Dakota Growing
Dakota Growing Ep. 40 - Fire Blight & April Showers
(soft music) - Welcome to Dakota Growing. I'm Kelsey Decker, your horticulture agent here in Burleigh County. Joined in the radio access studio by my co-host, Tom Call, the NDSU Extension Horticulturalist. How's it going? - Oh, it's okay, I guess. - Week after the fourth. It's going okay. - Yeah, oh, it's okay, it's one to eat. Everybody's well-rested. Ready to, well, there's beautiful, ready to have a great show today. Great, great show to talk about all the misery happening in our gardens right now, 'cause that's, you know, that's what we're all about, with extension people, you know. Nobody ever invites me and see, Tom, you gotta come look at my lawn. It's so beautiful. Yeah, I'll go, Tom, what the heck's wrong with my tree? You gotta come out here and save it. So I just feel like I'm a, like an ambulance guy, kind of always running around trying to look at sick things. - Phone was ringing, I said it's almost like a vet office around here. I got my vet texts that are asking the initial questions. - Right, well, money's always the worst because they had the whole weekend to notice a problem in their yard. - Well, I was hoping most people would have been at the lake, you know, doing all the 4th of July festivities, like give the yard a break type thing. - Well, there's not that many lakes in North Dakota, so. - No, but there's a lot that people occupy the ones that there are. - Right, and I've never really been to the lake so much in North Dakota. But yeah, but money's generally are the worst 'cause that's just my experience, especially money mornings 'cause people wanna, they fall like their leaves are dropping on their tree and they just, you know, they're concerned. - Lots of rain again. - Yeah, it keeps coming. But now it's, sorry, it's big, it is turned off now. Sorry, looks. - Are you gonna talk about that later? - North Dakota right now looks like, so you know what, it's been really moist and a little bit moderate in temperature. - Yeah. - A little cool. But now it looks like it's gonna get really warm now and I saw no rain in the next 10 days for bismarck me and Dan. So it looks like the heat of the summer's coming now. - Yeah, I was telling Quinn, our producer, before we started that on the 4th, we had like a monsoon at our place. It was like two inches under an hour. - Yeah, right in the morning. - No, it was afternoon. - Oh, yeah. - It was afternoon. We actually were gonna go for a little horseback ride, literally drove the horses to where we were gonna ride. I didn't even get up on my horse, just down-port and then a down-port for about an hour straight and our corrals like flooded, I'm like, man, never seen this much happen out at our place where the water was just running. - We were in the sweet spot. - I think that was a good lord just saying, you know, it's a holiday for your horse. You gotta steal that horse, let it rest. What do you run? What do you sit on top of a poor old horse for? So sometimes I think the lord does manipulate the weather for certain reasons and maybe that was the case this time. That's just my thought, I could be wrong about that. But you know about that, I was thinking about that moisture too because like, it's been so long, it's really growing. - Strongest spring. - Yes. - And usually, like we always say, okay, you gotta fertilize the lawn and labor on Labor Day around and then Memorial Day. But then like 4th of July, it's like an optional one. But I was thinking like, you know, this year that it could be a good year because we've got so much rain so that fertilizer kinda leeches out a little bit and there's been a lot of growth. So if someone, usually I'm low maintenance guy and I wouldn't, I just would not do it but other people are higher maintenance. If you did like organic fertilizer that wouldn't burn the turf, you know what I mean? But not, so it could be done off. You really care a lot for your lawn. But now again, here we go. It's gonna change now. - Yeah. - The weather's gonna change. So maybe like in 10 days your lawn's gonna kind of be dragging along there. So 'cause it doesn't like the heat. But we'll just have to see what happens. A lot of things, it's always dynamic. Every year is a little bit different. - Mm-hmm, very much. - So what are you gonna highlight today? - Oh, I'm gonna start off on a positive lawn. - Well, why are you gonna do that? - Well, you talk about nobody wanting to show off their yards or anything and you know what? - But you got a lawn, you got some to show off. - I got, you know what? Shout out to my grandma to start. - Okay, there we go. - Yeah, she, a couple of weeks ago, my grandpa got an honorary award out in Glenolin and we were leaving and my grandma called and she goes, "You just gotta pull in really quick. I just gotta show you something." So I was thinking, "Okay, what tree's not looking good?" - Oh, really? - And then she showed me her front yard here and just, she said she did nothing. Looks wonderful. And these pictures don't even, I mean, this picture doesn't even do it justice. I took some close-ups of it, but she told me, I know rule number one, but she's gonna collect some seed for me and I'm gonna give it a whirl at my place, so. - Okay, so like she has a large sprit there. - Yeah. - Yup, and then like white daisy looking. - Not even though. - Like she has the daisies or cosmos. - Not cosmos. - They're not cosmos. - No. - Gotta get close up there. - Yeah. - But cosmos look a lot like daisies and they get that tall and they're really easy to grow and you can see, see from cosmos if you want. - Yeah, yeah, and then she got that hanging basket. That's in the picture too, but yeah, it just, it looks very nice, very, very nice. And then I had another gardener. You see that bouquet in the middle? He brought that into our office, grows roses. - Didn't you tell him you're married? (laughing) - He's just showing off his roses. - Oh, he's not coming into that. - How great his roses are. And he said that, and he did show me the picture. I didn't include it, but he showed me a picture. It's right in his front yard. And he said for several years, he had a gentleman who would come by and take photographs, but he's just got abundance of color down there. And again, the photos don't do it justice, but big roses, these deep purple just, I don't know, they were just gorgeous. Very good. - Oh, he looks great too. - Yeah. - No disease there. That's kind of-- - Good disease. - That's kind of nice. I like that big color he got that. - Mm-hmm. - It almost looks like a double delight. - He had another one in the bouquet. It's behind the big purple one. That's kind of like a light pink, kind of double color as well. But I don't know exactly the varieties. I was very intrigued by the deep purple on him. - Yeah, you don't see that very often with roses. - No. - A dark, deep purple. - Yeah. - So that's, and those look like hybrid teas from the quality of the bloom. They're pretty big and showy and-- - They're just beautiful. - Maybe a drink of flora. - Maybe a drink of flora. - Terry Goss. - That'd have been so negative all the time. We gotta start off on a positive note. - That's a mean, sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, well, that's not easy growing hybrid teas like that in North Dakota. - No, that's what I hear. - The winter protection's pretty important to a-- - Mall Trae. - Oh yeah, you gotta protect them, you gotta-- And you go, I think one of the biggest keys is you gotta plant them deep to begin with. You gotta have that crown-- - Protected. - At least four inches in the ground, just bury that sucker, or not a sucker. Shouldn't even say that 'cause I kinda don't-- Just bury that plant and then you gotta give it winter protection for hybrid teas that is. You know, there's other hardy roses out there like shrub roses. It's like for roses, I like to get ones that are on their own roots. So that way, if they do die back, they'll spring up with the same type of quality as the top the scion was. So I look for only root roses. Not unless I grafted roses. Grafted roses, like most hybrid teas are grafted. And if they die back to the crown, you're just gonna get the-- - They're done. - Well, they're just gonna have a wild rose root stock come up after that, but that would be cool. - It inspired me to want to try roses, but you know, like-- - You're gonna grow roses now? - I talk about my place and there's no tree protection. So I'm like-- - No tree protection? - Am I, you know, like our winters, that's a lot of exposure. So am I setting myself up for failure, disappointment, trying to grow like these nice hybrid teas that I would want, I would want that purple one. I just, I love that purple one. - So-- - I have to say, I think the best thing about a hybrid tea, the one thing special about it is the fragrance on some of them. - They were very frag, right? - See, that's what you don't get with the shrub rose. Shrub roses, like for you, it sounds like you lack confidence in your situation. So maybe a shrub rose would be like, you gotta learn your ABCs before you learn calculus. Shrub roses are dark purple. I'm not aware of any, but there may be like one. - I'm gonna have to go research now. - Just like, it's very rare for shrub roses. Almost shrub roses, there's a lot of pink among shrub roses. - Yeah. - But actually, they come in all kinds of colors and others. I mean, it's really been exploding in the last 20 years as far as the colors, but a deep dark purple, I'm not aware of any, but the shrub roses, they lack fragrance, they're easy to grow, but they just don't, they don't still, if people say, if you smell it and you smell something, it's really imaginary, you just imagine you smell it. There's almost no fragrance and almost all of them. That's the only disappointment. Hybrid tees are great for fragrance, but they're just so tricky. - So how about I tried in a raised bed, does that help my odds? - No. - No? - Sorry, well it improved drainage, but the promise, anytime you raise the plant up, you could be exposing the roots to more cold temperatures, which is the roots are the most sensitive part of the plant to a cold temperature, so if you do do a raised bed, you have to heavily mulch the rose. But you know what, there's only one way to find out and have to try it. - That's right. - Go for it. - If I had like a permanent structure on my place that I knew like, hey down the road, I'm not gonna, you know, build a new house, but that's kind of the goal, so it's like-- - Like how much land you got there? - A lot. - So like you can't find like a little plot of land that you know you're not gonna build a house on. - Well, I just, I wanna increase my chances of protection. So I feel like if I would have, you know, if I'd plant it and then I would be able to eliminate some of that Northwest wind, that would increase my-- - Well, hybrid tea, you're burying it. - Just burying it every fall. - Yeah, what you do is you, okay, you're gonna, you'll cut it, you won't cut it back. You won't cut it back. What you'll do is you're gonna have about, you'll have your canes and then what you gotta do is you'll like heap amount of soil over it. Like about say eight, 10, 12 inches of soil or compost. And then you're gonna put leaves over it or straw on it. And you got lots of straw, so that's, I bet it could go from those horses and stuff. So I'm sure you can try and like what they do, like I remember when I was in Wisconsin, I was at the Milwaukee Rose Garden, Botanical Garden. And these, like you have a bed of roses and it's all, you know, got wood chip mulching, all shredded bark mulching. And then what they do is they put like chicken wire around it, the whole bed. - And just fill it. - And they just, yeah, you top a little soil on top of the crown of each. And then you fill it with like shredded leaves or straw is even better 'cause it won't mat down. But yeah, since you got straw, that'd be great. - Give it a try. - Yeah, but you gotta, but first thing, gotta bury that plant deep. You gotta get that crown deep. Otherwise you're gonna have problems. That's the whole key. - Okay, I might try it. - You can do a sunny spot. Best is the east facing location where it gets the morning sun, sunny spot. And you gotta have access to moisture. It's gotta have, gotta, you're gonna, they like to drink those roses. - They're heavy drinkers. - Okay. - There you go, you can do it. - If I get, if I get some-- - You can bring them in. - You can bring them in. - I'll bring them in. Give me a couple of years here to give it a try. - Okay, that's a challenge. - All right, we'll go negative then. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, go through it. - No, we'll go ahead and start. - Oh, here you are with the negative. - Yeah, the fire blight. - The fire blight, we talk about this every year. And just to recap, you know, it does affect our plants and the Rossaya family. We also see it on Rousebury, Servicebury, Hawthorne, and Katoni Astor. So I'd say I've been starting to get quite a bit of fire blight come through the office. How about you? Any calls? - Yeah, well any time I get a photo of a pear, I automatically think it's probably fire blight. - Yeah. - So it's the number one killer of pears. And it's fairly common on apples and crab apples. - That's where I usually see it. - Yeah, that's right. - Yeah, it's, and also I'm prunus. You didn't mention that, but. - Sorry, I didn't. - But no, but I'm just saying like, I never, I really didn't think about that before, but actually I sent some photos to a scientist in Utah. And he taught me that the prunus can get it too. Like I once saw him, I thought it was plums. It was a choke cherry. - That's right. - And I said this choke cherry, well, wow, I didn't like it fire blight until this year, but it does and, but it's a rare goal. - But that fire blight's all over the place. - Yeah. - That's a bottom line. And you see the tips. - Well, that's what we're gonna talk about, the symptoms. So your flowers, they're gonna appear water-soaked. They'll droop, they'll shrivel. They'll turn black or brown. Leave same thing. They're gonna turn brown or black and bend in that downward hook shape that we call the shepherd's crook. You know, big thing is, is like we've talked in the past. Kind of looks like somebody went in with like a propane torch and scorched like a branch or two. And then even your bark will be discolored and it can use, ooh, excuse me. So big thing is, it's like this year, people always wanna know how does it survive? How does it spread this year? Lots of ways. I mean, with as much rain as we've been getting, irrigation, it can spread, infected tools. So if you're pruning and you're not cleaning those pruners in between cuts, insects can go ahead and spread it. And then how does it survive? It's gonna survive in those cankers on the trunk and branches in the spring. It's gonna multiply during that wet warm. Whether that, especially we've been having in that bacteria seeps out of those natural openings. So there's some pictures. This one's really good to see that even, it's a little bit tougher on our end, but hopefully the viewers can see it. Even the fruit is affected on this one. You can see it's sporadic in there, kind of within the area. You can even see the discoloration of the bark on this tree. And then here's kind of a close-up. Again, you can see that turning of the color, the discoloration of the branch, and even that's starting to downward shape on it as well for that one. So it's around. - Yeah, like what you said about, like a propane towards, scorched the chips. I didn't even heard that before, but that's a good description of what it looks like on the tips of the branches. - Yeah. So how do we manage this? Well, first and foremost, try to find more resistant varieties out there. You wanna prune out the infection at least eight inches below that canker. And like I said, let's sterilize those pruners in between cuts. And then there are some pesticides available that, again, aren't a curative, but they are gonna help prevent the spread of it throughout the tree. So usually when I talk to people about fire blight, you know, I always talk to them about, once you have it, it's about managing it, not carrying your tree or getting rid of it, 'cause you will not do that. You can manage it within your tree. - Manage is one word. I would say amputate it. You've got to cut it out. - Yeah. - There is no, once you've got it, you've got to-- - You've got to manage it from spreading so fast. - Management is not, that is so soft. It's like, you've got to cut it out. - That's a good Eastwood coming out. - You've got to, it's like a civil war leg. You've got to cut it off. - It's got the gangry. - That's right, because it's in the wood. - Yeah. - It's in the wood, you can't spray it a cure. Like I said, you've got to cut it out. So that's right, tell my kids all the time, cut it out. What? - So question is like, what about cutting it out? You've got to go eight inches below where you see the symptoms. At least, at least, like two feet's better. And you're going to-- - Just take down the tree. - What else is going on? (laughing) That's going to start all over. All right, it's so negative now. - Sometimes you have to tell people that though. Sometimes they have it very bad within the tree that if you really love apples, you know, is this a problem you want to endure every year? Or do you want to restart? - I've had-- - Got to let it go, huh? - Yeah. - Like that frozen movie, like that song, "Let it Go." It's one of my favorites. So, okay, listen, here's a key point to our, are we done with Fireblade? - You've finished, okay. - Okay, I've got to finish. I've got a few important things I've got to say here about managing it, or amputating it. Okay, when is the operation? When do we amputate it? That's the first question. Because if you amputate it now-- - You're going to spread it. - There's a great risk, 'cause you're making a wound when you make the cut, and it's every bacteria needs a wound and water to infect, okay? So that's why a lot of times, especially in the past, we just say, okay, just let it just calm down. It's not good. But let's wait until the dormant season, let's just chill until December. And then we'll prune out infected tips, again, going several inches back. And then, since it's the dormant season, we're not likely to spread the disease on our pruners, okay? So we don't have to sterilize our pruners between cuts, okay? So that's the dormant season approach. The other approach is people are going to look this up. It's called the ugly stub approach. And that's where you don't wait to the dormant season. And you go, okay, I'm going to take you, you've got a bad disease. I'm going to operate today on you. And so you cut it out like you did before. Again, like, I think at least eight into, like you see eight, but be aggressive, 24 inches back, 'cause you would better take out the whole branch. But leave a stub. You leave a stub of like, it's got to be two or three year old wood, it's got to be four inches. And what happens is if you didn't get all the bacteria, it will coagulate in that stub. And then you take out the stub in the winter time. Like you can like spray paint the stub with some fluorescent paint or something, so you can see it in the winter, so you know where that gets stubbed out. But again, anytime you stare, anytime you prune during the growing season, you've got to sterilize like Lysol disinfectant or rubbing alcohol or a 10% pleat solution between each cut. Otherwise you're just burning the disease. So it's kind of like you say, it's a tricky one, there's no, it's a hard one. But I kind of like that ugly stub, 'cause if I had cancer or something, I wouldn't tell the doctor wait 'til Christmas to operate. I would say-- - We'll take that tumor out, right? - Let's go like you got. What are you doing for lunch? I know it's how about you skip lunch and take out my cancer as soon as you can. So I'm kind of more of that towards, but you got to leave a stub and sterilize between cuts. - There you go, that's a hard one. - Yeah, it is. - So make sure you call your county extension agent and we'll give you all the details on how to handle it. If you have more questions. - Very good. All right, let's talk about-- - And that's streptomycin, forget streptomycin for home ownersets. You know, that's a preventative that only orchardists use after a hailstorm. This hail is how most hail, and also it's kind of interesting, hail when the battery enters through the flowers. Most likely, so that's where the openings are. Bacteria has to find an opening. They can't treat, they can't dig in. They have to just flow in. So flowering is the type. You've got a hail storm and flower and your trees are flowering. That's an orchardist gulky. We might use some streptomycin. But for home owners, that's way too complicated. That's my opinion as an orchardist as a family orchard guy. - You would know, you would know. - A little bit. - Yeah. - Well, what are the second disgusting things? - We're gonna talk about bugs. We're gonna talk about it. - Okay, destroy them. - Yup, I'm gonna hit disease, bugs, weeds today. - Great, can't wait. - Honey locusts, plant bugs. - Cool. - So this is kind of an interesting one, at least I find it interesting. And what I find interesting is that these symptoms resemble herbicide injury. So those leaves are gonna be small. They become twisted, dwarf-like. And then if you look at the underside of the leaves, again, you have to be like inspector gadget to wanna notice these things, I feel like, small, shiny varnish droppings on the underside of the leaves. So this next one's just gonna show you the plant and like the plant, excuse me, the bug in an adult stage and then again, you're seeing that new growth on this honey locusts looking like there was herbicide injury. It's- - Like the leaves are all cupped up. - Yup, cupped and stuff. The thing that's really distinct, especially in this one, I took this one actually at somebody's place that I knew they had a honey locusts right off their deck and I was looking- - Exactly. - I took this, but you can see, again, if you know what you're looking for, they don't- - They don't use any type of herbicide, so you know that it's not, am I sure? - Yeah. - I'm very sure, very positive on that. - You trust them, huh? - There's alfalfa weeds growing right below there, all kinds of things, so again, this is people who live out of town, you know, like me and all of me. - Well, what herbicide is sprayed in farmland. - This one, I know there's a lot of stuff, everybody sprays their crops with daikimba. - Yeah, not this one. - Okay. - Not this one. So, good example just to show you again. - And also, you see the bugs? - I did not find the bugs on this particular branch. They do look like they're pretty small and then they get that green color in them, so it's- - That's right. And they kind of hop around a lot. The one, I like this, 'cause like this, like you, what I think really the interesting thing you said there is it's off their deck, and that's so honey locust has historically in the Midwest been one of the most popular trees near a deck, because it provides a light dappled shade, not a deep shade, but a light dappled shade, so he still gets a little bit of sunlight getting tea on the deck, but he still gets a comfortable shade, and what everybody happens is like, what the heck's going on with my deck, it's getting all sticky. - Sticky. - It's all sticky on the wood, or like, or what's wrong with my car or the sidewalk? It's all sticky right here, and it happens to be underneath a honey locust tree, and that's that honey do we call it, that kind of poop that they give off, or the excrement that they give off, that excess from their feeding on the sap. - Yeah. - It's that excess sap pouring on their bodies. - And this is a younger tree here, this one's not like, I mean, this one's not providing ample shade at this point, but it's, I'd say it's probably about 15 feet tall or so, yeah. - So what are we gonna do about this guy? - Yeah, what are we gonna do about it, you just stuff. - Cut down the tree I guess. - No, no, no, just relax, this damage is mostly cosmetic, it's not impacting the health of the trees. - 'Cause the leaves are still green. - Leaves are still green. - Still functional. - Still functional, again, this is something if you've had past problems you may consider a past aside, so again, you and I probably aren't gonna do anything, at least I'm not. - Oh really? - Relax. - You're easy going, you're gonna relax in the deck, you got all that sticky poop falling on you. - Definitely, that's sticky, so. - Oh, it's a light inf, 'cause it wasn't a tall tree. - Yeah. - This is where I get out my, oh, you said Clint Eastwood. - Oh, are we back to that, okay. You are gonna take the. - But I'll be, I'm not gonna go full guns here, I'm not gonna try to blow up the world. - Okay. - I'm gonna like, I'm gonna try that open hammer, I saw that open hammer. - I'm gonna blow up the world, I'm not gonna be hearing Truman about this. But how about a blast of water, just knock those suckers down, just get off my tree. It's like, old people like me, so get off my lawn, so get off my tree, get off my carnal, blast 'em. 'Cause that's just like a huge tsunami on these little bugs. - Maybe the rain did that this weekend. - Yeah, you want the spray for rain, so you don't have the carnals nearby, pray for rain. That can help too. Just a blast of water can, and like you said, that was a light infestation, so I'm with you, you know, don't wanna, you don't need to, you don't need to get out the part of your stuff. - Look the other way. - Well, at least with a small tree, you know, you can spray, you know what those leaves are more sensitive than a big tree, they're more sensitive, they're also, they're easier to spray a big tree, so. - Yeah. - And you had acid fate, that's a systemic, so that's systemic action that helps. - Yeah. - It's pretty toxic, I think, just a. - But they do say, like, I mean, would you agree with that too? That the timing is kind of critical, 'cause you would have to hit it around bud break. - Yeah. - I mean, the. - Insecticidal soap is effective against, like, that nymph stage, but again, you have to be. - You gotta cover it. - And it's a good gadget to be seen now. - Yeah, see, well, the thing is, the thing is nobody notices it. - Until the damage. - Until you see the stickiness, that's, that's the thing you look up at, oh god, what's it about, and then they get that bite off your eye, so. Insecticidal soap, that's kind of tricky, 'cause you gotta hit the bug itself to dry out the bug, so that you can't use insecticidal soap on a tree of any size. There's no way you're gonna get good enough coverage, and also, I mean, you gotta hit it, and it's no residual, so I like just not gonna give a tsunami approach, that's what I would do. That's what we did in Wisconsin when we had honey locus, that's a very popular tree on decks. Honey locus is not that hardy, it's marginal hardy here, so it's not that common, that's why we don't see that bug that often, but there is a northern acclaim honey locus tree that's at Velvet Garden Centers, and that's from NDSU, that's one of our greatest trees that Dale Herman and our program has developed historically, so that's, if you like a honey locus, a beautiful tree, northern acclaim is the one to get. And then you fight the bugs when they come. - Or relax. - Or just accept a little stickiness in your life. - Yeah, exactly. - There you go. - Okay. - What about what's going on? - I'm gonna talk about controlling weeds in the garden, oh man, I might talk about my garden. - Oh. - This is not my garden. - Is that my garden? - I don't know. - That's my garden. - That's my garden. - That's my whole yard. - That's my whole yard. - That's my whole yard. - Yeah. - Looks like stars, and it looks beautiful. - How about any of this? - That's out. - Dandelion. - Oh prickly lettuce. - All prickly lettuce. - Yeah. - And that's so much. - How about perslane? - That's a prom on compacted oils especially, got a deep tap root. - This is my yard. This isn't my yard, but this is literally my garden. - Look like a lawn. - It's grass growing everywhere in my garden. - In your garden? - Oh man. - Are you doing that on purpose? - No, I'm not. - Okay, that's fine. - I'm not. It has been a struggle this year. You know, we don't talk probably that often about our own failures. - Yeah. My garden. - What's there to say? - Yeah. Mine's a failure this year. - Oh okay. - Too much grass. You know what? - My failures are. - You know what I did this weekend? - Oh okay, yes. - I went and I tarped my whole garden and said we're not. - You tarped it. - Yup. - You're just gonna like black, you put black tarp on it, and you're just gonna say everything does. - That's a landscape fabric. - That's it. - My 10 by 10 garden. - We're done. - I said. - Just try to solarize it, just kind of like have a giant, no sunlight, and just squish earth. - Suff again. - Wow. - Yeah. - Well, sometimes you've got to do that. - I'm doing that because you know what? I went over, my sister's got a very big garden. - They've heard a round up? - Yeah. - Like a sage? - Yeah. - Not for you, huh? - No, we're gonna talk about that, but no. - Okay. - I hope my sister planned a big one, and I haven't went to look. I'm sure she's battling weeds, too, but I figure, you know what? I put some labor into this garden. I can have some of the harvest time, and my 10 by 10 can be put to bed this year. - That's right. - All right, so what do we need to do? This is where I lacked. You need to attack those weeds as soon as they appear. Don't let them go to seed or flower, not that they were seeding or flowering. It's just, the grass got out of hand really fast this year. So let's use a good garden hole, get rid of them. Or if you're just me, you're out there pulling, and you want to get all those roots, which is pretty much impossible. - Yeah. - Also, you can mulch. I tried that this year, and he's still poked up from my heavy mulching attempts on that. So I said enough with it, not dealing with it anymore. It's an eyesore in the yard, I'm gonna solarize it out, and focus on the flower beds. But you brought up herbicides. So, you know, I get the question around like corn, glue and meal and stuff. I don't know, studies out there say that it can be effective, but it may or may not be effective with like that germination of weed seeds, and that it also can inhibit other seeds. What would your opinion be on that? - Well, that's your organic eyes, that's in, you have, it's not like you say, it's not, it can be effective, it's not 100% effective, it has to build up over time. I'd see the only benefit of corn, gluten, and meal, is it's not toxic, and also gotta be a pre-emergence, you know, once the seed's up, it's the seedlings up, it's not gonna do much for you. - Right. - So, that's an option if you're organic, but maybe just invest in a garden hole. - Or like you said, get out the glyphosate, right? - Well, that's, that's, that's pretty severe, but not so severe, because it has a very short life in the environment, and I mean, there's a lot of, there's contract, there's different reports and long-term health effects, but it's a glyphosate, it's a, can, if used properly and follow the label, which is important, it can be a great tool, and it's a vegetation killer, it will kill almost every vegetation, but then it has a very short life, so like you could spray glyphosate today, and then come back in two weeks, and you could kill the land and grow your fall radishes or something and be, and be perfectly safe, or you'd be safe. So, yeah, a sharp hole, don't forget that, that's important. - Yeah, or a nice small tiller, if you got one to go in between, I don't know if you're a husband, boy, isn't that kind of, you're destroying all those poor microbes, but yeah, right? - Yeah, good roller-chiller, I can do a great job, I'm not here on my crop, but. - That's right, it's, sometimes you just, I take the loss, that's what I did, so I don't W this year, it's like a big L, but that's okay, you know, I do, I told you earlier this year that I was gonna try the flowering, kaolin cabbage, remember that? - Right, right. - I see, I started 'em, they got probably their second set of leaves, they're still in the house, so I'm just gonna keep those little babies growing, and then I'm gonna put 'em out door, I'm gonna put 'em out door. - Yeah, in a container, or, in another, in a different race, okay, so that's my focus, I'm very excited. - I want to see how-- - That's very colorful in the fall, and edible, it's edible if you're-- - I don't think I'm gonna eat it, it's just, I want to eat it. I want it for the looks, so. - Okay, that's what I got today, 50 is over to you. - Okay, here we go, what am I gonna talk about? - Yeah, what are you gonna talk about today? - Well, we're gonna talk about April showers. - In July? (laughing) - Oh, it is, how come nobody told me that? Turn, I should've known that fourth of July, no. - Are you sleeping over all day? (laughing) - That was the fireworks, that's trust me. April showers, that's my thing today, because what do April showers bring? - They say May flowers. - That's right, April showers, we got a lot of April showers this year. We had nearly twice as much rain as usual for April this year, and the rain kept going strong and consistently through May, so there's been a lot of moisture, and now the impact, there's been an impact earlier, but now there's some sad impact happening now, so there was some good stuff in the beginning, the robins had a good time splashing around, and like you say, April showers bring May flowers, had nice beautiful tulips, and the crab apples were vibrant this year, lawns were spectacular, they still are, they just loved that moisture. However, that was a good part of April showers, the bad part is we're seeing diseases on our tree leaves, and when a tree leaf comes out, it doesn't have much waxy coating, waxy protection on it, and so it's very sensitive to moist conditions and disease, fungus, and so this is a picture of apple or crab apple scab, and this is a hot problem right now, infection was earlier, and people didn't notice it, but now the disease is spreading and the leaves are dropping, and like when you see 10-20% of the canopy falling, that's when you call your extension person and go, "Oh my God, is my tree dying? What are we going to do? Are we going to cut it down?" I had that story once, I had a homeowner like this, had a problem like this, he's scabbed, it's like a olive to grayish, almost splotches on the leaves, and the leaves were coming down, and they thought for sure the tree was a goner, but the wise woman, the wife of the family called her local extension agent before we think I'd cut it down, and she described me as a sentence, and I said, "Don't worry about it, that's just scabed disease." Look at the tree, there's still lots of green tissue, the leaves are still functional, you know, that tree could drop every leaf today, and it would come back next year, because it's got food and reserve, it's only when we have problems like defoliation now, defoliation next year, defoliation next spring, that's when the tree gets weak and you start worrying about it, so what did that lady do when I told her that? She went and baked a pie. No, she didn't bake a pie, she dropped a phone, and she ran out to the backyard, her husband was wrapping up the chainsaw, cutting down a tree, and so she dropped a phone, and she just ran, and then she called me a back five minutes later, she said, "Sorry if you feel apologize for being rude," but she said her husband was cutting down a tree, but now it's saved, so there was a true story. What you're scab is that the tail tail tree, two of those lesions occurring along the veins? Yeah, you know what the really thing is, is you notice that it can't form on the fruits too, by the way, on the service of the fruits, but what you notice is the leaves dropping, that's when people start freaking out, but it's not, it's rarely severe. You want a rake to get this fungus out of the area, almost all the time the fungus comes from the previous years, leaf, and fruit litter, so rake up, and then also prune the trees in winter, because a fungus likes humidity, so what we're going to do is rake a prune the tree so there's more air movement and sunlight, less humidity, and once you got it, there's nothing we can do about, it's kind of like that fire by a little bit, that we don't have curative chemicals, but in this case we can use preventative chemicals, but usually we'd only use these if there's a very young tree in early spring when the leaves are just popping up, we've got to protect the leaves, or if it was a tree that had severe defoliation for a couple years in a row, then we're going to protect it, okay? It's like captions are common fun to say, or copper. I think the big question is always, whenever you have tree issues, apple tree issues, can you consume the fruit? Because it has scab disease? Scab fire blight? Well, fire blight, you've got scorched tips, not so much the scorched fruit. The scab only affects the surface of the fruits, and so, I mean, how hungry are you really? If you're really starving, like if this is like, I saw that Oppenheimer movie, like if we were at Scorched Earth and there's no food except for my apple tree, okay, I would peel off the scab and eat the fruit, but, or you can make apple sauce, you know, there you go, but yeah, but rake the fruits up when they fall, and see how we thinned out this tree to make good air movement and sunlight, so scab isn't going to affect this tree on the right because it's got nice and open. So how do you prune a tree? Just one second here. It's not brain surgery. People say, oh my God, what if I prune the wrong branch? My tree is going to die, oh my Lord, what do I do? Just if you can do nothing else, it take out these vertical shoots, we call them water sprouts. It's mindless, you don't have to think. Vertical has no fruits, has no flowers, vertical wood is worthless, just clutters up the tree, so just cut out those water sprouts in March, okay. And then if you do spray, as soon as the leaves are pop and open, because they don't have any waxy protection, and the best time to spray is a day or two before the rain comes, because in the fungicide can act as a shield of protection against the infection. Okay, now that's the scab. Now here's a hot one right now on oak trees, anthracinals. You talked about ash anthracinals about three weeks ago, and that was the hot one. Now the oaks are getting anthracinals, a different species, but still anthracinals. And you see the brown spots, but again, just like with your ash anthracinals, this is not a killer. Just like with scab too, it's not a killer. There's still green functional tissue on the leaves. Very similar to scab. There's nothing we can do about it. The leaves are going to drop prematurely. Oak trees do send out flushes. New flushes throughout the year though, so likely there'll be another flush coming out. But don't get uptight about it. If you can rake up the leaves underneath it, and if it's a young tree, we could consider spraying the following early spring again. But if it's a big tree, you can't get good spray coverage on a big tree. And again, it's got to have a severe defoliation for like three years in a row to have any words. And that just doesn't happen. It's a dryer out in the western North Dakota. So anthracinals, one way that I always tell the difference is when you look at the tree, you step back and look at the whole tree. If the top of the tree is the healthiest, that's great. That means it's like a boar or vascular. It's just got some some sleaze spotting anthracinals because the top of the tree gets lots of sun and air so that the fungus can survive. But you see the fungus on the bottom branches and inside the canopy. So don't worry about anthracinals, but it's on burrows big time right now. I've been getting some of those. Here's one you're going to get next and that's early blight. So tomato spotting is beginning right now early blights, the first common one. You can see on if you look at that brown lesion carefully where that guy's finger is, you can see like a target, a concentric ring. So early blight is just starting right now. So you can use preventative fungicides, vegetable fungicides, like let's say a core thalonyl or copper, but but probably near some more symptoms, kind of bigger lesions. But just don't do overhead irrigation. That's how it spreads. And in the future, like for tomatoes, we the last 10 years have made remarkable progress finding disease resistant varieties. So I look for a modern F1 hybrid and there's early blight resistant just in the last 10 years, every year new varieties come out. Look for that. I just had somebody actually this morning text in with Septoria leaf spot. Okay, that's very common. That usually comes a little bit later, like a week or two later. That's tiny burgundy spots, just like little pin pricks. Unfortunately, she told me she overheads waters. And I said, you're just spreading that. So he so we got to stop that because that's what that's what the fungus wants. It was that humidity. So target your water at the base of the plant and water in the morning. So if you get any leaves wet, it has the whole day to dry off. So yep, that's, that's what happens. There's no resistance for this Septoria at this time. Sorry about that. Okay, we're also going to I'm going to talk to you like you talked about some insect pests. There's two insect pests that are the most common to pass for apples are active right now. I got some pictures of the worms just entering nearby apples or just crawling near the apple fruits, cobbying moth and apple maggot. They're active right now on our apples. If I had it spray, like let's say two times the year, want to be right after the petals fall and the next one be like the first week to of July to have the maximum impact. So be aware of that. I'm caught out of potato beetle active right now and you see the adults with the stripes and big fat body and the orange eggs are there on the underside of the leaves. But now this is the time when they do their damage. This is their larva, the teenagers. They're not a beetle yet. They're just hungry teenagers and they cause most of the damage to your potato plants. So look for those kind of gelatinous, kind of slimy teenage bugs and so look for them. They're very hungry and there's two ways to go at it. If you want organic spinner said is a great tool for if an organic approach and there's Monterey and also Captain Jack's dead bug. These are common at garden centers. And then if you want to go with the chemical approach, they're also very effective. Don't use that old-fashioned seven which is carburel. Use the garden text seven which is zeta cypermethrin. That's a new formulation that's effective against these bugs or bonite has their eight which is permethrin. So these are pyrethroids that are very effective. So look, scout and for me they love eggplant as well. They'll go after peppers and tomatoes if they run out of potatoes in your garden. So look for them right now. So again, that's a summary there. You can look for the orange eggs on the underside. Look for those larva. You can justify spraying if you got 25% of foliation and go after them with either spinosad organically or pyrethroids. Okay. Last thing I'm going to talk about today is blossom and rot. This is where right on the cusp of this becoming the major problem. And you can go out your garden right now, your tomatoes. And it's usually the first flush that gets impacted by blossom and rot. So look at those young fruits. Look at the bottom of them. As they got that collapsed dark brown tissue, then just pick off those fruits. That was a loss cause like your garden. It's just a loss cause. But there's hope because the next flush may not be impacted. Okay. It can be on later in the development of the tomatoes. Blossom and rot can impact peppers. It can impact squash and it can impact watermelons too. It's always on like the end of the fruit there, the bottom of the fruit there. And this is caused by it's not a disease. It's a calcium deficiency and causes the cells to collapse. It's just like old people like me who don't have enough calcium. I can just collapse and that's what happens. We need calcium in our plants so that they don't collapse. So it's calcium deficiency in the fruits, not necessarily in the soil. Usually the calcium's in the soil, but it's not getting to the fruits. We've got to get it to the fruits. So we're not going to focus on adding calcium in the soil. We've got to get the calcium to the fruits and how we do that. By having moisture in the soil so that the calcium flows in the soil solution and the roots can absorb it and pump it up the plant. So irrigate on a regular basis and mulch can help keep moisture in the soil. Okay. Focus on that. You want to cultivate, shallowly. Don't damage the roots. The roots are important. They've got to absorb the calcium for us. In the last thing it's kind of weird. It's like avoid lush plants because it's a battle in that tomato plant. The leaves want the calcium, the fruits want the calcium. They do not cooperate. They fight. So the more lush plant you got, the more leaf you got, the less calcium your fruits are going to get. So don't go nuts on the fertilizer. Actually, I don't side dress my tomatoes until after they set fruit. Okay. If you do fertilize, use calcium nitrate if possible. Not ammonium nitrate, which is much more common. And if you've got these long indeterminate vines, you know, you should be pruning off the sucker. So be careful about fertilization. Okay. One last thing is you can spray the fruits directly and there are sprays available. You can mix up your own calcium nitrate, four tablespoons per gallon of water. You can just say forget about you leaves. You get none of this. I'm going to give you to my precious little baby fruit. So you've got to hit the fruits when they're young, just about the size of a dime. And you spray them and they'll give them a direct shot of calcium and help to prevent the blossom and rot. So expect to be seated a big problem. So no need for the eggshells or the absolute salt. Okay, the eggshells have calcium. That's a good thing. But you got to pulverize much such a fine degree and still they'll probably only be available the next year. Okay. And chances are you're looking at the wrong thing. The calcium is already there. I mean, that eggshell doesn't hurt, it's like, you know, that's extra. The person's already the soil's already got enough calcium and that Epsom salts is ridiculous because Epsom salts has magnesium. It doesn't have calcium and magnesium and calcium fight for spots on the root. So the more magnesium, the less room for the calcium ions to get to the roots. It's kind of like reminds me of like a parking lot is the root. There's only so many parking lot spots. Those calcium and magnesium are fighting for parking lot spots. The more magnesium you have, the more they're going to get the parking lot spots. So the less room for the calcium. So don't use abs and salt. That's a that's nonsense. Give it. But also one thing is and also those pair and palm shaped types like Roma, they get it all the time. I just accept it, pick off the young fruits. After a while, the roots get established, the parking lot gets bigger, the calcium can find a way to the plant. So and also the leaves have less of a advantage over the fruits. So it's usually that first flush we always worry about. After that, you're probably going to be okay. Sounds good. That's what I got this week, Kelsey. That was a lot. A lot we covered. Well, there's a lot of problems out there. That's what it means. There is. Until next time. Until next time. Well, we'll just thank our viewers for joining us like we do every time. And of course, we always welcome you back to future episodes of Dakota Growing. Dakota Growing is a gardening show brought to you by Dakota Media Access and NDSU Extension. We discuss a variety of timely topics pertaining to your landscape along with giving you tips and advice for your lawn, garden, and trees. If you have questions, call 701-221-6865 or email ndsu.burly.extension@ndsu.com. Dakota Growing airs on Radio Access 102.5 FM, Community Access Channel 12 or 612 HD or online at FreeTV.org. [MUSIC]