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

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

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of Plant Pathology, happy to be your host this evening.

It's gonna be a real interesting program because we're gonna talk about one of the most successful kids programs that this state has ever seen.

And you're gonna enjoy this evening because you're gonna laugh a little bit, you're gonna learn a lot about what kids like and what they don't like.

So, we'll get into that as we move along.

Before we do that, I have to do something else.

In the immortal words of Dr.

Hayden Ferguson, who sat in this chair for many years when we first started this program, Happy Mother's Day to all of you who qualify.

And those of you who don't will have a nice day anyway.

I'll never forget when Hayden opened the program with that one night.

Let me introduce tonight's panel.

Uta McKelvy, plant pathologist, extension plant pathologist.

She's got some funny looking creatures there that we'll get to later on.

Our special guest, I'm really happy to have her here, Patti Soares.

Patti is a volunteer for the Gallatin Farm Fair.

It's just, they take a bunch of fourth graders, to a tune of about 1200, and immerse 'em in agriculture in one day.

And the results are pretty amazing.

The kids love it.

We'll get into that and find out more how that program works.

Tim Seipel.

Tim's here way too often, (Tim laughs) but we appreciate him being here.

Tim's our weed scientist.

Any weed questions, and you know in this state we do have an occasional weed, and if you wanna control it Tim's the answer right here.

And of course, Abi Saeed.

Abi is our horticulturalist.

I let her off last week, but she's back to answer questions this week.

And answering the phone this evening is Nancy Blake.

Nancy, thanks for coming in, And Cassie Linderbud.

So Cassie, good to have you back here again.

I'm gonna open this and let Patti tell us a little bit about Gallatin Valley Farm Fair.

- Okay.

- Have at it.

- Well, thank you for having us.

The Gallatin Valley Farm Fair started in 2004.

There was two gentlemen, Ed Brainerd and Duane Burkenpas, that decided that kids needed to learn more about where their food come from.

And so they wanted a hands-on field trip for fourth graders.

And so they started this program.

I think I heard the first year there was like 150 kids.

Now, we're up to 1254 were registered this year.

We just had it last week.

So over 400 kids a day came out to the ranch for the entire day.

We put 'em through 16 different stations.

We have all the livestock.

We have beef and dairy, pigs, sheep, goats, bees and pollination, weeds, forestry.

We have crops, water cycle.

They make tin can ice cream.

We just run 'em through 16 different stations, and so they learn all about agriculture, where their food comes from.

It takes a lot of volunteers.

(Jack chuckles) We feed everybody lunch.

We have eight teams of horses.

They get to go on a wagon ride out into a field and learn about irrigation.

And so it's a great program.

- It sounds great.

Do the kids go home knowing that chocolate milk doesn't come from brown cows?

- We sure hope so.

(panel laughs) - Okay, sounds good.

You know, what do the teachers do to prepare these students, these fourth graders to show up?

- What we do ahead of Farm Fair, usually in March we provide the schools with educational materials.

And so we get seeds from the Montana Seed Growers Association and we get the planter trays, the 72 plug planter trays.

They have seed facts.

And so they do experiments with those.

We did Farming in a Glove this year with five different types of corn seeds.

We got that from the Agriculture in the Schools program.

We did a branding activity.

We get Ag Mags, which are targeted toward that age group, from the American Farm Bureau.

And so we did beef, we did wheat.

We've done bees and pollination.

They have all different types of ones.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So we give those to the teachers ahead of time.

And then if they incorporate that into their lesson plans, they can enter into a drawing for a pizza party for the classroom.

(Jack laughs) - [Jack] Bribery.

- It is bribery, but it works.

- [Tim] I will say, - But it works.

- we had a Desi chickpea and an Austrian winter pea come home with Miriam and it was...yep.

We did advanced plant physiology with those, too.

- [Jack] Okay, great.

- And I will say, having worked at the crop station this year, the kids were super prepared.

Like, we asked them, "Do you know what plant this is," and they knew their crops.

- [Patti] Great.

- Yeah, it was really amazing, yeah, - [Patti] That's good to hear.

- Actually, so a friend lives up on the Tree Streets here in Bozeman on the top of the hill, and MSU has its foundation fields around And actually, the one kid, he knew and his dad didn't know.

His dad was like, "What's that in the field?"

And the kid said, "Oh, that's a chickpea."

So he actually recognized there was a chickpea.

So you guys have great impact out there.

- [Patti] Great!

That's awesome.

- Yep.

- Originally it was to make kids more aware of where their food comes from.

- [Patti] Yes.

- And I tell you what, from what I've seen, and I haven't been out there, I've retired about the time you guys started.

I'm gonna make a point of going next year.

I definitely, I wanna see it, I've heard so much about it.

And to me, an exciting way of getting kids immersed in agriculture, right?

- [Abi] Yeah, yeah.

- Are you going next year?

- I will.

- Okay.

- I will be there.

Great.

- So, to change the tune just a little bit, this came in last week and I've got Tim here from Great Falls.

They wanna control white top in a garden and also in a field.

How would they go about doing that?

- Whew, okay, let's start with the field first.

If it's a hay field, I would probably apply a herbicide to it, which mesosulfuron, rimsulfuron, these SUs- - How about some common names?

- So, that's a good question.

Rimsulfuron is Outrider, Rimfire.

Those sorts of things work in pastures.

When you come into your garden maybe you don't wanna, I wouldn't put those herbicides in my garden 'cause they'll have really long carryover.

And so, probably what I would do in my garden is, and actually I was doing this with quackgrass the last couple days, is stick a big fork in there.

I actually use a pitch fork, loosen it up, dig those rhizomes out and pull 'em out as whole as you can get them out of there.

- It sounds like a lot of work to me.

- It does.

But if you chop it up with the rototiller, all those little chunks are just gonna resprout.

So if you're gonna do it in a organic way and you're gonna dig, I would use a pitchfork and take out the biggest chunks of rhizome that you can.

You could apply glyphosate in the garden too.

This time of year, I was looking at some the other day, it's getting too late.

It's starting to flower.

So, I would dig it up and then live to fight another day.

- Sounds good.

(Abi chuckles) Question from Billings.

"Why do you choose fourth graders?"

That's an interesting question.

- Well, when they started the program, Duane Burkenpas had read a study that somehow fourth graders are at that age where they're open.

They're better listeners.

They're open more to learning, they're more excited about learning.

And so that's kind of what we've gone with and it has worked well.

They do seem to, there's a picture right there, they do seem to enjoy learning about the crops and they love the animals.

- Oh, I have a comment here.

This woman says, "My daughter came home and told me after Farm Fair that she wanted to raise goats the rest of her life."

(panel laughs) Probably have a negative influence to a certain degree, but that's interesting.

You do reach kids at that age there.

There's no doubt about it.

- That wasn't a comment, from my daughter came home and said that she wanted to have, she wanted to be a goat herder too.

Interesting, they're doing a good job in that goat tent.

- But it did have baby goats, - Yes.

- and they're so cute.

- They are kinda cute probably, yeah.

I won't say they eat well at that stage.

They don't have veal goats, do they?

- I don't know.

- Not heard about that.

- I shouldn't go there.

- Yeah, don't.

(Tim chuckles) - All right, Abi- - [Uta] Keep it cute.

- Question that came in last week.

Now that's last week, this week now, is it too early to plant tomatoes in the garden?

- Yes, I get this question every other day.

Like, "Is it time yet?

Can we plant them yet?"

And the answer right now is still no in most places around the state.

So for example, in the Gallatin Valley, next week we're gonna have temperatures in the high 20s, low 30s.

And with those warm season veggies, they can't even handle below 40 degrees.

So I would say, wait a little bit.

My usual marker is waiting end of May, early June and looking at the forecast.

- Okay.

I usually will go for June 1st.

Even if you plan 'em earlier, you really don't get much time.

- No.

- Yeah, I feel like they sit there shivering, cold shock, and they don't actually grow.

- Yeah.

Yeah, they need- - If you have to do it and you got, you know?

- Yeah.

- But yeah, it's... - They like those soil temperatures in the 80 degree.

That's their... - But peas are okay now, right?

We can plant some peas?

- Uta, tell us about the peas.

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, you gotta start somewhere, right?

- Yeah.

- So peas and then, I mean, probably your radishes, right?

- [Abi] Yeah, radishes, carrots, greens.

- Okay, question from Hamilton.

This person says, "We've had a farm fair in our valley county for years.

Is it different than the one here in Bozeman?"

I don't know.

Are you familiar with the one in Ravalli County?

- I am not familiar with the one in Ravalli County, but I do know that when Ed and Duane were talking about starting Farm Fair, they did go to Ravalli County and find out what they were doing and learned from them.

So, (clears throat) I've never been to it so I'm not familiar if it's the same type of thing.

- Okay, I'm curious now.

You know, it's been extremely successful here in Bozeman.

Ravalli County, the caller says it's been over 30 years; 33 to be exact.

Are other communities like Billings, Helena, larger communities starting farm fairs for their kids?

- Some are.

We've had Park County come over and learn to see what we're doing.

We had a gal from Yellowstone County come this year.

And in the past we've had someone from East Helena come.

And so we are open to having anyone come see what we do.

If they're interested in starting a farm fair in their community, we'd love to show 'em what we do and share anything that we have with them.

- [Abi] It sounds like we have to do a circuit of farm fair, yeah?

(panel laughs) - Yes.

- Patti, you had the director of the Department of Ag come too and visit.

Jillian Striedl, right?

- We did, yeah.

- She was there too.

- Jillian came and she brought her communications director and her deputy director.

So that was great.

- You know, when we decided it was time to have Gallatin Farm Fair on the program and talk about this, I got a hold of some of the thank you pictures that the kids sent.

And actually, I thieve them out at the grocery store in Belgrade.

And I took some pictures, which I forgot to bring in, but the kids love that field trip.

Many of 'em say it's the best day of their entire school year.

And that speaks highly of what you guys do out there.

It really, definitely.

- Yeah, we get great thank you notes.

And the great thing about it too is not only are we reaching the kids and teaching them, but then they go home and they tell their parents what they learned.

And so, it's a great program.

- [Jack] It's a win-win.

- It is.

- You know, you brought a ton of garbage in.

(panel laughs) Let's start with the one way- - The furthest away?

Yeah?

- [Jack] Yeah, the cedar.

- What do you mean garbage?

These are all precious, beautiful examples of plant diseases.

(Jack laughs) And they're timely too.

Yeah, so this one here is (clears throat) an example of probably my favorite disease in the springtime.

This is cedar-apple rust.

And so it's a rust disease, a fungal disease.

It affects cedars and junipers, trees like that.

And so this is what it looks like on those trees.

So the fungus infects the branches and then forms a gall.

And then when we have in the spring this cool, wet weather, it will grow these like orange, gelatinous tendrils that just come out of this gall.

And so the spikes here are just kind of dried up remnants of these gelatinous tendrils.

And so in those spikes are spores that are released.

And so then the pathogen moves on to its alternate host, which are apples, crabapples, sometimes even hawthorn.

There are different kinds of this type of rust, and will form kind of like these orange red spots on the leaves of those hosts.

And also under favorable conditions in the summer, produce against spores that then go back to the cedars or junipers.

And so that's how that disease cycle goes.

So, maybe in a few weeks when we're still on, I might bring in a sample of what the symptoms look like on our apple plants.

And so this is a really common disease that we see.

You know, it might girdle on the cedars like twigs.

And so, in terms of management, you know, pruning out the branches or twigs that have these galls is a good idea.

You wanna make sure to disinfect your tools so that you don't kind of spread the spores around.

And then if you're really, you know, really protective of your apples, your ornamental plants, you could consider applying a protectant fungicide.

You'll basically have to look for when these galls are forming their tendrils, which is already passed in this case.

And then you could apply a fungicide to and protect them this way.

You may have to do it several times.

I don't know if it's worth the effort.

I think it's not like the ugliest disease as you will come to see later in this show.

So, maybe just roll with it.

One thing is to, you know, if you have control over it, try to physically separate these two alternate hosts.

But in a town like Bozeman, that's kind of hard to do.

They're just everywhere, right?

- What I used to do when I was still in Lincoln, we had a bunch of 'em, I just pick 'em off by hand.

- Right.

- Early, now say in April, before they turned gelatinous.

- Make a bouquet and give it to your favorite plant pathologist.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, why not?

- Yeah, yeah.

- And maybe a weed scientist would learn something about plant pathology.

(panel laughing) Okay, from Helena, "How do you get rid of bindweed in a flower garden?"

Aha, gotcha.

- Ooh, okay.

Well, how to get rid of bindweed in a flower garden, well, this is a tough task.

(Jack laughs) Well, (Jack and Abi chuckles) - By tomorrow.

(Tim laughs) - I'm looking forward to the answer to this.

- I would get my trusty pitchfork out again and I would take out every single one of those big chunks of rhizome that I could and not let it break apart, and take out the biggest pieces.

Then, I would wait, - And do it again.

- and then everything would grow back.

And then I would probably spray something like glyphosate on it in a spot spraying thing.

Really just like, if you have a little backpack, take the nut, spray individual leaves.

I think I called that poor man's precision last week on the show.

And you know, that's what I practice sometimes is I, you know, I will literally go around spot spray, few drops here and there on those leaves as they're exposed.

- [Abi] If you use like a- - [Jack] And you gotta- Go ahead, Abi.

- I was gonna say, if you use a thick layer of mulch, will that do anything?

- Oh man!

Oh, I've seen people- - It makes them happy.

- I've seen people lay out hay tarps, you know?

Like six-eighth millimeter hay tarps, and all that bindweed does is just go to the outside.

And then it grows, and then you take off the hay tarp, and then all those bindweed plants underneath the hay tarp just start to grow after that.

I've never had any luck with mulching or hay tarping on taming bindwood.

- But Tim, this sounds like such a familiar conversation.

Didn't we talk about that last Monday?

Wasn't there somebody saying they purchased like tin cans over the bindweed, - Oh yeah!

- and after several years... - So we heard last week from someone that when they got, it doesn't quite make sense.

So they lived in Eastern Montana and a long time ago, I think this was their mother-in-law.

She would put tin cans on the top of the field bindweed plants and claim that she got rid of her field bindweed after that.

- Huh, after a few years.

- I'm skeptical.

We're gonna have to do a research project.

- [Jack] I wanna see you write the grant for that one.

(Abi and Tim laughing) - A good use of old tin cans.

(Abi and Tim laughing) - Yeah, no, it's tough.

- Okay, onto the next topic.

- It's tough.

- It is tough.

- Yep.

- Interesting question for Patti, and this is kind of funny.

From Sydney, they wanna know what the favorite activity of the kids at the farm fair is other than lunch?

(Tim and Jack chuckles) - Ice cream.

They get to make tin can ice cream and they get to eat it.

And that's the loudest station because they're rolling the cans across the flatbed.

(Abi laughs) - Another use for tin cans.

- Yes.

- [Abi] Yeah, you can take the recycled tin cans for your research.

- And it's hard to find metal coffee cans anymore.

- I agree.

- So save 'em and give them to us, please, if you have any.

- Good idea.

- Yohan- - We always get the kids, so they come out of the ice cream stand, and then they come into the weeds booth where we talk about plants and weeds.

It gives them a little extra sugar (panel laughs) to be excited about learning about weed science.

- Yes.

- You know, interesting, what do you do for lunch for four or five, 600 kids?

- Oh, we actually serve lunch in waves.

We have four waves of lunch that we alternate with the wagon rides.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And so, we have a group of guys that barbecue hamburgers.

And they're Montana beef and we use buns made from Montana wheat.

And we have milk for 'em.

And then also just carrots and oranges and pretzels and cookies.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- And so- - I know I'm coming now.

- Yeah.

- It's really good.

- It is a very good lunch.

- I got the comment when my fourth grader came home, that was the best cheeseburger that she's ever had.

- We hear that a lot.

- [Uta] Also taste that better in fresh air.

- I know.

- We hear that a lot from the kids, and, you know, it just so much better than going down to the local drive-thru.

- I believe that.

- Yep.

- Well, I'm curious, having never been out there, you get that many kids.

You need a lot of people to herd 'em around.

Kinda like herding cats, probably.

How many people; adults, supervisors, do you require to handle an operation like this?

- We have probably about 180 volunteers a day.

- [Jack] Wow.

- But what herds, (chuckles) we have group leaders that, when we have 400 kids, we have 16 different stations that we rotate 'em through every 15 minutes.

And to lead those 16 groups of students, we have the FFA students.

So Belgrade and Three Forks FFA students come out and they lead our kids around, and they're assigned to that group all day long.

And I tell you what, the FFA students are so impressive this year.

They were great.

They kept track of the kids.

They kept them on task.

They count them, make sure they don't leave anybody behind in lunch, and when they get there, they count 'em.

Before they get back on the bus they count 'em so nobody's left behind.

I mean, they're a great group of kids.

I have a real, really impressed with this FFA chapters.

- So, I'll ask you this.

Can anybody in Gallant Valley volunteer to help with Farm Fair?

- Yes, we love volunteers.

(laughs) - So how would they contact you to become a volunteer?

- Okay, well we just had Farm Fair last year, I mean, last week.

And the next one will be, again, the first part of May.

But we have a website that you can go to.

It's GV, for Gallatin Valley, - [Jack] Yeah.

- Farmfair.org.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And there's a lot of information on there.

There's a lot of pictures on there.

We have some videos that we did during the COVID years.

We did some videos of different things.

UTA helped with that.

One of the crop ones.

- Yeah, that's my first.

- Yeah.

And so there's information on there so you can volunteer for Farm Fair, although that's closed right now.

- Okay.

I'm continuing on this 'cause I wanna learn a little bit more about it.

A lot of people from the university involved with these stations?

Or is it agricultural people in the valley?

Who?

- Both.

- [Jack] Both.

- We are very fortunate because MSU is right here and they do so much for Farm Fair; the crop station, the weeds station, the potato station.

It just amazes me.

They plant potatoes in time so they bring all these plants out there and so they teach the kids about the potato plant, but then they also get to dig for potatoes.

- [Jack] Kids like that.

- They love that.

And then they're carrying around potatoes all day long and they're kinda not very nice by the time they get back on the bus.

(panel laughing) So yeah, we're very fortunate with that.

We also have a lot of local farmers and ranchers that help.

- Okay, sounds great.

I love the program.

- I did receive a comment just a little while ago from our awesome Extension agent in Hill County who's watching tonight, Colleen.

She said she's participated in the Ravalli County Farm Fair.

She said it's pretty similar to the Bozeman Farm Fair.

- Oh good.

- Or to the Gallatin Valley Farm Fair.

So they have some kind of similar things going there.

Thanks for watching, Colleen.

- Yeah, great.

- [Patti] Good.

- Move over to Abi, this question came in via email and I'm sure a lot of people are interested in this.

"With the cold temperatures that hit flowering fruit trees here in Bozeman the last couple of weeks, will they have plums and/or apples?"

- That's a tough one.

It depends on what stage the flower was at when those cold temperatures hit.

So there is a way that you can check to see if the buds will have viable fruit afterwards.

And I'll talk about that in just a second, but it's hard to say.

And some plants are more hardy.

So for plums, for example, if they were in full bloom and temperatures were below the 30 degree mark, chances are there was probably significant damage and you may not have plums this year.

But for some of the apples, they could be a little hardier.

If you are in a sheltered area, like a microclimate that protected from the wind, even a few degrees here and there can be helpful.

And what you can do is if you take your flowers that have been damaged, if you take like 10 from various sections of the tree and you cut into them.

If the base of the flower looks brown or dead, that means it's not gonna turn into a fruit.

But if it's green and healthy, it could still turn into a fruit.

So I would recommend you can investigate a little bit, give it time.

The good news is this isn't gonna hurt the health of most of our established trees and shrubs.

It's not gonna impact their overall health.

It just our fruit production in our home gardens could take a hit.

- I had a lot, I had apple tree and it's a big year for the apple tree, and it had tons of flower buds on it.

And maybe I got some thinning out of done for me that actually might be helpful - [Abi] Yeah!

- rather than me doing some self thinning.

But I did notice when I pulled some flowers apart that there were, like some of the pistols in the inside of the flowers were pretty brown.

So I was thinking that those probably are not gonna make it.

- Okay, back to some more of that garbage that Uta had.

(panel laughs) - Yay.

(laughs) - The crown gall, and this one fascinates me because I have a Lombardy Poplar in my front yard, and I probably have, at minimum, 30 or 40 of those popping out of the turf.

Tell us a little bit about it, and I know there's not much you can do about it, but.

- Right, yeah, so this sample came to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab this last week and I thought I'd just bring it in 'cause it's such a picture perfect sample.

I'm sure many people are observing these crown galls in their lawn right now.

So as this sample really shows you is you can see where the grass, where the turf is, right?

And you can see kind of this callous tissue popping out.

And then if I hold it straight, you can also see where the crown gall is emerging from.

This here is the root of a, probably a poplar or aspen tree or something like that.

And so, crown gall is really like, you can think of it as like a tumor that's growing.

And so what causes this is a bacterium called Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

It basically occurs everywhere in the soil.

And so what happens is we might injure plant tissue, in this case the root, for example, from mowing the lawn.

Like when the roots are kind of poking out, you mow it, you clip it, now you have a wound where this bacterium can go in and it basically causes the plant cells to divide and grow in an uncontrolled way, much like a cancer essentially.

- [Jack] Right.

- And so this will keeps growing until, you know, it's very noticeable for you.

This could also happen on stems, trunks, et cetera.

This is not just something that occurs on roots, but I think injury to aspen poplar roots is very common when we're mowing the lawn.

So that's where we see it a lot.

And so unfortunately in terms of management, there's nothing that you can do to cure it.

I mean, these people manage to somehow cut the part out, but also there's probably still stuff left in the soil.

So I feel like root pruning is kind of a excessive activity.

I don't know how effective that is.

Something that you could do to prevent infection is if you start seeing like roots kind of rising to your turf surface, so to speak, like in the danger zone where they could be injured by mowing and other activities, try to slowly but surely add layers of soil or compost on top to cover them up just to prevent that they are being injured when you mow them and that could be a way of preventing it from spreading.

And then once again, disinfect your tools, especially if you pruned out stuff.

I don't know how feasible it is to wipe down your mower blades after every mowing, but I also don't know how much you care about your aspens.

- The only thing I'll say about it, it makes for a really rough lawnmower ride across.

- Yeah.

- And if you injure them enough, they will come loose, but there's gonna be another one come shortly thereafter.

- Yeah.

Hey folks, we're not getting a ton of questions now.

I know it's a beautiful evening out there.

I've had some email questions.

Hey, if you want questions answered tonight, here's an excellent opportunity to get on the phone and call 'em in.

Meanwhile, Tim, this person wants to know if glyphosate is sold as Roundup anymore?

- Well, quick answer is no.

So if you go into the hardware store and you look at the row of glyphosate or the row of Roundup products with the trade name Roundup, it used to contain the active ingredient glyphosate in it, which many people have used.

I'm sure we're all familiar with the cancer claims, the television commercials, the lawsuits, all that goes on with it.

And basically what happened was Bayer Crop Science took glyphosate out of the Roundup trademark name.

So now you go to the hardware store and it says Roundup for lawns.

Normally you wouldn't wanna spray Roundup on your lawn, right?

But it's only as broadleaf herbicides in it now.

- [Jack] Yep.

- If you say Roundup Extended Control, that's what happened to this lilac here.

So my neighbor went to the store one day and bought Roundup off the shelf and came home and sprayed it kind of on our fence line on some bare rocks that he keeps.

And he thought, "It's just glyphosate, it's Roundup."

Well, they don't have glyphosate in it and it wouldn't have affected the plant.

This had a bare ground herbicide in it that was probably a mass appear, which is in the Extended Control.

And my roots went under into his rocks.

The roots then took up the herbicide and this is about a 10-foot-tall top of a lilac.

And last year it was injured, and this year you can see it's trying to grow back.

And this is a really common thing that you see when things get herbicide injury and they're still alive, especially to And it grows back what we call the witch broom.

So, I was looking at it today, my lilacs.

Some of the flowers got frozen and they're not looking so good.

So I'm thinking about doing some pruning now.

And I was looking at this branch thinking, "Huh, okay, do I take the whole thing out?

Is it gonna be ugly when it grows back?"

What should I do, Abi?

- Yeah, so Tim, I was gonna chat with you about that a little bit.

So one of the things I wanted to ask about is, it can take years for the damage of these bare ground herbicides to show up, isn't that correct?

- They'll show up quick, but the damage may continue to occur for years.

- Yeah, 'cause as even as root systems grow into the affected area, - Yep.

- and they're persistent.

How persistent could they be?

- There's a few of these herbicides that we're talking two to three years and they'll still be in the soil and they may come back and damage the plant a little bit.

I was trying to decide how much, obviously this is not very attractive looking for a lilac shrub, but I guess I'm probably gonna trim everything back low and hope, not the whole hedge, I'll take out, some of them are injured, some of 'em are not.

And take out some of the big chunks and hope I don't get injury again this year, but I was kind of looking, going, "Huh, is that more cupping?

Is that more injury that's coming this year?"

- So if you've applied a bare ground herbicide, is there any amendment you can add to tie up the active ingredient maybe?

- That's pretty tricky.

So, the most common herbicide injury we see in the Schutter Diagnostic Lab is probably from compost being contaminated with a herbicide called Milestone, often used in hay pastures and things like that.

It sticks around for years.

And then people put compost into their gardens, and then all of a sudden their gardens look really bad.

With those, you can do things like cultivation, lots of watering, good microbial biomass to break it down.

Maybe put some biochar in there, get your organic matter up, and that will help break down the herbicide more quickly.

When you have roots going under a gravel driveway or things like that, it can be pretty difficult.

You might think, "Okay, maybe I can trench and sever the roots so that the roots aren't connected anymore."

But I don't know.

That's pretty tough.

It might be worth trying, but might cause more stress to the plant than it's worth.

- I know ISA or the International Society recommends trenching sometimes, but they recommend putting like plastic barrier to prevent continued movement of that active ingredient in towards the healthy root system.

But in terms of like how effective that will be and how much impact has had, it's hard.

So- - [Jack] You know, - Yeah?

- [Jack] what you do is you read the label - Yes.

- and you avoid that kind of stuff.

- Yeah, you read the label very carefully.

What's the carpenter's thing?

Measure twice, cut once?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

- All right, we have a question from Helena, and this person wants to know, "Is there a cost to the fourth grade students to attend the Farm Fair?"

- No, there isn't.

We do this, it's all volunteers that work Farm Fair and we do not charge the schools or kids anything.

The only cost to 'em is the transportation out to the ranch.

- Who pays for all the burgers?

That's a lot of burgers.

(panel laughs) - We have some, well, we apply for grants.

We have a lot of great sponsorships and donors that support the program.

- Okay, do you have an address for donations?

Where should they go if somebody felt they really wanted to support this Farm Fair financially?

- Oh yeah, we do.

- The website?

- Yeah, it'd be on the website.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

We'd love to have some support.

That's great.

- A follow up question.

This person says, "You have 16 sites.

Who selects what those 15, 20 minute sessions are?"

How do you determine, this person would like to know, what the kids should really learn?

- [Patti] The topics?

- Yeah, the topics.

- Yeah, you know, we have pretty much stayed with the same stations as far as I've been involved.

I guess I've been involved, I've been out there all three days for probably the last 12 years.

I've been in charge of it the last nine years and we've pretty much been stable on the stations that we do.

They seem to work really well.

We've switched out a couple times different ones, but we've gone back to the basics.

You know, it's just kind of the basic agricultural stations where they learn about their food and how it's grown.

- Yeah, I love that concept.

But I am curious, I'd like to go back to these kids four or five grades later when they're in sixth grade, seventh grade, and find out what they really retain.

I think they'd be interesting in doing a study.

Now that's not any of us that wanna do that, but an educational study, follow it up.

I think it'd be great.

Another question then I'll get to one here for buttercups, but before that, this person would like to know, is this Farm Fair phenomena just a Montana operation or is there national operations that are similar?

Do you have any clue on that?

- I do not.

I do not know.

You know, we've kind of done our own thing.

We've not followed any, - [Jack] National organization?

- national footprint or anything.

We do access American Farm Bureau information and the Agricultural in the Schools.

We use a lot of information from them, especially in the educational materials that we provide to the schools ahead of time.

- Great, I love it.

Foresight, Tim, how do you get rid of buttercups in your lawn?

Caller has tried multiple things and nothing has worked very well.

- Buttercups in the lawn, that's an interesting one.

A non-native buttercup has a- - [Abi] Creeping buttercup, I believe.

- Oh, creeping buttercup, yeah.

Do you know, AbI?

I have not dealt with buttercups that much in the lawn.

- So if it is creeping buttercup, one of the issues with that plant is that it likes high moisture, heavy clay soils and where your lawn wouldn't thrive.

So it's gonna take over in those areas if your lawn is thinning out.

In terms of these lawn weeds that are persistent, especially for perennial lawn weeds, I always like to recommend healthy competitive turf grass.

So if there is an issue in your turf that's causing it to thin out leaving bare patches, you're going to have more issues.

So even if we came up with chemical control methods that would work, that would be a temporary solution.

And so you'd wanna make sure that you still had turf that would take over those bare patches if you did get rid of it.

So I would do a combination of maybe using some sort of an appropriately labeled herbicide, reach out to your county extension agent for recommendations, and then also maybe overseeding with a turf variety that's gonna do well in that landscape.

- So is there anything you can do?

So, well, we're gonna go back to my pitchfork work 'cause I do a lot with it.

(panel laughs) So, sometimes I use it just to airify my lawn.

We talked about dandelion yoga last week.

And so sometimes I just airified, real compacted areas, I just will stick the pitchfork in there and loosen it up.

If it's a really bad spot, maybe I might actually dig some soil out, loosen it up a little bit, put some organic matter in there, maybe just some potting soil and then try to put my turf back down and get it to regrow.

- You like to work hard, don't you?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, I'm a sucker.

(panel laughs) - Okay.

We had one here wanting to know, are carpenter bees and carpenter ants both a big problem in the state?

And we don't have an entomologist here.

I'm gonna try to get one next week, but Abi, do you have any clue on that?

- Yeah, so there are two categories of carpenter bees.

We have the larger carpenter bees.

They're in the genus Xylocopa, and then small carpenter bees and they're in the genus Ceratina.

So the eastern carpenter bees is, if you've lived in the eastern United States, is probably the one that you are familiar with that does a lot of structural damage.

In terms of our native, we do have a couple native larger carpenter bee species.

I don't hear very much about significant structural damage that they do.

For the small carpenter bees, they're much smaller in size.

They usually nest in woody, pithy stems of plants.

So they don't do structural damage really.

They're nesting in like little, woody twigs.

And then there has been though, the eastern carpenter bee, it's very distinct.

It looks like a bumblebee, but with a shiny abdomen.

One of the scientists on the Wild Bees of Montana project, Casey Delphia, she actually found one in her backyard a couple of years ago, but we haven't really seen or heard of reports of that since.

Those are the ones that, having lived in the eastern part of the US, I've seen more structural issues but I don't hear very much about the other ones.

And then for carpenter ants, yes, they can be a little bit of a problem.

One of the things is that they impact more wet or kind of water damaged wood usually.

So if the wood is wet or damaged and is kind of degrading, they'll chew through it.

So if you have I think healthy wood that is dry, it shouldn't be as much of a problem, but if you have some water damage, that can be an issue.

So reach out to your county extension agent if you think that you do have carpenter ants.

- Okay, I'm gonna switch back to that garbage pile that's... (Tim laughs) You know, we haven't talked much about crops tonight and it's early in the year, but so far crops are in need of a little water around the state.

- Yes.

- We have not had really adequate moisture, but you have something there with wheat that is very common in the state and is, I believe, avoidable if you do some good practices.

- Yes.

- [Jack] So have at it.

- So, my last sample that I brought in today is, this is winter wheat from North Central Montana and this actually has Wheat Streak Mosaic Disease.

You have heard me talk about it before.

So I wanna just point out what the symptoms are that you might look for and then we can talk a little bit about the disease.

So, you might notice that generally this wheat is pretty yellow.

And if you look closer at the foliage, I don't know how close we can get here, you would see that it's kind of like a streaking, irregular modeling type of pattern.

So this is a viral disease.

There's several viruses that cause this disease and they travel kind of in a complex.

The way they spread from plant to plant and field to field is by a small mite called the wheat curl mite.

And so this infection, given how, you know, early in the season it is and how severe the symptoms on the plant are likely occurred last year in the fall.

And so knowing a little bit more about the history of the sample, it checks out.

So if we're thinking about risk factors, things that promote Wheat Streak Mosaic Disease, we often see it associated with fields that experience or that are in a neighborhood to fields that got hailed out close to harvest.

And so what results is is you have a lot of volunteer wheat growth.

This is where the mites carrying the virus move into and kind of wait between two crops, and then they move into your fall-planted winter wheat crop.

And so last year, you know, we had a few pockets in the state where we had wheat streak pop up and then we had a pretty favorable fall for this type of disease.

We had those localized hailstorms, we had a fairly long fall with warm temperatures.

We had these late summer rains that would promote a lot of volunteer growth and made it really hard for our growers to get in the field and terminate that green bridge before planting.

And so this is probably what happened here.

So, I wanna make a pitch here.

I do have a current research project, where we are trying to understand and reassess the viral composition of the Wheat Streak Disease in the state, because knowing which viruses are present predominantly can help our wheat breeders decide which resistance traits to incorporate into their varieties.

So if you think that you might have wheat streak samples or wheat streak in your fields this year, bring a sample to your extension agent or ship it directly to us, Schutter Diagnostic Lab, and we will basically look at which viruses are present in the sample.

I know I'm talking long, but since I have the spotlight I'm gonna talk just a little bit about if you have this disease issue right now, like what can a grower right now do with a winter wheat field that is affected?

It's tricky.

So, basically like all the other diseases we talked about, you can't cure it.

It's a viral disease.

So, there's nothing that you can do in terms of treatment to cure it.

Right now it's basically about cutting losses with disinfected crops.

So you wanna avoid adding more inputs in here, especially nitrogen fertilizer has been shown to really like encourage the mites that are transmitting this virus to reproduce and grow in numbers, and the virus likes nitrogen as well.

So that's not a good idea.

Many people will want to possibly terminate their crop right now, which is fair.

The only consideration to make here is that, when you kill this plant the mites that live on here will seek another host.

So they will set up, like fly or drift away, and land on whatever other crops are around.

So if you have in the neighborhood a lot of freshly planted spring cereals, et cetera, you're basically pushing your problem to your neighbor, which is not very neighborly.

So, probably wait with the termination until the spring wheat is, you know, a little further in development.

After jointing, if the crop gets infected, the impact won't be as bad.

So that's one way to strategize.

If you haven't planted yet, you may consider pivoting to a broadleaf crop, which is not susceptible to this disease, but I recognize it's not that early in the year anymore.

So that might be quite the change that is not applicable anymore.

And that's where I'm gonna stop.

Email me if you have more questions.

(Jack laughs) - Okay, thank you.

Patti, this person wants to know if all the schools in Gallatin County are eligible to participate in the Farm Fair?

- Yes, in the fall, usually September, October, we send an invitation out to all the fourth grade teachers.

We send it to the public schools and private schools.

- [Jack] Okay.

- The only situation we're running into now is 1200 kids is probably about our maximum that we can handle just with the space requirements we have.

You know, 400 kids a day is a lot and so... (Tim giggles) - [Jack] I shake my head too.

A day is a lot.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Imagine the noise, 400 4th graders.

- That just had ice cream.

(panel laughs) - Yes, so sadly, we're probably gonna get to the point where, you know, we'll take the registrations as they come in and we might have to limit it.

- That's too bad because- - [Patti] It is too bad.

- [Jack] that's really great for kids.

- [Patti] We hate to do that, but our volunteers can't go four days.

As you guys know, after three full days of doing the same presentation, 16 times a day, three days in a row, you're exhausted.

(Patti laughs) - That's what the old dairymen said this year.

They're, "Whew!

We're getting worn out."

(panel laughs) - You know, I admire the volunteers for being involved with that.

- Oh, they're amazing.

- Yeah, and you said that the young volunteers are really very... Hey, they have more energy.

You know, I'd sit there and watch, but I'm not gonna actively herd kids around.

(Patti laughs) Anyway, great program.

Fort Benton, for Tim.

He's talking about Roundup no longer containing glyphosate.

Are there still products that contain glyphosate?

- Yep, there are.

You can go to the hardware store in Fort Benton and you can find glyphosate, but you're gonna be not buying a trademark Roundup.

You're gonna be looking at - [Jack] Generic.

- Makaze, Glystar, Max, there's some other ones.

Bayer Crop Science actually does still have glyphosate in RT 3, - [Jack] Yeah.

- and in Roundup PowerMAX because that is what's used by agricultural producers.

So you still can get it, it just won't say the Roundup name.

It'll say PowerMAX, it'll say RT 3.

It'll be called Makaze, Glystar, but it's still at the hardware store.

- [Jack] Yeah, and- - So read the label twice before you grab something and go.

- I'm still a big proponent of glyphosate because I don't have to take a pitchfork in cases and dig out my weeds.

It works well.

Although there is resistance now to glyphosate.

- Oh, absolutely.

In cropping systems, more and more, it's a difficult, very difficult topic.

The Yellowstone River Valley, you think Roundup Ready sugarbeets, Roundup Ready corn, Roundup Ready alfalfa, it's all filled with Roundup Ready Kochia.

- Okay, so we have a bunch of questions about dandelions in the lawn; what to spray, are there organic methods to get rid of 'em?

You can dig 'em like Tim likes to do.

And this one person wants to know, is it feasible to put diesel oil on rocky areas that have dandelions?

And the answer to that is, no.

- No, please.

- Never approve that.

- Please don't do that.

- That's if, you'd be better off buying Roundup because diesel fuel's probably more expensive than Roundup these days.

- You're right.

Good point.

- Yeah.

- But yeah, in terms of dandelions, this time of year is not really a great time to control them.

The fall is a better time for these perennial weeds that I think.

And then, I am on Tim's side in terms of the elbow grease part of dandelion control.

They have this really cool tool called a dandelion fork and you just stick it into the ground.

You can pop up, try and get as much of the taproot as you can.

But the trick is, 'cause they'll keep coming back, the trick is to over seed those patches where you've pulled the dandelions out of, over seed with turf grass seed so that the grass will grow there and fill in those gaps.

Because dandelions are opportunistic.

They're gonna keep popping up where there is space.

- [Uta] It's not a good time?

- Really, alfalfa's, you really wanna manage dandelions in the fall in alfalfa.

You're trying to manage dandelions in it is just does not work out.

- And that's even pretty much true in lawns too, you know?

You really have to be after 'em big time in the spring, more than once.

And fall applications just before it freezes is very, very effective on dandelions.

- So because we were talking about lawn seeding, is now a good time to seed lawn?

- Yeah, now is a good time to seed lawn.

It's my second favorite time.

I like the fall seeding, but spring seeding works really well too.

And now is a good time.

- Okay, thank you.

Patti, this is a good question, and this person obviously knows you because they say you are going to be retiring, stepping down as chair.

And they appreciate the job you've done.

But they would also like to know, is there anything that you've experienced that would improve the Farm Fair?

Anything that you would like to see done in the future that would make it even better than it already is?

So somebody's putting you on the spot.

- They are putting me on the spot.

I'm stepping down, but I'm not stepping away.

I'm still gonna be there all three days.

And what the great part about that is, is the gal that's stepping up, Becca Burkenpas-Elkins, it was her grandfather that started it.

So she's got a vested interest in the program.

So that is wonderful.

No, it's a pretty well-oiled machine.

What we've been doing seems to work really well.

We do every year, in fact on Tuesday we have a wrap up meeting where everybody gets together and we talk about what's worked well, what hasn't worked well, what we need to change to make better.

You know, it's worked really well all these years and we're just gonna keep on doing it.

- Well, everybody that I've talked to who had been involved are very, very proud of being able to work with you.

I know Uta, she told me, "You gotta go out there and see that."

- Yeah.

- And I've been around kids in other operations and I admire anybody that can handle 400 4th graders in one day.

I mean, that is impressive.

- [Patti] It's awesome.

- Sometimes, you know, you might worry about the future, but then you see these fourth graders come through and they know stuff and they're smart, and it makes you feel actually good to come see all the fourth graders out there.

They know a lot of stuff about plants, about weeds, about, yeah, it's great.

- One thing we'd like maybe is some younger volunteers.

(Patti laughs) - You know, that makes good sense.

- [Patti] Yeah.

- Maybe some... And I have a question here, why hasn't the Department of Ag become more involved statewide on farm fairs?

- We had a nice visit with Jillian about it this time.

We've invited them for quite a few years.

They've sent representatives I think in the past.

But, you know, we told her that we're open to have anybody that's interested in starting a program in their community.

We'd love to have them come see what we do and we'll share everything we've got.

- [Jack] Okay.

- 'Cause we'd like to see that.

- Sounds great.

From Great Falls, perennial wheat.

And by the way, on PBS this afternoon at 4:30, I happened to catch it.

It was a story about perennial wheat and what it's being used for.

This person wants to know, has it been tried in Montana?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

Kernzas been grown, and I know a couple producers.

One of the largest is out in Conrad, actually.

And then there's another couple producers who have been growing it around the Geraldine area, if you guys know where Geraldine is?

- [Jack] I do.

(Tim laughs) - And yeah, there's some a few.

It's nice to have as a dual purpose crop.

I've talked to people who said, "It makes grains most of the time, but my cows eat it, too."

(Jack and Abi laughs) - You know, part of that program this afternoon also featured grower in Kansas that was still growing the variety Turkey red.

Turkey red I think was brought in the United States in the 1860s.

Tall, you look at wheat back then it was about as tall as I was.

- Whoa.

- Yeah, and now because we want shorter varieties, they don't lodge.

But Turkey red was a huge change in our wheat for this state and for the country.

Okay.

This caller believes they have leafcutter bees damaging their honeysuckle.

How can they figure that out?

And we're down to one minute, so quickly.

- So usually leafcutter bees don't do enough damage to hurt the health of your plant.

Your plant will bounce back.

It can handle leaf damage, and honeysuckles are resilient so don't worry about it.

Leafcutting bees are really great and important to our agricultural industry.

- Okay, thank you.

I'm going to thank the panel tonight.

I've got plenty of time.

Uta, thank you for coming in as usual.

Patti, it's been wonderful.

We learned a lot about that.

I will be out to eat the hamburger next year.

- [Patti] Great.

- I promise.

Cheeseburger.

- Tim, and you, Abi.

- Visit MontanaPBS.org, - next week, yeah.

- [Voiceover] slash-AGLive.

(fiddle music) (fiddle music continues) - [Announcer] "Montana AG Live" is made possible by: the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(light music)