By Andrea Sarchet

Madison-Jefferson County Extension Agent

As a result of the success of the first Master Gardener class which was held in Whitehall earlier this spring, I have determined that there is enough interest to offer the same course in Twin Bridges.  This is where I need your input. I plan to start the class the week of October 26^th. I would like to know if students who plan to take the class would prefer:

1.       * One class per week (2 hours) for eight weeks or two classes per week (4 hours total) for four weeks.

2.        The days of the week I am planning for are Tuesdays and/or Thursdays.  If there is a preference for other days of the week, I would like to know that as well.

3.       Preferred time of day, either 2:00-4:00 pm or 5:30-7:30 pm   

* If the course is 2 classes/week, the dates would be October 26 – November 18.  If the course is 1 class/week, the dates would be October 26 (or October 28) – December 14 (or December 23 because we would skip the November 25^th class). 

Even if you are not interested in becoming an official “Master Gardener”, I would like to know if you would like some formal instruction on the basics of gardening and horticulture.  Below is a brief overview of the program as well as a description of the Level 1 course.  The cost for the level one course is $115, with $50 being refunded after fulfilling a 20-hour volunteer commitment.  The class fee covers a textbook, “The Montana Master Gardener Handbook”, facility fees and other handouts provided throughout the course.     

How does the program work? 
Montana State University Extension staff, State Extension Specialists, and local gardening professionals teach a series of classes to train students in research-based home horticulture practices. There are three levels to the Master Gardener Program. The eight-session, Level 1 Master Gardener course will teach basic yard and garden installation and maintenance. Level 2 is an advanced Master Gardener course for those that have prior gardening knowledge and/or experience. The Level 3 Master Gardener course will be an intensive three day training on the Montana State University campus available the summer of 2011.

Classroom participation enhances your educational experience as students are encouraged to network and share their own experiences, thereby also learning from each other.  While not mandatory, it is recommended that students have internet access in order to use some class materials.  Upon completion of your training, you will receive a certificate and be asked to volunteer community service time through the Montana State University Extension Service or other community activities.
Level 1 Master Gardener:
This eight-session course (16 hours) will be taught by the local Extension agents, plant professionals, volunteers or via Adobe Connect and the Internet. During the beginning of the Level 1 Master Gardener course you will receive the Montana Master Gardener Handbook and other informative handouts pertaining to the class. In the Level 1 Master Gardener course you will learn about:

• Montana State University Extension and the Master Gardener Program
• Soils, nutrients and fertility
• Plant growth and development
• Growing vegetables
• Annual, Perennial and Biennial Flowers
• Trees, shrubs, vines and pruning
• Lawns and irrigation
• Small fruit and fruit trees
• Composting
• Integrated pest management (IPM)

Following completion of the Level 1 Master Gardener course, you will be required to pass an open-book exam with 80% or higher and fulfill your volunteer commitment of 20 hours of volunteer commitment. The cost, time and location will be determined by the county Extension agent or Master Gardener coordinator.

Please contact Andrea Sarchet at 287-3282 or asarchet@montana.edu if you are interested in enrolling in this course and with any questions or feedback about this program. 

Andrea Sarchet

Madison-Jefferson County Agent

MSU Extension

If you’re wondering why your ash, cottonwood, willow or other deciduous tree has not leafed out this year, there may be a fairly simple answer. While there could be a number of different things affecting tree health, this year I have seen an uncommonly large number of trees that suffered from severe winter damage.  It is mostly due to the extreme temperature change that we experienced early last fall in which a warm October day quickly turned to below zero temperatures. Many of the trees didn’t have a chance to prepare for winter – a process we call hardening off. Add to it the late frosts and cool weather we had in our area this spring and it is no wonder the trees are struggling. It’s likely that some trees are not going to make it. However, it is a waiting game. If the trees have not leafed out, there are often times axillary or secondary buds that will form new leaves.  You may see a clump of small branches at the base of your tree or coming off the trunk or other main branches. This is your trees way of trying to make up for lost time and gather as much sunlight as quickly as possible.  I would recommend not pruning these branches or water sprouts out even though they may look a little strange.  If your trees haven’t produced buds this year, use a pocket knife to cut into the branches to see if the vascular tissue is alive. If it is green, it’s alive. If it’s brown, it’s dead. If you find that the tree still has green vascular tissue, the tree may survive. MSU Extension Horticulture Specialist, Toby Day recommends waiting until next spring before pruning or even cutting down the tree if there is a chance it could survive. However, if it hasn’t leafed out this year, you should probably make plans to have it replaced next spring.

This is also a good time to remember that proper tree watering is essential throughout the year.   To help your trees along and increase their chances of coming back next year, water them more than you would regularly.  This means a deep watering at least once or twice per week depending on how much additional precipitation your trees have received. Trees should be watered to a depth of 16-20 inches. The amount of water to apply in any situation depends on the soil type. Sandy soils absorb water the fastest (about 2" per hour), followed by loam soils (3/4" per hour). Clay soils have the slowest absorption rate (1/2" per hour). By allowing water to penetrate deeper into the soil profile you are encouraging deeper rooting and a more drought tolerant plant. Frequent, light irrigations will lead to plants that have a shallow root system and that are more prone to water stress.  When watering, be sure to water in the proper location.  For large trees this is not at the base of the trunk.  You should step back from your tree and look at your tree as if it’s an umbrella. Envision an imaginary line that extends from the farthest reaching branches down vertically to the ground.  It is at this circumference that you should water your tree and it’s best if you can water in two or three locations along that circumference.  In the fall it is important to harden off your deciduous trees. To do this, begin to decrease watering in August and continue until the leaves fall off the deciduous trees.  In late fall but before the ground has frozen, give your trees another deep watering.  During the winter months, water deeply when we have days above 50 degrees.  Feel free to contact me with any questions about your trees at 287-3282 or asarchet@montana.edu

 

 

BOZEMAN - Montana State University plant pathology specialists say weather conditions in Montana are ideal for late blight, the disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, and they urge home gardeners to watch for signs of the disease on tomatoes and potatoes in home gardens to inhibit its spread to commercial crops. 

"Gardeners should be aware that conditions have been ideal for the late blight disease over much of Montana the past few weeks," said Barry Jacobsen, MSU plant pathologist and Extension specialist.

Jacobsen explained that the disease is favored by temperatures in the 60s to 80s with frequent rains and heavy dews, and it can be devastating to both tomatoes and potatoes.  

The first symptoms of the disease are small, dark, circular to irregularly shaped lesions commonly occurring first on lower leaves, although under epidemic conditions all leaves may be infected.  Jacobsen said the lesions will expand rapidly to large dark brown spots with a pale green to yellow water-soaked border. On a cool damp morning there may be a white, velvety mold growth visible on the underside of these leaf spots, he said.  Lesions can also occur on stems, usually where infected leaves attach to the stem. 

"Plants can be totally blighted and killed in a week’s time if cool wet conditions prevail," Jacobsen said. "This disease is quite uncommon in Montana, but the weather conditions for the past month have been near ideal."

There are no resistant varieties available to homeowners and the only control is to spray plants with a fungicide such as maneb, zineb, mancozeb or chlorthalonil on a weekly basis, Jacobsen advised. The fungicides are available at garden stores under a wide variety of names.

Jacobsen said heavily blighted plants should be removed and disposed of in the trash.  Spores of the late blight fungus are rain splashed or blown in wind currents from infected tissues and can go many miles.

Jacobsen said the source of infection will most likely be infected potato seed or tomato transplants brought into Montana from other states.  Potato seed and tomato transplants produced in Montana should be free of this disease.

Jacobsen advised that the presence of late blight could threaten Montana’s seed potato industry. 

"It is critical that home gardeners control this disease since their infected plants could provide inoculum to our commercial seed production fields located primarily in the Gallatin and Flathead valleys," Jacobsen said. He added that commercial growers are already scouting for this disease and applying preventative fungicide sprays.

The late blight fungus caused the Irish potato famine in the mid 1840s and is responsible for much of the Irish immigration to the USA during that time.

From MSU News Service

Nitrogen is important for optimal crop production, but it can be lost to leaching as nitrate. High amounts of nitrate in drinking water can be harmful to people, especially infants and pregnant women. While most groundwater in Montana has nitrate levels below the drinking water standard, the Montana Department of Agriculture has found high nitrate levels in certain areas of the state including parts of northeastern and central Montana.

Fortunately, “there are management practices that can help keep the nitrogen in the soil and out of the water,” said Clain Jones, Extension soil fertility specialist in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences (LRES) at Montana State University.

In Montana, nitrate leaching from dryland agriculture is thought to be insignificant during the growing season because plant uptake of water generally greatly exceeds precipitation, preventing downward movement of water. However, in fall and winter the opposite is true, resulting in increased potential for nitrate leaching. In addition, overwinter organic matter decomposition can add soluble nitrogen to the soil, increasing the amount of soil nitrate available to be leached. This is not only a health concern, but a direct financial loss to the producer.

Shallow or sandy soils or those with cracks that connect the surface to below the root zone have high leaching potential. High precipitation can exacerbate the problem. Jones and Chengci Chen, associate professor at the Central Agricultural Research Center in Moccasin, found that in a wet winter, soil nitrate levels decreased by up to 25 pounds of nitrogen per acre from fall to spring. Actual nitrogen lost to leaching was likely higher because soils at this site can gain up to 40 pounds of nitrate per acre from organic matter decomposition over the winter. This suggests a total of up to 65 pounds of nitrogen per acre could leach into groundwater from shallow soils.

Annual soil testing and realistic yield goals should both help producers calculate fertilizer rates and reduce nitrate leaching, since unused available nitrogen is subject to overwinter loss. In the study at Moccasin, there was no change in nitrate from fall to spring on fields that received 40 pounds of nitrogen per acre the previous year, while fields that received 120 pounds per acre lost more than 25 pounds of nitrogen per acre. The higher fertilization rate left more residual nitrogen in the soil, which was lost most likely to leaching over the winter. This illustrates that either the crops use it, or you can lose it.

“Recropping, rather than fallow, and reduced tillage both help reduce nitrogen losses,” said Jones.

Upendra Sainju and associates with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service compared the estimated initial soil nitrogen level in 1983 to the 2004 level from a plot study near Culbertson, in eastern Montana. The spring-tilled wheat-fallow rotation lost an average 26 pounds more nitrogen per acre each year than spring-tilled continuous wheat. The twice-tilled (fall and spring) continuous wheat rotation lost an average 14 pounds more nitrogen per acre per year than the no-tilled continuous wheat, which had the lowest average annual nitrogen loss of 8 pounds nitrogen per acre. While it is not known what fraction of that nitrogen was lost to leaching rather than erosion or volatilization, leaching loss is likely, given the coarse soils at that study site.

Planting a diversity of crops, including perennials and deep rooted crops, such as alfalfa, sunflower and wheat, or a winter crop, helps ensure readily available nitrogen is used and harvested or held on site as plant biomass.

Jones suggested planting annual legumes for seed or forage because “they are good scavengers of available nitrogen and they do not need nitrogen fertilizer as long as sufficient phosphorus, potassium, sulfur and the correct inoculants are available for nitrogen fixation.”

Jones also noted “spacing crops for optimal density and yields will optimize resource use, and decrease potential for nitrogen leaching.”  For example, Chen found spring wheat had a higher efficiency of nitrogen fertilizer use at 6 inch row spacing than at 12 inch spacing.

Ideally, conventional nitrogen fertilizer is applied right before the plants need it most, which is from seedling to tillering stages in cereal grains and seedling to early branching in oilseeds.

“This can be followed by in-crop fertilizer topdress applications based on plant demand or growth stage, rather than calendar date,” said Jones. “By using such split applications, there is less potential for over fertilizing during a dry year, because nitrogen applied is based on the current year’s growing conditions. That leaves less unused nitrogen in the soil to be subject to leaching.

“There are also advances in fertilizer and application technology that help increase the amount of applied fertilizer actually used by the crop, which decreases the amount of fertilizer susceptible to leaching,” said Jones.

Enhanced efficiency fertilizers slowly release their nutrients over time. Recovery of nitrogen fertilizer by wheat has been found to be 4 to 14 percent higher with one of these slow release products than conventional urea.

“These deserve consideration, especially as the price difference compared to conventional urea fertilizers decreases,” said Jones. “But, timing of application is a little different than with conventional fertilizer,” he cautioned.

Variable rate application is another tool to help ensure nitrogen is applied where it is needed most and not in places where it will be lost. By identifying areas in the field that are limited by factors other than nitrogen, the producer can limit nitrogen leaching loss by applying just enough nitrogen to meet that area’s production potential. By using available technology and management practices, producers can make sure their fertilizer dollars are spent feeding a crop, rather than lost to leaching, and can help reduce the potential for nitrate contamination of ground water.

 

Feb. 25...Rancher Roundtable at noon in Sheridan at the Episcopal Church Fellowship Hall. Clain Jones, MSU Extension Soil Fertility Specialist, will speak about fertilizer guidelines and pasture nutrient management. Jones will show yield, protein, and economic responses of fertilizing pasture and hay, as well as the benefits of soil testing to determine fertilizer rates.

This workshop is FREE to the general public and includes a meal sponsored by Grow Tech Management. Please RSVP so we can plan for enough food by noon, Feb. 23, by calling the Extension Office at 287-3282 or Cleve at 684-5678.