- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, the Montana Bankers Association, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Advisor Program.

(lively folk music) - Greetings, you are tuned to "Montana Ag Live," starting in another new year, coming to you from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus we call Montana State University, and being brought to you over your Montana public television system.

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

Happy to be your host this evening.

We have kind of an interesting program tonight.

I think you wanna stay tuned because we'll have a few laughs, a few chuckles, and you'll learn a lot.

But before we get to that, let me introduce today's panel.

On my far left, Mary Burrows.

Mary is a plant pathologist, spends part-time in the dean's office, but overall she's better as a plant pathologist than being in the dean's office.

I had to say that.

Kevin Mcphee.

Kevin's a pulse crop developer, breeder.

Kevin's been here several years.

He really knows how to produce some of the best quality pulse crops here in the Northern Great Plains.

It's a pleasure to have Kevin here.

He's been here before.

But if you have any questions this evening concerning pulse crops and their use and development, hey, it's an absolutely beautiful time to ask that question.

Tim Seipel.

Tim is an extension weed scientist.

(Tim laughs) I prefer weed scientist to cropland weed specialist because weed scientists cover a lot of things other than cropland weeds, so I want to be a little less specific.

And Abi.

Welcome back, Abi.

Abi Saeed is our extension horticultural specialist if you have questions concerning horticultural crops.

And I think most of you that watch this program, a lot of you do, will have questions about when to plant your tomatoes, so forth and so on.

Answering the phones tonight, and they're doing it remotely, is Nancy Blake and Bruce Loble.

Tell you a little bit more about the program tonight, we have a pulse crop cook-off.

We're gonna do that halfway through the program.

In order to sit at this panel this evening, everybody had to agree to bring in their favorite pulse crop recipe.

And we have a panel of experts here from KUSM management who is going to judge the special recipes that we brought in.

I'd like to introduce those.

On the far left, or far right is Aaron Pruitt.

Aaron is director and general manager of KUSM.

Aaron, thank you for being here.

I hope you enjoy the special treats you're gonna have tonight.

- I'm sure I will.

- Jeannie Gracey, development officer for Montana PBS.

Gracey, happy to have you here.

And Christina Martin, who is director of development.

So about 6:30, we will turn that over to the panel and we'll see what we have to eat.

Before we do that, Kevin, tell us what you do here at MSU.

- Very well.

Thank you for having me on the show tonight.

As a pulse crop breeder, what I do here at MSU is work on developing new varieties of peas, lentils, and chickpeas.

We focus on a wide range of different traits objectives within those.

So we're after traits that the producers really want: upright growth, high yield, standability, harvestability; looking for traits that consumers want: so quality of the crop, protein is one of those, the topic may come up later.

Disease resistance, that's a very big issue with regard to production.

All places that pulses crops are grown, but Montana is certainly no exception to that, many different diseases across the three crops.

And a lot of different things.

It's a lot of fun to look at the variation that we create by crossing different varieties together to try and combine the traits and then select within those.

So yeah.

- You know, when I first moved out here, and that's been a long, long time ago, all we had in this state basically was wheat, barley, and a little bit of alfalfa, and now we're a very diverse agricultural state.

Why have pulse crops taken off so extensively here in the Northern Great Plains, specifically in Montana?

- So the reason for that expansion within the industry within the producer community is that legumes for many years have fit well with rotations of cereal grains.

They offer an opportunity for producers to control grassy weeds, weeds that are important to the cereal grains crops.

They also, one of the big advantages is the nitrogen fixation potential that they have.

They fix nitrogen through symbiosis with a soil bacteria, and they produce nodules on the roots; and as they fix the nitrogen, they take the nitrogen from the soil, fix it within their biological systems into a form of available to the legumes as well as the cereal grains.

So they help to improve the soil fertility.

There's a lot, there's quite a wide range of different agronomic as well as economical issues that they help the producers with.

- I've always preached rotation,.

Mary has preached rotation her whole life, and, boy, does that fit in nicely with the pulse crops.

- And they don't only benefit from that crop, but also the wheat crop following really benefits.

- Absolutely.

- Certainly.

- That's a good point.

Tim, a question from Billings.

And this is one that comes in every year and it's an early one.

Bulbous bluegrass, what is it, what do they do about it, and why is it a problem?

- Bulbous bluegrass is one of the earliest weeds we see growing in Montana.

It's probably the, you know, it's really one of the first ones.

There's a lot of it around the Billings area.

It does really well in our warmer climates in Montana.

It's a bluegrass.

It's a non-native species.

It's a short-lived perennial, it'll live for a few years, but you'll see it's the first thing to turn green.

I've seen it turn green in Bozeman already.

And it'll grow, and instead of making seeds, it makes little bulbils that...

They're called bulbils, and the hence the name Bulbous bluegrass, but those fall and they're ready to grow.

It can be a weed in alfalfa, early alfalfa.

It can be a weed in some crops.

And to manage it really, it depends on what crop or what situation you're in.

But what most people do is apply glyphosate very early in the next...

Whenever it gets warm, whenever spring arrives in Montana, we can go out and put down a early application of glyphosate before other things grow, and that's probably the best way to control it.

- And when is the snow gonna be off?

(Tim laughs) - You know, I was talking to a producer in Livingston recently, and he said, "The first 50-degree day is the day you really need to be out there when the snow is gone if you're trying to manage it in your situations."

- Okay, that makes good sense.

Abi, this question is from Bozeman.

When should they put out their mason bee hotel?

What is a mason bee hotel?

- Yeah, good question.

So mason bee hotels are little hotels, you might have seen them, that have those little cardboard or bamboo tubes inside them.

And they're a great home for cavity-nesting bees like mason and leafcutter bees.

And these are usually are early season bees as well that need this kind of environment to nest in.

And so usually you wanna aim for when it's about 55 to 60 degrees for a few days in a row to set them out, that's when those bees are gonna start flying around and be looking for a place to nest.

- You know, it's cold this year, yeah, it's a late spring.

And do the bees survive all right in a winter like this?

- Yeah, because, you know, our climate has, you know, it varies year after year, and the bees are pretty well accustomed to it.

Sometimes it can be an issue when the bees might emerge and the plants are a little bit delayed, there might be be kind of a resource limitation where there may not be enough flowers.

So planting kind of early season flowering plants in your landscape could be a good way to help kind of offset the slow spring when you don't have as abundant of those floral resources.

- Okay, thank you.

Kevin, we got a question here/ But before we do that, the one before that was this person has some black, they call 'em, knots in their choke cherries, and they're curious what it is and what should they do about it?

Mary, I think that's yours.

- Yeah, that's how you recognize cherry: black knot.

- Yeah, you're right.

- So all you can do is prune it out.

And I'd prune it out while the tree is dormant.

And since cherry is also susceptible to other diseases, you know, clean your pruners pretty well with an antiseptic, not bleach 'cause that'll crow corrode pruners, between each cut so you don't spread anything else.

- You know, I've had some in my....

I've got a couple choke cherries, and it doesn't seem to spread very rapidly.

Is there a reason that it doesn't spread?

- I don't know.

I have one that's declining, and it's really quite bad.

I don't mind it.

And I bring it in for "Ag Live" occasionally, so I keep the tree around.

But it's just preference, I suppose.

What do you think, Abi?

- Yeah, I'm not sure either.

I would, yeah, I really think so.

- Maybe wounding and the environment at the time.

- We've had like hail and stuff sometimes will open that tree up to- - Yeah, damage - Yeah.

- Okay.

From Billings: "Are pulse crops more or less drought-tolerant than the more common Montana crops?"

And I assume they're talking about wheat and barley, although chickpeas are about... Not chickpeas, pulse crops are about as common as wheat and barley anymore.

- Yeah, we've got like half a million acres.

No, a million acres of pulses now, right?

- A million acres, yeah.

- And 5 million of wheat.

- [Jack] So are they pretty drought-tolerant?

- In general, compared to many crops, yes, they are.

Chickpeas and lentils more so maybe than peas, but they do tolerate the dry conditions better than some crops.

- So I've been out of ag, not totally out of agriculture, but I'm not as current as I used to be.

If you have a rotational system, we used to call it flex cropping years ago, and if these crops don't use as much moisture, can we, in our dryer areas, maybe grow three crops in four years using the peas or chickpeas or lentils in that rotation?

I'll let you guys- - Well, most areas of the state can grow a crop every year now.

And weed fallow is disappearing, and a lot of that is due to pulses.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] I didn't realize that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's good.

- And you can't grow lentils everywhere.

You know, they have a really good fit in that northeast corner, where peas are everywhere in the state.

- Yeah.

Peas, sorry.

Peas and lentils both tend to have a narrower or a shorter root system, so they don't mine the soil as much for moisture as chickpeas, but they all tend to leave moisture behind for the following crop.

- Yeah.

I think sometimes we have to watch out for herbicide carryover because what's used in wheat or fallow can sometimes damage pulses into the next year.

So we have herbicides with less residual now, but it's still sometimes an issue.

If you wanna change your rotation, you have to be cognizant of those plan-back intervals.

- Okay.

Another question here.

And this person says they're anxious to see what the panel has put together for dinner tonight, but they also are curious what else are pulse crops used for.

And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that.

But Kevin, Mary, all of you guys, why are we growing so many?

Where are they going?

What do we do with them?

- So I'll take a first stab at it and then everybody else can chime in.

The the first thing they were produced for was for human consumption as well as animal feed, both as whole and split seeds for human consumption into soups and various mixtures of that nature worldwide.

And much of our crop in the US in the past was exported into feed markets as well as food.

With the shift toward ingredients, using the pulse crops as an ingredient in many different recipes that companies have put together, that shift or that export market has reduced.

So we're consuming a lot more of our own crop domestically.

And you look at the grocery store shelves, and the range of different products that include to some degree any of the pulse crops is enormous, is immense, and very diverse.

And a lot of it is quite enjoyable, quite tasty.

- Well, and a lot of it is incorporated in some products that you're gonna show.

The protein is extracted from the seed.

And a lot of it is included in pet food, a lot of these plant-based meats.

I don't know what else that- - Well, a lot of the protein drinks have pea protein in 'em.

And on that note, this is... As you can tell, I'm not a smoothie-type guy.

But this is a protein powder that is made here in Bozeman, and it's a combination of cricket and pea powder and some chocolate and a little bit of sugar.

Nutritionally, this is really quite good.

If you go online, you'd be surprised to find that there are a lot of different products out there that contain cricket protein.

The reason that it is so usable is that the iron from crickets is very, very utilizable by the human body compared to some of the other proteins.

But a young lady here in Bozeman started a company called Orchestra Provisions, and she has combined pea powder and cricket protein.

And from what I'm told and what you read online, it's really kind of interesting.

But there's a lot of products like this that are coming on the market.

And 20 years ago, if you saw anything other than green peas for split pea soup and lentils, there wasn't much out there.

It's changed.

- Well, I think that gluten... You know, a lot of people are sensitive to gluten, so there's a lot of alternatives.

And then if you're diabetic, too, they have a low glycemic index, and they're just good for your heart as well.

- That's true.

And, folks, if you got questions tonight... We're not getting a ton of questions.

And if you have specific questions, concerns, or comments, hey, get 'em in tonight because you're gonna have a good chance to have it answered on air.

And with that, back to Abi.

This person wants to know when is a good time to plant rhubarb.

- Yeah, so like you said, we've had kind of a, we've been having a pretty slow spring.

But usually I like to go and, like, put my trowel into my soil.

And as soon as that soil's workable and not frozen, you can put that in there.

That's when I'll put my crowns in.

- I'm always scared, like, I'll put... Dormant I think is okay.

But if I did a transplant, I don't want it to freeze.

So I kinda want things growing.

- Yeah, I would be worried about transplanting.

That's a good point.

Yeah, yeah, when things start to start to green up.

- Yeah, everybody's anxious.

- Yeah.

Wanting to get in there, yeah.

- Okay.

From Livingston, here's an interesting question: "Why are lentils all different colors?

And do the colors affect the taste?"

- Okay.

So lentils are quite diverse within the crop, and that's because there are different market classes of lentils.

And they can come with different seed-coat colors, seed-=coat patterns.

The cotyledon colors that are marketed are typically either yellow or the reds.

The yellow cotyledon types are what kind of oddly we refer to as the green lentils because of the seed coat that they have, and they're typically consistent as far the color.

We try to breed them and select and produce lentils in the green market class that hold that green color; it can in time discolor to a brown.

The pigments in the seed coat oxidize and change color, which is not desirable.

Within the red lentils, it's a lot more diverse as far as the seed coat and whether it's a dark brown, a light brown, whether it has speckles, some sort of a model or pattern to it.

And it's just the nature of the the lentil crops.

It's a lot of different options.

And that's what in part it makes it kind of fun for me as a breeder to see that variation and to select amongst that.

- But they take the seed coat off of the red lentils, right, before they- - Yeah, when they're consumed they decorticate 'em, so take the seed coat off.

Some markets will split them just like peas.

Other markets like to keep the cotyledons together so it's just a seed without the seed coat.

- You know, on that note, this is my own question.

I love split pea soup, ham and split pea soup, and you always make that with green peas and not yellow peas.

Is there a reason?

- The green peas tend to hold a color.

Sometimes the yellow peas don't have as attractive of a color once they're processed.

I'll go back to the previous question on the flavor of the different lentils based on the seed coat.

And some markets...

So, yes, there are differences in the seed coats, in the flavor of them, based on the pigments that are in there.

And to a cultural preference, they can tell a difference between different lentils based on those pigments and how much is there, and they do prefer that.

But, yes, there are differences in flavor.

- Okay.

A question came in as kind of a follow-up: "Are pulse crops a good source of fiber?"

- They can be.

That's one of the three primary components of the seed, you know, protein, starch, and fiber.

So, yes, as long as the seed coat is retained, usually with the green lentils, not so much the reds because of the dark pigments that come with the red lentils.

But with the green lentils, yes, the fiber can be good.

- Okay, thank you.

From Helena.

This person has a lot of purslane in their garden, and that's a low-growing, kind of a almost wet crop, I mean, it is, it contains a lot of moisture, very low-growing.

They rototilled it last year or a year before, and last year they had even more purslane than they did before they rototilled it.

Is there a reason?

- Yep, there's a lot of....

So purslane is a, it's a warm season weed, so we won't see it germinate here until middle of June, maybe the 1st of July.

It has a very persistent seed in the seed bank, and that seed will be there for a really, really long time.

And then when you chop it up, it will grow into new pieces and chunks too.

It dies back every year, but you often don't seed the seeds and the flowers that are in the axials of the leaf.

And when you chop it up, you put all those seeds out there.

And that seed bank remains really persistent.

The one thing, you can eat it.

Purslane is actually pretty good.

I fermented some purslane in kimchi style last year.

If you can't beat it, eat it.

And so that was one of the things I did with it.

I think it's really important you have to keep it from going to flower and you have to keep it out of your seed bank.

I think it really, I view it sometimes as a cover crop under my sweet corn.

- Yeah, basically that's correct.

- But you need to add more water because it does, it sucks up a lot of water and it'll suck up a lot of nutrients, too, is my... Yeah.

- It is hard to get rid of.

It is susceptible to glyphosate if you get it early.

- And you can use some, like, too, in corn.

If you have it under your sweet corn, you can use some broad-leaf herbicide too, that will get it.

It's hard to keep it chopped out.

It'll keep growing and growing and growing.

- Okay.

From Hamilton.

This person would like suggestions on how to thin and prune his Triple Crown blackberries.

I don't know what a Triple Crown blackberry is, do you?

- No, I actually don't know what a Triple Crown blackberry is either.

But in general, to thin and prune, now is a really good time to do that anyway.

So that's a really good question.

You can definitely start pruning your blackberries and your trees and shrubs as well.

But to thin it, we have a really nice smart guide that's talking about pruning fruit trees and bushes.

So if you go to the MSU Extension store and check out the publications, it'll show you more detail on how to do it.

But you wanna start with making sure that it has enough kind of nice circulation.

So thin it out, don't remove more than a third of that material.

If you wanna encourage that additional growth, you can head some of those branches.

But generally you wanna thin it out, make sure it has enough circulation, and yeah.

- Okay.

Thank you.

And while I have you up, I like this question: "Will flowers grow if you scatter seeds on top of the snow," and they say, 'in a flower garden?"

Now, that's, the birds will get it.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

The birds are probably gonna get it.

And sometimes if it's on top of the snow, you'd worry about them kind of, you know, rotting.

And so that's why you wouldn't wanna seed grass then, too, because it can just sit there and just, yeah, rot.

- Okay.

Kevin, this person has a home garden but would like to try to grow some pulse crops in their home garden.

This is from Corvallis.

Any suggestions what they could do?

- Well, certainly peas is a great option.

Peas have been grown in gardens for many, many years.

And there's a lot of different varieties with fresh peas, snow peas, the snap peas, so the immature pods are consumed.

I have a friend who enjoys growing chickpeas in their garden.

And we often think of chickpeas as a dry seed harvested crop that is then reconstituted or soaked and then cooked, canned, and prepared in some manner.

But there are also many who enjoy the immature chickpeas.

Much like your, like the peas I just mentioned, harvest them immature when the pods are full, the seeds are plump, and they're really quite a tasty snack.

And in the Middle East, it's a delicacy or it's a part of their diet where they'll take a handful of plants with the pods still attached, they'll roast them over a fire, and then shell 'em out, add a little oil, and eat them that way.

So that's a kind of a fun option.

I'm not sure that lentils have much of an option for the fresh side of things.

- [Mary] They're just too hard to harvest.

- They are.

They're such a small pod and a small seed, but- - I've grown fallow bean, though.

And the same thing with the chickpeas, so you can get the green.

Yeah, they're really hard to break the pod once they're dry just by hand, but the green is great.

- Yep, when they're immature, I enjoy walking through the plots in an alley or an odd border plant- - That's the best part of pulse field days.

- pull a plant and just shell the peas or the chickpeas and eat them fresh.

- I will comment on that.

If you have any four-legged creatures like deer in the area, you don't wanna try to grow pulse crops in your garden.

- Antelope and chickpeas.

Antelope and chickpeas, they've given me trouble a couple times.

- Well, antelope and lentils, they love...

I've got great pictures of birds within the lentil plots; they not only eat them, but they like to take a rest there.

Elk and chickpeas are a terrible combination for producers.

They'll walk through any other field with a straight line to the chickpea field, yeah.

- [Jack] I believe that.

I've seen that myself.

- So Kevin, I was...

I've walked around some rural villages in Morocco before and seen a bag of Montana product lentils sitting kind of on the side.

And I was walking around with a friend who's from Bullhook Bottoms .

And so how much of our chickpea or lentil is exported to other parts of the world?

- Okay.

Before the trade tariffs were put in place by India, it was closer to 90%, 85 to 90% were exported.

With the domestic markets through the use of the fractionation and the parts of the seed, that has dropped down to the 50 to 60% range exported, the rest is all consumed.

So it's about a 50/50 mix anymore.

- Okay.

Thank you.

We're gonna change tunes a little bit and we're going to turn it over to our taste panel and the various dishes that our esteemed panel, myself not included, have prepared.

So we're gonna start off with myself.

And I made a lentil elk burger soup, and they're going to have an opportunity to taste that right now.

It's pretty simple.

The hard part is getting the elk.

The easy part is making the soup.

It's a combination of lentils, any type of lentil, elk burger, a little bit of chicken broth or chicken stock, grated carrot, onion, and maybe a touch of tomato paste.

And it's actually a very, very good wintertime soup.

And I hope the panel will enjoy it.

They're gonna taste it right now.

They're at it as we speak.

None of 'em have dropped over, so I guess it's not that bad right now.

And with that, after they finish that... Oh, no, they're still eating.

It must be pretty good, huh?

So I'm getting a few nods that it's edible at least.

Okay, our next is Abi, and she made chana masala, which is actually chickpea masala.

And if you would care to explain to the audience how you did that and why it's special, that would be great.

- Yeah, I'd love to.

So chana masala, and again, it translates to chickpea and the spicy sauce, it's a chickpea curry.

And when I, growing up in Pakistan and even in Canada, it's something, it's a big staple of what I grew up eating.

My mom would make it once a month, if not once a week.

And so very, very nice staple dish.

And generally, pulses are one of the most common foods that, you know, in South Asia that we grew up eating.

But this is my favorite recipe.

It's chickpeas and it's a tomato and onion based sauce.

It's a little bit spicy.

It's served with basmati rice and naan.

And it's not as good as my mom's, I'm sure of it, but I think I did a pretty good job trying to emulate her recipe.

So it's one of my favorite dishes ever.

- Okay.

Thank you.

It looks good.

And I'm sitting here salivating, so... (panelists laughing) All right.

Tim, hotdog soup, right?

- Yep, well, so this is Frankfurter lentil soup.

My dad was an immigrant from Bavaria and came, worked for International Harvester, actually.

And so this is a staple of Frankfurt, Germany, actually; if you can look, you find it.

And so it has, it's green lentils, it has, does have Frankfurter or sausage in it.

And basically you start out, you put some soup vegetables together, some celery, some onion, some carrots, saute 'em around, tomato paste, then add a little bit of wine in there, green lentils, put the sausage in at the end, and just a little bit of vinegar that goes in at the end, with a little bit of potato in there as well.

And that was always one of my favorites as a kid.

- You know, Tim, I'm not trying to influence the panel at all, but- (laughter drowns out Jack) Should go with- (laughter drowns out Jack) - That's a wiener.

(panelists laughing) - So I'm not criticizing your creation, I'm just, you know, making a comment.

Kevin, what'd you bring us?

- So tonight I brought in a bruschetta.

It's a lentil bruschetta.

We have two different kinds of lentils.

I included both a small green as well as a red lentil.

And we just cooked those on the stove by themselves and then added them in.

It's a very colorful dish.

It goes on bread.

You can see this picture there on the screen.

It has tomatoes, basal, feta cheese, avocado, a little olive oil to help spread the flavors through the dish.

It's a very simple dish to put together.

- It looks delicious.

You know, I know that you have specialized in cooking with a lot of different pulse crops.

Because we have a coffee at the department every year; and when Kevin's lab comes, it's strictly various different kinds of chickpeas, every different preparation that you, and it's all delicious.

So my compliments to you and your wife too.

- So I thought I was gonna make...

So, like, I have international students within the project.

They always bring something traditional to their background.

But I certainly have to pass on an awful lot of congratulations and thank you to my wife for putting a lot of this together, she's...

In fact, with the lentils, she put together a lentil cookbook for a, or actually it's for my mom's boss who had some health challenges and needed to have something with pulse crops in 'em.

So they have a, a lot of value.

- [Jack] Good.

And, Mary, it's up to you.

I think what you brought was chickpea pasta.

- I brought a lentil bolognese sauce on chickpea pasta.

So I used a small brown lentil, paridna lentil, from Timeless Seeds, and that's in Chester, Montana, they're organic.

And then the chickpea pasta is produced by Banza, but the chickpeas are grown in Montana, again, in a similar area of the state.

- [Jack] And is it really good?

- [Mary] I hope so.

It's vegan, I put, except for the Parmesan cheese.

And there's lots of wine in it, so it may... - [Jack] Well, it can't be all bad.

- [Mary] Yeah.

- So, honestly, folks out there in TV land, I'm not trying to buy votes.

(panelists laughing) However, if the elk burger chickpea or lentil soup won, I do have my second favorite beer, brew here, it's called lentil beer.

It comes to us from Rebellion Brewing Company up in Regina, Saskatchewan.

A good friend of ours, Charlie Cahill, up in Scobey arranged to get this down here.

And Charlie is big in the chickpea industry.

He is one of the pioneers up in the northeast part of the state.

I say chickpea, he started with chickpeas, but he does all pulses right now, provides a lot of seed for northeast part of Montana.

I thank him for bringing down the lentil beer.

And should I happen to win, I think we could split up a few beers here this evening.

(panelists laughing) So with that, any comments?

If not, we're gonna judge this with five minutes left in the show.

Stay tuned.

They're gonna converse on which ones they like best and we'll announce the winner at that time.

And the winner gives some kind of special prize, like a trip to Honduras, I believe.

Wasn't that... (panelists laughing) I guess that's not true.

Okay, let's move on to some questions here.

Dylan, a caller, asks how to start growing water crest in his warm water slew?

Why would you wanna do that?

- I do not know how to grow water crest, yeah.

Do you know?

- I think I just buy it at the grocery store.

- I've never tried growing it personally.

- First of all, I think it's probably too cold to grow it around this part of the country even in a warm water slew.

- [Mary] Maybe he has a hot springs slew.

- Well, that's true.

We do have some hot springs here.

From Laurel.

This person has a weed growing in his potatoes last year that was a vine with a spike on it.

When it dried out, it cut him while harvesting his potatoes.

Any idea what it is, Tim?

I don't- - I think maybe puncturevine.

- [Jack] Good point.

- Also called goat's head.

If you look up puncturevine or goat's head on the internet, it's... Yeah, you see it around, you see it around in the warmer parts of the Yellowstone Valley all the way out to Sidney.

And it's common and flat, has a yellow flower.

It has a compound leaf, a pinnately compound leaf, kind of looks like a legume leaf.

And then you'll have these really, really sharp seed úheads that are... And they're called goat's heads.

And if you look at 'em, they do look like the head of a goat.

So if he wants to go out, he might find one that's still out there.

But, yeah, puncturevine.

Tractor tires, lots of equipment, they could be pretty difficult- - As I recall, that's primarily in the warmer parts of- - Yep, it's a really, it's a warm season weed down further.

Really we're kind of at the northern distribution of it.

As you go into California, as you get down into some of the other agriculture, it's really common.

- Okay.

From Scobey, and this may be Charlie calling in: "Is there any new seed treatments for pulse crops?"

- There are quite a few on the market.

Most of them will have a combination of active ingredients.

And in a cold, wet spring, you're gonna wanna use something containing metalaxyl or mefenoxam for pythium root rot.

In areas that have aphanomyces root rot.

You could use ethaboxam, but it's not, the disease is not active until the soil's warm, so it's your personal choice, but there's no consistent yield benefit of that product.

And then you wanna use something with activity against the fusariums for sure.

And those seed treatments will last, you know, three weeks after planting or so and then it's kind of up to the crop establishment.

- And you definitely should be using them.

- Absolutely.

It is not recommended to go without one, especially on chickpea.

And if you're trying to grow organically, you need to wait a while, like puncture weed makes you wait a while sometimes, till those soils are, you know, 45, 50 degrees.

- At least.

- At least.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And there's some really good data from Michael Wunsch out of Carrington about soil temperature and yield of pulse crops.

So if you look at the Carrington website, you can find that information.

- You know, that's interesting because I've always been told you plant peas as early as you can get in.

- [Mary] You do.

- But lentils and chickpeas, you need warmer soil.

- I believe lentils, too, you go as early as you can.

But chickpeas, especially if you're gonna try to grow organically, you're gonna lose 'em if the soils are too cold, especially the Kabulis.

- All right.

Got a couple questions here that have been piling up, one is from Missoula.

They see that you can purchase chickpea flour to bake with, does it bake well or does it need some gluten added to it to make breads or so forth?

- So with the chickpea flour, it can be cooked.

I think the pasta that that Mary brought in is 100% chickpea flour, so it can be used straight.

Oftentimes it is in a blend with a cereal grain to give it the proteins that are necessary for the bread making.

- Okay.

Tim, and this is an interesting question because it's one I've always been fascinated with.

We do have resistance to kochia, which is a major weed.

And this person from the Sidney area would like to know what's new in resistance to kochia here in the State of Montana.

- Yeah, so kochia is a tough weed actually to manage in pulse crops.

It's a broadly-leaf weed.

Kevin mentioned earlier, you can control grassy weeds quite well in pulse crops when you don't have resistance.

Broad-leaf weeds are harder in pulse crops.

And we have a smaller suite of herbicides that are used in pulse crops.

And then so in Northeastern Montana and parts of Montana, we have increased resistance in kochia, so the kochia was killed with a herbicide before and now it doesn't because it's evolved resistance.

And this year in Southern Alberta, Southern Saskatchewan and Western North Dakota, they documented resistance to a herbicide called Sharpen.

And Sharpen is a really important herbicide that pulse producers use before planting their pulses.

And so that's a thing to keep our eye out for in Montana.

And I'd like to hear about instances if we have it.

And I'd be happy to work with producers who, as we try to do a better job of managing that kochia.

I think as we go along, kochia is gonna get more and more difficult to manage in our pulse crops and in fallow, especially in the lower part of the state.

- How widespread is kochia resistance in Montana?

- It depends on where you are and in what system you are.

As you go down the Yellowstone Valley, you have so much glyphosate-resistant kochia because of Roundup Ready sugar beets, Roundup Ready alfalfa.

In different parts of the state, you have a lot of resistance to group two herbicides and there's increasing resistance to group four herbicides like 2,4-D, fluroxypry, things like that.

Canada did a survey just recently, and I think they showed about 45% of populations are resistant to glyphosate; and I think 10 to 15% were resistant to dicamba, the group two herbicides, and glyphosate.

And now we add Sharpen resistance on top of it.

So it's a tough situation.

- Yeah, that doesn't sound real good.

Interesting question.

Abi, this one I'll throw to you.

Sydney, Australia.

Rhubarb grower had success during a recent hot and dry summer season and wondered whether their next summer crop would be as good or whether the hot, dry previous season would cause issues in growing the next crop.

And the question is from Bozeman, a father from his Sydney-based daughter.

- Okay.

So I would say, you know, as long...

So the question was if the hot, dry season is gonna impact this year?

- This year, yeah.

- Yeah.

And, you know, if you keep up with irrigation and make sure that you have good soil, add some compost so it helps kind of the water holding capacity of this soil, it should be just fine.

I wouldn't worry too much about that.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Question from Florence.

We don't get a lot of questions from Florence.

Are pulses part of the Mediterranean diet?

- 100%, yes.

Yeah, the Mediterranean diet consumes a lot of lentils as well as some chickpeas.

Peas are not as as popular in that diet or that region, but the lentils are probably consumed daily and maybe multiple times during the day, and chickpeas very close behind.

So, yes, they are.

- You know, we're seeing more and more chickpeas in restaurants.

And pulse crops in general, you're seeing more of their use in various different dishes in a variety of restaurants, which I think is good.

It's good for the growers here in the State of Montana especially 'cause- - In school lunches, too, you see it.

- In school lunches.

I didn't know that.

And the kids are eating them?

- Oh yeah.

- Okay, I'm just checking.

- All right.

Question about exporting again.

You mentioned a large portion were exported for a long period of time and now that's dropped off.

Do you anticipate seeing the export market increase again for pulse crops?

- I guess I'm not sure how to predict that.

A lot of it depends on the trade barriers, tariffs, agreements between countries with regard to how those export markets move and shift.

And I don't know the ins and outs of that.

It would be nice if those markets did come back.

It would increase the demand for these crops in our cropping systems and certainly benefit the producers, expand the acres and benefit them in that way.

But how soon that will happen, I wouldn't wouldn't even hazard to guess.

- Okay Yeah, it's hard to predict markets, there's no doubt about it.

Comments.

And by the way, folks, we do recommend that you comment on things.

We will issue or air those comments whenever we get 'em.

But we did have a comment tonight, both from Ennis and Missoula, callers that rose to the defense of local water crest and said, "Water crest is a native Montana plant," and callers find it very tasty and recommend it.

Your job is to find out, next time you're on, more about water crest.

- Yeah, I will.

- And we'll see what we can do about answering those questions.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Okay- - So when we mean local water crest, they are referring to cardamine, the genus cardamine.

They can answer back in if they'd like to.

That's an intriguing question.

- Okay.

So we have some things to do our homework with.

- Yep.

- Okay.

Do people use as many pesticides on pulse crops?

It doesn't say where that question came from, but- - As many by what comparison?

I'm curious.

- Well, that's a good question.

Say compared to traditional wheat-barley rotation, do we use a lot of pesticides on 'em?

- There's this perception that farmers wanna use pesticides.

And I think they use as little as possible because they don't wanna drive across the field and spend the diesel and pay for the pesticide, so they're going over as little as possible probably pre-plant and conventional systems to control the weeds.

I don't know if there are any in-crop herbicides.

- Yeah, people use the... Maybe not like wheat and barley.

We use in-crop herbicide in wheat and barley.

Usually as the pulse crop is growing in the field, there is less in-crop weed control with maybe a pre-harvest weed control somewhere at a later point.

- And, like, chickpeas might use a fungicide for ascochyta in wet year; but lentils and peas, very, very rarely.

- I was gonna comment on that as well, that the fungicides for disease control would say that it's less on the pulse crops than in many of the other crops that are out there.

Primarily it's gonna be the herbicides that we've just discussed.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Mary from Lewistown.

This us good question.

This is a year that we might consider.

Are we gonna have an issue with snow mold?

- [Mary] Oh yeah.

- [Jack] Oh yeah.

A lot of different places.

- On winter wheat, for sure.

And then so anywhere where you get snow sitting on a grass over three months, you're gonna get snow mold.

So all the lawns this spring, you're gonna have dead patches.

Just rake out the dead bits and let it grow back.

And then winter wheat, there's gonna be some loss, for sure.

- [Jack] Lawns too.

- Yes.

- Absolutely.

Kevin, this is an interesting question I've never thought about.

Are most post crop lines developed by university researchers or are there also industry people that are developing peas, chickpeas, and lentils?

- Okay, sure.

Good question.

It is different depending on the crop.

With peas, there's a very active group of private companies, both domestically here in the US as well as internationally, that are breeding peas for production in Montana and the US production areas.

Lentils, for the greatest majority, it is public institutions, universities that are developing those.

Chickpeas kind of follow the same path as the lentil.

But there are a few companies I've heard that are beginning to think about breeding for chickpeas.

- Is the chickpea acres increasing in the Pacific Northwest, specifically Montana?

- I don't believe that they're necessarily increasing, but they're certainly very stable.

The Pacific Northwest, if we looked to the western side on the continental divide, the Montana, or, sorry, the Idaho, Washington area, the area there, the chickpeas are part of the legume rotation, but the primary crop is the cereal grain, the wheats that they can really produce very well there.

So I think that the area there is very stable.

There is room within Montana, the continental area, the continental climates that we have here as well as in North Dakota.

If we can get a handle on ascochyta for disease resistance, there's quite a large area potential for increase there.

- And then South Dakota and Nebraska and Kansas, right?

- They produce some in those three states as well.

They don't produce as much as the potential may be there, but they are working with it and trying to establish a good production system for those, yeah.

- And I kind of wanna revisit the pesticide question and just say that pulses are very sensitive to pesticide residual in export markets; especially the European market and glyphosate residual, they'll get it rejected for herbicide residual.

So they watch labels very, very closely.

- Okay, thank you.

From Bozeman.

This person has a lot of dieback on their ash tree.

When is a good time to prune that out, Abi?

- With dieback, you wanna prune that out now.

Now is the really good time for pruning in general.

And you wanna cut back to the live wood.

And so, yeah, I would start pruning back your dead parts of your trees now - [Mary] Do you wanna explain why we prune while things are dormant?

- Yeah, that's a good point, Mary.

So, yeah, we wanna prune when things are dormant because it reduces the likelihood of disease issues and it also helps kind of increase that vigorous growth when the spring gets here and yeah... - You need to see everything better.

- Yeah, exactly.

You can see the structure of your tree and you can, and, you know, visualize what you want it to look like better too.

- It gives us such a feeling of accomplishment actually to have pruned a tree.

- I love pruning.

It's my favorite.

Definitely.

- Okay, I have a question here, and then we're going to go to our taste panel for the judges.

And remember, folks, I do you have... You know?

Okay.

No influence there, but... Kevin, what is the protein content, compared to wheat, of most of the pulse crops?

- So protein content in all three, the pea, lentil, and chickpea, hover in that 20 to 25% range, so it's often roughly twice what you would see in a cereal grain.

And it really depends on the production region, how well the crop grows, drought conditions.

The drought conditions or the amount of moisture really impacts how much protein is there.

Lower moisture tends to give a higher protein content and vice versa with that.

- All right.

We do have a comment here, and I'm not sure... We'll try to do this.

A person from Helena asked if we will show the recipes that we are utilizing this evening with the viewing audience.

And we'll try to do that.

We'll see if we can't work that out.

But meanwhile, here we go.

Here we go.

Who is the winner?

- Well, first of all, I have to say that all of these dishes were amazing.

We were all, I think, really surprised and impressed.

- Very good.

- And I would like the recipes as well for all of them.

But the winner was unanimously decided upon.

- Yes.

- And it was Abi's dish.

- [Abi] Oh, yay.

(group laughing) - So, Abi.

- Really nice spice level.

- Ooh, very cool.

- [Jack] And that is kind of nice.

- Yeah, that's really awesome.

My mom's gonna be proud of me, so I'm excited.

- I saw them all carrying on eating it repeatedly, so yeah.

- Now, I hope you guys haven't eaten it all because the rest of us would like to sample some of this as- - Oh, yeah.

- We made a pretty good dent in it.

- We did make a good dent.

- So we have a couple other questions.

We got just a few moments left here.

- Oh, thank you.

- Tim, this person wants to know how to get rid of weeds in asparagus.

- Ooh, weeds in asparagus.

I would either cut 'em all out with like a stirrup hoe or something really early in the... Do it as soon as the weeds start to grow and before the asparagus starts to germinate or starts to grow for the year.

And I'd say go over the top.

You can also do it with glyphosate.

You can do it with a light bit of harrowing.

If you do it with the harrow, you're probably gonna have to come back multiple times and do it.

It'll be the chickweeds, it'll be some cheatgrass, it'll be those early-season weeds.

- Okay.

- Do it soon.

- Well, you gotta let snow disappear.

- I know I'm too jumping too but I'll wait for the snow to melt first.

- Yeah, we're all itching to get... Yeah.

- Well, before the program, and this is a question we were discussing.

Normally by this time of year, Mary, we're planting barley in the Park City area, Joliet, Fromberg area.

Is that gonna affect the yield by having a late spring and planting probably a month later than normal?

- I believe it will affect yields, but hopefully we get some good moisture.

We'll have good soil moisture for sure, so we'll be mining that until the tap turns off and... - Okay.

Question for Abi from Bozeman.

When is a good time to start your tomato seedlings or sets?

- Yeah, so if you're growing them in a greenhouse, you can...

I'd probably start them in a couple of weeks and aim for that, you know, late May kind of planting in Bozeman.

But you can start...

I would probably start them by the end of this month.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Mary, this person from Bozeman saw an article about wheat disease in a local newspaper.

You wanna comment on what that contained?

- Yeah.

So Uta McKelvy, who's an Extension plant pathologist, has been working on spore trapping in wheat so we can predict disease and use less pesticides.

So that'll be entered into a national model to help wheat growers all across the US predict leaf diseases, rusts, and other things.

- I mean, I've been away from it for a number of years.

Stripe rust.

Do you predict some stripe rust this year, because we've had some snow cover, that may have survived?

- The prediction came out from Washington State last week, and it's a moderate year, but it hasn't been found much in Eastern Washington.

And usually for us, it has to either be established in the fall or hop the mountains early, so probably low for us.

Plus we've got pretty good resistant varieties now.

- Okay.

A quick question for Kevin.

And he says, "You talked about animal problems with growing the pulse crops.

Any suggestions on how to avoid that?"

Legally.

(laughs) - It really, it depends on your field and where you're at.

The best way is just to fence them out, that's the only reasonable option.

And I don't know how reasonable that is with the expense of building a fence around a property to keep them out.

But it's a difficult challenge, it's a hard one to deal with.

- I've seen the fences you've build at the pulse farm.

I can't see many producers building fences quite like that.

- No, that's true.

- Although I will say Perry Miller has had some problems with deer and elk in his garden, and he puts a live wire, a hot wire around it and puts a little peanut butter on it but doesn't charge us.

So the deer come for two or three days, four days, lick the peanut butter off.

And then about the fifth or sixth day, he puts the juice to it.

And they don't come back after that.

They're trainable.

- I've not seen that, but I have certainly heard the stories of the outcomes.

They're humorous.

- Well, first of all, let me thank the taste panel, even though I did not win.

(panelists laugh) Other than that, we appreciate your time.

We had a good time tonight.

And we will try to get those recipes out to you.

Next week we'll have Paddy Fleming with the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center.

It'll be great to have him here.

He talks about how small industries are developing here in the state, especially in agriculture.

Stay safe this week.

Hope to see you next week.

Good night.

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