- [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 watching Montana Ag Live originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very beautiful 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 fun program.

It's a program that I always look forward to talking about invasive species because we learn about a lot of potential pests that could enter our environment here in the state of Montana.

So if you have questions tonight about invasive pests, it'd be an excellent opportunity to bring 'em up because it's not only you that likes the question, it's other people would learn from it.

And that reminds me, get on the phone when the phone number comes up and get the questions in, because this is a very boring program if we don't have questions from the general public.

With that, let me introduce tonight's panel, Frank Etzler.

Frank is way on the left.

He is a entomologist of the Montana Department of Agriculture.

He's been on the program many times, very knowledgeable about insects here in the state.

Our special guest this evening, Liz Lodman, she's with the Invasive Species Council.

I've seen Liz for many years.

I kind of remember her.

But anyway, if you have questions about any kind of species, she can answer 'em tonight along with Jane Mangold, who is our plant invasive species.

I call her a weed scientist, but she doesn't like that.

But anyway, we'll call her an invasive species person tonight.

And of course, Abi Saeed sitting next to me is our horticulturalist.

If you have questions about horticulture, tonight would be a good time to get 'em in.

Answering the phones tonight, Nancy Blake and Vicki Young.

And they're not busy, start calling.

Before we get into the night's program, you're wondering what this is.

Abi and I did a mock ag live for the Helena Montana Gardener's Special.

It was in Helena yesterday.

We had 175 people there.

It's the Master Gardener program.

It's really a great program.

And this is a little take home thing that they gave me.

But I get here today and I find out it's loaded with invasive species.

So which one is it?

- So if you are all looking at this, some of you may be able to spot this very familiar plant over here.

This is baby's breath and it's very commonly used in the floral culture industry in bouquets.

I see it all the time.

But this is a highly invasive species, right, Jane?

- It is, yeah.

It's one of those ornamentals that was brought here intentionally and escaped.

Interestingly, you know, a lot of times, it's in flower arrangements and interestingly, you often find infestations near cemeteries because the flowers are there and then they dry up and blow away and scatter their seeds.

- Yeah, and they produce thousands of seeds so they're very prolific and they do escape from those flower arrangements and end up in areas.

- So I actually predicted it was a rose that was the invasive species.

I'd have been wrong.

So with that, I want to thank the Master Gardener program up in Helena and it was really a fun day yesterday.

Back to Liz.

Liz, tell us a little bit about what you do for the Invasive Species Council.

- Well, I'm with the Montana Invasive Species Council and we are housed within DNRC, but we're one of the many councils that the legislature has created.

And we've got 22 member board made up of state agencies, MSU Extension, county and a bunch of other stakeholder groups on the council.

And we get together and coordinate on invasive species issue, make sure each other is aware of what's going on, and collaborate where we can.

And we do a lot of outreach.

We've done science advisory panels when we want to take a special look at a certain invasive species and bring in experts to guide us on what we could do about them, those things.

So we work all across the state with all our stakeholders.

- I have a question.

Explain what an invasive species is and what qualifies a plant or an animal to become an invasive species.

- Well, all of us could have maybe a different answer to that really.

- [Jack] I believe that.

Mine's coming up.

- So it's a species that maybe wasn't native to that area and has moved to that area and now has negative impacts to the native plants, animals, land, water, where it's moved into.

- Okay, that makes sense.

So I think the two biggest invasive species that this state has ever seen, number one would be winter wheat, which took over our short grass prairies and number two, cattle, which changed the environment for a lot of our native species.

Why don't they qualify?

- Well, that's a good question.

- Good question.

- Well, sometimes another part of a definition of invasive species is it's a plant or animal or an organism that is unintentionally introduced perhaps.

And once it gets a foothold, it has the ability to spread beyond where it was originally introduced.

It invades.

And it does that on its own without further assistance from human beings.

So if you think about wheat, wheat would not continue to spread across Montana if we weren't planting it.

Does that make... - You have some volunteer wheat but I mean- - Yeah, but it wouldn't persist.

It probably won't.

- Yeah, it wouldn't take over.

- Okay.

- And then cattle, I think they kind of take over a role of large herbivores in a lot of these ecosystems now that we've gotten rid of all the other large herbivores.

I'd say they do have a vital role in our range ranch now.

- I agree.

I just have to play the devil's advocate once in a while.

- We do this all the time when we talk about invasive species.

- Yeah, and I'm a ranch girl too, so yeah, I'm all for cattle, but you know, that doesn't have detrimental effects on other things and it's managed.

- Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Question left over from last week.

It has to do with garden flowers and thrips and how do you control thrips and all these garden plants?

- Yeah, so thrips can be pretty tricky among flowers.

A few things that could work because they're not very mobile, they're really tiny little cigar shaped insects.

And the fun fact for all of you is the singular of a thrips is also a thrips so that's just something fun for your dinnertime conversation.

But a few things that can help would be sanitation, clearing up the area, reducing the amount of spots for pupation and overwintering.

You can also relocate where your flowers are.

So crop rotation can be helpful.

You can use some reflective mulches.

Some of them can work in kind of preventing the thrips from pupating in the soil.

You can use some contact insecticides.

But usually using a combination of those IPM strategies like crop rotation, sanitation, cleaning up the area, monitoring.

You can monitor with blue sticky cards.

You can use other colors too, but blue I think works the best for thrips.

Using those combination of strategies can help.

Anything to add, Frank?

- No, and blue is also good because it prevents other beneficial pollinators from thinking it's a flower and sticking.

- Okay, thank you guys and that cleans up last week.

A question this week from Haver.

This person has heard about feral pigs and I wanna bring up a picture of some baby feral pigs.

Liz, how close are the Saskatchewan pigs to Montana?

- Yeah, there's feral swine in basically every Canadian province.

- Okay.

- Probably the most is in Saskatchewan.

And we used to think they're right on our border but now Canada has done a much better job of mapping where they're finding pig reports and they're not right on their border.

They're way up in the central part of the province, and they really are trying to trap and remove those wild pigs from the landscape, so.

- Let's bring that picture back up.

Believe it or not, I live halfway between Bozeman and Belgrade and my wife called me one day and said, "Look, what's in our backyard."

And there's two little pigs back there.

Our golden retrievers tried to retrieve 'em and they didn't particularly like that.

But I called the Montana Department of Livestock to report that.

That's how feral pigs get started, isn't it?

- It's one of the ways.

So basically there's three ways.

Somebody could haul pigs up from a southern state where they're running rampant to introduce 'em to Montana, they could walk down from Canada or our domestic pigs if they're let loose on the landscape and they start reproducing and are not kept, can turn into a feral state.

Grow more hair, elongated snout, that kind of thing, and become feral, so.

- [Jack] Okay.

We don't want 'em.

- No, and calling the phone number for the Department of Livestock to report them is the best thing to do.

They're really responsive to go out and check anything they get reported.

- I actually called Fish and Game to start with and they routed me to the Department of Livestock and within 20 minutes, we had somebody out going through the neighborhood seeing if we could find those hogs, baby pigs and couldn't find them.

Ironically, two weeks later they're loose again so they're obviously somebody's pets.

But what do they do with them when they get large?

Do they keep 'em or do they turn 'em loose on the Gallatin and say fend for yourself?

- That's something that happens with a lot of pets.

Could be feral swine or your goldfish in your fish tank that you no longer wanna care for, but yeah, you take care of your pigs.

- Yeah, I agree entirely.

Question for Jane.

This is a good question.

And we have one for Frank coming up too, that just popped up here.

By the way, these questions that you phone in show up on this little computer here, and I put my glasses on so I can read 'em because it's small type.

Jane, this person from Northern Montana wants to know which of the invasive plant species are you most concerned about?

- Oh yeah.

Well, there are... Gosh, the state has probably eight to 10 species that aren't here at all or they're here in very small isolated populations that we're trying to prevent from becoming more prevalent in the state because of the impacts that they could have.

I would say one of the species, and it's included on Montana Invasive Species Council's list of like 10 species to watch, is rush skeletonweed.

And rush skeletonweed is an interesting plant because it's mostly a rangeland pest in western North America, but in other parts of the world it's a big issue in crop production, especially Australia.

So there's a lot of it in the states to our west, like Idaho, Oregon, Washington.

It has a wind dispersed seed and of course our prevalent winds come from the west.

So we're seeing an increase in Western Montana, and we're really concerned about it getting into our crop producing parts of the state.

It has a yellow flower.

There's a picture of it right there, real tiny yellow flower.

The plant itself, it's a skeleton of a plant.

It's just kind of looks like a bunch of green sticks growing out of the ground.

It doesn't have a lot of leaves.

So that's a real high priority species.

It's included in the Department of Agriculture's early detection rapid response species and the state is working really hard to keep that from spreading.

We have seen it just in the last couple years move across the continental divide.

We've had some population show up on this side of the continental divide.

- So you mentioned that and you identify population, say in Broadwater County or Lewis and Clark, someplace that it hasn't been.

What do you guys do about it?

- Yeah, so that's a great question, Jack and I'm glad you said Broadwater County because last summer a plant showed up in Broadwater County along the highway.

- [Jack] Right.

- So thankfully we've done a lot of work in terms of educating and increasing people's awareness, both but also people who are professional weed managers and people are looking for this.

And it was found by the Department of Transportation and reported to the Department of Ag and they respond quickly working with local weed managers, local extension, weed districts to collectively manage the population.

This was, I think, just a single plant.

So, you know, that's pretty easy to deal with.

But we do have task forces established for some of these high priority species like rush skeletonweed, and it's a collection of people working across jurisdictions and across agencies.

Like we have to work together to have any chance of success for these invaders.

- So you find a population.

Is it responsive?

Broadwater County Weed Control takes care of that?

- They would work with like Department of Transportation.

It kind of depends where the plant is found.

This was along the highway.

If it's on private land, you know, the weed district can help with that, Extension can help with it.

And you know, the response is pretty swift and we kinda use the most effective tools we have because we don't wanna let the plants, you know, reproduce and drop seed and spread.

So you're either pulling plants or you're spraying them with a herbicide.

- All right, we'll get back some more of these because I'm learning a lot from this.

Frank, we had a question from Glen Dive and I can wholeheartedly understand this one.

They wanna know are ticks out now and is it necessary to treat your dogs to avoid these ticks?

- Yes.

You've seen our winter that we've had, which has been almost nothing.

- [Jack] Nothing.

- Ticks are active right now.

Anytime the weather is nice and you want to be outside, ticks are also out there.

So as more people go out and explore our wonderful wilderness that we have here in the state, they're active and you should treat your dogs.

- So on the invasive species, we, last year identified the tick that carries Lyme disease in the state.

Is that correct?

- [Frank] Correct.

- And that's a deer tick of some kind?

- Yes, it's a blacklegged deer tick.

- Okay.

That's an invasive species, right?

Is it on the list?

- So that's a tough one because it is native to North America and it's kind of in an area where you don't want it.

It's a hard one to truly classify as an invasive because it's on the edge.

- [Jack] Okay.

- 'Cause we can get a lot of things from Eastern United States and Eastern Montana naturally.

So it's hard to really classify it as invasive.

It might be more of a species of concern.

- Okay, that makes sense.

But, you know, but I have to give you guys a hard time or I wouldn't be doing my job properly.

A quick one from Fort Benton.

Liz, you can do this or anybody can.

Is a hackberry tree considered an invasive plant?

- I'll let you plant specialists figure that.

- So I don't think so.

I haven't seen any kind of information about hackberries being an invasive.

They're very common ornamental plant, but I don't see them really escaping that cultivation much.

Jane, have you heard anything?

- [Jane] Yeah, I would agree with that.

I've not heard of hackberry being a problem here or in other states.

- Anywhere.

- If it grows, other than maybe Russian olive which you guys got into last time, if it grows well in the state, grow it, I mean.

- Yeah, I mean we do have several, three or four invasive woody shrubs to trees.

- Which are?

- On state noxious weed list.

- Is barberry one of them?

- Barberry is not one of them but we kind of discourage people from planting it.

Well we have Russian olive.

- Right.

- Saltcedar.

- Thank you, Liz.

- And common buckthorn.

- Common buckthorn.

Yeah.

- Okay, so there are some woody species that we don't want in this.

- Yeah, they tend to be in the riparian areas, which are really critical habitats in our state.

We don't have a lot of them, but they're really critical.

- Sounds good.

Appreciate it.

Frank, this person is from Hot Springs and has an infestation of long narrow stink bugs in their new cabin.

How can you get rid of 'em?

- Well, with like all stink bugs, you're going to have to use your vacuum to get 'em outside of your house.

That's pretty much the best way.

And then preventing, so new cabin, you wanna find how they're getting into your house.

Long and narrow.

They're probably gonna be the conifer seed bugs.

So a lot of conifers last year had a lot of seed produced, so you're gonna have a huge population happening.

So preventing them coming to your house 'cause they love to aggregate over winter, so find, seal up those cracks.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Especially in a new cabin.

And that's easier said than done.

- I agree with you there.

While I have you up a quick question here.

Japanese beetles.

What's the status of the Japanese beetles in Montana and how do you deal with them quickly?

- Japanese beetle, they are only found in Billings, Montana.

They've been there since 2002.

And then you want to treat them.

Probably right now, put granular pesticide in your lawn to target the larvae.

- Sounds good.

I'm gonna alert our staff that we're gonna show some pictures.

I have a question here from Helena.

They wanna know what are some of the invasive species that we're concerned about.

Liz was thoughtful enough to bring a bunch of photos along of various invasive species.

I found some of 'em rather interesting.

But let's start with what are some of 'em?

I know the bullfrog is one of 'em.

- Yeah, we can talk about the bullfrogs.

So a lot of invasive species come from another continent, but bullfrogs are native to North America, but central and eastern North America.

They're not native to Western states but we do have a couple populations of in the Billings area and then in the Bitterroot up towards the Mission Valley, right below Polson.

And when you've got a bullfrog, they're going to eat anything they can put in their mouth and that could be mostly other frogs.

So when you have bullfrogs, you've lost all your native frogs.

They'll eat baby ducks, salamanders, So pretty hard on the other critters trying to live in that same water environment and a real problem.

- So let's keep rolling some of the other photographs that you brought in.

I mean there's snails, some plants, a little bit of everything.

And it's a good question because a lot of people don't realize what these things look like.

So let's have the rest of the pictures up and we can start talking about 'em.

- [Liz] All right.

- [Jack] There's one.

- Frank, I'll let you do this.

- Yeah.

So this is the Eastern heath snail, so this is native to Eastern Europe.

As you can see in these photos that unlike other snails native to Montana, they aggregate in warm weather on vegetation or anything really.

They love propane tanks surprisingly, but when it gets warm out, they'll aggregate on top and cluster together and that's the best way to find them.

We have some populations in Central Montana and unfortunately, Dr.

Jeff Littlefield says that they travel at 65 miles per hour because they're carried by people.

So you really don't want to move these if you see them.

- [Jack] Are they any good for escargot?

- No, they're too small.

- Pretty tiny.

- Yeah.

You might get maybe some fun nematodes, but we're not quite sure on that but I don't think you want those nematodes.

- Yeah, they're everywhere from Great Falls to Lewistown along that road and we think moved many ways.

Could be moved on propane tanks, but they like beehives, they'll climb on hay bales.

And this is the only snail that really climbs vegetation on hot days.

We have a lot of other snails that look like this snail, and this is a terrestrial snail.

It's not an aquatic snail at all.

But our native snails don't climb on vegetation and do that behavior.

- And we have seen some anecdotal evidence of being accidentally spread by ATVs and other off-road vehicles.

So if you're out in those areas, kind of.

It's almost clean, drain, dry.

Double check your stuff before you load up and take it away.

- Well, I have you guys up.

I have a question here about the mussels, the invasive.

- Zebra mussels and quagga mussels.

Yeah.

- This person says he's curious.

He's not against it.

He's curious.

How much money has been spent by the state in monitoring and- - Prevention.

- Checking boats as they come into the state.

- I don't know that number.

So the Aquatic invasive Species program is operated by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and they've been doing it since before 2017.

And really we know that prevention is the best tool to keep them out and that's why we have those boat check stations.

As you come into Montana, we want all boats to be checked.

Zebra and quagga mussels are getting closer and closer to us.

They're in North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho we know and the way they move is on things that have been in the water.

So that could be boats.

So prevention is worth it.

- I can say it's whatever money being spent on monitoring for them is about 10 times less than the cost it is to treat it.

- [Jack] Yeah, I believe that.

- Prevention is always... It's like IT.

If you have a good IT system, you don't realize there's a problem until you don't have it.

So it's like any kind of security.

The investment in preventing is always worth the cost.

- I agree.

- And the state does get federal funding to help with that program too.

It's not all state dollars.

- And there's also a lot of collaboration across the states especially the states to our west, further west.

There's concerns about like the mussels for example, getting into the Columbia River Basin and just the havoc it would cause in like hydroelectricity.

With aquatic species, once you get them, you're not really ever getting rid of them.

It's more of you're mitigating the impacts.

And I think that gets back to like what Frank was saying, the cost of mitigating impacts is 10 to 20 times higher than the cost of preventing something from getting established.

- We know those states that have infestation, spend millions, their hydropower places spend millions cleaning them off to have their dams operate properly and it can get into irrigation structures as well.

- [Jack] No.

We don't want 'em.

- Don't want 'em.

- Okay.

Quick question, Abi can answer this real rapidly.

It is from Flathead Valley.

Is it too early to plant Montana Native wildflower seed?

- It can be a combination of too early and too late.

The best time that I think to plant wildflower seed is in the fall.

And that's because a lot of those native plants need that cold period.

They need to go through like six to eight weeks at least of that cold temperature in order for them to germinate.

Some of them will germinate.

So if you plant it now, you may not see all the plants on that list emerge that first year.

So you may have to wait till next year to see all of it.

- Abi, is it possible like if they purchased seed now that that seed would've been received some sort of cold treatment so it's ready to go?

- I wouldn't count on it.

So I would say unless it specifically says that it's been cold stratified I wouldn't assume that it has been.

- Okay.

Question.

That came in from Thompson Falls.

That's a good question.

English holly is a very invasive plant in Washington and Oregon.

With global warming, they're concerned that it could become an issue here.

Is that on your potential noxious weed list or?

- It's not on our list, but it should be of concern, especially with the changing of our environment whether it could be suitable habitat here for it to grow.

I don't know if it would be.

- Yeah, so I think, you know, because of this and this winter was a classic example that a lot of these plants that people couldn't grow here 20, 30, 40 years ago are surviving winter.

So it should be on our radar.

- It's also interesting to think like holly, I don't know a lot about it, but I'm guessing it needs a little more moisture than what we might have here.

However, if you know the western- - Some of them.

- Half of Sanders County and Thompson Falls gets a lot more moisture than the rest of the state.

So yeah, the changing, definitely the but also how we might see precipitation patterns change can influence whether or not a species... We're more at risk of a species becoming a problem.

And there there is work being done where we're looking at species and trying to match where species are currently successful with the climate that is there and then looking at models for climate change to say, here's where a species could become a problem if we start moving in this direction with the changes in the climate.

- Okay, thank you.

We really don't know yet.

- We don't know, but we're trying our best.

- Okay, sounds like a plan.

Frank, there's several questions here from Bozeman, Billings, Hysham.

These people have ash in their yards and they're concerned about and have heard about the emerald ash borer.

How are we trying to prevent its entrance into the state and how close is it and what do we do once we get it?

- Well, we have a external quarantine into the state from infested areas.

So that was put into place when the federal quarantine went away in 2020.

Preventing it from getting in is how we're preventing the host material coming in.

Right now, it is in Oregon, Victoria British Columbia, it's in Manitoba.

You can see that's the emerald ash borer and the D-shaped hole on the screen.

And then we have the Dakotas and then we have the corridor from Denver to Colorado North has emerald ash borer.

- [Jane] And everywhere east.

- Yeah, and then a lot of east as well.

- So if people are seeing an ash that's struggling and they might see a D-shaped hole, who should they reach out to?

- They should contact their local extension agent, SCADA diagnostic lab and then they'll link us in from there.

But they're the first line.

If you see something, send it that way.

- It's a beautiful insect.

- It's very beautiful.

Unfortunately- - [Jack] Very devastating.

- [Frank] Devastating.

Yes.

- We have a lot of lookalike insects too that might fool people, I think.

Like shiny little green insects like that so collecting a specimen.

- Yeah, definitely collect a specimen.

And if you're not sure, it's always safer to report it.

I'd rather someone report it and I get to say it's not that versus they don't report it and it turns out to be something.

- And the other thing with emerald ash borer, one of the other ways to prevent its movement here is to not bring firewood in from out of state because it can hitch a ride on cut firewood.

- So how do you prevent that?

- Well, we are doing outreach campaigns and certainly the states that have emerald ash borer or spongy moth or Asian longhorn beetle, they're talking about don't move firewood because those things can be in firewood that's moved.

But we don't have a firewood quarantine, do we, Frank?

- We do for Dutch elm disease, I believe.

- Yeah, there are certain thing, it's certain quarantines on firewood.

So like ash firewood is quarantined, it cannot come into the state.

And there is a program, Don'tMoveFirewood.org, you might've seen some of that.

They actually work very well with the tourist board in Montana and they actually send out little flyers for people who are planning on coming to visit.

So they work across the United States to kind of educate everybody, so.

- Okay, I will point out, and Paul, our producer brought this in today and the University of Minnesota has a biological control program geared at the emerald ash borer and it's using a specific fungus to attack the emerald ash borer.

How well it will work, we don't know yet, but at least people are working on that.

Question from Facebook.

How deep should compost be applied and when is the best time to plant clover?

- So I would say if you just kind of sprinkle in compost, you can rake it in.

Having it about a quarter inch, half an inch into the soil would help and it'll slowly break down and incorporate into the soil.

In terms of planting clover, you can plant it in the spring, but I would say it's a little bit too early right now especially because if you seed it and it germinates, it's gonna be sensitive if those temperatures drop to freezing, which we are still seeing that risk is still there for the next month or two in terms of freezing temperatures possible.

So maybe wait a little bit.

Wait until May, I would say at the earliest.

- So our chokecherry in the front yard has leaves this long.

What would a temperature say 15 degrees do to damage that tree?

Would it cause a significant injury?

- Yeah, it's very dependent on the type of tree that you're looking at.

So for something that the leaves are out, 15 degrees is going to kind of scorch them.

You'll have this effect where it kind of turns like blackish, brownish and wilty.

Some plants can have more sugars in their leaves and in their buds so that they're able to withstand some of those cold temperatures.

But some of the most sensitive growth are those flowers.

And so anything that's an early flowering plant right now, especially some of our fruit trees and shrubs, that is a concern for if we do have those temperatures dip below freezing.

And there's a varying sensitivity.

So for example, like haskap or honey berry, they're some of the cold hardiest, even they're flowers but then things like grapes, they are the most sensitive.

So looking at the type of plant you have and how sensitive it is would be a good idea.

And if you're expecting those temperatures to dip below freezing, you can contact your extension agent to see if that's a plant you should worry about or maybe cover or wrap in something to try and protect it.

- Yeah, it has been an unbelievable winter.

Halfway between Bozeman and Belgrade, two inches of snow all all winter and that's not normal here.

- And I was in Corvallis this past week and collecting bumblebees and honeybees off of the fully blooming aurora variety of haskaps.

So everything's early and not according to our plans of course, but things are happening.

- Yeah, they are.

Okay, Jane, you wouldn't forgive me if I didn't let you talk about your favorite invasive plant.

- No, and Jack, you've asked me before to bring a sample of the sin.

So I brought in ventenata.

This is another species that the Montana Invasive Species Council has on their list of species to be particularly thoughtful about.

It's an invasive annual grass, so it's similar to cheatgrass, but this species is actually a little worse because it doesn't have any forage value.

It has high silica content and that silica is the same element that's in grass.

- In glass.

- Sorry, in glass.

Thank you, Liz.

And as you can imagine chewing on glass doesn't taste good or you know, it hurts their mouth.

So this plant's very difficult to identify.

I mean grasses are hard anyway, but ventenata is challenging to see and pick it out.

This plant right here in the middle, this was collected in middle of July, July 12th and this is when the plant becomes the most obvious to see.

It turns a brownish, kinda yellow blonde color and opens up the top, the seed heads open up and it becomes very obvious on the landscape.

But before that, it's kind of hard to see.

So this sample I'm showing, we went out to a population just outside of Bozeman and collected plants starting in early May.

This is May 15th, I think.

You can just see the seedling.

It's starting to elongate.

And then we went back and collected plants once a week until that plant all the way over in July.

So it is hard to identify, once it opens up, and is that yellow blonde color.

It does have seeds on it that have bent awns.

I don't know if the camera can zoom in towards the top of that plant in the middle and you might be able to see some of the bent awns.

But this is a species that started moving into Montana about 2015, 2016, rapidly spread.

We were warned about it from our neighbors in Oregon and in Idaho and it did just what they said it would do.

We had about eight or nine counties in 2018 that had reported it.

Now we're up to about 28 or 29 counties.

And we're doing a good job in terms of finding the populations when they're mostly small.

There are a couple parts of the state that have considerable, like thousands of acres infested, but it does tend to travel along the highways, kinda like the snail.

It travels at 65 miles an hour.

There's a great shot of an infestation.

This is just north of Bozeman.

This is in early to mid July.

And you can see that blonde, brownish blonde patches of ventenata growing amongst the perennial green grass that's still green in July, but that ventenata is turning that silvery blonde color.

- [Jack] Control.

- Yeah, we do have herbicides that are very effective on it.

You can't really use targeted grazing because livestock don't wanna eat it.

- You'll spread it.

- Yeah, you could be spreading it.

Mowing doesn't work so well.

It's a real thin wispy plant and it just kind of bends under the mowing deck.

No bile controls.

So right now we're focusing on finding infestations early, as early as we can when they're fairly small and treating them with herbicides.

- [Jack] Thank you.

I let you talk about ventenata.

- Thank you.

Yeah.

- Okay, from Missoula.

Are all varieties of St.

John's wort considered invasive?

I got 'em.

Thank you, Missoula.

- Yeah, no, so there's actually several native species of hypericum.

It's St.

John's wort is hypericum perforatum and I mean it's a specific species but we have native hypericums that I don't know how many species, I think it's like eight to 10.

And they are not invasive.

There may be some ornamental St.

John's worts as well.

- Yeah, there are some.

I don't know how frequently we grow them here in Montana, but there are some commonly grown ornamental St.

John's worts.

- Okay.

But yeah, the invasive St John's wort is a very, I mean it's a specific species.

- Species.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Thank you.

From Dawson County, follow up on event, but not a question.

They want to know why isn't palmer amaranth considered an invasive species?

- Yeah, so this is a challenging show.

We're talking about like differentiating why is something invasive and something else isn't, even though it might have large impacts.

So palmer amaranth is definitely high priority species for the state.

We just had a task force meeting last week about palmer amaranth.

It's a crop pest and one of the reasons it's such a challenging species to managing crop settings is because it has developed resistance to multiple modes of action.

It does not tend to move into natural areas.

You know, it stays in places where we're disturbing the soil on a regular basis.

But I will say that it is a restricted species in any seed coming into the state.

And definitely we're having lots of discussions with the Department of Ag, the seed industry, the extension, the weed districts as kind of like how to handle this species.

- [Jack] It comes in with bird seed, right?

- Yes, and we've had instances where it's been found in bird seed, so.

When Tim Seipel is on, our crop land weed specialist, I hope this person will ask the question again for Tim because yeah, we're having lots of discussions about this species.

It doesn't really display invasive tendencies in terms of being able to move a lot on its own into non disturbed areas.

But it certainly has negative impacts and will be a major problem for our crop producers in the state.

- Thank you.

We got a lot of questions.

And thank the audience out there for getting all these questions and a lot of variability in 'em and I kinda like that.

From Boulder, the caller has powdery mildew on his squash last year.

How can he prevent it this year and how long does it persist in the environment?

I wouldn't worry about it.

- No, every squash that I see ends up with powdery mildew.

But you can kind of, it's not gonna impact usually the fruit production, but you can maybe thin it out and improve that circulation.

It can reduce the severity of it, but I see it all the time.

- Okay.

I don't worry about it one bit.

You can get so much squash you can't keep up with it anyway, so no big thing.

Jane, seriously, I've had about four or five questions come about cheatgrass.

People are starting to see it.

I actually saw some fields of it yesterday coming back from Helena.

They would like to know, number one, what's the solution to cheatgrass?

Number two, they want to know if it germinates in the spring or last fall.

And number three, they want to get rid of it.

- Well, I'm gonna start with that easy question is, does it germinate in the fall or spring?

Most cheatgrass germinates in the fall and then over winters as a seedling and it's out there growing right now as soon as the temperatures are warming up.

The roots probably grew through the winter because we had such a mild winter.

You can have some germination in the spring, especially if you have a dry fall.

But most of that germinated last fall.

I think... What was the other question?

What's the solution?

- Solution or control?

- Yeah.

- 100%.

- I mean it, there's a lot of options for cheatgrass, from herbicides to targeted grazing to burning.

It just kind of depends on the setting.

Yeah, it's a complicated situation.

I mean it's a complicated scenario.

Each instance is a little bit.

You know, you kind of need to do site specific management.

But definitely like having good vegetation out there and taking care of that good vegetation to try to compete with cheatgrass is - So if you have, and I've seen some pastures, not as many as you used to see that are heavy with cheatgrass, can you control it with targeted grazing?

And is it nutrition enough that cattle... - Yeah, you can use targeted grazing.

You have to do it very carefully and very diligently.

Cheatgrass is good forage before it starts heading out.

So like between now and you know, probably for the next month to six weeks, it's decent forage.

Once it starts getting flower heads on it and developing seeds and awns, the forage quality declines and animals don't want to eat it because of those awns.

- Okay, I appreciate that.

Liz, from Missoula, this caller knows that Russian olive trees are considered invasive and you can't currently plant them but they have several large older trees on their property.

Should they remove them?

- Well they certainly could remove them if they want to.

We have a woody invasives working group that's looking at Russian olive, saltcedar and common buckthorn as problematic especially in riparian areas.

You know, and a lot of us have shelter belts that have Russian olives as one of those rows in our shelter belts.

We're not asking people to cut those down.

But when it gets into riparian areas and just changes the way we can use those riparian areas and access for wildlife or cattle to reach waterways, changing the channels, all three of those species can really be problematic.

And we have a managed statewide management plan for those three species that people can refer to now and IPM guides for each one as well.

- How do they get this information?

- The woody invasives management plans, we can find on our website.

You can call me.

It's probably the best way to find that.

But invasivespecies.mt.gov is our website.

- And we'll repeat that again before the end of the program if people missed that.

Interesting question.

Abi, this caller has raspberries.

They're invading part of her garden where she doesn't want them.

What should she do?

Could she just dig up the little starts and give them away?

- Absolutely, yeah.

Dig them up, give them away.

There will be people that will want them.

That's usually what I do.

I always have raspberries into my lawn, so.

- Alright, thank you.

Frank, from Fallon County, grasshopper forecast, and I'm sure this is a rancher because grasshoppers really do impact.

- Yeah, it's really hard.

I would say we had a lot of grasshoppers in last year's survey.

We were probably the highest of all the states that were surveyed for and we had no real winter so we're gonna have a lot of over winter survival.

And it really depends on how much moisture we get this spring.

It depends on how much it is, but I would expect a lot of grasshoppers this year.

- Yeah, I would agree with you there.

Is there still grasshopper programs with the USDA for managing populations?

- There is but funding for treatment is probably non-existent this year.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I'll keep this with you.

It's from Glen.

Anybody know where Glen, Montana is?

Where's Glen?

- South of Butte.

Between Butte and Dylan along the big hole, I think.

- All right.

Very good.

From Glen, their dog has fleas and never had that issue before.

Is this something new to Montana?

- I wouldn't say new to Montana.

I would just say it's probably because how the winter was.

They just survived a lot and maybe got into like a rodents nest or something and they just hopped right on.

- Okay.

I would agree.

Abi, a little outside your area of expertise, but I think you can handle it.

It's from Facebook.

What chemical is recommended to treat scale and spruce trees?

Are granular applications more effective than liquid applications?

So I'll let you have that.

- Yeah, so one of the things to know about scale in spruce trees is that white pine scale is the most common one.

They really like stressed trees so often their parasitoids do a really good job of controlling them.

So I don't usually like to recommend an active ingredient right away.

There are products both systemic and contact.

Contact would need to be timed as soon as the crawlers hatch.

So you'd need to do your monitoring for that.

But it is important to maybe consider those beneficials, that keep those populations under control and think about overall tree health.

So usually, I like to take a step back and think about tree health first and usually the scales themselves aren't causing significant damage to those trees.

- Okay, we're moving right along here.

Abi, question.

When's a good time to stop pruning?

- Yeah, so I think it depends on your plants growing.

So pruning has been the hot topic this spring and we are seeing a lot of new growth.

If your plants are showing any growth right now, they're pushing any foliage, do not prune those.

They're putting all their energy into that new growth and pruning can set them back pretty significantly in terms of if your plants are still dormant, those can still be pruned now.

But yeah, so if they're showing any growth, don't prune them.

In terms of how to prune them, a good thing to keep in mind is you don't wanna tear those branches off.

So you wanna use sharp tools, you wanna sanitize in between pruning cuts.

You can use loppers or pruners that you see in this picture here.

Bypass pruners are the best.

And if it's a branch that's over an inch and a half in diameter, then you'd wanna use a saw and you can for that saw, use a three cut method and you make that first cut just about an inch on the underside of the branch that you see there and then you make your second cut after.

And what that does is as you cut that branch off, it's not gonna tear through the bark and pull it right into the trunk.

So you're creating a nice cleaning cut and then you clean that up and you create a nice little section where the tree can compartmentalize.

- Good to know.

- Nice.

- Thank you By the way, you look pretty good doing that.

- Yeah.

You make it look easy.

- I have some trees at home.

- We could do the next pruning demo at your house.

- Okay, sounds good.

From Gallatin Valley, caller is really enjoying Liz on the panel.

Please have her on again.

Comments, if they're favorable, I'll air.

If not, uh-uh.

Jane, it's a good question.

Controlling spurge, can you do it with things other than herbicides and let's expand that, some other noxious weed.

- Yeah, so like leafy spurge has been a noxious weed in Montana for decades and it's one of those species that has had a lot of research done on it and a lot of tools developed to deal with it, including biological control.

So we have biological control available.

You can use targeted grazing like with sheep or goats.

You can mow it.

You can spray it.

There's a lot of different options.

One thing, so leafy spurge is also one of those species that you should try everything because it's such a successful invader that you're probably not going to have a lot of success with any single tool.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So you know, the integrated management is very important, including cultural control, like making sure you have competitive vegetation there.

So I think it's also important to have reasonable expectations with leafy spurge.

Kind of the rule of thumb is that if you've had a population of leafy spurge present at a site for more than five years, it has such an established root system that you'll probably never completely get rid of it.

You'll always be managing it to some level.

And the trick is really to keep it contained and to keep it below a level that like you can live with some of it.

- Okay, quick question, short answer.

Chemicals to control cheatgrass - In the fall, you could use a product that contains Imazapic.

I should have started with spring 'cause that's where we are right now.

You can spray it with a glyphosate at like four to six ounces per acre like right now.

The next warm sunny day we have- - Over 60 degrees.

- Get out there and treat it.

As the other vegetation starts turning greener and coming out of dormancy, you don't wanna use glyphosate because it's non-selective.

And then you're really looking at either a midsummer to to fall application of either Indaziflam which is sold as Rejuvra or Imazapic sold as Plateau or Panoramic.

- Thank you.

Darren Boss called in and he has a question for Abi.

What tomato varieties would you recommend for his greenhouse?

Preferably one that doesn't get blossom-end rot.

- So blossom-end rot is usually more common on more elongated varieties of tomatoes and that's because it takes, it's a slightly different process for moving that calcium during fruit production.

So rounder or cherry tomatoes.

Cherry tomatoes don't get blossom-end rot as frequently or rounder tomatoes but if you get the Romas or the more elongated tomatoes, they're more susceptible to blossom-end rot.

- Can you supplement it with calcium?

- Usually that's not the issue.

The calcium's usually plentiful, but it's the inconsistent watering that's moving the calcium.

That's usually the issue with blossom-end rot.

- Okay.

Question for Liz.

What are you most concerned about from an invasive species standpoint?

- I think I'm most concerned about what we don't know is out there that could be heading our way.

- Yeah.

- You know, invasive species are gonna be part of our lives always.

We are mobile people, we've got things moving around all the time.

We just don't know what the next thing is.

So I think just like making sure we take care to clean our gear, don't move seeds.

And sometimes we don't know what's gonna become invasive.

'cause we've got like things we planted as ornamentals that were okay back in the day but now we've discovered, oh there are impacts there.

So just being aware that things could change and once you know better we gotta do better.

- Okay, we got about 30 seconds left before I close this program out.

This person wants to know the seeds that require freezing.

Could you do that in a refrigerator?

- Yeah, you could put your seeds in a refrigerator for the cold stratification.

Aim for like eight to 10 weeks.

- Okay, thanks, everybody.

It was great.

Liz, enjoyed it.

We learned a lot tonight.

I always enjoy a program where I learn a lot and I did so thank you for being here.

Frank, as always, you do a great job.

Jane, thank you for bringing the cookies again.

Abi, yeah, it'd be great to have you here.

Next week, Patrick Mangan, who is a county agent up in Polson on a flathead reservation, will join us.

See you next week.

Goodnight.

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