 All right, we're good. All right, welcome everybody. Welcome to the second night of our 2017 North Dakota State University Spring Fever Garden Forums. I'm Tom Call, the Extension Horticulturist here, and I'll be the moderator. I'm here with my executive producer, Bob Birch from Aerocultural Communications. We are broadcasting live from the Morrill Hall Studios on the campus of NDSU and Fargo, and we are beaming out to 30 county offices as well as over 100 gardeners at home enjoying the forums. And so welcome to everybody. Now, as far as this past week, it was a very momentous one, at least where I was in central North Dakota because this is the first week since November where we didn't have snow in the forecast. So spring is definitely coming, and I also heard that the ground is thawing to the point where you can now pull out all your Christmas decorations out of the frozen ground. So this is a very momentous time. The ground is thawing. When the ground thaws, we start thinking about planting trees and shrubs. And that's our topic, one of my favorite topics of horticulture, trees and shrubs. And we're gonna talk about flowering shrubs to the beginning. Now, I kinda like analogies. So I'll bear with me here. But if a landscape is a cupcake, and the flowering shrubs are the sprinkles, the flowering shrubs, they add the flare, they add the sparkle, they add unique qualities to your landscape. And here tonight, we have Dr. Todd West, who is the head of the nationally acclaimed Woody Plant Improvement Program of North Dakota State University. And Todd's gonna share with us his insights on the best flowering shrubs for North Dakota. So Todd, welcome to the forums. All right, well, thank you, Tom. Pleased to be here. You good? All right, so first, we're gonna do a little bit of background information. This is gonna seem redundant, kinda dumb, but what's the difference between a tree and a shrub? So a tree is defined as a woody plant with one main stem, generally 15 foot tall, having a distinct head, whereas a shrub, you're looking at a multi-stemmed, generally, again, under 15 foot tall. But then we get into that gray area, especially now with the tree forms, where they're putting all the shrubs on a standard, a single stem, what they call that standard, grafting it up high or training it up high. So we get that lollipop, that shrub on a stick. So just starting out here, mentioned springs on its way. So here's one of the first signs of spring is for Scythia. Beautiful shrub for about a week of the year. The other 99% of the time, maybe not so good looking. But now, hey, look at there, now we got a shrub on a stick. So this is what they call the standards, and a lot of the shrubs are ending up this way now. So we'll touch on this a couple of times during the presentation. So why do we plant shrubs? So we can use it for screen, we can use them for direct traffic, we unify the space. Basically the sprinkle effect on the cupcake. We really bring the landscape together. We can save space, we know yards are getting smaller, especially in the urban environment. And so we can fit more plant material in a smaller space. That photograph you see there, you can, in the bottom right, shows that standard, that shrub on a stick, kind of an idea, but allowing us to fit some really beautiful horticultural plants in a much smaller spot. And then dealing with the aesthetics. We have the foliage, we have the flowers, that's what we're gonna be talking a lot about tonight, obviously with flowering shrubs, but then also some fruit as well, because with flowers we often get some fruit, and we wanna talk about that. So here's a nice landscape, bringing things together. Thing that's missing here though is some color. They do have shrubs, they have evergreens, they have deciduous, we have some trees, we have some multi-stem, we have some conifers. There's a little bit of everything here, but not a lot of color, it's all shades of green. And what we wanna avoid is the cookie cutter landscape, what we typically get with the builders today, where you're gonna get the same three things, you're gonna get your one little autumn blaze maple out front, and then nothing too exciting. So we wanna avoid that. So some qualities that we wanna look for in shrubs of predictable size and form, that's what makes them nice, rapid growth rate, ease of transplant and establishment, minimal litter, we wanna make sure they're not causing mess in our landscape, we love gardening, but we don't wanna garden too much, right? Resistant to attack by pests and disease, obviously we don't wanna bring problems to our gardens. Non-allergenic, a lot of people can be allergic to the pollens, and so we have to be careful with that. Tolerant of a wide range of environmental conditions, again depending on where we have them in our landscape, and then excellent aesthetic features, and we also wanna make sure we're not dealing with invasives. So some criteria, function, design elements, site conditions, plant features, tonight's main focus is plant features. So some of those features, foliage, flowers, fruit, bark, I know I'm going over this pretty quick, but we're just gonna focus on the flowers tonight. We could talk about these other features, but the main thing really was shrubs is that we kinda wanna have a multi-season interest, it's nice to get the flowers, it's nice to have good foliage, it's nice to have good fall color, not every shrub's gonna have that, but we try to maximize what we can. So tonight we're gonna focus on the flowering shrubs. Now this is just a little bit of insight that I've pulled, again, these are not gonna work in every single condition, they're not gonna work in every location through the state, but it's a nice overview, and also introducing some, maybe some shrubs that you've overlooked, or maybe not have come in contact with, and hopefully some of these will be a review. So this one should be a review. We have several different forsythia now, we have the NDSU metal arc, Northern Sun has also been out for quite a while, both are really hearty, good choices for us, we wanna stay away from the hybrids, the X-intermedia, they don't have the bud heartiness for us, but again, these are gonna be larger shrubs, and with any of the forsythias that are not on the standard, that shrub on a stick, we really wanna put them in a location where they can shine early in the spring with those flowers, and then fade away, because it is what I always say, it's a shrubby shrub, it's not the most attractive shrub once the flowering is done. Nice thing is it does tolerate deer, it's very prune tolerance, you can shape it, so it does have some good qualities, but a bigger shrub, and not a lot going for it once it does finish flowering. And again, here's back to that same picture of the Northern Sun on a standard, so allowing you to maybe control it a little bit better, keeping it into a better size. Unfortunately though, it needs some good staking to develop, because again, it wants to be a shrub, it also can sucker too, so it's a little bit more maintenance than just planting it and forgetting. Potentillus, there's a lot of potentillus out there, great thing about them, long season of flowering, very low maintenance, doesn't require much water, tolerant to deer, tracks butterflies, a lot of good things going for it. Here's a pretty popular one that's still available on the market, again, an NDSU release, I don't wanna focus on just that tonight, but just kinda look at some other ones. So there are a lot of different colors available, pink beauty, I don't know if the color's showing up across the state there, but the pink, it actually is a really nice pink. From what I'm seeing, and maybe it's just the light in my eyes, if it doesn't look as pink as what I think it should, and what a better way to go is with mango tango, it's just fun to say, hey, I got a mango tango, but a really nice orange, and then the happy face is a newer potentilla, that's a nice white. So again, we don't have to be stuck with the same old yellow potentilla, we can use a lot of different colors, they're very florific, bloom time, again, even past frost, in a nice protected spot. Rhododendron, University of Minnesota has done a lot of work with the Northern Lights series. Again, we have to be a little bit weary on the hardiness component here, zone four, wouldn't really go probably a zone three with these, also they need good drainage, they can't handle the wet feet, there's a lot of root diseases, so you wanna get them up where they can get drainage out of a kind of raised bed, but again, nothing really can beat a nice Rhododendron. The Canadian artist series rose, there's several of them, this is my favorite, I really like the campfire rose, their breeding rose is now to be a lot less problematic, more disease resistant, a lot less work, don't have to worry about hardiness, this one's hardy to zone three, what I like about it is the color change, it starts out in a tighter bud, more of a yellow, and as it opens up, it turns into a yellow pink, and then eventually we'll go to a pink, and it's supposed to resemble a campfire, it's a very, very attractive rose, again with a lot less maintenance of our traditional roses from the past, and also boasts that will attract hummingbirds. Wigila, this is again another one where you could do zone four, if you're in a zone three, I would be a little hesitant, maybe in a spot that's more protected, but there's a lot of new ones out, this is kind of one of the standards now, is red prints, really nice dark red color, medium sized shrub, we're looking at, well, medium to large, five to six foot, but really nice accent and it blooms during the summertime, so that's one thing I like to do when I landscape is you want that spring flowering, like our forsythia, where it'd be more of a backdrop when other things are not flowering, get that wow, then when it's done, it kind of fade away, and then you get the forefront moving in throughout the season, and Wigila, long bloom time all through the summer. French lace is a little bit smaller one, four to five foot, again, they also attract hummingbirds, really nice long bloom time, minuet, beautiful color, it's kind of a two tone, with the lighter kind of pink in the inside, so really, really nice, kind of almost reminiscent of a lilac, so you get your nice early lilacs, and then you can move into the minuet if you really like that more lilac, traditional lilac color. Chokeberry, who doesn't want a chokeberry, right? That sounds so great, that's why in the nursery trade they're called eronia now. But again, multi-season interest, the flowers, they're very subtle, they're white, not really wow in your face, but what's great is that they do produce an edible fruit, and I thought I had another picture of it, nice edible fruit that you can mix, not really eat by itself, but it is really healthy, high in antioxidants, makes a great smoothie, they're actually better tasting after frost, they get a little bit sweeter, but amazing, really great red burgundy fall color, so again, this is a nice one for ed escaping. Buttonbush, now this may be one you're not familiar with, again, this is Hardy Zone 4, maybe 3B in a protected spot, we have this out at our Absurac Research Station, doing very well, and really distinct flower, having that white flower where it looks like, almost like Sputnik from back in the 60s with the space program, but it has all the flower parts sticking out, it will produce a red fruit, and again, you get a really nice long season with it, can be used as cut flowers, it's a smaller shrub, three to four foot, there's several different cultivars, one I'm showing here is Sugar Shack, and that's the one again that comes in a little bit smaller than the species. Coralberry, this one, the trademark is Proudberry, and again, it's Hardy to Zone 3, this is one where the flower is really not that exciting, it's fairly small, it's kind of a whitish pink, smaller shrub, it will be wider than it is tall, about three to four foot, four to five foot spread, but what's nice about it is that it has really showy fruit, so again, later in the season, when everything else is done flowering, you still have that color in your yard and not just the green, they're also deer resistant, there's a close up of the fruit, it's really cool, it's this purpley white color, and it just doesn't really look natural, but it's a beautiful, beautiful, persistent fruit. Northern Pearl Bush, cultivars Northern Pearls, and it gets its name because of the flower is a nice solid white, just a very pure white, and the petals are fused before it opens up, so it looks like a white pearl. Larger shrub, six to eight foot, just as wide, and extremely tolerant to variable soil types, and also drought tolerant, so that's another nice aspect, too, so really nice, pretty subtle white flower, and that's what I always look for, too, is to have a diversity in color and in styles. So here's just a little bit of a close up, if you look on the right picture, you can see kind of central right, where the buds are that tight round kind of pearl look to them, they will open up to be a little bit more flamboyant, but really nice, nice, pretty white. Any of the pionicle hydrangeas, becoming very common now, a lot of work and selection has been done on them, for us here, they do very well. Hardy Zone Four, again, once again, Dead Zone Three, maybe a little protected spot, but a lot of different colors now, here's Diamond Rouge, really, really pretty, a deep kind of magenta color to it, four to five foot tall, not really a spreader, more than upright, which is really nice. What's neat about it, and here you can see the color, this is a lot like what we were just talking earlier, where like with the campfire rose, where it does a color transition, and so you can see where it's coming out kind of that white, and then it will fade into a deeper color, because the flowers that we're seeing are actually sterile, they're not true flowers, and that's what's great about the pionicle hydrangeas is that they have really long flower life because they're not true flowers, and so they don't have the process of creating seed, so they're there long term, and can be a really good asset to our gardens. Incredible is an arbor essence, slightly different species than the panicle, but again, does very well. Hardy Zone Three has those big mop heads, which can be a little bit on the messy side, come the next year, because you're gonna wanna do some deadheading to kind of remove all that, but wow, what a show, look at this hedge, just amazing. But again, super variable when it comes to soil types, very low maintenance, but again, the flowers that we're seeing are sterile, so they're really persistent. Here's just a photograph showing how large it is, so you can see in scale with a person's hand, and that's why they call them the credible, just because they're so incredibly big. Winter holly, or winter berry holly, so here we actually have a deciduous holly. There's several different cultivars, this one I think is kind of funny, it's berry poppins. Again, very adaptable, can handle wet locations, which is nice, because again, we don't always have a perfect yard, and so it's nice to have plants that will do well in the dry, some that will do better in the wet. This is also a native, which is also nice, because we really want to encourage natives to help out our pollinators. It does require a male to pollinate, because one thing about the name winter berry, you would expect then a berry, because the flowers are kind of subtle, not too exciting, but it's the berry that really is. So you have to make sure you get a male to get the berries. So here's just a shot of those persistent berries. With berry poppins, they're more of a red. There are other cultivars that are yellow, so here's berry heavy gold, and then little goblin gold, which is sold more as a orange, even though it kind of looks reddish, but it's on that orange side. Ninebark, we know does really well. Hardy Zone Three has no problems really whatsoever, no maintenance, can basically plant it just about anywhere. It is native, lots of different colors now with the purple foliage types, to the green, to the gold foliage type. This is a new one that's out called Tiny Wine. It's kind of competing against Little Devil, but again, giving us some smaller plants to be able to mix in as well. So this is three to five foot tall. So again, the flowers are kind of subtle, but it really is more all about the combination of the flowers and that foliage color with that purple foliage. Spirea, we know there's a million spireas, but there's a new one called Double Play. Double Play Big Bang, it's like too much of a name, but two to three foot tall. So it's a nice little compact plant. What's cool about it is that the foliage, when it emerges out, is more of an orange, kind of golden color, and then it will fade off into a green, and then the flowers are this really nice pinkish purple, which is kind of standard for Spirea, but it's the foliage as it emerges out in the new season that really gives it that bang. Lilac, we can't go without talking about a lilac. Here's Prairie Petite Lilac, this is awesome. Only three to four foot tall, and it's been documented three foot after 25 years. So this is a common lilac that will fit anywhere. Great fragrance, very florific, just beautiful, beautiful little lilac. Track butterflies, hummingbirds, fits just about anywhere. So here's just a close up of the flowers. Traditional lilac, it is a common lilac. And then we have a lot of the hybrids. Here's Bloomerang, which is a repeat bloomer. Again, we want to get as much money, or much bang out of our money, and here we can get a nice re-bloomer. Super fragrant, another new one, scent and sensibility. Really super fragrant, it's in the same line as Bloomerang, it doesn't have as good of repeat bloom, so it's not being sold in the Bloomerang line. But you will get some repeat bloomers out of scent and sensibility, but it is a really super fragrant lilac. And then my favorite, why do you need to improve a lilac when we have dwarf Korean lilac? Beautiful lilac, prune tolerant, planted just about anywhere as long as it doesn't stay wet. And super florific and really, really fragrant. And here's just a shot of it now as a standard. They're trained them up as standards, and you can't go wrong with that. So with that, those are my quick overviews and strokes. All right, thank you, Titus. Excellent, I tell ya, I got the spring fever looking at those pictures, those are spectacular. I love it. Okay, we got some questions already coming in, and keep coming, everybody. How about you mention Holly, the Ilex? Yeah. Did you see that's native to North Dakota? I don't know if it's actually native to North Dakota, it's native into Minnesota. Okay. See, and that's the one thing we always have to worry about with the term native, you know, is it really, is it native to North Dakota, is it native to the regions, is it native to the US? And so we have to be careful with the term native. Okay, but at least it's, at least nearby native, you can say that. How about the persistence of those winter berry fruit? Any time you have fruit that's persistent, you always have to be careful, because the catalogs will say they'll be there all winter long, but we know better that wildlife, once they find them, they'll be gone. So they'll be there a while, but again, we are also helping promote our wildlife as well with food source, so eventually they will find them. So are they gonna be there for Christmas? Holly, decoration? Potentially, it depends on who finds them. It has a smooth leaf or a tiny leaf? No, it's more of a smooth leaf. There is a serrated edge, but it's not like our typical Holly leaf that we're used to. Because a smooth leaf, Holly, when you bring it indoors for decoration, that means the man is in charge of the house for the upcoming year. I did not know that. Just wondering if that was safe to bring in my house. I did not know that. How about, is coral very edible? Good question. I should probably know that, but I don't. Is it persistent? It is, and again, it's the same thing where eventually I see Lila, while life will find it. How about, can you recommend any shrubs that have a nearly constant bloom? If you want constant bloom for the longest, yeah, the hydrangeas, because they have the sterile flowers, potentilla, really long bloom time. How about that rose, you mentioned this? The rose, that is a really long- That's how it has a series of flushes. It's not a one-time flush. I agree, it definitely has a series of flushes. That's such a great rose. Yeah, it looks great. Okay, how about, do any of these shrubs work under a north-facing bay window, like shady? Well, I mean, there's some that will do the part shade, nothing that's gonna handle extreme full shade, because anytime you're looking at a plant that's in a really, really shady spot, you're gonna work, problems are gonna come out with it being leggy, it's gonna grow out, you won't get as many flowers, so you're gonna compromise a lot of the good qualities of that plant. So maybe an evergreen. Yeah. How about a hydrangea? Did they take a little shade? A hydrangea could definitely take shade, yeah. How about will the hydrangea penicillata rendia turn color even without an acidic soil? Yeah, that's a nice with penicillata. So that's a very good question, because like the big leaf hydrangea is susceptible to our pH, so with high alkaline soil, it won't turn that nice blue, it'll stay pink. With the penicillata, it's not dependent upon pH. So the color that you buy is the color you get. Okay, that's good. And I've got some hungry gardeners out there. How about that proud berry? Was that a coral berry? Coral berry, yeah. Is that edible? We already instead. I should have looked up all the edible things, I didn't realize I was gonna be so excited about eddy's keeping. They're starving out there. We need to do a talk on eddy's keeping. That was last year, we weren't eating coral berries. I don't know, I've never eaten a coral berry. How about aronia, they said that makes a good smoothie. Yeah, aronia, you really gotta mix it with something to make it really palatable. Again, there's that edible versus palatable. It's really stringent, really bitter, but really healthy. So mix it in with some ice cream and yum yum. Okay, how about, when would you prune a Korean lilac? Well, with any of the lilacs, you wanna make sure that you can prune when you need to prune, whenever you have time to prune. But if you're gonna prune a lilac, realize that it's gonna be on the last year's wood. So if you prune it, you wanna prune it right after flowering. So you can try the flowers. Because then you get that new growth that comes in, you enjoy the flowers, you get the new growth, which will then set the flower buds for next year. If you prune it before flowering, you're gonna miss out. Right, same with forsythia, that's not it. Yeah, forsythia, same way. Same thing, wait till after the flower. Yeah, the best way to prune a forsythia is right at the base. Yep. Maybe a little round of two. Yep. Just kidding. Can you recommend a flowering shrub that would do well as a privacy hedge? Oh boy. Depends on, do you want it all year round? Cause with our deciduous shrubs, obviously they're gonna lose their leaves. Cause even forsythia, you can shape it into a nice privacy hedge cause of its size. But it's gonna lose its leaves, but it's fairly dense. If you're looking for a privacy screen, you may want to look more evergreen. Or how about like with arrow wood, Vibranum to the drive? Arrow wood wood, yeah. But again, same thing. Once it loses its leaves, it's not as dense. Yeah. Are any of the newer nine bars less acceptable to powdery mildew? Well, that's what they're trying to really breed into. Cause I know the little devil is supposed to be more tolerant of powdery mildew, a little more resistant. So the newer varieties, that's what they're saying. Again, you want to make sure you keep them in spots where there's going to be good airflow. How about dead button bush? Oh wow, these people are so hungry. Button bush. Don't eat it. Don't eat a button bush. Okay. Yeah, you know, that is a good thing to say, Ted, right? Like don't, unless you're sure. Unless you're sure. No, the button bush, it's such a unique flower. It's a good conversation. And like I said, it makes a nice cut flower too. And you can really wow your friends with something that they've probably not seen. Right, I never saw it before. How about which of the lilacs suckers the least? Ooh. Or maybe which one to avoid. Yeah, which one to avoid. That's a good question. I mean, cause that's kind of what they're there for. One thing, several years ago, I had a chance to go over to Poland. And the coolest thing I saw over there was a common lilac trained his tree form. Now they had to maintain the suckering, but actually trained it as a tree. It was gorgeous. But yeah, you're going to be dealing with any type of suckering on the lilacs. And you just have to deal with it. That's right. Okay, can you fertilize a hydrangea to get blue color? You're not necessarily fertilization, but you're going to have to do soil modification with acidification. But that's again, that's with your big leaf, not your peniculata. Peniculata, you can't change that color. So when you buy the hydrangea, you got to be sure of the species that you want the big leaf hydrangea and you have to have a super acidic to turn it blue. So the best thing would be is if you want that really nice blue hydrangea, you need to make a raised bed. So that way you can modify that soil and keep it modified. You sink it in the ground into a regular bed. It's gonna be really hard to modify and stay modified. Now let's talk peat moss is good for that soil. Peat is really, really good helpful. But it's going to be a lifelong battle. You're better off just trying to go with something else. Did you mention barberry bushes? You know, I did not talk about barberry at all. And because you're anti-barberry or I just didn't give you enough time. Not anti-barberry, but I don't think of barberry when I think of a flower in a shrub. That's a good point. But it is, it's a good one for directing traffic. If you want people not to cut through an area, plant barberry. That's right, keep the neighbor's dog out. How about the Canadian Explorer series of roses? Are they still available? Yeah, they are. I know Jeffrey's Nursery is one of the releasers with the Canadian series. If you go to their site, so anybody who buys through Jeffrey's should be able to get them. Doesn't Bailey Nursery still? I think Bailey's, they should. The thing with Bailey's is that they're developing more of their own lines of material and they're dropping other people's lines of material. So, you know, I'm gonna throw in my own questionnaire because you know, there's so many cool plants like you said like that. We've never seen before, but how, what would be your strategy? I get really inspired to say I gotta have one of these coral berries. You know, how can I, what would be your recommendation? How I can make that happen? Should I go to my nursery right now and tell them I wanna have this specific cultivar of coral berry and then they can order it from Jeffrey's or Bailey's? So don't wait for them because it may not be there. Exactly, don't wait for them. You know, it is that double end or double edge sword is that, you know, they're gonna push what they think you want and then you also need to go in and tell them what you want. So now's a good time to do that. Now's a great time to do it. Proud berry is not edible. We hear from Alva County. Oh good, thank you. So there you go, don't eat it. Can you make our recommendation? What type of shrubs do best when they're exposed to a lot of wind in a part sun environment? Well, I mean, anytime when you're exposed to a lot of wind you just wanna make sure that they're staying well watered. You're not focused on ones that are more drop tolerant because you're gonna get a lot of drying out with that wind on the leaves. Avoid any of your evergreen, your dwarf evergreen shrubs because they'll burn up in that type of situation especially in the winter time obviously but just make sure you got good moisture. And to make a soil acidic. Sulphur? And there's other acidifiers. Yeah, but sulfur is the best method. So, Ty, another inquiry, how come you didn't mention mock orange? You know, I was gonna include mock orange but again, that's another one where depending upon cultivar, a lot of the cultivars are zone five. We have zone four. And again, that was that iffy and I was like, well, so yeah, I was gonna include it but that was the one that I kind of took out because of the time. Okay, where's Jeffrey's nursery? Jeffrey's nursery is a wholesale nursery up in Manitoba. So they don't sell directly to the public but a lot of the nurseries in our area here buy from Jeffrey's. How about this gardener in Mourntown? He has some buried lines and what shrub can you plant that does not root too deep? Is that really a concern? I wouldn't really be too concerned with that because with shrubs, they do have a fairly shallow root system and you shouldn't have any issues really. How about his endless summer? Is that a small leaf I drained? That's a big leaf. That's a magnifier. That's one that turns blue. Yep, so we have that on campus and it's a beautiful pink. Even though it's a little bit big. We're just power pack full of questions here. Oh, town or nursery does not buy from Jeffrey's. I saw that pop up. You need to go to a garden center. Also, I should say this presentation is archived. So, and we'll get it on the internet in a day or two. So I'm sure you want to see it again and share it with your friends in case you missed something. Also, please download your handouts. All this good information is there. What else, my executive producer? Did I miss anything here? Do you think we got it licked here? Okay, Todd, all I got to do is say thank you, Del, it's a great presentation. We really appreciate it. And we're gonna take a quick five minute break and move on to the next talk, everybody. All right. Oh, you know, I stepped in and I found it in there and then you can stand. That's what I got for last week. Well, all right, everybody. Just a quick note that we're gonna meet our microphone here for a couple of minutes and we'll have the next presenter up in just a few minutes, less than five minutes and we'll get started with our second session tonight. Stay tuned. It's for me right now. You ready? I'm ready. Hey, everybody. I just have to be in front of the camera. I should have been here in the introduction, but my wife gave me a new sweater, so I just have to show it off today. Okay, now we're moving on to our, what a great talk we had about following shrubs. I'm really excited about our next talk too. Sometimes I get it as a question. What is a special tree that I need to have in my landscape in North Dakota? And to me, I think one of the answers, you have to consider a birch tree. Why? Because birch has amazing bark and bark in North Dakota is so important because for goodness sakes, our trees are leafless for most of the year. So why should we care about like a crab apple that blooms for two weeks? Care about something that has great bark all winter long. And so consider a birch tree. So now we got an expert to tell you about birch trees. Greg Morgensen has been an urban forester for decades. He is a top researcher from this nationally acclaimed woody plant improvement program and we're so fortunate to have him here tonight. So Greg, please welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. We'll hand the advances to the first slide. Well, I kind of wanted to talk about birch tonight because one of the things, if you live anywhere in the central US, the Northern US, you have probably tried a birch in your yard. We're not all successful at it. And I'll talk about that, but birch is probably one of the most popular landscape trees that we can plant. So I'm going to go through a little bit about it. Birch, why they do well, why they don't do well. Some of the things we can do to make sure they do perform up to their best and then maybe go into some of the species and cultivars after that. So there's many, many cultivars of birch and species of birch. Not all birch are created equal. So there's many, many different species out there and a number of them we can use in our landscapes here in North Dakota. They offer a very striking addition to the landscape. I want to say when they're sighted and planted properly where the climate is suitable for their optimal growth. And that's really the key to this where they're planted correctly in a suitable environment. Well cared for spruce and home landscape provide attractive seasonal interest, as Tom mentioned, the bark through the winter and also all the traditional tree benefits of wind protection, shading of a home, just making a living environment a little bit better. As we've progressed in birch about the last 30, 40 years, we've actually started doing a lot of different changes selecting for plant form to make them a little more adaptable to landscapes. There's upright forms, there's small forms that the old traditional European weeping birch is still in use, hopefully not for long, but still in use. So there's a lot of different forms you can place in a very incised landscape. A lot of different foliage textures and colors got everywhere from green to purple foliage. Generally most of them turn a yellow to brilliant yellow in the fall. So you've got that extra season of interest there as they start to shut down in the fall. And the bark on, and Tom mentioned bark, there's so much variation in the bark of birch. I always thought a really neat planting would be to not just have one species of birch, but maybe have five, six different species in a planting and mix up that bark texture in them. They're everywhere from brilliant white to salmon colored to highly exfoliating. So there's a lot of different bark textures that you can choose from. So we have this nice birch in our yard. It's grown for a while and then suddenly over a couple of years it's dead. So what happened? What happened to my beautiful birch? Well, most birch are planted outside of their optimal growing conditions. And birch under stress run into all kinds of problems. So the result is decline in death. The picture here, you're gonna have moisture stress. It's planted in a dry spot, high soil pH. It looks like it's in a Western environment with a higher soil pH. You have reflected heat from that street. One thing you don't want is a lot of reflected heat on a birch. Plant competition and these all start to contribute to decline in birch and really is the problem with their decline in eventual death. One thing we need to remember about birch and we use them in our landscapes, but they're really far out of their native environment when we put them in those landscapes. They're naturally found growing in the Northern US, Canadian provinces, mountain forests, pretty evenly moist shaded, cool soils, cool as a key there, and slightly acidic soil pHs. And they generally grow on sunny sites where their crowns are sunny with a similar site requiring species. So there may be other trees or shrubs mixed in that's like the same conditions. And there's minimal ground vegetation. There's not a lot of brome grass or turf grass. And the trunks are often shaded for a portion of the day. Their root systems generally are always shaded for most of the day. So we're really trying to move birch into an unnatural environment in our landscape. So where do we plant birch? We take birch, we take them into our landscape, we put them out in the front of a lawn, generally just grown by themselves, turf up to the trunk, unless you do a little bit of control on it. Heavy, heavy turf, light shallow watering instead of less frequent, deep watering. And they may grow for a while and start doing very well, but at some point they start to decline. And the tree in the picture on the left, there already has dead stems up in the top of there, probably from bronze birch borer, which we'll talk about. The turf to the trunk of the tree is probably one of the biggest things that end up causing a lot of damage. Birch are very thin barked. And so we run around them with mowers, we run around them with string trimmers, and we eventually damage that bark to the point that the tree's really no longer to function properly. So in the landscape, that sets us up for a number of problems. Bronze birch borer being the number one, I'm sure you've all heard of bronze birch borer. We've got some lesser problems, birch leaf miner, which is cosmetic but can really cause some severe defoliation in a heavy infestation. And if you're here in the valley or some of the other places out west with high pH, you get this yellow chlorosis on the foliage. So those are all indications that you're gonna have problems with your birch. If anything else we learned tonight, we'll learn about bronze birch borer and why this is such a problem. You've all heard of emerald ash borer from Asia. Bronze birch borer is its close cousin from North America. Very closely related species, emerald ash borer and ash bronze birch borer in birch. So we have our own borer that's native to our country and has been here for millennium. So our species have evolved with that. The North American species that have evolved to bronze birch borer have, and I kind of grouped this three ways, poor to fair to very good tolerance to bronze birch borer. Bronze birch borer tolerance is species dependent and it's also population within species dependent. And then European and most Asian species, which did not evolve with bronze birch borer are very susceptible to bronze birch borer infestation and death. One of the symptoms of bronze birch borer, very similar again to emerald ash borer is the D shaped exit holes on the trunk of the trees. So if you see those on there, those D shaped holes, then you know you've got bronze birch borer in there. So oftentimes when I drive around, you see a lot of birch, such as a birch on the left with the whole top beginning to die back. And that's bronze birch borer infestation. Again, planted in a lawn situation, sawed up to it. We may think we're doing pretty good care for it. And other trees like an elm or an ash or an oak would perform well there, but birch out in that full sun environment with a warm root system just does not perform well. Again, you see the D shaped exit holes and then also you start seeing woodpecker damage in there. The woodpeckers know that those larvae are in there. So they'll go in there and start tearing up those trunks too. And then eventually you've got death of that tree. So how can we avoid all this? Well, the first one is to plant tolerant species and cultivars, avoid the European and Asian species. We all like the European cut leaf weeping birch. Unfortunately, if you were to take all the birches and say which one is the most susceptible to bronze birch borer, it'd be the European now weeping birch. Plant in an optimal planting site, mulched, root shaded area, north or northeast side of your home. Avoid the real open dry full sun planting signs on the sites on the south and southwest. So if you can shade those roots during the day and keep them cool and keep them mulched, you go a long ways towards improving the health of that tree. Avoid damage by mowers and string trimmers. Whoever's doing your lawn care, make sure that they stay away from them and try to have a mulched area around there so you totally avoid it. Birch have a very thin bark on it. And once you've damaged that tree, that area where you've removed that bark is no longer functioning for transport in there. One thing, avoid granular herbicides. People like to spread weed and feed all over their lawn. You're actually spreading 240 granules all over in there that can leach into that root zone. Avoid those type of materials around them. I would say avoid them around all trees, but birch can be very sensitive to it. Keep your pruning to a minimum. You don't wanna go in and prune a lot of wood out of that tree. Just do some general maintenance type trimming. And if you can, leave those limbs lower where it shades the trunk, shades the soil around it a little bit. And a good thing to remember, the warmer, drier and more exposed to the site, bigger will decline and stress will occur. It's just pretty much a given on birch. So a little bit about site-wise, try to water deeply during dry periods. People like to irrigate their lawns that do a lot of shallow everyday irrigation or every other day that's really not getting down in that root zone area and then getting that water level that they need. So avoid the real shallow ones, maintain a cool root run. Mulch, if you can mulch out to the drip line is ideal, especially on birch. If you can keep that mulched area wide, that's the best way you're gonna keep those in good health. Additional birch problems, chlorosis. I just took this picture last summer, I actually has taken, or some of it before last, taken pictures of elm. And what it shows here though, you can see how well that elm is doing on a boulevard planting here in Fargo. To the left of it is a birch, to the right of it is a red maple. Those bright yellow trees are not adapted to our clay, high pH soils, or the pH soils further west in the state. So if you don't have a site to plant a birch on, don't plant a birch. Select a tree that's gonna do well in that area. Sap sucker damage. If any of you have birch, you've probably seen this. Sap suckers are a woodpecker. They'll drill around and around that tree and they'll actually drill hundreds of thousands of holes in there. And at this point, they're not looking for anything inside the tree. They actually wound it so that tree oozes sap and then they can basically lick that up. They don't suck it out of there, but they lick it up. The sap on the birch is sweet and they like that. As I said, the bark is thin. So that's one of the trees they really go for is those thin bark trees. Basically at this point, it is hard to recommend what to do for it. People have hung snakes and owls and metal pans and tangle foot all around them and the sap suckers still will go to the tree. The best thing I think I have heard is to take three or four bamboo stakes or some kind of wooden rods or poles and tie them around the trunk of that tree so it interrupts their feeding patterns. Excuse me. So if you can interrupt that pattern of the bird going around the tree, you wanna do that. Woodpeckers are also protected migratory birds so you really can't do anything otherwise to get rid of them. What to plant and what not to plant. And as I said, avoid European white birch and cultivars of that, such as the pendula or the weeping one and the cut leaf weeping. They're very, very highly preferred by the bronze birch bore. There's purple leaf cultivars that are very attractive in the landscape. And I know I see them more and more in the landscape but one thing to remember, they are either that species on some of them or they're hybrids with that species, the European white birch. So they're also gonna be very susceptible to bronze birch bore. The North American species that have evolved with bronze birch bore have some low tolerance to very high tolerance in certain species and cultivars. And examples of some of our native species include paper birch, the gray birch, river birch, yellow birch and sweet birch. And I'll talk about a few of those here. I think we're all familiar with paper birch. It's another one of the white barked birches. It has some exfoliating bark on it. It's native across the whole northern tier of the US. This is a birch that's native to North Dakota, one of our two native birches. And paper birch and then the Western Rocky Mountain birch are also native to North Dakota. But paper birch is found in areas across North Dakota and it has some tolerance to bronze birch bore until it's placed in a very stressful growing conditions. But generally of the birch species, paper birch has more tolerance to bronze birch bore than many of the other white barked birches. Populations from the northern Midwest are generally those that are best suited for North Dakota conditions. We don't wanna take a paper birch from New England or from Northern Canada and plant it here and expect it to do well under our conditions. So North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana type populations are best. There's a number of paper birch cultivars that we have in testing out at our horticulture farm. The one pictured here is Renaissance Reflection does very well, it's somewhat pure metal, very nice dark green foliage, bright white bark. So it's kind of one of them that we tend to recommend a little bit. Avalanche is another one. And again, very nice white bark, pure metal, seems to be very susceptible to sap sucker damage, but seems to be doing well. Chickadee is a very upright, narrow paper birch. One of the paper birch that has gotten national, I guess, recognition that is being widely used across the Northern US is Prairie Dream Paper Birch. And this is available in most nurseries in the area, garden centers. And this is a selection out of the NDSU Woody Plant Program. And it originated from a birch population in the Kildere Mountains of North Dakota. So the Kildere Mountains, well north of Dickinson, you're out in a stressful environment with low humidity. This tree growing in that area has adapted to those conditions, these populations of birch. And so Dr. Dale Herman, our previous head of the Woody Plant Program grew a population of birch from the Kildere Mountains and selected Prairie Dream out of that. Very bright white bark, attractive, grown as a multi-stem as most white barked birches are. And does very well in our areas, pretty readily available now also. We'll talk a little bit about river birch. River birch is probably one of the most widely used landscaping birches in the US, but it tends to be used further east of us and further south for two reasons. Once was cold hardiness within a lot of the populations. And the second one is they tend to have iron chlorosis on high pH soils. So we've got two problems that we had to overcome there. There are a number of paper birch that are around and growing. I do see them, some do well and some do not. Again, I'm gonna put a little plug in for one of our releases. This should be available in 2019. This is one called Northern Tribute River Birch. Very shaggy, exfoliating, white-ish cream color to salmon-colored bark, full-sized tree. And as you can see the foliage in the picture, this is growing on a pH of about eight to two. So it's got tolerance to higher pH soils. And again, this came out of the birch program at NDSU and Dr. Herman had found or had heard of a tree, river birch tree in all places, Dickinson, North Dakota, which is probably one of the most unusual places you would find a river birch, grew again a seedling population from this and selected Northern Tribute River Birch out of there. There's been three of the major landscape ornamental nurseries get this tree into tissue culture and they're now in their production programs and should have it available in 2019. Asian white birch. For a while, this was kind of touted as a replacement for European white birch, very cold-hearted, well-adapted to North Dakota, high pH, soil pH tolerance, but it was found to be susceptible under stressful planting conditions. So again, we go back to that proper siting and care for them. And there are several platyphila or Asian white birch that are available. Again, one of the birch out of the NDSU program, this kind of taking the birch world by storm across the country is Dakota Pinnacle, a very upright, compact birch. It does very well in the landscape, 40 to 50 foot in height, very nice deep green color, bright white bark, a very uniform predictable shape to it and it's pretty widely available. So of the platyphila birches, Dakota Pinnacle is probably now the go-to tree. There's one out of Canada now out of Jeffery's working with Bailey Nurseries in Minnesota, it's called Parkland Pillar. And basically what this is is called just a tissue culture variant out of a tissue culture population of Dakota Pinnacle birch. One was noticed that was very columnar in form instead of the broadly columnar was narrowly columnar. So that was selected and named as Parkland Pillar, very, very narrow upright birch. So you're gonna have to have a spot where a very narrow tree will be the tree to plant. I wanna talk about a little bit of other birch possibilities or our other species. Yellow birch has a huge range to the east of us. It comes quite a ways across Minnesota on the whole tier of northern states, generally not used as much in the landscape situation because it doesn't have the bright white bark. It's got kind of a yellowish, golden yellowish exfoliating bark. This is a tree that's growing in Fargo here, bright yellow, full color, kind of a nice ornamental birch. Excuse me, my throat seizes up here. And then along that same line, I'll talk about some other species, but I'm gonna talk about some of our program at Absaraka. We have had and have a birch evaluation program. We have a large planning of birch, number of them do well, a number of them are in various stages of decline and death. We have a high population of bronze birch bore, which we want all the birch out there. We want it to be subjected to the worst through the worst. So you can see some trees do very well, others do not. I wanted to mention Korean birch betula castata because this has kind of been touted a little bit as having some resistance to bronze birch bore. In fact, some reports even says it has good resistance to bronze birch bore, but Korean birch does very well for us. Those of you that like to grow things from seed, if you can grow a tomato seed, you can grow a birch seed. So you can go to some of the seed companies, FW Schumacher, Sheffield seed, they have packets of some of these birch species and certainly give them a try as a beautiful tree. Another one along that same line, but with even more exfoliating bark is the hurry and larch. It's kind of a smaller tree. Again, it has been said to have resistance to bronze birch bore, very pH adaptable, very exfoliating bark on it, really, really pretty plant. So again, if you come across seed of that in a packet, give it a try. We have another selection out of our program, two of them actually that I've released pretty recently. Generally we think of birch as trees, tall trees anywhere from 20, 30, 40, 50 foot tall. This is one called cinnamon curls. This is a betulacostata, again, a Korean birch. And at about 30 years of age, this birch is nine foot by nine foot. So very small, fits in a very small landscape, very attractive exfoliating bark. We've got one nursery that now has it in tissue culture. So hopefully down the road here, not too long from now we'll be able to get this birch and use it in our landscape, but to have a very small birch in the landscape with this type of bark that's hardy here, will be a real plus for us. We just released another birch that we're getting out into the trade, and it's called Tianchen birch. It's from Northern China. Very, very columnar in form, very drought tolerant, very pH tolerant. So we hope this gets picked up by the nurseries also and we can get that out. So from all this, there's a lot of birch species you can grow. You just need to provide the suitable conditions for them those that are adapted to your area. So thanks a lot. And if you have some questions, I'll try to answer them. Okay, thank you, Greg. Okay, we got a lot of good questions here. How about just give us a ballpark. We got a healthy weepy birch. So let's assume it's under a right, the proper environment. So how long is this birch gonna live? Is a birch a long-lived tree or short-lived tree in China? Birch, the kind of the rule of thumb is if it's 40 to 50 years old, then you've done a really good job. So if you can keep it in good shape, and they can certainly live longer than that. We know they can live longer than that. But yeah, if you're doing it right and just taking care of it like that, I guess I wouldn't change anything and just keep going. What do you think about rock? Is that a good mulch around a birch tree? I guess I don't have a big preference between rock and wood mulch. Rock is fine with me. I know some people don't like it. The biggest plus is it doesn't blow away. And in our climate, if you're exposed to 60 mile an hour winds, then you've got all that bark or rain washing out in your yard. So I guess I haven't had any problems with it. And in fact, I see birch doing very well in some small rock mulch plants. How about the heat build up from the mulch? Yeah, I have heard that and I just, I guess I just haven't tested that. But, okay, great. What's a best paper birch for a higher pH? The best paper birch right now to go to your garden center and buy is Prairie Dream Paper Birch. Is that better than a yellow birch? And they're high pH soil, dependent on high pH. I don't know what the pH is. Up to about eight or so you can grow yellow birch. Above that Prairie Dream will grow up eight, two, eight, three pH in your soil. So why would it grow a yellow birch instead of Prairie Dream? Why would you? Yeah. Why don't I just get a Prairie Dream? Well, yeah, you could. The one thing is Prairie Dream is a white bark birch. Yellow birch is a yellow coppery, creaky, yellow birch. So both of them are very attractive trees. I guess I wouldn't limit myself to one species or cultivar. How about, how far did birch bores travel? Because this person doesn't know if any other birch trees at least five blocks in any direction. Well, they're a flying insect. If we go by emerald ash borer, which is a quarter to half a mile, then I would think bronze birch borer would be about the same. And they'll find a sand birch tree. Well, what they do, yeah, and what I should mention here, when birch declined, they released a chemical. And so the bronze birch borer zeros in on that chemical that's released by a declining birch. Greg, do you like understory plantings or like hostas in the mulch under the birch? Sure, yeah, understory plantings, non-competitive understory plantings, especially hosted with large leaves to shade the soil would be good. You know, you mentioned starting some of these exotic birches from seed. So like, come on, man, what kind of timeframe are we talking about to get to a four-foot tree? Like, is that for my grandchildren or what? No. No, okay. Let's go. Do you want me to talk about seed a little bit? Seed. I'll like to get a four-foot tree. How many years? Okay, birch seed is really easy to collect, treat and germinate. If you want to grow off your own tree, grab those female capcans in the fall when the seeds are shattering, put them in a baggie, mix them with some damp potting soil, damp peat moss, throw them in the refrigerator, keep it damp, bring them out in the spring, put them in a flat cover lightly, put something over the top just to, just to retain moisture but let light through. They'll germinate in a week to 14 days. You can just prick them out of there like you would any vegetable plant. They should grow anywhere from one to two foot the first year to, that should be anywhere two to four foot by the second year. Birch grow very rapidly, very, very rapidly. Really? Yeah. Four-foot tree. In two years. In two years, my goodness. Can you get seeds of the cinnamon curls birch tree or is that just via tissue culture? Cinnamon curls, no. At this point, you can't, that is a variety of castata and I'm assuming they want the small version but castata, bet you like castata seed is readily available from seed dealers. Kim, has Aspen a good substitute for a birch tree? I think Aspen is actually a worse substitute for a birch tree. They tend to sucker, they're subject to a lot of canker diseases and decline. They're attractive in the landscape for a while but if you do not maintain them and keep those suckers mowed down, you'll have a grove taken over your yard. What do we got here? Okay, the bronze birch bore, you mentioned as a major threat. If you think your birch tree has bronze birch bore, what do you do about it? Get somebody out there to confirm that if you have a local garden center person, certified arborist, make sure that that's what you have and then what control they would offer for that. I'm not into chemical control on trees. I like to plant trees that we're not gonna need that on but there are some chemicals, systemic chemicals that birch can be treated with. If the infestation is light, if it's a heavy infestation, do your cut at ground level and rid yourself of the problem but light infestation, there are some systemic insecticides. So we'll see the damage starting from the top of the tree because the vascular system has been destroyed by the borer. Right in that area. So the top of the tree gets the last drink of water. So you'll see the symptoms there. And I was taught that if you see more than one third of the tree died back, then it's hard to save the tree because the vascular system has been so much destroyed. And there are insecticide, systemic insecticides and matacloprid, bare advanced tree and shrub insect control is the magic cure for that. Does clump birch do well in eastern North Dakota? Yeah, clump birch. Clump birch really is birch in a clump of whatever species it may be. But yeah, birch do well pretty much statewide depending on the proper species in the proper site. Now you've said that Northern Tribute River birch does not show chorosis even at 8.2 pH. Correct, because I soiled sample right underneath that. That's a breakthrough for river birch. Yeah, totally. That's a breakthrough because that's an amazing. When Northern Tribute does come out, it's a pretty special tree. And also the one thing about river birch is they are almost totally immune to bronze birch borer. They do not produce the chemical under stress that attracts birch borer. So if you want a tree that will not get bronze birch borer, the river birch are one of those. And that can take the heat. That's why the river birch is so special. If you take the heat, it doesn't get the borer, but it can't take a high pH of your Northern Tribute. It's an amazing advancement. So fingers crossed, 2019 will start saying so. It's gonna be available. Hopefully, yes. Okay, I'm gonna look forward to it. Well, so any other questions out there? Here's a question. If birch are close together in a clump, will the trunks tend to girdle themselves on the inside of the clump? Not necessarily. Not unless there's a lot of movement in there. And birch naturally grow as a clump anyway. So I guess I would say no. I have not seen that personally. Okay, let's see. Buy a prairie dream birch from a local garden center. How many years until it reaches about 30 feet tall? Under good growing conditions. Yeah, I would say 12, 14 years. Okay. Under good conditions, they grow. They can grow two to three foot a year sometimes under very good conditions. Okay, that's, you know, you mentioned about herbicides. How you shouldn't put granular herbicides under the root system of a birch tree. Well, how far does the root system of a birch tree go? That's your whole yard. That's all your whole front yard. I know some people like them, so but I'm just saying keep away from them. That's right. A dandelion is okay. Think of your birch tree. Limit your application once a year maybe in fall. Okay, any more last questions here? Okay, that's great. Thank you, Greg. I'll see Andy. So we will take another five minute break and then we will get the tree doctor of North Dakota to come and talk to us about some tree pros and spruces. We cannot go and talk anymore with that one. It's rude. All right, everybody. We're gonna be muted for about five minutes and we'll be back with you shortly with Joseph Lesnick and we'll have our last presentation of the night. And a warning, we'll have our last presentation in just one minute. I arguably, you could be argue if I had an argument for tree doctor, I think, like, if I had six trees. Kim Walla does pretty well. Kim Walla is, so he'll keep you honest. Interesting. Thought I'd put mine on. We were surprised to find that it had a tripod. Bounce it at the bottom, it's got a little screw there. Nice. And this tripod has a level, a level. Killed. Okay. I need to use my outdoor voice. Yeah, okay. Not super loud. Tell me if I'm too loud. Or of course not. That's right. Welcome back, everybody. Now we're gonna wrap up tonight with a talk about spruce disorders. You know, spruces are one of the most commonly planted trees in North Dakota. It is a great tree. It is so widely adapted. However, it does suffer from many insect pests, diseases and other types of disorders. So tonight we've got a leading, if not, I would say the leading tree doctor. If you had a sick tree, this is the person you would want to consult. Joel is the last neck extension for us. I'm quite serious. And you will get his email. So just give some more work there, Joel. No, Joel is really, he is the expert when people have a question about how to care for a tree under stress. And we're very fortunate to have Joel here tonight. So let's welcome Joel to the forum. Okay. Well, thanks, Tom. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. That's true. Very humbling. Thank you. All right. Okay. Well, thanks for having me here tonight. I hope I can teach you something about spruce trees and all the disorders they suffer or can suffer here in North Dakota. I do want to point out this presentation is based in part on a recent publication that came out last year, diagnosing spruce disorders in North Dakota. It was put together by myself and Aaron Bergdahl of the North Dakota Forest Service. Should I hold this up in front of the camera? Okay. There you go. There. All right. There it is. Okay, very good. I'm gonna add a few things to this presentation that aren't in here and there are a few very rare or very uncommon pest disorders that I'm not gonna cover tonight. But there's more information in this document if you're interested. And another document that I'm gonna refer to. So that being said, I have diagnosing spruce disorders, mostly spruce. Some of the examples I'm going to give are include pine trees because there are some pests that hit both pine and spruce. So we'll cover that here tonight. Just very briefly, there are a couple that are time sensitive. You will see at certain times of the year, we're gonna cover those first. And then there are other disorders that you will see just about any time of the year. So very quickly, we'll get into winter injury. Winter injury is number one. Winter injury is kind of a vague term. There are a lot of things that can happen to trees over the winter. It gets awfully cold here and then it gets awfully warm and cold again in the spring. And you combine those factors and it's really tough on trees. So winter injury, it can show up like this. On this spruce tree, this is a photo from Mike Kangus, North Dakota Forest Service. It can show up like this. This is another photo from Aaron Bergdahl, North Dakota Forest Service. So the symptoms you're gonna see are pretty variable. Thing is, they show up now. They show up near the end of winter. Actually, this winter hasn't been too bad. So we might not see much of it this year. And sometimes there's a pattern. Obviously these aren't spruce. These are pines in the foreground. And everything above the snowpack was killed. All the needles above the snowpack were killed. All the needles below were protected by the snow, were not killed. So this is another type of winter injury. Obviously this example's pines. Same on this pine, very low to the ground where there was snow, those needles were fine. Above the snow line, they're, I don't wanna say toast. I don't wanna get too technical, but they're hurting. In this example, kind of more damage on the right side of those trees than on the left. That was more of a wind issue. Or this one could have been road salt, actually. Hard to say based on this location. These are white pine trees. This is over in Minnesota. And sometimes there isn't a pattern. Sometimes it's pretty random. In this pine, you might see some needles are dead, some are alive. Some are dead on the bottoms of the branches, some on the top. So it's really variable. And about the only thing you can do for winter injury after the fact is sit and wait. Wait it out. In this example, you can see where the red arrows are, that's where new growth is coming out. The buds were not killed. The needles were, but the buds were not. So in that case, where those red arrows are, new growth is coming. So you just wait it out. But you'll also notice where the black arrows are, those buds are not growing. Chances are they did die. So it's really variable. So that's about all you can do after the fact. Before the fact, actually in the fall, watering from about mid-September until freeze up is what you can do to, I don't wanna say prevent, but at least minimize winter injury. Having trees go into winter well hydrated is about the best you can do to prevent winter injury. Obviously, if you have little shrubs, you could use some kind of burlap or other type of material to protect them, keep them out of the wind, keep the winter sun off them. But for a big tree, you can't do that. The other time sensitive pest I wanna mention is Yellow-Headed Spruce Softly, YHSS. What you're gonna find here, you need to look at this in early to mid-June and you need to start scouting well in early June. This pest shows up mostly in Central and Western North Dakota. I don't know that I've really seen it that far East. I've seen it from Devils Lake down to Richardson. So everything in between. And with this, you might see twisted needles or half eaten needles. Or in this case, you could see the needles have started to turn pink and have started to actually kind of shrivel up. So that's one of the symptoms of Yellow-Headed Spruce Softly. On the right-hand side and kind of towards the background, but on the right-hand side of this photo, you see there's one branch that most of the needles are gone. And that's what the insect does. It can either chew just a little bit off the base and kill the needle or it can eat the whole needle. And this is a Caterpillar, Yellow-Headed Spruce Softly. And here's the thing about this insect. Yeah, that head doesn't look yellow. It looks a little more reddish-orange to me. And yeah, sometimes they're like that. However, the interesting thing with this is it's really not a tough caterpillar. It's pretty sensitive to the chemical, to insecticide control. It's very easily controlled by insecticide if the timing is right. You have to have the insect there. There's a window for about four weeks. Look for it, find it, scout. You have to be out there and find it. And then, yeah, most insecticides will take care of it. But if you spray too early or you spray too late, that's just a waste of money. So that is Yellow-Headed Spruce Softly. Keep an eye out for that in starting in early June. Okay, oh, and there we go, control. Well, there we go. It's everything I just said right there in two lines. Timing is critical, okay. As we move on, we're gonna talk about spruce disorders. You're gonna see it any time of the year. And I wanted to add a little caveat. Any time of the year for diagnosis. Okay, and you're gonna see these a lot, different times of the year, but the treatment is often time-sensitive. There is an insect pest that you can see this every month of the year. It's always there. Treatment for it is really time-sensitive. And we'll talk about that. Okay, but first we'll talk about the needle cast diseases. Okay, needle cast diseases are gonna show symptoms like this. See, the bottom branches are bare. The interiors of the tree is bare. If you look at an individual branch, you might see something like this where the most recent year of growth, they're on the right, the last year of growth. The needles look fine and then you go in one year and the needles are still there. You go in to the third year needles, they're mostly gone. Fourth year needles are totally gone. So you need to look at the different age class of needles. The first year should always be the second year, the second age class there. They might already be affected. If they're affected, if they're infected, excuse me, that's gonna be really tough on the tree. Third year and older, that's gonna be tough as well. Spruce trees should hold their needles for three to seven years. Sometimes, I would say closer to that, seven. Usually I'd say five to seven. But they should hold several years worth of needles and if they're losing them, that could be a problem. So the lower needles are more affected, as I've said. But here's the question, very simply, how can you tell the difference between a needle cast disease and just simply the effects of shade? As trees get older and grow bigger, those older needles towards the center of the tree get shaded out. That's why the tree lets them go. How can you tell the difference? You can tell the difference by these fungal fruiting bodies. Okay, these are on the needles. These are photos really close up of the needles and those little dark dots are fungal fruiting bodies. On the right is a fungal disease called rhizosphera and the left is one called stigmina. And it's really hard to tell the difference. We'll talk about that in a moment. Normal needles, all those stomates, stomates are the little pores in the needles. They're just nice little line. They should be white. They should be white. You can see in those bottom photos, some of them are white, but mostly they're black. Those are the fungal fruiting bodies. Okay, so that's how you tell the difference between needles that just got shaded out because they're not gonna have those black fruiting bodies. Okay, the way you tell the difference between these two diseases, it's very simple. Stigmina, those fungal fruiting bodies, they're kind of fuzzy edges on them. It's, obviously you can see it in this photograph. With a 10 power, 10x hand lens, you should be able to see it. It might be a little tough. You might need to get it under a microscope, but if you see those fuzzy edges to those fruiting bodies, that's stigmina. Rhizosphere, they're smooth edges. Over the last few years, it seems like stigmina has kind of kicked out rhizosphere. Rhizosphere used to be the most common of the needle cast diseases, but it seems like stigmina has kind of taken over and replaced it. In terms of control, rhizosphere, it wasn't easy, but it was pretty straightforward. Chemical control two times early in the season. First is when the needles are about half elongated, and the second would be three to four weeks later. As a rough rule of thumb, it was Memorial Day and Fourth of July. A rough rule of thumb. As we move more towards this stigmina, it seems like that four week, oh, and sorry, let me back up with rhizosphere, that two-time treatment, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, you would need to do that in two consecutive years. And that would work to prevent future infections, or at least minimize. It's really good at that. With stigmina, it's kind of an ongoing battle. Yes, there are those two applications, but it has to be continued throughout the growing season for three or four or five applications, depending on the weather, and several years in a row, more than just those two years. We really need more research on it, but that's our recommendations right now based on our experience. So it's a tough disease to treat. We find this mostly where it's wet. I see this in the Doubles Lake area all over the place. As you get further west, it lessens, it tends to decline. West of 83 or 85, that goes from Bismarck to Minot. 83. 83, I always forget. 83, west of 83, I've seen it a few times, and it's not nearly as common as it is east of there. Okay, and if you're looking for more information about this, our extension publication, F1680, has more information about the needle cast diseases. All right. Another one you can see just about anytime a year is Valsa Canker. We used to call it Cytospora Canker. I think we're gonna be in this transition mode for about the next 10 years because we've sold Cytospora Canker for so long. So it's called Valsa now. This one is interesting because it's just individual branches. Whole branches are gonna die, and the entire branch is going to die in this disease. And that's one of the key diagnostics, but not the key diagnostic because, you know, a branch can die because of a lot of different things. It could just have had too much snow on it, for example, and it broke. Okay, just physical cracking could have been, I don't know, squirrels eat branches sometimes. Yeah, that's about spruces. Yeah. But here's an example. In the left, that tree, I took that photo in 2005, the branch on the left of the left photo with the green arrow, the color was a little bit off, and it caught my eye, so I took that photo, and you can see a year later in May 2006, the entire branch is dead. Now, also on that tree on the left, in the red arrow, it's pointing to a branch that looks really healthy. That's really healthy, and is really healthy. A year later, totally gone. Well, geez, what happened there? The key diagnostic for Valsa canker is these fungal fruiting bodies that you find just under the outer bark, just in the inner bark. That's the key diagnostic, and it's really hard to see sometimes. Basically, treatment is very simple. Remove dead branches and destroy them, burn them, chip them, preferably burn. And keep the trees properly watered. Valsa is a really interesting fungus in that it's really associated with moisture. If the tree gets drought stressed, if a spruce gets drought stressed, it's very sensitive to this disease. The flip side of it is don't overwater spruces because they're pretty sensitive to flooding. See, it's hard to talk to an online audience because I'm so used to say, any questions out there? I know we're saving questions til the end. They're coming, Joe, lots of them for you. All right, lots of information. Spruce spider mites, you see needles like this where the needles get a mottled appearance, mottled appearance, where they, you're usually green, but there are these patches of yellow or tan. You'll notice, again, this is going back to another issue. Stomates, the stomates here are all white. There's no needle cast on this. And the spruce spider mites are tiny. Oh my gosh, they're small. This is how I'm so glad I earned, got this photo of that insect. So it's a cool season mite. Above about 80 degrees, it goes dormant. So it's active early in the season, it's active late in the season. Incredibly small, hard to see. Culture control works pretty well. Just spray a jet of water on there and knock them off of the chemical control. They're mites, they're not insects. They're more closely related to spiders. Okay, so there's a certain class of pesticide called a miticide and they will kill spruce spider mites. However, they'll also kill predatory mites. Some mites will eat plants and some mites will eat other mites and insects. So, gotta weigh that. Timing is critical. Again, it's an early, it's either early season or late season and get out there and try to find them. An easy way to do this is take a white piece of paper and put it under the branch, shake the branch and see if there are little black specks moving around on the piece of paper. I've also heard of the smear test where you get those black specks and you run your finger across them and see if they smear on the paper. Crude but effective. Okay, spruce spider mites. Pine needle scale, this is one of those you're going to see at any time of the year. This is an insect pest that hits pine trees, as you can see in the photo on the top, but also spruce trees. I've seen them right next to each other in the same shelter belt, a pine tree and a spruce tree and they both have pine needle scale. It's a tiny insect that you see those white coverings anytime of the year and that's the eggs are under there. The mama's scale has created that safe zone for the eggs to hatch, for the eggs to hatch and create the crawlers. And the crawler stage is from May to early June. So again, timing is critical. Yes, horticultural oils may work, insecticides are many that will control scale insects. But again, timing is critical. You have to be out there when the crawlers are out. That's when the chemical has to be applied or the treatment has to be applied. So scouting, scouting, scouting is important. Okay, a few more I have listed as other. These are more environmental things that may or may not actually be in our diagnostic guide. This is a pine tree. In this example, it was rodent damage. It was voles that killed this tree. But I've also seen where the whole tree dies because of a line trimmer has pretty much girdled the tree. So what do you do in situations like this? You cut the tree down. There's nothing you can do, unfortunately. But if the whole tree goes all at once, then check at the base of the tree. Check right on the stem where it hits the ground and see if it's been girdled. Another thing that might happen is the site. For example, in 2012, in Bismarck, this tree is kind of on its way out, unfortunately. And they're sitting right in a pool of water. 2012 was a big Bismarck flood, just like these trees. Some of them are already dead. One of them is not. People say, well, why didn't that tree die? Who knows? Genetics, maybe that one's just a little more resistant. It's a little bit bigger. Maybe it's age. Maybe it's a site thing, but I would be willing to bet that maybe that tree lasted a little while longer, but I'd be willing to bet that it's dead. For the areas in Minot that were flooded in 2011, you'll be hard-pressed to find any conifers in that area right now that survived the flood. There are few, but there are few and far between. Okay, here's another example from Kindred, 2006. My old boss said, hey, he left a branch, a spruce branch on my desk, said, hey Joe, what's wrong with this tree? It's killed this one tree and it's going down the line. It was a dead branch, I didn't know. So I went out to the site and this is what I saw on the first tree. And there it is. And if you go to the left, that tree is in decline somewhat. And if you keep going down the line, well, further away, the trees are healthy. Okay, so yeah, he was right. It's starting at one end, going down the line towards the other. And I go back to that first photo and I knew exactly what it was right away. Look at the house behind it. The house is about four to six feet higher than the driveway and that house was pretty new. So what happened was they built a new house, they graded the ground and put in a lot of fill soil. Okay, spruce trees cannot handle fill soil. They can't handle flooding either. It's a low oxygen environment. So that's what was killing the tree. Yes, insects came in and probably some disease and finished the tree off. But really it was that fill soil that caused the initial decline, the initial stress that allowed these other pests to come in and kill the tree. Okay, that was other and now we're into more other. These are some smaller trees I saw in Fargo. I want to say an 09. And where I have those arrows on that individual tree, there's something different between the top of the tree and the bottom of the tree there. The bottom, it looks more full, a little more green. Above those arrows, it's a little more yellow and a little more thin. It's a subtle difference. It's a subtle difference. You have to have the artist's eye to see this. And in the background, I've got sky in the background with photo and one in the background. It's hard to see, but there is a subtle difference. Below those arrows, it's fuller, it's darker, above it's more yellow and a little more open. So I looked at the stem right in that area and that's what I found. Okay, the strap was still on the tree. Many years later, it was choking the tree, it was girdling the tree and there was a big swelling above that where all the food made from photosynthesis was piling up and I went back a year later to go check on those trees, they were gone. So what can you do? But along the same lines, here's a big, big spruce tree where the same thing, same idea. That tree's enormous. There's something happened on the stem at about that height. In this case, it was sap suckers. Blew them away, couldn't believe it. Sap sucker is a bird. You cannot kill it legally, do not. They are a type of woodpecker. They're not going after insects, they're going after sap. There's not a whole lot you can do about sap suckers and unfortunately, we always see this damage after the fact and I'm working on my own apple tree at home right now, those buggers took out my apple tree so trying to figure out how to fix that. Okay, then we're going from more other to more extra other, a couple other things before we finish up here. A herbicide damage, herbicide damage on spruce trees is sometimes hard to diagnose, sometimes it's pretty clear. We often see damage on conifers going up the tree in a kind of a spiral. That's the way water goes up conifer stems is actually spirals up the stem. Other trees are different, how water moves up the stem. Well, if water, if herbicide is in that water, it will spiral up and kill branches along the way. And sometimes it takes an artist's eye to see that spiral. Sometimes it's hard to see, sometimes it's not. In this case, I don't know what the causal agent was. This was over in Moorhead. There was a railroad siding there and some kind of herbicide was sprayed to keep down the vegetation. And what happened is all the spruce took some of that in and it turned those outer needles yellow. Here on campus and the issue campus and that fence in the foreground, somebody was spraying to keep down the vegetation and I never quite figured out what the chemical, what the active ingredient was that was there. This was in Headinger a few years ago and we tried to figure out what was sprayed. Some, someone said it was Roundup or Glyphosate, some said it was 2,4-D, but we were never quite clear. In this case, the color was interesting. It was more of this purplish pink, but what we noticed, besides the purplish pink, is you'll notice that it's always the branch tips. It's the active growing points or most recently active growing points where you're gonna find that damage. In some cases, it starts to twist the needles. There's also a pest called a phytoplasma that may twist the needles in a similar way. We're still trying to figure that one out as well but in this case, with all the other herbicide damage, we're pretty sure that's what caused the damage here. That being said, I wanted to go through that fairly quickly. There's a lot of information there, but I'll be happy to do my best to answer some of your questions, thanks. Okay, thank you, Joe. We got some questions here for you. One is, deer are browsing on a mugo pine. The needles are gone but the buds are still there. Will the branches survive? The branches should survive. If the buds are there, that's where new growth is coming from. And hopefully there's enough new growth to make up for the amount of needles that were lost. Again, you're just gonna have to wait it out and find out. I think, well, they should be okay but we'll see what happens. How about the spruce tree? The top got broken off. Will the spruce tree still grow? Yes, it will. The spruce will still grow. However, with the top broken off, it's hard to say. If it's a small tree or if it's just the very tip, the very leader, like one or two years worth of growth, a side branch can be tipped up either on its own or you can help it along. If it's a large two, three, eight inches diameter, a side branch eventually will make its way up to become the leader or actually several side branches, which is gonna create a point where structurally it's gonna be weakened. If it's something you can direct a new leader, great, do that. If not, well, be careful in the future. Okay, Joe, how about the difference between the rhizosphere and the stigmina fruiting bodies? Is there a way to tell the difference between the two? Sure, yeah, stigmina, you need to, it's subtle, but you can see it under a microscope or with a 10 power hand lens. With the stigmina, the edges of that fruiting body are gonna be fuzzy. They're gonna be blurry. They're little tendrils that come off of those, little hair-like structures. With rhizosphere, it's pretty much round without the fuzz. A lot of you are, and they're all gonna be, they're both those fruiting bodies are gonna be linear on the needle in the... In those stomates, yes, they're laid out in a line. So you have to look at those black dots carefully, that Joe said. Okay, let's say they have stigmina or rhizosphere. Do you recommend a fungicide for that? Yes, fungicides with the active ingredient chlorothalonil. Yeah, I guess I should have added that. Sorry about that, great question. Chlorothalonil, there are a variety of products that have chlorothalonil as the active ingredient. Look those up. How do those disease, those needle cast diseases spread? The needle cast diseases spread, the spores get released, I think throughout the year, but mostly it's early in the growing season and they get spread and if the new growth is susceptible or receptive, that's when they can get infected. It's that new growth that's still soft and tender that is most susceptible. Later in the growing season, they're hardened up, they're less susceptible, less likely to get infected, although it can still happen. Okay, if an ice storm breaks off the branches on one side of a tree, will that side of the tree ever grow back? If an ice storm breaks off the branches on one side of the tree, well, probably not, but that being said, sometimes trees will put out new branches off the stem. I've seen where if trees are heavily, heavily pruned or heavily, heavily stressed, they will send out new branches off the stem. Looks a little weird, but it can happen. It can't grow. Yeah, for a long, long time. For a long, long time, maybe it could take a long time to fill in. Okay. What's the latest verdict about using roundup at the base of a tree trunk to keep the grass awake? The latest verdict. You know, there's some research that's, oh, there's no easy answer yet. Sometimes roundup does get into the trees. Sometimes it'll get into a root or into the stem and it can cause some damage. Sometimes it doesn't. Be careful. Use it properly. Use it according to the label. Try to keep it off the tree stem if you can. If there's a wound on that tree stem or on a root, yeah, it'll get in from that wound, that fresh wound. So try to keep away from those. Joe, how about does a copper fungus spray work to get rid of black fungus growth on a small, new blue stem? Blue spruce totem, spruce totem, like a totem pole. Well, I think if you see black fungus growth on a young blue spruce, what do you think that is? Is it 30 mold, maybe? It could be. Fungicides are almost always preventative. They're not curative. So in cases like that, after the fact, it's probably not gonna do much. It might prevent new infections and that would be a way to go. Now, I'm mostly gonna say at this point that it's hard to answer questions because usually when you do a diagnosis, it's not just like give Joe 20 words and here's your answer. It's that Twitter. Photos help. So yeah, we are in the age of a digital camera and it can make such a huge difference. So take a series of photos, close-ups, distant photos and send to your county extension agent. They're there to help you for any type of tree disorder. And then Joe is also there to support the county agent and to support you to give you the answers you need. And in our digital age, you can get an answer rapidly and you get research-based information from NDSU Extension. We won't try to sell you a fungicide that you don't need, for example. Joe, I don't know if you can do this one. Can you use well water at a pH eight, sodium level 800 PPM to help establish spruce or pine? That's a pretty specific question. But how about, maybe you can talk about in general about the salt tolerance of spruce or pine compared to most other plants. You know, salt tolerance, really there's not a lot of plants, not a lot of trees that are salt tolerant. And using water like that, I would say you could use it in an emergency, but if you've got, if you can get better water than that, that's pretty high salt level. I'm not so worried about the pH. Yeah, our pH of our water is a little high. The pH of our soil is a little high. The spruces that we have here, which are Colorado blue spruce, blackhill spruce, mire spruce, a little bit. And in urban areas, you see Norway spruce, they do tolerate our higher pH soils fairly well. Okay, how about, do you know of any public tours of trees at Epsiraka? Just pay attention to the field day. Yeah, pay attention to the field day, August. They can just Google that. Early August. You can, yeah, so every year is a field day and actually the people you had here tonight are the people who will leave those tours. Yes. When you prune for Volsa canker, do you prune the whole branch if only part of the branch is affected? Or you just prune the part that's affected? Prune the part that's affected. If it's a sub branch of the main branch, yeah, you can take out just the dead area. That maybe if that doesn't work, then you can go all the way back to the main stem. How about a chemical name to control pine needle scale? Pine needle scale, there's... There's horticultural oil. Yeah, horticultural oils, but there are a lot of insecticides that will control scale if the timing is right. You know, a metacloprid is systemic, thank you. It is early spring, you'll get it. It is early spring, yeah. Metacloprid is a systemic, does control scale, but under the right circumstances, carburel, which is also systemic, can be sprayed, thickened, and malathion, malathion will work. If you get it when the crawlers are coming out at the right timing. Yes. Okay, a general cultural question. They have several 20 foot tall Colorado spruce trees planted in late September. Should they fertilize them in spring? I'm not a big fan of fertilizing trees in North Dakota. Generally, there's plenty of nutrients in our soil. If you are going to fertilize spring is the time to do it, but really the most limiting factor here in North Dakota is water. That's the biggest issue, far and above the nutrient issue. And the 20 foot tall Colorado spruce tree planted in late September. Planted in late September, oh boy, I hope they had a big root system as part of it. Re-establishing that root system is really critical, and water's gonna be the, Severe shot. Yes, water's gonna be the critical component to get those roots re-established. Okay, here's something that's a really useful question. There's kind of like the idea that cutting off the leader is gonna make your spruce tree fuller. Is that true? Do you recommend doing that? I don't recommend doing it. It can make it bushier. When they share Christmas trees, spruce trees, yeah, they will clip the leader and clip the leaders of the branches. But that being said, boy, I wish I was able to have some diagrams here. Spruce trees are interesting in that, on the, can you see my finger? Okay, buds on spruce trees are all throughout that leading branch. So if you clip just the top off, there are other, there should be other buds below that will take over, that will kind of compete to be the leader. So it'll make it bushier, but what you'll lose, and that's okay if you're growing a seven or eight foot or 10 foot Christmas tree. But what you'll lose in the long run is you'll lose a central leader. You'll have multiple leaders coming off and years down the road, that's a bad thing. Right, so we generally do not recommend shearing your landscape trees for spruces. How about this long-care company said that they can spray something on their spruce tree to help protect the tree over winter. Okay. What do you think about that? There are products called anti-transference, those pores in the needles. There's those stalemate pores. That's where a number of things happen, but that's where trees lose water. And an anti-trans, it's called transpiration when they lose water. So an anti-transparent is basically a waxy coating that plugs up those pores. They've been kind of hit or miss here in North Dakota. They work for about three months. You have to apply them when temperatures are above freezing. So you apply it in October. Okay, so three months later is November, December, January. January, it generally is not above freezing in North Dakota. If you can time it right, find that mid-winter thaw, you might be able to do it and it might help, but it's gonna be tough. Okay, Joe, that is gonna be it. So thank you, Joe, for that outstanding presentation. And oh, sorry, you got one person. Ken, how do you get rid of spiders on a Bruce Bruce? Well, they spiders are spider mites. I'm okay with spiders. Yeah, yeah, if it's spiders, they're beneficial. They're eating the insects. Yeah, they're good things. Don't worry about that. Spider mites. Spider mites. There's those mites. But you also said jet spray of water is the common way to control. Just use a jet spray of water in those cases. Yeah, there you go. Okay, thank you, Joseph. And we will, for our online viewers at their home computers, we're now shutting down. And we will see you next week. Next week, we're gonna be talking about fruits. We're gonna have presentations about growing Juneberries and growing raspberries, as well as how to graft apples. So we'll see you next week. And feel, please, email your friends, let them know about the Spring Fever Garden Forums, everybody's welcome. So there you go for that. Now, for the people who are, for the people who are, for the people who are on the county office, we're gonna do seed starting. We're doing seed starting kits tonight. So just real brief, I'll just talk for about a minute about what we've got, because everybody wants to get home in a decent hour. Everybody will be provided with a six cell plastic tray. And from that, it's a good time of year to, or even maybe in the next week might be even better to plant your tomato and pepper transplants. And so we've got a series of different tomato and pepper varieties for tomato. We have pole big, and actually, I should have worn my reading glasses when I read that for them. I spelled it wrong in your pack, because it's not pole-y big. It's pole-big, P-O-L-B-I-G. Pole big is an early girl type. It's an early tomato on a compact vine. So it's very easy to grow. Looks very promising for North Dakota. We have celebrity tomato. Celebrity is maybe the most popular of all fresh market tomato varieties for North Dakota. Has good vigorous, disease-resistant vines. Easy to grow. We have sunrise bumblebee tomato, which is a golden cherry tomato that has red stripes and is very delicious. And we have Juliet tomato, which is kind of a match between, it's like a little bit bigger than a cherry tomato and a little bit smaller than a Roma tomato. And it's an oval shape, it's outstanding flavor. It has a little bit of a longer vine, so you need to travel us that Juliet tomato. That's a really rich flavor tomato. You'll enjoy that. For the peppers, we have the Carmen pepper, which is the highest yielding, most reliable pepper grown in North Dakota. It's a sweet pepper often used for frying. It has a bullhorn shape, not a bell shape. And then also we have Cheyenne pepper, which is an outstanding cayenne. That's a large cayenne pepper. Everybody's also getting two peat pots. Peat pots, we usually use peat pots when we want to plant something that we don't want to disturb the roots in when we set them into the ground. If you use a cell pack, you pull out the plant, you can disturb the roots. But if you plant in a peat pot, then you just insert the peat pot into the ground so the roots are not disturbed and just cut a few slits in the peat pot to help the roots penetrate through. Peat pots are often used for cute curbits. So we're talking about watermelons and squash and cucumbers, any type of melon. They're very sensitive to root disturbance. So we use peat pots, especially for that. And we did provide seeds of sweet decoder rose, which in our trials we found to be, it's probably the best quality reliable water melon you can grow in North Dakota. It was bred in North Dakota. So sweet decoder rose is really worth a try. But I also want to throw it out here that we should not be planting any melons this time of year. It's too early for that. We really only want to have them about four weeks old when they're set into the garden. So we're going to plant them in late May. So that means we should not sow the seed until late April at the earliest. So don't sow your watermelon seeds tonight. You should wait at least a month and every agent received lots of seed packets, about four seed packets for every person. So you can take some seeds home with you and also labels so you can remember what you plant. So you can judge if it's good or not for you. So there you go. I hope you enjoy those seeds, starting trays. Next week we'll be giving out free packets of gladiola corn. So for the county agents out, please tell me by tomorrow at noon how many gladiola packets you need. And we'll be sure to get those off in time for next week's class. So again, gladiola's and fruits next week. And we hope everybody has a good night. Thank you everybody.