Show Questions: April 7, 2011

1. This is a viewer from Crete who has yellow jackets or wasps that attack the bird houses and they even go in and sting the new baby birds. They clean their bird houses every spring. They want to know what they can do to get rid of the stinging creatures.
a. Messy. What I think is happening there is competition going on. The birds want the houses to nest in. It offers the nice modern environment, it is protected. But that's what the yellow jackets want too. And, they’re so much more mobile. So, it's going to be really tough. I don't know if these bird houses can be opened up, but, yellow jackets or even paper wasps will attach their nests at the very beginning and they will grow and develop and enlarge from a top attachment point. If you could possibly spray some kind of very smooth enamel so it doesn't stick or even some kind of Teflon lining at the top, you might possibly solve the problem. It doesn't matter so much about the walls or anything. I don't think that's going to harm the birds either. That might be one solution. That's going to be a constant battle. Those houses are perfect--sometimes backyard grills, covers, things like that as well--for yellow jacket or paper wasp habitat. Spraying would not be in order in any situation like that.

2. There is a little weed with white flowers blooming already; actually two little weeds, as we had a discussion off air. One is dinky one and one that stands up like with heart-shaped.
a. One of them is Shepherd's Purse. If you look at the seed stalk it is heart-shaped. Shepards' purses, back in the day, they were made of sheep scrotum, that was the purse. It became the name shepherd's purse. That stalk can be 3 to 6 inches long and have you a number of these seed capsules on there and it does actually flower white and the capsule is formed. The other weed is chick weed, an annual--but it's a winter annual. People are seeing that, much like henbit and other winter annuals, you can go after it with herbicides, but you're wasting time. They have gone through a robust winter and everything else and they are ready to seed and reproduce by seed the following fall. So, there is really not a whole lot you can do from a herbicide standpoint on any of those weeds that are winter annuals. The Shepherd's Purse is also a winter annual. Don't try to control it. You can hoe it up pretty easily; it is relatively easy to pull, or it can be cultivated. I rolled some capsules in my finger; it's not mature yet. So even if you cultivate it in, you're not adding to the seed reservoir when you do that because it's not going to mature until it dries out and that's not going to happen until we get warmer than we have now. I think it's going to take more than one 85-degree day to make that happen.

3. We have a question from a viewer who had problems last year, which is good. They are trying to anticipate and get on top of it. This is a viewer who had ash trees whose leaves curled and went brown and fell off in a month’s time.
a. We'll see infection starting in the next couple weeks. Early on, the thing with that fungal infection is the leaves being deformed because they are expanding so they will sometimes look cupped and curled . It doesn't typically kill the tree, though. So it's not something you have to control. If it is something that is in the early stages of development, you know when it's a young tree you want to keep it growing, you can use one of the general use fungicides that you could pick up at a garden center. But, I wouldn't really recommend the fungicide in that setting. But that's probably what it is.

4. Jeff this is a viewer in the Norfolk area that has strawberries in full sun. A new bed was planted last year in early summer. They want to know if they should rake off all the old growth and the tree leaves and then whether they should fertilize this spring.
a. Well, yeah, they should clean everything up. They want to be careful though, especially with strawberries, because the plants--like a lot of perennial plants early on--are pretty loose in the soil. Be careful. With strawberries, I would get in there with my hands and do a lot of the cleanup and not be relying on a rake. Maybe it's a little early for fertilizing; I don't want to get them too early--we might still have a cold snap, but in the next few weeks add a garden fertilizer to it.

5. Okay, Jim, a viewer has a question about whether dormant fruit tree spray is available that will not hurt bees. Is there a dormant all-purpose spray that won't hurt the bees?
a. Normally, I think of this from an insecticide point of view. When it comes to fruit tree sprays, we don't spray until post-bloom for anything. That's even maybe a week or so after post-bloom when the fruits are just starting to develop. So, the only dormant sprays that we would possibly spray earlier in the season would be something like for mites or scale types of insects. That would be a horticultural oil spray. I can't think of anything that is going to answer that question: "as far as you know what is there or how can I avoid spraying a spray without harming bees" because it's not an issue, I don't think. On the disease side more like a lime sulfur maybe. Lime sulfur would not be harmful to pollinators either. They can make that spray and wait until after spring.

6. Roch, we have a viewer who has a fescue lawn in an area where he had a tree removed due to pine wilt. They are concerned about whether the soil is too acid for that fescue lawn.
a. The lawn will be acidic at the surface, but it's not very deep. If they are worried about it, fescue has the widest range of pH adaptation; it can go down to 4 or 5. I guarantee it's not 4 or 5. If they are that concerned, they can pull the needles off of there, which they should do anyway since they will impede the grass seed growth, and put them in a compost pile or use them as mulch underneath another tree; recycle them and call it good.

7. Loren, this is a tomato blight question. Will the plastic that we use for soil sterilization kill the tomato blight and how long do we need to leave the plastic down?
a. If they really want to eliminate tomato blight, they ought to do it all summer and take a year off and come back next year. You could get away with just mulching, putting straw down, or something when you plant. Try to keep the plants upright; maybe a trellis instead of letting them sprawl. Don't overhead irrigate. See how that works for you. That would probably be the better thing. They can use plastic, just take a year off.

8. Jeff, this viewer has a snow crab, probably 'Spring Snow' I would guess, that produces suckers. They have used Finale, but it is available only in humungous quantities and used Sucker Stop. What would you recommend?
a. I would say that one thing we have to do is to discourage suckering. If they are in a habit of pruning heavily now, dormant pruning, you will be encouraging the suckering. A lot of times I tell folks, especially with crabs, wait until June or mid-summer to do some of that pruning, if I’m going to do very much pruning on a crabapple. Other than that, being vigilant about cutting back the suckers; I will do that as well. Roch, any ideas on herbicide?
It surprises me that the Sucker Stopper is not working, but many people spray it on the sucker. You're supposed to prune it, then spray where you cut, then you don't have re-growth. If they are trying to spray a sucker that is already there, that is not going to do anything. It has to be an exposed cut and the growth regulator has to get into the woody growth of the plant. Why try the sucker stopper again? It's a little expensive, but some people find you only have to apply it once. If you use Finale, cuts stems work better, but it will take multiple applications; it will continue to grow. Use the Sucker Stopper again. Cut it before you spray it, you'll be better off.

9. Jim, we have a viewer from Omaha who sent us a picture of a good guy or a bad guy. He wants to know whether we can give him an answer to that. Our viewers can kind of see above that plant tag next to the oak leaf that cool looking little, not little actually--you brought us one.
a. We saw the image in advance. I didn't quite know what it was until I saw it really large. This is a water scavenger beetle. It lives in ponds mainly. It is a predacious beetle and is going to be feeding on other insects that are in ponds and also maybe small fish or something like that. It's kind of strange that it is out there in that leaf litter. Possibly it was overwintering, because you tend to see these all season, more so toward the end of the summer.  It is strongly attracted to lights at night. You know, strongly attracted to light, and that might account for it being out of place, as well. It's a good guy. It is shiny. just don't hold it on the underside; it has a sharp spine and it will really hurt. But it is a good guy.

10. Roch, are there any new nutsedge products available and will they hurt the ornamental sedges that are now becoming widely used in rain gardens and wetlands.
a. Ornamental sedges are going to be injured by things like SedgeHammer and some of the newer types. If you have water plants and other things and sedge types, even if they're not Carex, you are probably going to see injury and possibly death. I would avoid their use in and around or in proximity to the ornamental sedges.

11. Loren, an Omaha viewer has a peach tree with oozing sticky stuff on the stems and on the fruit. So again, this is apparently a question from last year. They want to know whether they should spray now.
a. To really manage fruit tree diseases, it would be good to have a good fruit tree spray like we talked about earlier. If it's not flowering yet, you could look at a dormant like a lime sulfur application. Oozing from the stem can mean different things. A lot of times, there are different cankers that can do that. Brown rot can result in superficial cankers. Probably just going in and trying to remove any branches that are dead and have any signs of the disease, and then doing a good fruit tree spray will get that under control.

12. Time to prune the raspberries, Jeff. This is a viewer that does want to know when and by how much. They don't say whether they are ever-bearing or gold or red. And, the second question is they had a lot of berries last year that didn't ripen entirely; part of the berry remained white. Do we know why that happens?
a. As far as the pruning, you know, you can look at the canes right now and I think of my raspberry patch: Last year I didn't prune very much off and they flowered right away; I had fruit very early. The down side to that is many times the fruit will be smaller then and so maybe not quite as juicy as you would like it to be. It depends on what you want--if you want earlier fruit and through the season, that's what I did. On the other part of my patch, I didn't do much pruning. I cleaned up the dead canes the dead tops that sort of thing and let them do their thing so I had fruit early. The other side would be to go in and take it back. A lot of folks will take it back pretty close and clean it up and get all new canes which mean you're not going to see much for 6 or 8 weeks at least until they start bearing. As far as the white fruit, I don't know. It's kind of hard to say what might be going on. Sometimes stink bugs, tarnish plant bugs, are interrupting the development. There are some viral diseases of the raspberry that can result in splotchy white fruit. If they saw just a single area in the planting that had it could be that. If it's viral, not much you can do. Maybe doing some of this cleanup now may get rid of some of those. The really cool thing with that question is next week we have Sarah is doing pruning on raspberries for her segment. We'll be able to show people, if they can wait.

13. Roch, this is also a Norfolk viewer. With a picture. Move to a new home, new house, new yard, new weed. They say it looks an awful like ivy and it's everywhere. They want to know how to get rid of it.
a. That looks like ground ivy to me. It’s possible it could be henbit, but based on how clumpy it is and its prostrate growth, I'm going to say it's a ground ivy which is a perennial, extremely difficult to control weed in our lawns. It loves the shade; it just gets bigger leaves in the shade. It’s very problematic. It’s usually seen in lawns that are low in nitrogen. So sometimes you can suppress 10 to 20% of the population with a better or increased fertility program. But that said, you have to be fairly aggressive to control it and if you don't get it all, it's going to get away from you. We actually recommend fall treatments, but spring treatments are fine right now with any of the broadleaf weed control products to suppress it a bit, but I'm sure we'll be covering ground ivy again this fall. Right now, all you're going to do is knock it back a little bit and not really eradicate it totally. But you don't want it to continue to spread.

14. Loren, a viewer in Cass County has a 50-foot tall American sycamore. It has anthracnose each year, has for the last five years. They've read some things about it that say they can control it at bud break, but it's usually better to just let the tree handle it. And they are really wondering what they should do because apparently the lower half of the tree is more impacted by this and they want to know what they should spray, if anything.
a. Sycamores are one of the tree species that tend to get anthracnose the worst. But that said, it sounds like they’re seeing it on the tree every year and the tree is still surviving. I wouldn't recommend a larger tree like that be treated for anthracnose. It's not going to kill it, so you really can just let it go. Something like that, you know, if it's that large you would have to get a certified person to come in and treat that tree. It's too large for to you treat it yourself. There are fungicides you can use; an early season application is the right time. But that said, I really wouldn't treat the tree.
What we look for is opening it up so there is more air movement around the tree. That would be one thing. If the tree is close to the house, maybe the house is part of the reason. If there are buildings or something--if you have something around it that maybe isn't as desirable, maybe opening it up a little bit so it has a little more circulation around the base of the tree if that seems to be where they are having the biggest problem.

15. Great. Okay, Jeff, we're going to stick with you, and Jim might want to weigh in on this one. We actually had a question about this this last week that we didn't get to. A viewer has this particular tree that has all those little holes in that line and wonder what that is exactly and what to do about it.
a. That's a yellow bellied sap sucker, a well organized one. They're in the woodpecker family. They riddle the trees amazingly uniformly for two reasons: One of them is that the sap that is extruded from those holes--they lap that up. And then, insects are drawn to that too and so they’ll eat the insects as well. They do have a tendency to be attracted to the same tree and is this true on campus have you noticed? The same tree that seems to get the brunt of the holes? It's a habit of theirs, when they find a good one they will stick with it; the tree can be completely riddled. And you can talk about the consequences of it, of course, as far as tree health, but the only protective measures (and maybe you have done some things, too) are something like hardware cloth and I don't know about the sticky tack traps. If you make the tree bark sticky, they aren't going to prefer it, but I was thinking maybe the hardware cloth would at least help to stop the progression of that happening over the several week period or that they are there. And I don't know how much damage you are really doing to the tree itself. I'm sure it's something it can handle typically. You’re right, it opens up a potential place for disease and other insects to get into the tree, but a lot of times when we see it on campus, if the tree has health problems that's usually not the reason why.

16. All right, Jim, a 25-year-old blue spruce: caterpillars eating the needles and birds are nesting in the tree. How do you get rid of one and keep the other?
a. Caterpillars are eating the needles. Alrighty. Any ideas on that or do we need a picture or a little more information? If it's actually a blue spruce, there aren't that many caterpillars that feed on blue spruce other than spruce needle miner, but they don't get to be very large. I'm thinking we need something, probably could be a pine or something. More information needed yes.
LATER: I just happen to think that possibly the way the question was regarding the caterpillars and the blue spruce maybe that’s bagworm. And so bagworms, yes, by all means just remove as many bagworms or the bags you can. The birds actually aren't that fond of them, so they’re nesting in the spruce probably because it is offering some good protection or something like that. But, for bagworm injury, get rid of the bags right away and you’ll cut down the populations fairly quickly. I think we're on the down swing for bagworm populations now.

17. Roch, apparently we have wild strawberries trying to overtake over Omaha because we now have three questions that are not exactly the same about them trying to take over the back yard and how to kill them.”
a. If they’re in the landscape bed, it's going to be cutting and pulling and pruning which I know doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but unfortunately there’s really no herbicide that you can effectively use for that unless you want to spot spray with RoundUp. Even that is a little problematic in the spring, especially with something that has woody growth, because the herbicide isn’t taken up very well. But they’re going to have to be persistent on that, so a lot of it’s pulling out as much as you can. There’s some brush killers that are also labeled for lawns that are probably not a bad idea to put onto wild strawberry that has gotten into the lawn. But up and in the landscape bed, you’ve got too many similar plants that are going to be a problem.

18. All right, Loren, will composting correctly to the right heat and turning, and everything like that, kill whatever the fungus is that causes blight on tomatoes?
a. Yes, if you would take that and just make sure you're mixing that compost up and breaking all that material. That debris is going to be colonized by other organisms and it’s going to breakdown. Just make sure you don't have obvious leaf tissue pieces or anything like that in there because that will continue.

19. “Okay, Jeff, we have an awful lot of people also anticipating asparagus: Valley County, North Loop, Cedar Rapids. How do you control the weeds? And there’s brome in the patch so there’s kind of an interesting one for Roch, but also how should it be fertilized. The soil has high phosphorous and salt content and he wonders if he can use that as a compost in the asparagus. Do you want to talk in general about asparagus.
a. Generally, this is if they haven't already cut things down and cleaned them up, this would be the time to get in there and do that. We want to be careful as things start to emerge and they may be in warmer locations, things may be coming up. Typically with the asparagus I want to add more compost, more organic matter to it. So it's not something that I want to add a lot of fertilizer to. So, over–top dressing with the compost, working it in a little bit around the plant, being careful not to disturb the plants is the way I would be working my asparagus bed right now. As far as killing weeds and grass: grass is a real common thing with asparagus. I don’t really think there—I mean you know it's a crop you're going to eat--and some of the herbicides actually have labeling deferring or delaying use or not using at all with crops you're going to eat. And brome was a weed specifically mentioned and once again we go back to the common spot spray with RoundUp and with brome that's going to take tons of applications and digging doesn't work as well on brome ‘cause the rhizomes can go, you know, 5 or 10 feet beyond the plant. It’s just going to take some aggression. But you can mulch out brome. You know, you can put enough mulch on the surface and smother it; that may be the route to go. I think you kind of suggested that with the compost without incorporation would do exactly that. Anytime there is high salt, I don't know if I would be adding any soil that you fear has high salt to any plant material other than maybe juniper which can tolerate salty situations.

20. Okay, Jim, again, we have questions about when to spray for borers in purple ash. And I think they are talking regular borers since we have told them there's no spray for the E.A.B. just yet.
a. Yeah, as a rule, again, like for lilac ash borer, it's usually around early May and you’ll see the day-flying moths flying around that look like little wasps. Generally speaking, for borers, May tends to be one of those big times of the year when most of them do come out. So, just general treating the base of the trees and branches is good protection for a number of host trees and shrubs. So be well informed about that you know. If you have any problems, then you can seek information from a NebGuide we actually produced in our department. I believe that is still pubs.unl.edu? Or for the NebGuides for shade tree borers.

21. All right, excellent. Okay, Roch, this is a pasture, very degraded pasture with 2 to 3 feet of manure in some locations. And not much turf. And this particular person wants to convert this from weeds and manure-borne weeds back into prairie ideally, if possible.
a. Actually, let's utilize the manure that’s on site; it was obviously piled up or whatever. So, let's get that spread around. I would cultivate as deep as possible. It may require, if they don't have a tractor or the equipment to do it, but get that mixed in together. And then hope for rains that would bring some of the weeds up to the surface and see if you can cultivate ‘em back down or, if necessary, use something like RoundUp. But if it’s pretty well denuded—the reason we cultivate primarily is because if it was grazed and pastured, there is a lot of compaction in there that needs to be taken care of. The other thing is I’d go with a warm season grass mix because we just know that's what this native prairie was predominantly. And we’ve got the invasive species like bluegrass and other things that aren't very productive really for pastures here. Get a good warm season mix from some of our local suppliers. I can think of a few right off hand. There are plenty of people that have some really good mixes. A fairly large piece of ground, you know, they’ll probably want to go directly to the supplier and there’s plenty of those. Was this in eastern Nebraska?
-Dorchester.
Yeah, any of these mixes is probably gonna—the eastern mixes will work fine for it. And get it into the ground after they’ve got those killed and hope for good timely rains and everything else. But plant the seeds physically in the ground so it’s not birdfeed. They should be good to go.

22. Loren, fairly quickly, outside Lincoln, 25 miles, they don't say which direction, brown spots on a ten-year-old peach, and they want a natural control and they do say it's one tree next to the cedars that has the most spots. And usually loses all of its fruit. Any ideas on that?
a. When they’re saying brown spots on the peach, I’m wondering if they are talking on the fruit during the year. I’m assuming so. It's really going to be difficult to control that naturally. We go into fruit tree sprays and that's going to be the best thing. That said, you really don't have to control it, you can get by with just harvesting as much fruit as you can and letting nature take some of it away in the form of disease. Do anything you can to open up, you know, canopies, to increase air circulation; that’s going to reduce infection, and then the other thing would be at harvest, hot water dips.

Lighting Round

Jeff

1. “Is it okay to plant potatoes now?”
a. “Yes it's okay to plant potatoes now.”
2. “All right. Can you grow sweet potatoes in those new potato grow bag things?”
a. “Ah, I haven't, but I’m guessin’ you can grow anything you want in those grow bags as long as you protect it and don't let them get too hot through the summer.”
3. “All right. We have a viewer that has a cherry tree that is suckering. How do you kill those?”
a. “Well, you know I’d be careful if you're going to be eating the fruit off of anything. And you know, you’d want to look at the label. They talked about the sucker stopper earlier, so I would just prune them off quite honestly.”
4. “All right. Viewer has an 80 year old walnut tree that didn't have any walnuts on it last year. Any ideas?”
a. “Well, sometimes flowering is interrupted for walnuts for a variety of reasons be it insect or fungus or the weather or something like that. If anything, they were maybe lucky they didn't get hit by walnuts last year, so.”
5. “Okay. Is it time to prune oak leaf hydrangea now?”
a. “No, you know, other than cleaning out some of the dead and some of that stuff, I typically don't get too carried away with oak leaf hydrangea.”
6. “All right, is it okay to heavily prune barberry now?”
a. “Aah, you can go in and do some of your pruning of your barberries right now. That would be safe.”

Loren

1. “Will fungal spores of various diseases overwinter in mulch?”
a. “Yes.”
2. “Viewer has noticed anthracnose in the raspberries last year; can they expect it to return?”
a. “They can, but they can prune it if they are first year bearing to reduce disease potential greatly.”
3. “Okay. Is thousand cankers in walnut in central or eastern Nebraska yet or should we expect it to be?”
a. “It has not been identified in Nebraska yet. It is not even in adjacent state yet so I would not expect it this year.”
4. “Is it time to spray the hawthorns for hawthorn rust yet?”
a. “Not yet. I would wait a couple weeks.”
5. “All right. Squash last year rotted in their garden and they didn't get them cleaned up. Will they spread rotten squash diseases?”
a. “They really need to clean that up before they do any planting.”
6. “Okay. What exactly does milky spore control?”
a. “Pass.” “Milky spore is entomology question.”

Roch

1. “The forsythia is blooming, so is it time to put down the pre-emergent?”
a. “Using forsythia as an indicator is a misconception because we have too many cultivars, too many species and it's a guideline at best.”
2. “Okay. Will the pre-emergent products that work on grasses also work on broadleaf weeds?”
a. “Only small seeded broadleaves like oxalis and some of the others, but it’s not going to work on the big dandelions and things like that.”
3. “Okay. Viewers seeded their new fescue very early and it's up. Do they need to water daily and if so for how long?”
a. “Um, we're not really using much water right now and I would be careful about potentially ponding and damaging the new seedlings, so we’re probably looking at every other day until we start breakin’ about 65, 70 degrees.
4. “Okay. How can you kill Kentucky bluegrass in a rose bed?”
a. “Uh, use a product. . . There’s Grass-Beater and Grass Be Gone. A number of different products out there. Some of them contain Fluazifop as the active ingredient, but just look for a grass killer that is designed for ornamentals.
5. “This viewer didn't spray violets last fall; is it too late?
a. “Well it's too late for last year.” “They can control it. They can hit them in the spring it’s just not as effective as the fall would have been.”

Jim

1. “Is it time to spray for the ash lilac borer in viburnums now?”
a. “No, not until about the end of April, early May when the common lilacs are blooming.”
2. “All right. How do you control boxelder bugs? They’re in the house already and on the south side.”
a. “Just let them fly out and next late summer seal your cracks and crevices on the outside and spray a barrier spray if you have to. But you gotta to let them out because if they die in the walls they are going to cause all kinds of problems.”
3. This viewer had maggots in their carrots last year will they have them again in the same spot?”
a. “I would say go ahead and rotate the carrot planting somewhere else, because the pupae from those flies remain in the soil and so it's a convenient location to jump right to the carrots so. . . Plant somewhere else.
4. “What eats holes in the spinach leaves? Little tiny holes.”
a. “The spinach flea beetles, a number of different flea beetles, actually come early in the season and they’re hungry. That's about the only succulent plant that is up so.”
5. “Are those round sticky traps a good nonchemical thing to use in orchards?”
a. “They are. It's an estimated that 5 per tree—the globe type ones or apple maggot—five per tree actually has some effect in reducing the populations and therefore infestation of the fruit. And there is much more you can do as well.”