somebody brought into her and wanna know if they were edible.

And in reality they're probably not, they're called inky caps.

And if we could bring up a photo of those mushrooms, they are kind of interesting.

Now, the inky caps that I have in my yard are a lot smaller, these are larger ones.

But our new mycologist, Chance, he identified these by taking a look at 'em when I sent the pictures over.

Shelly, thanks for sending those down.

They were kind of interesting because they showed up, I was told, by a telephone pole, and telephone poles normally have (indistinct) or similar products on it.

And to me that should inhibit the production of mushrooms, but in this particular case it did not.

So anyway, thanks for that, we had to bring that up.

- So another comment about inky caps, sometimes you'll see 'em growing up on the edge of a gravel road, like through rock hard extremely compacted soil.

So that's amazing the, the force and pressure that they can use to emerge.

- I've actually seen some mushrooms come up totally through asphalt, driveways and so forth and so on.

Billings, question.

Soil is very heavy clay with a bentonite clay.

Would like to plant trees, any recommendations for a soil amendment that might make it more plausible to raise trees in those heavy clay soil?

- That's a very good question.

I don't know, I'll be honest here.

I sincerely can look that up, I'm not on the forest side a lot, but yeah.

- [Nina] I can comment on that.

- All right.

- You know, in general, when you're getting a plant from a nursery, whether it be out of a pot or a ball and burlap, you always wanna dig the hole at least twice as large.

And then also, like, if the pot is this deep you wanna dig it that much deeper than where the bottom of the plant is gonna be and you could amend it with compost.

One thing to do if it's really, I've seen situations where if it's really, really hard clay, that will essentially become like a pot, (laughs) and the the roots will actually grow like in a circle inside of the pot that is the soil.

But so kind of chip away around the edges to kind of try to break it up a little bit and kind of scarify the edges a little bit to promote places where the roots can grow.

- So actually you talk about mushrooms having a lot of pressure, roots can grow through some very dense soil types too, I've seen that.

You want to get 'em a good start, but then they- - Then they will grow out of it, yeah.

- Okay... This caller is from Bigfork, is a retired landscaper and has questions about keeping snow in the mountain or mountain ivy under control on his property.

- Oh, snow on the mountain.

This is this carrot family, I can't remember the genus right now, but it's a variegated... He can call back and let us know, he means this kind of white, green, variegated carrot family plant that is super weedy.

In the east coast of the United States it's often listed as a noxious weed, I know in Vermont it's an noxious weed, I know in some of the northeast.

How do you keep it under control?

I say get rid of it and... - [Jack] Can you eat it?

- No, you cannot eat it, actually.

I've gotten rid of it in my yard actually, but it was a combination of techniques and what really actually had to happen was some shovel had to go in there and kind of dig that root system.

It has a super deep root system, and if you spray it with herbicide it'll kill the top, but it'll be back the next year even with 2,4-D and stuff like that.

So at some point you really have to kind of mess with the roots and and stimulate 'em, dig 'em out and, yeah, it's an interesting plant but it's been pretty invasive in the east coast of the United States.

- Okay.

Interesting question here, that this person is referring to Gary who was on the program last week.

He said that we need more grass to increase the beef numbers in the United States.

Are there any programs that assist producers in bringing back grasslands?

- Yeah, so carbon credits actually might be an opportunity for that.

Perennial systems generally store more carbon than annual systems like crops.

In addition, there may be opportunities through different NRCS programs like EQIP that might help with that planting, especially if you're, say, on some more erodible land.

They're always very excited to do things to help reduce erosion.

So a range of possibilities there, definitely.

- You know, I'm gonna comment on that a little bit.

Four years ago I went to a conservation program north of Wing North Dakota, which is northeast of Bismarck, and at that time I saw a lot of grasslands, native prairie being torn up to produce corn and soybeans in that area.

With $4 corn or less and 10 to $11 soybeans, we're not seeing that anymore.

I was there a week ago, week and a half ago, and some of that native prairie that was torn up is now being seeded back to grass, and $4 calves probably make a difference there.

Are there programs, do you think, that help growers go back to Native Prairie or reseeding try to attempt to go back?

- Yeah, I'm not certain if exactly what circumstances NRCS would pay for that, but I think it might be a potential, something at least to talk to your local NRCS folks about.

Also, one possibility would be, you know, if you've got cropped land that just isn't making economic sense right now, the conservation reserve program can be a possibility because basically they'll pay you to replant with native grasses, maybe do some additional work on the land.

And in that case you'll generally have that you're just gonna leave that as is, not gonna produce on it for that period but you are getting payments.

So potentially if you were thinking in the long term that you want to shift some of your cropped land back to native grasses and back to grazing in the long run, you could say, "Okay, let's sign up for a CRP contract today.

They'll pay my costs of replanting native grasses, they'll give me this decade of payments, and then I'll be able to, you know, use it fully as pasture at the end of that period."

- Okay.

Good information.

I also have been told that if we ever get a new farm bill, there is a provision in there that maybe will increase CRP payments and acreage.

Now that's rumor, and I can't verify that but I was told that when I was in North Dakota last week.

Interesting question from Highwood, and we don't get a lot of calls from Highwood.

They have issues with soil acidification in that area.

They'd like to know what the update is and is the soil acidification problem spreading in the state?

- Yes.

I think we didn't see the problem before because the sampling depth that we normally do, the depth is 0-6 for the majority of the fertilizers.

And we are pushing really no-till fields for conservation purposes.

And the acidified area, it will develop right there where we place the fertilizer, that's where the fertilizer will break and those protons or hydrogen will accumulate.

And if we sample, we have many Montana soils, we have this calcite layer so if we go deep, deep, deep, the pH goes up, and we are, if you imagine a field, a big field, we're grabbing this samples from several spots, mixing in a bucket, pretty much all depths.

And even the calcite, mineral is calcium carbonate which is the same as lime that we use to raise the pH.

So we are neutralizing that acidity and sending it to a laboratory, so it took a long time for us to see but now more and more we are seeing the development of these areas.

I think we have a estimation of 500,000 acres in the state.

- Wow.

- My personal opinion, I think it's much, much more than that, just because of the sample or screening, how to screen that correctly.

And it's very spotty in the field, right, you have places it's a lot variable within the field, and very little are doing grid sampling or more focused sampling this low production areas.

So probably, I think this will keep increasing over time, especially if you look at the nitrogen fertilizer used, which is the cause of the soil acidification.

It's also increasing, the nitrogen sales keep increasing so I don't see how we're gonna get back.

- So can you do an occasional tillage to incorporate that shallow layer into the deeper layers of the soil?

- That's a very interesting question.

So, the tillage, we have a trial that we're testing sugar beet lime tilled and no-till in some soil health aspects, right, but due to wind erosion and I think farmers, they fought so much to get this organic matter up in their soils that I think many of them, when you talk about tilling, they won't like the idea.

However, if you till you're bringing those carbonates up, you're mixing the soil, right.

And then you kind of neutralize, but let's talk about the long term.

So the chemistry is still there, the hydrogen will still accumulate, so probably you are making the 0-6 profile or how deep you till more and more acidified.

So I think instead of doing that, if you want to till apply line and till too.

We've seen some results that tilling can raise the pH, but it's not even close as efficient in actually doing the lime application.

- And the side note on no-till from our earlier conversation is that that's also on the list of practices that you can get different government incentive payments or private carbon credit payments for, would be transitioning towards no-till.

- You know, a lot of our viewers probably don't realize it, but say 10, 15 years ago, the average soil pH in most of our production areas were a high sevens to low eights, and now they're dropped down as low, acidity-wise, of six, even five six, which is a huge change over what I consider to be a very short period of time.

- It is, Jack.

And if you think about the certification pattern of the no-till area, so we have organic matter stratifying all the nutrients and all pretty much all the chemical properties in the soils.

And sometimes just applying the phosphorus in furrow, right, what most producers will do when the soil test require that phosphorus application.

We know that phosphorus can help to hide that acidification effect a little bit, and they keep applying the nitrogen so we're developing slowly the problem there.

So if you look at your 0-6 and you have let's say a pH six or 6.5.

In the 0-6, probably in the 0-3 you're much than that because that's where the acidity is developing, especially if it's a no-till field.

So I would certainly look shallower samples sent to some lab that you trust, and get the results back.

Probably you'll see lower pH there.

- Okay.

At some of the farmer meetings I've been at recently, I hear a lot of people talking about foliar fertilizer applications in crop.

I hear a lot of stuff about biologicals mixed with all kinds of stuff and applied foliarly.

Do people apply much nitrogen to wheat foliarly, and does that get around the soil acidification problem?

- That's a very good question, Tim.

Like, maybe if we think how much we need, how much nitrogen we need to produce like a 60 bushel crop, we need much more.

And if we try to apply that overflow, we'll burn, we'll kill all the plants.

So let's say that we can do like a bandaid on the nitrogen in the leaf, so we can apply probably more than six pounds, you start burning these plants with ammonia toxicity.

Plants are very, very sensitive to ammonia toxicity.

So yeah, you still can do it, but I don't have seen many people doing it in Montana.

If you wanna do any top dress fertilizer, not foliar, but if you wanna still use some liquid, we have the UAN option, which is urea ammonial nitrate option.

But- - And that's mixed quite often with herbicide applications in crop.

In spring wheat they'll put UAN in there and then the herbicide and the whatever adjuvants.

I wondered how much it boosted production.

- On that note, Nina, do potato growers use on a Foley or fertilizer?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

They like to say they spoon feed their crop.

So there are fertilizers that go down pre-plant based on the soil test and then they'll give incremental fertilization mostly through the center pivots, so it really gives them the capability of doing that throughout the season.

And they can mix it, like Tim said, with their other pesticide applications, whether it be fungicides or even herbicides.

- Okay, and insecticides.

- And insecticides.

- You can't leave anything out.

- Yeah, most of those are actually flown on, so with the ground rig early in the season and then flown on later in the season.

- All right.

So I'm gonna veer off to another topic a little bit, I'm taking a little bit of editorial license here.

I wanna promote a magazine that is produced by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks.

It's called "Montana Outdoors".

It's not all about hunting and fishing.

In this last issue, there's a great article about cottonwood trees and what they do in the state and how they've survived.

Great article on pollinators, and Abby is gonna get this and she'll be here next week and we'll talk about pollinators.

But on the last page there's also an article about the American plum, the wild plum, which we have a lot of in Montana.

It makes great wine, I'm told, and it makes great preserves, but you gotta get to 'em before the raccoons and the deer do.

So it's a great magazine, folks.

And, you know, I'm probably not supposed to promote anything like that, but if you don't take it, you might consider it, and it's very reasonable.

So with that, enough said there.

This is a good one.

From Haver, they have a plant they call Bishop Weed.

Are you familiar with that?

- Oh, I do not know what Bishop weed is.

- And it's variegated like snow on the mountain.

Are they the same plant going by a different name?

- Ooh, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, I've never heard it called Bishop Weed before.

- I haven't either.

This is a good one, I've had several questions here.

I'll use the last one, it came from Bozeman, we had some last week that Tim didn't get to.

Caller for many years have had lilacs that bloom prolifically, but it seems that there aren't lilacs in bloom this year.

Any reason for no blossoms?

- Absolutely.

Well, I live south of Bozeman and I do live in a colder area, but I think all across Montana we had some pretty severe frosts, like the first week of May.

And then we had another one about a week or 10 days later and then another one.

And the lilac blooms, we also had warm march in early April, and so those lilac blooms were starting to, you know, the buds were starting to form, the flower buds were starting to form, and they just got hit.

I have three different types of lilac, and usually if my common lilac gets hit by the frost I'll at least have my Korean lilac or my tree lilac will actually bloom, because they bloom later.

This year all three different types of lilacs got basically axed.

And driving around the state, you see very few lilacs anywhere around the state this year.

- Just scattered quarter, like scattered flowers, just very few.

- Oh, such a huge disappointment.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I miss the smell.

- Yeah.

- Oh my gosh.

- But you know, I went hiking today and the lupins were smelling wonderful actually in the forest.

- And they're everywhere.

- And they're everywhere.

- [Kelsey] Oh, yeah, they're going crazy right now.

- Okay, enough of that, let's move on.

I have to throw you a tough one here.

This collar has a six by six foot compost pile about three to four feet high.

It's from Billings.

Can they use household ammonia to kick the pile and get that started as a nitrogen source?

Between you two, what do you think?

- I mean I just sprinkle a little bit of fertilizer in it and keep turning it and make sure it had plenty of moisture.

What would you say?

(laughs) - The first thing that we look at, obviously we have a lab behind us to help us to take the decisions at the university, which is much harder when you're at home.

But we look at the Cn relationship of this compost.

And if you are too low, probably you're gonna start losing that nitrogen that you want to keep it.

If you're too high, you will take a long time to that dose immobilized.

Whenever it's not available to the plants, we'll call it immobilized nutrients, to actually become in mobile forms.

Like I think I like her idea, go slow with the fertilizer, water it and keep checking to the point that you actually want you think, it's a good point.

I think that's what I would go for at home.

- Is there some kind of scraps or something they could add to the pile that would be relatively like (indistinct) and get that started?

- Chicken blood.

- Chicken blood.

- Actually that's a great comment too.

I mean, lawn clippings, if they have not been sprayed with any type of herbicide that could be a residual problem.

I mean, we mulch our lawn so we don't actually collect any lawn clippings, but something like that that would have a really high degradation rate or decomposition rate, with some green matter material would be good.

- So most compost that if you created it with your lawn scraps, your yard waste, it's gonna have very little nitrogen, right, and it's gonna be really, but it'll have more phosphorus and potassium in it.

So it's often not a good, right, it's not your fertilizer, it's not your nitrogen fertilizer you need - But it's a good soil builder for- - It's a good soil builder.

- ... for soil texture and organic matter.

- Especially in gardens, I think people irrigate obviously.

Why they wouldn't, right.

We have light and water as the main like limitance of a plant growth, anywhere pretty much.

And I think if you're doing that, if you're thinking about the fertilizer, the nitrogen, it's always very limiting because we don't have enough in the soils so these plants actually develop as much as they can.

I think it's a pretty good idea and just the compost will be difficult to reach.

You're right, Tim, like very difficult to reach those demands, especially for growing very big, good, like, healthy plants.

That's why we use so much nitrogen fertilizer, is the primary fertilizer response that we have in pretty much all crops.

- Okay.

Promotion time.

June 17th was the Northern AG Research Center field day up in Haver.

They didn't let Tim come because he ate too many steaks last time he was there.

The next one coming up is June 30th and that will be at the Southern Ag Research Center over at Huntley.

Folks, there's a lot of great field days around the state, and if you have an opportunity, you don't have to be a producer.

If you have any interest in agriculture, catch one of the field days because you're gonna learn a lot, you're gonna have a good time, you'll probably see some friends there, and you'll walk away with a greater appreciation of what agriculture does for the state of Montana.

And I bring up the next one is July seventh in Western over at Conrad, so forth and so on.

If you have questions where they are, you can get 'em online at the AG Experiment Station website or just call your county agent, they'll know what the next field day in your area will be.

This person is curious whether or not you need to fertilize pulse crops.

Pulse crops mean chickpeas, peas, lentils.

Do you need to fertilize them?

I hear mixed results there.

- Yeah.

One point that I wanna make about this, the soil test, if you consider the fertilizer price, it was never so cheap to actually make to do a soil test, right.

You don't wanna over apply, that goes directly to your profit, like it would decrease your profit directly.

For the majority of the- I think one of the biggest problems in Montana is the low phosphorus.

So the phosphorus is good in a range of pH.

As we go lower than let's say six, we start having problems.

If we go higher than 7.58, we also have problems, different reasons but we also have problems.

As the soil test will tell you, it's very rare to have any issues with the potassium here in Montana, 'cause the majority of the soils are very high in potassium.

At least for what I've seen.

And if you look at the phosphorous in some service that we talk, in some other crop advisors that we talk, a lot of producers are not applying and they actually do respond.

So if your soil test says anything below 16 ppm, or parts per million, on the Olson test, which is what we recommend for neutral to basic pH soils, you probably will see a response in there.

So I would at least put the the phosphorous fertilizer that you're extracting with for grains, that's the minimal thing that you do, right, so you run out at some point.

- I know just enough about soil fertility to be dangerous, and I admit that.

But something that's always fascinated me, if you put something like 25-10-10 on your lawn, and that's 10 units of phosphorus, what Because don't you have to incorporate the phosphorus in the soil so the plants can get to it and if you apply it on the surface, it doesn't do any good.

Am I correct?

- You're correct.

So it's very mobile, the phosphorus is very mobile.

What I would try is to get the closest to the roots as possible.

So that's why the majority will fertilize their phosphorus at planting, different than nitrogen.

So you have a risk of losing that nitrogen when the plant's most need.

With phosphorus, because it's really mobile, that's why we put at in furrow, as we call directly on on the- I used to have a professor, but they used to say the mouth of the plant, which are the roots, right, right below that.

And they will certainly use it.

Yeah, so I think that's the best idea.

As soon as you plant it, make sure that you have a little bit of that phosphorus fertilizer in there if you wanna see results.

- Okay.

Great Falls.

Culinar gardens in raised beds, and has a question about potato rotation.

I know who's gonna answer this.

How often can they raise potatoes in the same spot?

- I would go at least one year between their potato crops.

Two years between is good.

Three, four years are better.

Our potato farmers in Montana on average, since they're raising seed potatoes and are very, very concerned about their plant health will go about every three years, but every other year for a home garden is good.

- Okay.

- Can I put my- So I pinched myself in this year.

I was standing there and I went, "Well, I have potatoes here last year and I was gonna put tomatoes here this year."

Do you need to separate your nightshades in a rotation or could you sneak 'em in there?

- You can go ahead and sneak 'em in there.

I mean it is good to kind of rotate by family, because there are some of the same root diseases and things like that, and insects that will potentially over But you'll probably be okay and, you know, as home gardeners a lot of times we are dealing with cramped spaces and rotations become more difficult, but... - You might get one pound of potato per (indistinct).

(everyone laughing) - Well, I have a bunch of tobacco mosaic virus all over the place.

- Okay.

The interesting question for Kelsey is from Miles City.

This person is familiar or realize that property values have gone up, as have property taxes for homeowners.

They wanna know if farm taxes, real estate taxes on farmland, has also increased as much as it has for homeowners.

- All right, yeah.

So there's two main things that are gonna be impacting the rate somebody's paying this year.

One of them's gonna be some changes from 2025 laws that were passed, where we changed around the rates of how much we're charging on different property tax values.

So high value residential, high value commercial properties.

Those rates both went up.

The ag rate went down from 2.16 to 2.05 of... And the other thing is that the way that ag taxes move isn't necessarily gonna be the same way that your residential taxes move, because if your land is qualified agricultural land, it's based on what we call the agricultural productive value of your land.

So that's basically, we ask, "If your land stays in agriculture forever, how much is that land worth?"

So it's gonna go up if we think that you could have a very, very profitable farm in your area, and it's gonna go down if we think that you're gonna struggle to make farm profits relatively.

So that's a little bit different from the question we ask for residential housing, which is how much could you get on the real estate market if you sold your house and your property right now.

So I wouldn't be too surprised to see if in some cattle production areas where we know they've been doing great the last couple of years, those ag taxes might go up because we say, you know, "Your operation is so profitable, we're gonna, you know, value that agricultural production a bit more."

And it might go down in areas with, say, wheat production where they've had really tight margins and we say, you know, "There's only so much money you can get out of keeping this in agriculture."

- Okay.

Excellent answer, thank you.

This is an email question came in from Jim Felton.

So thank you, Jim.

It's from Big Timber and they would like to know, number one, how to handle grass in a raspberry patch.

And I'll let these two have a shot at that.

They'll probably not know, but go ahead.

- Oh no, we know.

Well, we do know this one.

If you want to keep all the grass out of your raspberry patch, you can use a grass herbicide available at Murdoch store, your ranch and supply store in Big Timber.

- Okay, and one of those might be post.

- Yeah, post has been a common one that people have used.

I don't know exactly how many active ingredients that are out there, but there's a group of herbicides called Group 1 herbicides, ACCase inhibitors, and they are used just to kill grass.

- Okay.

So we handled that.

Now I moved to the next two on the panel.

Same person, how do you fertilize raspberries correctly?

- That's a good question.

- And I know you don't measure, so I'm not- - Right, I don't measure, I just yearly sprinkle nitrogen sulfate in my raspberry patch because it does have a little bit of sulfur, which contributes a little bit of acid.

- That's a great point.

Actually, we are seeing more and more sulfate deficiencies in the state.

Clain has been working with it and we have some materials out, please check the MSD soil fertility website, by the way, it's very nice and it has a lot of content there.

But yeah, I would look at mainly nitrogen.

If you have a chance to get a soil test, again, it will give us a lot of directions on what to do.

The less resource, if you don't wanna do any soil test and you're seeing something that you might think it's nutritional, it's a tissue test and sent to a lab.

We have these rates that we look at it, percentages of each nutrient so this can tell us how much, if we're needing more or not, just by... Or you can do a simple application and see if they're doing better than others, that's very good.

That's what we do all the time in research.

- Okay.

So Nina, you sprinkle it and I know you don't calculate.

That's okay, I do the same thing.

If you over fertilize, don't you get a lot of vegetative growth and not as many berries?

- I suppose that that's a possibility.

And, I mean, in raspberries those primo canes always contribute a lot of problems when you go to harvest, but I just give it a little bit every year, so- - Okay.

And, actually, raspberries are very prone to iron deficiency where you get green veins and yellow leaves.

And I hear the music, folks, you know what that means.

It means they're kicking us out of here in a minute.

So we got about 30 seconds, I want to thank everybody.

Kelsey, thank you for coming in again.

You're becoming a professional, you're here all the time now.

- That's right.

- Joao, thank you.

Very informative, good job.

Nina, thanks for filling in for horticulture tonight.

Tim, you're kind of a standard here anymore.

- And the irises will get killed by post.

- Okay.

So folks, we're outta here.

Joel will have pesticides next week, good night.

- [Narrator 2] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] "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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