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

- Montana Ag Live originated today from the studios of KUSM 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.

You're probably wondering what the heck, I said it nicely, is going on with this getup we had tonight.

Well, some lady at the far end of the panel decided that this is the last program of the spring series, so she insisted that we dress up in vacation garb.

So I'll get to introduce them in a minute, but I will say this is our last program.

We'll be back this fall, September 13th we'll start up again.

I hope you join us again this fall.

I hope you enjoy tonight's program.

We're gonna have a lot of fun with it.

Introducing the panel this evening, our troublemaker, Uta McKelvy.

She's our extension plant pathologist.

She's the one who kind of organized this rather brilliant display.

Yeah, it looks good.

Our special guest tonight, Cecil Tharp.

Cecil is our extension pesticide education specialist.

Very knowledgeable on a lot of different things with pesticide education, how you become certified, what you do if you have excess chemicals.

If you have questions tonight about pesticides or pesticide education, Cecil's here to answer them.

We'll have a good time finding out a little bit more about what goes on with those products here in the State of Montana.

We borrowed Frank Etzler again tonight from the Department of Agriculture.

Frank is an entomologist and he knows an awful lot about bugs.

And he's been with the Department of and he's filled in here many, many times.

So if you have entomology questions, bug questions tonight, go ahead and get them in.

Of course, our brilliant, color-wise, Abi Saeed is here talking about horticulture issues tonight.

Abi is really, really sharp.

We've got some backup questions.

She wasn't here last week.

We'll get to some of those and if you have additional questions, go ahead and phone them in.

Speaking of the phones, we have two phone operators tonight.

We have Carl Whitmore and Carol Pfeiffer, and I tell you what, keep those phones ringing.

It's not a real nice evening here in Bozeman.

I know we've had a good amount of rain.

I think it's been a good rain statewide.

We needed it.

So if you're watching the program tonight and you have questions, phone them in and we'll do our best to answer them.

Cecil, tell us a little bit about what you do in your program here at MSU.

- As a pesticide education specialist, primarily we coordinate the Montana private applicator program and that consists of around 5,000 private applicators, mainly ranchers and producers that are using what we call restricted use pesticides on land that they own, rent or lease.

Now in addition to that, we support the commercial program or homeowners with any pesticide questions, calibrating pesticides or pesticide equipment or tank mixing, a variety of other things like poisoning or non-target toxicity and carryover.

So we support and try to bring together other IPM specialists and put on programs around the state and opportunities for learning more about pesticides.

- So, let me ask you a question.

If I have a pasture in back of my house and say I had grasshoppers there and I wanted to go out and spray those grasshoppers myself, do I need a private pesticide applicator license to do that or who really needs them?

- You would need a private license if you were applying a restricted use product.

So there are some insecticides that could be used on grasshoppers that are not restricted use.

In that case, you would not need the private applicator license.

However, we always recommend to get the license and work with your local county agent and the pesticide education program because we offer a lot of pesticide education opportunities to better understand the pesticides you're using either way and how to calibrate your sprayer and not waste your money picking products that don't work.

- What is a restricted use pesticide?

- A restricted use pesticide is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency when they register a product and it will say restricted use on the first page of the product label.

And it's due to it having some sort of toxicity or elevated toxicity towards the environment or humans or mammals.

It has some environmental risks where some other products are a little less risky.

- So can I buy a restricted use pesticide even though I don't have a restricted use or a private applicator's license?

Could I go in... - No, you cannot.

So dealers are trained to check for your license.

If it's a restricted use product, they will be checking that you have a restricted use license.

And if it's on your own land, that would be the private applicator license.

- Okay, thank you.

- So if you walked in a hardware store, you couldn't just accidentally pick a restricted use pesticide from the shelf?

Or... Yeah.

- No, if you picked a restricted use pesticide, when you're checking out, they should be able to determine that that's a restricted use product and they will ask you for your license.

- All right, we learned a little bit there.

Thank you for the answers.

Abi, this is left over from last week.

This person has some horseradish and they say a little bit of horseradish is good, but once you plant a little bit, it becomes a lot of horseradish.

What do you do to get rid of it?

- Yeah, so horseradish is tough because it does take over.

It grows really well.

What I would recommend is like that, elbow grease.

So really good mechanical control.

So trying to get as much of the root system out as possible is really helpful.

If you're really struggling with control, you can use a herbicide, but the fall would be the best time to do that.

Prevent it from going to seed because it will readily seed itself and continue to spread.

And whatever you do, don't till the area with horseradish because you're just gonna multiply it and it's just gonna be everywhere.

So using a combination of physical removal, you can use a herbicide, and ideally planting it in more of a contained environment like a raised bed or something where it can't just escape and take over is helpful too.

- How do you make horseradish from horseradish plants?

- So I've seen a combination of ways.

I've seen people that freeze dry it or just like dehydrate it and turn it into powder and then add water to kind of make it a little milder one.

That's what I've done and I put it in my mashed potatoes.

It's a really good tip I received from a farmer in Malta.

But you can also just chop it up and grind the root up fresh.

You can eat the leaves too.

The leaves are pretty tasty.

They have a little bit of a zip to them.

They're really nice green.

Yeah, I love horseradish.

- I was wondering about, you know, the seedlings.

You know, are they quite spicy?

- They are.

They are a little bit spicy like arugula.

They're not as spicy as some arugula though.

So I kind of prefer them.

- It's got to be a nice kick in your salad.

That's a way to control it.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Eat it.

Yeah, like Tim says, if you can't beat it, eat it.

- He's still here even though it's far away.

- I have another use for horseradish but I'm not gonna go there because we've already done the Bloody Marys on the program before.

Okay, Uta, this call came in last week from Dylan.

This person planted peas on their vegetable garden.

A few of them started to come up but then they didn't make it and she has a very poor stand.

Any idea what may have happened?

- Well, it could be a lot of things.

My head's going... It could be like a damping off type of disease.

One of those root rots like Pythium, Rhizoctonia that like to go in wet cold soils and like to attack seedlings.

That's probably a likely scenario.

From personal experience, I would suspect bunnies, rabbits, that kind of stuff, they like to eat those juicy seedlings too.

It kind of would depend on how they went off.

Did the shoot just disappear or did it like kind of more or less slowly die and wilt and keel over?

But those would be my top two guesses.

- You know, a rabbit can clear out a row of peas in one big hurry and I've had issues early on before I got so many dogs around that ground squirrels, they'll also do, Columbia ground squirrels, they love peas.

As well as deer and animals.

Peas are very good... - Everybody loves peas.

I like to eat them too.

That's why I was so bummed when they disappeared.

(laughs) - I agree.

All right, I hope we answered that.

- Calling Montana Ag Live?

- Let's go over to Frank.

Frank, this person says the pastures look great around the state right now.

Does that indicate that we are not going to have a grasshopper issue in pastures?

- I would say yes.

So this cool period in June that we've had with all the moisture, it's knocked down that grasshopper population and I've heard from preliminary surveys they're actually having trouble finding nymphs as well.

So I think this is gonna be a good grasshopper year which means there's not gonna be a lot.

- You know, with this cold weather snap we've had, I mean it was low 40s this morning when it rained.

That's not good for grasshoppers.

And by the way we had another question here last week.

What is a grasshopper nest?

And we talked about this ahead of time and none of us really know.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I've never heard of a grasshopper nest.

The only thing I can think of I think we talked about maybe where they laid their eggs, where they emerged, or some area where there's a lot of nymphs around, hanging around.

But most likely that's where they can find some shelter during the day.

It's not really a nest, in my opinion.

- All right, that makes sense.

Cecil, from Florence, this person has a bunch of what they believe is outdated pesticides in their garage.

Is there anything they can do to get rid of those other than use them?

- Yes, the Montana Department of Ag has a pesticide waste disposal program that they could use.

It varies by year and they focus on different districts.

I believe if they register by July 1st, really coming up pretty quick here, it's at three different locations in the west end of the state, or in Polson, Hamilton, and Butte.

And I think there's another, in September there's also some locations in central Montana, I think it'd be Havre, Great Falls, Red Lodge, and Lewistown I think is another one.

And for that I would just go to their website and you could just type in Google, you could have Montana and pesticide waste disposal, and it'll pop up their website and you can register online or you can contact MDA.

And MDA's number, 406-444-5400, and just tell them what you're looking for and they'll forward you to Carli Davis, who runs the program.

- And Cecil, what are your expert thoughts on outdated pesticides?

Should you use them or should you avoid and why so?

- Yeah, outdated pesticides, you shouldn't use them unless you can verify the product itself and you know that it's registered currently, but when you say outdated and if you know it's outdated and the product label's falling apart on it, yeah, it's not recommended to use.

A lot of products over time will lose efficacy anyway and sometimes they'll gum up your sprayer as well.

So the best thing you can do is register for the waste disposal program and try to get rid of the pesticide waste itself.

- If I'm not mistaken, there's a pound limit on how much you can... - That's correct.

So it's 200 pounds, the first 200 pounds is free to use the program.

After 200 pounds, I'm not sure what that cost is, but there is an extra cost if you're bringing in more than 200 pounds, which most people of course are not.

It is covered.

It's an excellent program to use and I definitely recommend it.

- I also recommend it as well.

- Yeah.

- Good program and we've had pesticides that we've used forever that have never been re-registered to use and one I think of is Diazinon, which was a wonderful garden product but it was so costly to re-register that product that we never did.

If you still have Diazinon, you can either dispose of it or you can use it.

Okay, I don't know if we... I'm not gonna get into gophers tonight.

We'll get that one next year.

From Great Falls, the caller has dwarf apple trees and ants are invading it.

She can't find any other insects.

Does she need to control the ants or how should she control them?

- Abi- - Yeah, sure.

I could jump in.

I think... So first of all, ants are not gonna be harming your apple tree.

There could be a couple of reasons why ants are there.

So looking at the overall health of the tree, sometimes if the trees are older and there are cracks and crevices, ants could be using some of those spots to nest.

Other issues could be if you have a lot of aphid issues in your trees, ants could be around.

Sometimes they'll help protect those aphids.

They feed on the sugary honeydew, which So it could be a combination.

I'd recommend doing a little bit of closer investigation to see what the ants might be doing around the tree.

See if you can find any aphids or any other sugary waste excreting pests like scales and stuff like that.

Other than that though, the ants themselves aren't gonna be harming your trees.

So getting to the source of the issue would be the best bet.

- Yeah, I agree that it's most likely gonna be the aphids, as you were saying, because usually when I look at trees, the first thing I see are the ants and then that usually signals some aphid issues.

And it's good to look underneath the leaves and you'll see them feeding and they'll be very kind of small dots.

A lot of them are green at this stage, so they're hard to see, but if you look under the leaves, you might see green dots.

I think that's good.

- Speaking of aphids, and I'm going back, we haven't had an entomologist on recently.

There are several questions about aphids.

Are aphids more dominant this year than in most years?

Are we seeing more aphids?

I know in my plum tree is totally infested with aphids.

Why are we seeing, I think, more aphids than normal this spring?

- I think it just might be conditions are good.

Warm winter as well, so you had more things surviving over the winter time.

And then it's probably cooler so that the predators, like ladybugs, aren't flying as much, so they're probably free from that.

So a whole bunch of different factors boosting that population.

- And if you're seeing a lot of rapid plant growth too with these cycles, they like that fresh, kind of succulent leafy growth too.

So if you've added any fertilizer and stuff like that, that could be adding to that too.

- Yeah, I agree.

- Okay, I'm looking for a question that came in.

Here it is.

Tell me the best way to germinate clematis seeds.

Please, do I have to freeze them?

And how long or for what?

So that's yours.

- Yeah, so clematis can be a little bit tough to germinate, I've struggled with this in the past.

Sometimes it can take several weeks and sometimes it can take a year or even longer, even if the seeds are viable.

So one of the issues, a couple of the issues is the type of clematis and just how the seed will germinate.

But you do need a cold stratification, which you do need with a variety of seeds, so that means you wouldn't need to freeze them, but you'd need to refrigerate them or keep them below the 40 degree Fahrenheit temperature range for about 6 to 10 weeks before you can try to germinate them.

So you do need that cold stratification period.

And then just be patient.

So some people will put them under a grow light or in a greenhouse and just be patient.

Keep the growing medium moist and make sure that the growing medium is warm enough, so maybe under some bottom heat or something like that and patient.

Okay, thank you.

- Uta, from Missoula, this person has maple trees in their lawn and every time they water, a few weeks later the leaves turn dark black.

Any idea what's going on?

- In maple trees?

- In maple trees, yeah.

- Watering I imagine is probably a sprinkler situation.

- Most likely overhead, yeah.

- Yeah, well I guess my guess would be some type of fungal disease.

There's a whole host of those on there and I'm not very strong on which one.

It could be anthracnose comes to mind, but I guess it would require some diagnosis.

But I mean something that we commonly see, right, sprinklers are maybe not well adjusted so you irrigate your lawn, but you're really hitting the lower canopy.

So that just creates a conducive environment for all sorts of fungal pathogens that then, you know, they're already there, they're just spreading some more.

That would be my best guess, but then again you'd have to have a... Yeah.

- And I would also recommend like any time you're irrigating your trees to avoid getting any moisture on the bark and on the leaves themselves, aim for the drip line and beyond.

So that's the, as if your tree is an umbrella, that's where the water would drop down.

That's where the active root zone is where they're taking up most of that moisture.

But any kind of sprinkler, irrigation or watering where you're getting the leaves wet increases the susceptibility of pathogens, especially fungal pathogens because it makes it tender and it's easier for the fungal structures to kind of poke through.

So avoid that moisture on the foliage.

- All right, thank you.

So I always encourage comment and here's a good one from Ward in Montana.

He says Jack needs a corona with a lime in it to really look the part this evening.

And I don't disagree with that.

That would be good.

But I do encourage comments, suggestions, whatever.

I do screen them.

I've always said that.

But that was pretty good.

I appreciate that.

This is an interesting call.

And I'm not gonna say where it came from, because I don't wanna get anybody in trouble.

But it's a neighboring county.

I will say that much.

Caller has a neighbor providing a restricted use pesticide for grasshoppers to other neighbors, for other neighbors to use.

The guy providing the pesticide is a retired state employee.

Is he breaking the law and are the neighbors using a pesticide without certification breaking the law?

Have at it.

- Ooh.

- Okay.

Well, we do hear of this once in a while, and there is some confusion, if the individual only holds a private applicator license that they cannot distribute the pesticides to their neighbors or to anyone.

So you would need a dealer's license or to do that.

And they do not.

So a private applicator that purchases any chemicals, they cannot give those away, especially restricted use chemicals.

And for the individuals that have the restricted use pesticides, no, they are not legally able to apply those chemicals.

They can apply them, but it's not legal.

- Okay.

I think you covered it.

You shouldn't be doing it.

- Don't do that.

- Yeah, okay.

We got that answered.

From Poston, Frank.

Are Montana range cattle producers worried about the New World Screwworm?

And do you think that critter could survive in our environment up here?

- It is possible for introduction.

And if we have a winter like we had last year, it could potentially survive over the wintertime.

So there is a record in Montana of New World Screwworm from 1941.

So it did propagate that summer, but it died out at that wintertime.

So we have the risk of populations being introduced.

So yes, people are worried about it.

But we do have a task force in the state keeping an eye on it.

So we have a bunch of individuals from multiple different departments kind of working together to look forward.

So we have Fish, Wildlife and Parks looking for any wildlife potentially infected.

We have Livestock.

And then we have the Montana Department of Ag as well.

- Okay.

Thank you.

And I'm not surprised this came up.

There was a recent Supreme Court ruling that changed the status of glyphosate.

And it basically said you can't sue Bayer anymore.

Will that have any ramifications on our use of Roundup here in the State of Montana?

And that's probably an unfair question, but I like unfair questions.

- Yeah, this is kind of a moving target.

So we're talking about glyphosate and its impact on individuals.

And there is a debate regarding whether it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Now, there are some associations that are in the literature between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But overall, you know, the bulk of the publications refute that.

Most of the weed scientists are, and the pesticide specialists are not supportive of that, but it depends.

So as far as ramifications go, I'm not aware of any ramifications in Montana as far as restricting the use of glyphosate in any way.

I believe California, I think where this originated, they required some additional labeling on glyphosate products in the state.

And that, I think, also went back to litigation as well.

Right now, I don't see any impacts on glyphosate use and distribution in Montana.

As far as education on the matter, yeah, I'm occasionally called to present on that topic.

It takes, to be honest, a good hour to really flush it out and talk about it.

Because when we talk about associations, it's not causal.

It's just what is an association and when does it represent something that we should really be concerned about.

And it does take a while to divvy through that.

- Okay, thank you.

A question came in last week via email.

It's from Jim.

Jim, he says, all winter long, as warm as it was, they've had a small beetle about 3 eighths inch long, black with a red belly, and has wings showing up in their kitchen on wall, ceilings.

They head to the kitchen sink and south facing window.

They usually kill two or three a day.

What are they?

Where do they come from?

- Most likely, probably not a beetle, but boxelder bug is probably based on that description.

And then they aggregate like a lot of other bugs in people's homes over winter.

And they're going to that south facing side because it's warm and they just wanna get warm together.

- Okay, thank you.

I agree with you entirely.

- Is there anything you can do to keep them out?

- Fill in any cracks you have, but that's sometimes easier said than done.

Or take a vacuum.

That's another option.

Or your hands is another one.

- Or if you have cats, it keeps them entertained for hours.

- Okay, I've had three questions tonight coming on this little screen.

One from last week, two from tonight.

These individuals want to use deer scat in their garden.

And some are saying, yep, go ahead and do it.

It's not a problem.

Others say they're worried about things like chronic wasting disease and so forth.

We have no fertilizer experts on the panel, but anybody have a thought on doing that?

- I am out of my depth on that.

Yeah.

- Okay, we'll save that for next spring when we have our soil scientists here.

Uta, this person wants to know the difference between desi and kabuli chickpeas.

And they've heard that, and you have a sample here, that kabuli chickpeas are difficult to grow because of a disease called ascochyta.

You wanna talk about that a little bit?

- Yeah, so desi and kabuli chickpeas are just two different types.

They mostly differ in the size of the chickpea seed and then what they're being used for in the end.

And it's true, one of them is more susceptible to ascochyta blight, which is a fungal disease that's probably one of the most yield-limiting diseases that we're dealing with in Montana and actually in chickpea production globally.

And yeah, I have a sample here from last year that's showing some symptoms of ascochyta blight on the pot.

This is actually a good time to talk about ascochyta blight.

So if you're looking here at this pot, you will see these like tan colored lesions with a darker brown margin.

And you might even be able to see these black dots that are forming concentric rings in the lesions.

These lesions can occur anywhere on the plant, the pods, which are probably not developed yet, but the stems, the leaves, et cetera, et cetera.

And so now is really a time of the year where we're seeing this disease pop up.

And so it's a time where you wanna be as a pulse producer scouting for that disease and have your fungicide or your fungicide applicator at the ready to apply.

Because basically the earlier we control this, the better disease control will be throughout the season.

What's challenging with this disease, especially in chickpeas, once you kind of have that chickpea develop a full canopy, we have that under canopy that's really nice and moist where this disease keeps spreading, but it's really hard to reach the pathogen there with any kind of fungicides.

So early disease control and suppression is really important to get this under control.

The weather as moist and rainy and relatively cool as it is, is perfect for ascochyta blight.

Even if it started being warmer and stopped raining, I'm always surprised how wet chickpeas particularly feel when you walk through the field.

And in terms of fungicide management, I just wanted to highlight, I'm gonna reach over here.

I just put together this poster, which is like a fungicide table for fungicides that are registered specifically for ascochyta control.

And it breaks basically active ingredients down by the mode of action.

And then also on this other side, summarizes products and shows which mode of actions are in those products.

And the reason I hope that this resource will be valuable for others is that another concern with ascochyta blight control is that this pathogen is really good and quick at developing resistances.

We know that it already has fungicide resistance specifically to the strobilurins, but also other groups of fungicides.

So really paying attention to which modes of actions are in the products you're choosing and making sure you're rotating and not repeatedly of action is super important to basically prevent fungicide resistance from emerging and spreading and remaining in the population and essentially protecting our pulse crops from that disease.

- And that's important because last time I checked, Montana is still the number one producer of pulse crops in the United States.

It's actually really revolutionized our agriculture in the state.

Now we have a good rotational crop and we used to be wheat and barley and that was it.

But now we are very diverse in our cropping systems, which is good.

- And if you're interested in this poster, it's available in the extension store or you could just email me and I can find a way to get it to you.

We just got it in so we have a good stash in the store.

- Okay, thanks Uta.

From Denton, this person wants to know what happens legally to you if you apply a restricted-use pesticide without a license, and that's assuming they get caught.

- Well, you know, it depends.

It definitely, if they get caught, usually it's because there's a complaint of some kind or some non-target damage so that would make them more vulnerable to lawsuits and litigation primarily because they're not following the law.

And as far as secondarily the criminal part of it, that would be up to the Department of Ag as far as minimum fees.

Often they'll lose their license in that case.

It depends what happens.

Like if they're giving away the chemicals and it's misused by other people, oftentimes they can be held responsible for that.

And we've seen that down in Lubbock, Texas where restricted-use applicators gave out their chemicals for cockroach control or whatever and the individuals didn't know how to use it and ended up killing three kids.

You know?

So it depends on what's being used.

If they misapplied it, then it depends what kind of damage was caused as far as civil suits.

If it's on a neighbor, if it's their own land, they're often not caught.

But if they are, yeah, they could lose their license and there's sometimes a minimum fine that could be $500 or more or less than that.

- When I was gainfully employed, which has been quite a few years ago, you used to have to renew your private pesticide license.

Is that still the case today?

- It certainly is.

So we're on a five-year certification cycle for the private applicators.

It does vary by district that they land in.

For instance, this year, District 4, which is eastern Montana from Glasgow to, no, not Glasgow, but yeah, Glasgow down to Miles City to Forsyth City, that area.

They have to have six private applicator credits by December 31st to re-qualify into the next cycle.

If they don't accumulate those credits, at that point they will have to retest at the Extension office as a closed-book exam or they have to take an initial private applicator training program, which is now a nine-hour program.

It's pretty long.

- You don't wanna let it lapse?

- You don't because you've already heard that before if you have a license, so you're gonna be forced back into learning subjects that you already have heard.

So I always recommend, get your points, don't just retake the test because you're gonna learn a lot more about the weeds and insects.

You can choose programs that cater to your pests.

- Okay, thank you.

Good information.

We don't have a gopher specialist.

I mentioned that earlier, but I'm gonna say this.

This caller from Bozeman has five acres and lots of gophers.

You're not alone.

I can verify that.

How can they get rid of them without using a poison that will affect the birds that eat the carcasses?

That's a good point.

They can't shoot them due to hikers and bikers in the area, and if you shoot them with lead bullets, the birds are gonna get sick anyway.

So there is a gentleman with the Department of Ag.

His name is Stephen Vantassel.

He's based in Lewistown.

I don't have his phone number.

Does anybody remember his phone number?

- I don't.

- We would need to find- - Yeah, it's pretty easy to find.

Look up Montana Department of Ag and look at the people that are employed and rodent control specialists, and it would be Stephen Vantassel.

Flood him with calls.

He just loves it.

- He's fantastic.

- He is.

- And the website is agr.mt.gov.

- Okay.

- And you should be able to search vertebrate pests.

- All right.

Thank you.

Back to the plum trees.

Had several more calls on that, and also on apple.

This person wants to know is it too late to spray them this year, and is there anything you can use to spray them?

I know they get curled up inside of a leaf.

How do you get to them with a pesticide?

- Aphids?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

It's probably not too late to spray them.

It depends on the extent.

So my usual, and I'll let Frank jump in too, but my usual first resort is going with, depending on how big they are usually for if they're your backyard plums and apples, they're not 80 feet tall.

So if you spray them with a strong jet of water to knock off the aphids, that can achieve enough control that it's not gonna harm the health of the plants.

The issue with managing aphids with contact insecticides is that they curl up and are really well protected in the leaves.

So if there's high enough population that causes the leaves to curl, and you need to get direct contact with whatever specific contact insecticide you're using and the aphids themselves.

So if you can't achieve that efficiently, I wouldn't recommend just willy-nilly spraying the canopy of your trees.

In terms of other options, I would aim for trying that water strategy and then seeing if you're seeing any negative impact to the health.

Usually trees are designed to handle a significant amount of aphid pressure.

- Yeah, I agree 100% with that.

And usually if you spray, you'll affect the native predators more than you'll affect the aphids.

And you really wanna promote those ladybugs and other things around to eat those aphids.

So I agree, water is the best.

- Abi, would you know, is there information if you were to choose an ornamental plant in the future for your garden, is there information on aphid resistance?

Is that even something you select for?

- I've never seen anything like that before.

Because there are a combination, there are aphids that are more host specific within like a genus or a family, but then there are aphids that are generalists that will go to lots of different types of plants.

So I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything like aphid resistance, but that could be something, I know some people will anecdotally say certain plants in their gardens just don't get aphids versus others that do.

I haven't seen a list like that, but there could be information out there.

- Say, Abi, I had an additional question.

With the leaves curling like that, would you be supportive of recommending a systemic insecticide of any kind, like a neonic as a drench or anything like that?

- That's a really good thought.

My one concern with that is looking at if that product is labeled for something that you're gonna eat fruit from.

And so that's usually my concern with the systemics is usually with the timing of application.

So for that and specific questions like that, the Western Ag Research Center's website has some really great fruit specific recommendations.

And we have the Intermountain Tree Fruit Management Guide.

I think it's something to that effect that it's called.

And it is a list of all of the synthetic and the organic products that you can use for controls in any fruit trees.

So in terms of things like imidacloprid, I'm not sure if it will be labeled for that specific use.

So that's something to definitely check.

- Okay, okay, thank you.

A couple comments here.

One of them is from Alton.

It's an excellent comment talking about the deer manure.

And this is very true.

You can introduce a lot of weeds that you don't know about because they'll pass through deer into your garden.

So you might have a lot more problem.

And I can go back even further than that.

And that happened here in the Gallatin Valley where deer fed in a coulee that had been treated with Tordon for noxious weeds.

And they feed in the alfalfa overnight.

They'd pee in the alfalfa and you get big dead spots.

So transferring manure, not knowing what you're doing can be not a good idea.

Comment to him.

By the way, thank you for the comment.

Stephen Vantassel's phone number is, I'll have it up here in a minute, is 406-431-7720.

All of you people that have issues with rodents, call Steve tomorrow.

Tell him we missed him on Ag Live, but they found their phone number via us.

And his email is svantassel, one word, @mt.gov.

So whoever sent that in, thank you.

Interesting question.

This came in from Missoula.

Does the Department of Ag register organic pesticides?

And what would an organic pesticide be?

Tough question.

Go for it, guys.

- Yeah, well, all pesticides are registered with the State of Montana.

And I think they would be, yeah, an organic pesticide would be registered with Montana.

Because it has to be, if it's labeled a pesticide, it has to be registered.

- Okay.

- And in terms of organic, that's a specific list that governs what types of products are able to be used in certified organic systems.

- Yes.

Yes.

- So I'm sure we have... - There's OMRI approved, you know, which is a common approval that's not really through the state.

But there are some certifications that varies, but OMRI, Organically Material Review Institute, is one of the most well known.

If it has that stamp, that means it's organically approved.

And yeah, chemicals, the pesticides have to be registered in Montana.

Low risk pesticides, they're, or reduced risk pesticides, which tend to be, you know, plant based, that kind of thing, low tox products.

They're also registered in Montana, but they're not registered nationally, they're just identified as low risk.

And it varies by state, but in Montana, so a lot of the OMRI approved products will be reduced risk.

And the product registrant has to write a letter to the Department of Ag and ask for it to be registered, and they will register those as well.

But they have to ask for it to be registered.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Thank you.

You know, that alfalfa there, that's always been one of my favorite diseases.

You wanna talk a little bit about what that alfalfa problem is?

It's common every place you grow alfalfa when it's wet.

- Yeah, it's, that's true.

And this alfalfa is not looking so hot anymore.

So this is just a snapshot of like one of the many things we're seeing in the diagnostic lab right now this year.

So this here is Spring Black Stem and it's, as the name suggests, like very characteristic symptom of this stem discoloring black.

You know, I see it every year, but I'll have to say I've never seen the stems being this black as this year.

So most of the, you know, fungal leaf spot diseases, like Spring Black Stem on alfalfa, they thrive when it's rather cool and wet.

And so this is just the perfect, I don't know, is it spring?

Is it summer?

Where are we?

I guess by calendar it's summer.

So it's just perfect conditions for this disease to develop.

And so, you know, I'll admit I don't have, you know, fungicides ready at the hand right now for what to use.

I mean, fungicide is recommended here, but we can have a conversation if you wanna email or call about what might be a good product.

- The other thing that I remember if you started getting a lot of black stem, you harvest or cut the alfalfa a little bit earlier.

- Thanks for pointing that out.

So in terms of management, so what it causes, obviously it causes also leaf spots.

And so you're losing photosynthetic areas.

So the plants are not as productive.

So with these foliar diseases, often a recommendation is to just harvest earlier to preserve basically leaf matter that would be lost over time.

And then this disease is one that kind of flares up in the spring and then goes away over the summer and maybe flares up in the fall again.

So it's cyclical.

Yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

Great question, and I came here from Bozeman and this is applicable to a lot of people.

What is the best way to store personal herbicides and for that matter, other pesticides that you might use in your yard?

You have to store them where they won't freeze over the winter.

- You don't have to, but it does depend on the products.

So on the pesticide product label, it will tell you the storage requirements of the pesticide products.

Some products can be stored below freezing and they're fine.

Other products can be stored below freezing and in the spring they have some directions on resuspending it.

And there's others that are liquid pesticides that lose efficacy or they become gelled or aggregated if they freeze.

So, yeah, the best thing is if you wanna cover all your bases, if you can, is have a building that hopefully is outside a shed or something or in your garage and lock it up, secure it.

So, you know, the kids can't get in there and the teenagers and all that.

And basically, if it can keep that above freezing, that'll cover your bases.

But if not, there are some products that can go below freezing without an issue.

And the dry formulations like dust and pellets and granules, they're not a problem with freezing either.

- Yep, I agree with the entire, I keep mine in the garage, but our garage never freezes.

So that works pretty well.

Don't store them in the house.

- Don't store them in the house.

Yeah, that's a bad idea.

- Okay.

Abi, I'm gonna let you have this one.

This is interesting.

Another caller from Bozeman here says they have an insect collection from a college, University of Las Vegas, from 1975.

She has some very unusual insects.

Would anyone in Montana be interested in looking at her collection?

- I think that this could also be a really good Frank question since Frank is associated with the group that would be interested.

- Yeah, so potentially the Montana Entomology Collection would be a good place to reach out to as an option.

- How would you reach them?

- You can reach out to Mike Ivie directly.

Dr.

Mike Ivie.

He, you can reach out to him directly.

Or if you reach out to Frank, he can connect you.

- Yeah, yeah, I would be another resource.

So I go into that museum sometimes to look at insect specimens.

- Okay.

- Especially if they came from a university.

It depends on the collection.

But yeah.

- It would be interesting to see what they have.

- Yeah, let me know if they come in.

I wanna look too.

- Yeah, will do.

I'll send you an email.

- All right, this is a tough one.

I'm gonna let you start with it.

It came from Vida.

This person says something is killing all the spruce trees in the area.

Who can they contact to look at the trees?

He says the county Extension agent has not returned his call yet, but I'd keep trying that.

But if not, pictures, what do you think it might be?

- So who can they contact?

Obviously they tried the Extension office.

That would be my first recommendation.

Vida is Richland County?

I guess I know Richland County has a brand new Extension agent, so that might explain why they haven't answered so far.

If you're not out of luck with the Extension office, you can reach out to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

You could send an email with pictures to diagnostics@montana.edu.

Pictures would be good.

I'm really not gonna guess here what's going on.

I don't know enough about those trees, how old they are, where they are, et cetera, et cetera.

What we're seeing a lot is abiotic issues.

We already talked about irrigation issues often.

It's either irrigating the wrong way and getting the canopy wet and or not watering enough.

And then we're having those kind of, what do you call 'em again, Abi?

Winter kill.

Those are common things, but there's a whole host of other things that could be wrong with your trees.

So let's just start with pictures and take it from there.

- Yeah, and Eva Grimme at the Schutter Diagnostic Lab is amazing, kind of, she knows everything there is to know about conifers and lots of other plants, but she'll be, I think she'll be able to, she may recommend mailing a sample as well.

- Right.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Thank you.

This caller has a suggestion, from Bozeman has a suggestion for controlling ants in fruit trees.

They use tape around the trunk and spread sticky paste on the tape to keep ants out of the trees.

I don't know why you wanna do that.

- Yeah.

I don't think that's necessary since the ants aren't doing anything to the tree.

They're likely a symptom of what is going on, which could be aphids or other honeydew-producing pests.

- Okay.

The caller goes on to say, tell Jack that peaches do grow in Montana, especially in the Flathead Valley near the cherry orchards.

And I do know we do have some peaches in the state.

And that brings me to that oak leaf that you have here.

And then I'll add a little to peaches about that.

- Yeah.

So this is from my favorite oak tree on campus, which is, anytime I've forgotten to bring a sample into Ag Live, I walk by that tree and it never disappoints.

So this is oak leaf blister, where it literally just if you look at the leaves, it looks like blisters on the surface of the leaf.

And this is caused by a fungal pathogen.

And like Uta had been talking about throughout this season is this cold and wet spring and leading into summer season really favors a lot of our fungal pathogens, especially things like oak leaf blister.

So this tree looks much worse than it has in previous years.

This looks very significant.

Good news for this kind of issue, though, is that this isn't gonna impact the overall health of your tree.

So although it looks unsightly and if it's continued high, heavy issues year after year, it can cause an issue to the health.

But at this point, you usually don't need to do anything about it.

If you are using fungicides, by the time you see the symptoms, it's not gonna do anything to control it.

If you have a high value tree and you really wanna prevent this issue, you can use a preventative fungicide, things like chlorothalonil as the active ingredient.

But that would need to be applied at bud break to prevent it.

So by the time you're seeing these fungal issues on leaves of a lot of our ornamental trees and shrubs, it's too late to apply anything.

But sanitation is really helpful.

So in the fall when it drops its leaves, removing as many of the leaves as possible, don't leave them in the landscape, don't compost them.

That can help reduce the proportion.

But this is the result of our cool, wet spring into summer season.

- Okay.

And if you grow peaches, there is a related, try finding the name of that genus that in the Midwest it just devastated peach trees.

I have not seen it here in Montana, but it's very possible that it could.

Okay.

Quick question here from Galton County.

Due to cold and wet weather, this person is concerned about white mold in her garden.

White mold is a fungus disease.

Is there anything to do to prevent white mold?

- Yeah, that's a really good question.

White mold has been on my mind, as I do as a plant pathologist.

Yes, so this weather is super conducive.

White mold fungal disease basically can types of plants.

So you would see it on your carrots, tomatoes, et cetera.

So the way to manage it is really, I guess, as far as you still have a chance right now, like basically moisture drives it.

So avoiding planting too densely is a good strategy.

We might be past that decision right now.

Thinking about watering.

Again, if you have a way to drip irrigate rather than, you know, hose your canopy and keep that moisture going, that would be a good way to move forward.

And then also, you know, the pathogen likes to kind of infect through petals that fell down, like those flowers feed on that and then invade the stem.

So if you kind of clean up around the plants that can kind of reduce disease risk a little bit.

And then as soon as you see symptoms that suggest white mold, removing any infected plant material is a really good way.

It first shows up as kind of water soaked lesions, tannish lesions.

And then if you kept it moist, which does these conditions do that naturally, you would see really thick white mycelium growing on it.

So those are kind of things to look out for.

And I would remove that plant material.

And of course, you can always send pictures to the Schutter Lab or you send us a sample.

We've actually seen like a pretty severely infested garlic sample, white mold garlic sample this week.

- You know, I've only had it a couple of times in the 12 years, 15 years, I've had a decent garden here.

Beans.

You're really gonna see white mold get in the beans here.

And a period like this, if your beans are starting to flower, which would be early, they'll get in those petals and you can really have a serious problem with it.

- The tricky thing really is that once you have it, because this is a broad host range, it's hard to get rid of it.

So really catching infected tissue and removing it because the fungus will produce these sclerotia They look like mouse droppings.

You would see them on or in the infected tissue.

And if that stays in the soil, it can live there for a while.

And so it'll just reinfect and reinfect.

So sanitation is really a best practice in a garden setting, especially.

- Thank you.

We've had a little bit of time left.

I wanna choose to answer this one real quick.

It came here in from Helena.

Do both the state and federal need to register pesticide or can the state register pesticide without a federal registration?

- No, the feds or EPA has to register it nationally first.

And once it's registered by EPA, the state has the opportunity to register it in the state.

If there's a need in the state and the registrant wants it registered in the state because there's a cost associated with it as well.

- Okay.

You know, folks, we're getting down to the end.

I never get a chance to really thank this crew that we have here in the evening that helps us produce this program.

So I'm gonna ask him to get in back of us here and show the studio audience and the viewing audience how many people we actually have that we need to produce this show.

We have a lot of fun doing it.

We will be back again, as I say, in September, September 13th.

If you have comments, email them to me.

If you want specific guests, go ahead and let me know and I'll try to get some guests on here.

So if I can have the crew up here in back of us, folks, we do need quite a few students, our producer... I don't know where Paul is, with that outfit he's wearing.

I don't know if he wants to show up here or not.

But you see, we don't do this with a lot, with just a couple of people.

And these students learn a lot.

I wanna thank them all for the entire season.

They put in a lot of work.

I know you've been watching for quite a bit of time this year.

So with that, folks, I hear the music.

Uta, thank you.

Cecil, always thank you for coming in.

That special guest, Frank, filling in the night.

And of course, Abi is always here.

I'm not gonna tell you we're gonna be back next week.

We'll be back September 13th.

- Vacation.

- Oh, and we're on vacation.

- That's right.

- I tell you, people want us to be around... (upbeat music) - [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit MontanaPBS.org/aglive.

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

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