Show Questins - September 15, 2011

1. This an interesting question and I am going to Fred first and it might pop down to Elizabeth. A viewer in Custer County plant their gardens in the livestock corral by the barn. They rake off the manure and plant it late and nothing has thrived. There are a few things trying to grow but also have lots of grasshoppers and so they sprayed with Sevin.
a. As long as the grasshoppers are less than 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch, Sevin is probably the product of choice to control small grasshoppers. We like to keep the areas manicured and keep the food supply for grasshoppers down. But Sevin, except for on a few things like Boston ivy and a few sensitive plants, does not cause phyto-toxic symptoms. So the Sevin they used for the grasshoppers should not have affected the plants in garden.
When it comes to manure, we are looking at using aged manure and in a livestock lot situation, it depends on how long those lots have been empty. If your plants do well, they will do extremely well and you will have all top growth. So you need to be wary of how much nutrient matter is there and whether the manure is age dried or not and just watching that plant. Also, sometimes in the livestock lot situation you get a lot of weeds and be careful of that potentially in the garden. This may also be situation that they may want to get a soil test done.

2. Roch, they want to seed a new lawn on an acreage about 45 miles south of Lincoln and they can irrigate the whole yard. They are wondering what kind of seed mix or seed we would recommend.
a. They really have basically two choices. They can use some of the older turf type tall fescues that tend to be more appropriate for those big acreage kinds of thing. The trouble is we're right on the edge of being too late to put fescue in the ground and because of that we want to do a dormant seeding. If they want to overseed with an annual grain to just keep the soil down, they can. But you can seed into the ground a long time after the time of germination and what happens is the ground freezes and everything happens and the following spring. You take advantage of the spring rains and that dormant seed pops up. The golf courses do this in the rough areas and industrial grounds or parks and they never have to irrigate. The fescue comes up in the spring and it does really well. We like the dormant seeding method. Two things you need to remember: you have to get the seed in the ground and can't lie on the surface or you will be feeding the voles and the birds and nearly every creature that likes to eat seed. You have to physically get it into the ground-- that will require inner seeding with a drill or something like that to get it into the ground.
They could go with brome and do a dormant seeding as well. Brome is relatively invasive and as you get closer to the house and they want to go with something a little nicer they could go with a bluegrass or an improved turf type tall fescue. A problem is that brome encroaches into it, so I am not a big fan. But that is what is on all our roadsides and it is hardy as can be and unbelievably hard to kill once you have it and doesn't require a lot of maintenance and less fertilizer. It does grow more aggressively so it does require a fair amount of mowing. Personally, I would go with some of the older varieties of tall fescue.
Most of your seed dealers will have something for the acreage and get the quantity that you want and may cut you a little bit of a deal on price.

3. We can talk about disease around this question from North Platte. The question is should a scotch pine be shedding their two-year old needles? They are wondering if that is okay or do they have a problem?
a. Scotch Pines usually don't shed two-year old needles, so you have something else going on. If a tree turned brown really quickly and the would is dry, you might be dealing with pine wilt nematode. This is very agressive and is transmitted by the pine sawyer beetle. If that is the case, the best recommendation is the removal of the tree. You can burn, bury or chip it and you can use it for firewood but you need to use all the wood this winter. Anything carried over the next spring will release the beetles and that will be moving the nematode around.
The other thing it might be is there are several tip blights which affect scotch pines. We have Dothistroma needle blight and Sphaeropsis tip blight. Dothistroma or Diplodia tip blight that could affect the 2-year old needles. But a lot of time those needles stay attached to the tree and just turn brown with a dark band associated with them. They turn brown from the tip down to that dark band. If you want to have an good idea, cut off a sample and take it to the local extension office for a good idea what is going on with the tree.

4. Dennis, this was a goldfish question. 24 goldfish in a stock tank. One day later there was one left. They also had some guppies and are still there. There is only one goldfish and no remains visible outside the stock tank. They saw a sparrow hawk flying around. Is it possible that the sparrow hawk ate 23 goldfish?
a. It is slightly possible but probably that the sparrow hawk at the goldfish but it is likely a larger bird of prey. But raccoons and opossums and even mink if they have a mink in the area. One raccoon will take that many in one night. Yet, the raccoon would not be able to see the guppies. That is why I always promote native fish because the raccoons can't find them instead of the Golden carp from China.

5. Elizabeth, this is a viewer near Kearney and the question is whether there is a type of bamboo hardy enough to be a privacy screen in that location.
a. There is a hardy bamboo. However, it is mainly in eastern Nebraska and once we get by Grand Island-Kearney, it is an annual. Pick another type of perennial for a screen in that location.

6. Speaking of insects, this is a Linden viewer with tons and tons of ants. They are both inside and outside.
a. As the season progresses, ant colonies get larger and larger and more abundant.
The number of foraging workers that are available to invade the homes or landscapes can increase. We have to remember about ants that everything being equal, they are highly beneficial. They help plant seeds, they feed on other insects and in a perfect world we would let them do their own thing. Those that invade the house, there are a couple of things we can do. We can use a perimeter spray and going with permethrin 8 would be a reasonable choice. What you do is spray up the foundation and then out about three or four feet, all the way around. What that does is it puts a barrier in and as the ants go back and forth or try to build nests right around the foundation of the house it reduces those numbers.
In the house it doesn't matter if it's spring, summer, or fall. (and we do see more ants coming in during the spring and the fall). I like the ant stations that are baits, it attracts the ants and they feed on that and go back to the colony and can kill the workers and queen. I also have been pleased with the terro bait stations-you just clip them off and it's a boric acid solution. The ants take that bait and haul it back to the colony. Outside there are a number of products that we can use to control ants in the lawns and landscapes.
Any of the turf-labeled insecticides almost all have ants on the label. If they are really that bad, use the lawn insecticide. But with the first frost, they are gone.

7. Nut sedge is so prevalent this year. The question is about SedgeHammer. Does it kill other weeds and is it a pre-emergent or post-emergent?
a. It is a post emergent. It has limited, marginal activity on broad leaf weed species, but is not the herbicide of choice. It is not the choice for broadleaf or dandelion for example you will get burn with that. And SedgeHammer is better when it is applied earlier in the year and we said for years up to the longest day of the year is when you want to hit it and after that it's a lost cause. It is not really a lost cause, but will take more applications and you can hand pull it and you can use herbicide prior to longest day and it works well. After the longest day we have the problems with the proliferation. Anytime we have a wet year, and this year was a wet one we have more nutsedge. Especially in the spring when soils are saturated, for some reason the tubers in the soil you didn't think were there are released. When they release, it comes on gangbusters and we have seen more this year than we have seen in several years. We have spots on campus that had 10 or 15 plants last year and literally 300 to 500 taking over the parkways and other things.
Unfortunately a bit of a difficult thing to get control of this year and go with the SedgeHammer next year.
There is a pre emergent that you might want to consider in those areas, but that would be a spring application and what you are looking for is a commercial product called dismiss. It is available from some of your garden stores and Sulfentrazone is the active ingredient that is the pre-emergent. It’s often packaged with Barricade or prodiamine and that gets the crabgrass and the nutsedge at the same time. We found that to be a spectacular product and even if you start it this year it may not seem like it is working. But is clearly you would have seen 3-4 times more than if you have not used the product.

8. This is a pine question, Amy. They had Australian pine planted 12 years old or a little older than that and this spring it died. When they cut it down and found V shaped black marks in the trunk. They wonder what this is?
a. Most likely with the V black marks are it could be blue-stained fungus that has changed colors. Otherwise these are saforistic fungus that has moved in from the other areas with borers or black-headed borers. Any of the type of the borers that are right underneath the surface in the bark and the entry point of them moving in and out will allow the fungi to move in at that point. That is not what caused the tree to decline, what you are seeing is a secondary thing in there.

9. One question is about bats in the attic. The other is the viewer who wants to put bat houses up. The Omaha viewer is next to Lauritzen Gardens who planted fruit trees and all sorts of interesting edible things and they wanted to put bat houses out but were scared off because of the bat-rabbit issues.
a. Actually, there are other animals besides bats you should worry about rabies more than bats Yes, there are 10% at the very most with rabies when they are really bad. But, skunks and feral dogs and cats have a lot more instances of rabies than bats. Bats that are living outdoors away from the house even by a few feet are not going to be a problem with rabies. The only way to contract rabies is to get bit by the bat even though you may not know you have been bit. You can't get rabies because it is just in the yard. Bat houses are great. Don't expect them just to flock to it right away. It may take years for them to find it and raise a colony. You want it facing south and put it up on a poll or outbuilding.
Do not put it on a tree and they are not likely to go in it. Predators can climb the tree and get into the bat house.
For people who have had bats in the attic, use exclusion. It’s the time of year, we are after July so we can start excluding them. There are excluders in the NebGuide to show you how they can go out they cannot get back in. Then patch those holes. Bats cannot make their own holes, they cannot even chew through duct tape. So once they are out, find out how they got in and patch it up.
(Roch) We wanted to attract them from my parents home in New Mexico and used the bat house and you suggested finding where they were coming from and getting that bat guano and spreading that on the house. We did that and about better than 80% of them got bats out the next year. And if you know there are some bats around, you can correct it by using a glove to smear it around the house. Bat guano is used in mascara so it’s not something that is really bad.

10. Elizabeth, This is a viewer who wants to know whether we would recommend regular American cranberry bush viburnum rather than the big ones or one of the new cultivars like Hahs that has a good fruit or the little compact one and why we would recommend one over the other.
a. It depends on the space that you have and if there is space, go ahead and put in the cranberry bush vibernum. But, most of the time you will not have space for that large shrub. So you can go with the smaller shrub. Even though they are smaller in the name and smaller than the full size ones, but are not that small compared to the really small ones. It really depends on the space that you have, all of them have good fruit sets and blooms in the spring or later spring. It’s just a matter of size.

11. Ants in a compost pile.
a. Ants are not a problem in a compost pile, but they may be a sign the compost has not been turned enough. Turning the compost should break up the coloties.

12. A homeowner's association who uses a lawn service has been told they should aerate and overseed the lawn every year. Is that something we would typically recommend.
a. Aerating should occur every year, and if you can afford it, spring and fall. No question it benefits the lawn. If you are only going to do it once a year, it doesn't matter whether it is spring or fall. Most of the lawn care companies do it in the fall and in the spring they are busy with first applications and the fertilizer and pesticides. The overseeding every year concerns me a little bit because with fescue we recommend overseeding only every five to seven years, when it begins to thin a bit. Overseeding every year is a waste of seed and I would not recommend that. Maybe every three to four years at the most.

13. How often do you reseed a bluegrass lawn?
a. Never unless you want to change cultivars or renovate the yard.

14. Not sure whether Asiatic or oriental lilies, but it sounds like they are not day lilies because they are talking about the flower stalk. There is an orange protrusion or a growth on the stem of the lily. Is this a rust?
a. There is a rust on lilies that can occur. It’s not common, but with the really wet spring, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw rust. The best thing is to cut off the stems and throw them in the compost pile. This really shouldn't be too much of a problem.
If you see it earlier next year, cut off the stems so it doesn't continue to spread.

15. A viewer with sweet potatoes is finding 2 to 3 inch holes dug in the ground and big piles of soil. Abour 50% of the sweet potato crop has disappeared. Big chunks of the potatoes.
a. If the potato is completely gone, must be a larger animal, but if they take a bite out of it and you can send me an image of the bite I can tell you exactly which rodent. It could be voles, it could be ground squirrels. If the whole tuber is gone, possibly ground hog or woodchuck. Could be pocket gophers if there are tunnels and you didn't see them at the surface. If they dug a hole less than 3 inches and took bites, it is probably voles and you need to trap. There are toxicants for voles, but since you are in a garden, don't put poison in the ground; go with traps. Voles are active year round. You can trap them year round. And is actually easier to trap in the winter. There multiple catch traps. You can catch 15 at a time and it flips them into a chamber; the multicatch is really efficient on voles.

16. A question about size of trees at planting. The viewer wants to know whether purchasing trees in 1 to 3 gallons in a container is better than 7 to 10 gallons; is there any reason to go smaller? Also, the little trees are harder to find.
a. With the container size, you need to buy from a reputable nursery. Sometimes the smaller stock isn't sold and gets bumped up to a larger container and the possibility for being root bound or something like that. If you're going smaller, it will catch up to the larger tree with time. It is up to you on what you can economically afford to go larger or smaller. The smaller size is easier to handle.

17. A viewer in La Vista has a Linden that’s being skeletonizes. and it is becoming more transparent.
a. Japanese beetles. Japanese beetles love Linden and grapes. Flowering crab is another they like. It’s a network of veins, there was probably Japanese beetle.
And my guess is the beetles are mostly gone now, but next year you might need to protect that tree with a systemic that you place around the base of the tree or with a foliar spray.
And mid June through July to August pay a little bit more attention next year.

18. This is a viewer in Blair who has a backyard that has nothing but a vining plant growing across the area, green, full circle shaped leaves with scalloping along the edges, no flowers. This area gets one hour of sun a day. They want to know how to get rid of the weed and what kind of turf you recommend there.
a. I am pretty confident that is ground ivy. Take a look at it, if the stem is square, it is probably ground ivy. Ground ivy can grow in full sun (leaves tend to be very small) and in really dense shade (leaves tend to be 2 to 3 inches). There is no grass that is going to survive one hour of sunlight a day very successfully, even the fine leaf fescues and the blue grass which is extremely shade tolerant needs a minimum of three to four hours of sun, it can be dappled, shade, but it sounds like it's a dark area. It will probably take several years to get rid of the ivy. And a Roundup and 2 4 D mixture will work for getting rid of it with multiple applications; two and or three apps this fall and then again in the spring. And probably there will still be some hanging on and the trouble is they plant something in there and the ground ivy starts to take over and they're back to where they were to begin because there is nothing going to outcompete ground ivy in dense shade.
A Vinca vine likes the shade, and if you are going with the short, low growing, that will probably be the best thing for that location and some get 6 to 8 inches and it depends on what size of perennial you are looking for and what plant will work out well there. But the ground ivy will probably come back and take over. Leaving the ground ivy might be the best choice.

19. This viewer cut down a pine and they did burn the wood and wonder if he should put a concolor fur in the same spot.
a. You can definitely put a concolor there. It is not susceptible to the nematode that causes pine wilt. Concolor also has very little disease in Nebraska. Typically problems with concolor are from too much water; they don't like their feet being wet. Also, problems with planting depth issues. Planting too deep is the other big issue. Concolor can get aphids, but usually not a problem.

20. Can snakes come into a building through the toilet?
a. It is very difficult. If you have a septic system with a break in it, they can come up the pipe and get in. It is hard for them to come through the trap if there is water. If the stool goes dry, they are likely to be able to do that. Or if you have a city sewer system and there is a break and it is very dry they could do it. It is more likely for a snake to enter a building through another route, but then head to the toilet for the water. Then it gets found in the stool.

21. This is a mulch question. Should you mulch around mature trees and how close to the trunk and how deep?
a. Yes, mulch three inches deep around them because they are likely to get hit with a weed whacker or mower blight just as much as little trees. The mulch ring width depends on how much you want to apply and what kind of tree it is and whether temperature will be hot. We like to put a bit of a dip in the mulch close to the trunk; don’t pile thu mulch against the trunk. With Lindens, heavy shade, not much grass will grow under there anyway and so might as well increase that mulch ring out.

22. What is a tussock moth? What does its caterpillar look like and what does it do?
a. It is really a diverse group and the ones on milk weed are tough and they have these tough tufts on the back and some of the other parts, they are feeders on the diverse array of plant material. And the caterpillars are often brightly colored with the white or sort of tan colored and the moth is not nearly as spectacular as the caterpillars.Certain species are very common out west and others are common around here like milk weed.

23. A question about a purple blooming weed with thorns that showing up now.
a. They are thistles, and there are a number of different thistles and some are invasive. Getting rid of them is a problem. They can be sprayed with the 2 4 D products in the fall. Some are perennials and some are classified as noxious weeds and must be removed by law.