 Hi everybody, welcome. Now we're gonna for some house cleat keeping to take care of. There's a question that Joe had as far as is that Northern Empress Elm available. It's going to be widely available in 2019 and some special qualities of it besides that burgundy fall color is that it's nearly a seedless tree, so there's no litter prongs. That's great. So look for that in your garden center in 2019. Okay? The other thing to talk about is that handouts for tonight. Greg Morgensen gave me permission to modify his handout so you can see all those beautiful slides and all that text that goes with it. And so you can look for that. I'll have that posted on the Spring Fever website tomorrow and also I'll alert agents out in the counties to the availability of that handout so it gives you a much more expansive look at Greg's presentation, which we appreciate tonight along with Joe's. Now we're going to talk about tough sights. Tough sights. My goodness. I would say tough sights. The whole state of North Dakota can qualify for this, especially tonight. Here we are in April. Come here in Fargo. Cars and ditches. Blizzard in April. My Lord, what a tough place to live. But we're going to take that even a step farther and we're going to talk about some trees that can take the harshest of conditions in North Dakota. Dry places, salty places, shady places, windy places, poorly drained places, the worst of the worst, the harshest places. And so here we're going to talk with the head of the Woody Plant introduction for North Dakota State University, Todd West. So please welcome Todd to the forums. All right. Thank you, Tom. With this presentation, though, the caveat is that all these plants are going to be hardy across North Dakota. Also, they're going to be alkaline tolerance. So we're dealing with pH. So I'm not going to talk about pH tolerance because that's an issue that all of us have to deal with. So tough sights. Here's a tough sight. Not what we're worried about. Another tough sight. You know, these are some pretty tough sights. What we're looking at is more of these type of tough sights where we have very limited root space. You know, our yards are not going to be quite as limited as this. Same thing here with these tree pits. You can see the dieback. There is issues to deal with because of the architecture, not necessarily the site itself. You know, this is more of what we want. These boulevards and into our yards. But then we're going to have some issues with them depending where we are in North Dakota. The neat thing about trees, they can adapt. You know, here's a tree that came out of the pit and it's following along the cracks of the bricks. Kind of fascinating. It's amazing what trees can do. So the first area I want to talk about is shape tolerance. Remember, we're dealing with all pH tolerance. We're dealing with all hardy. Here is a tree that is very underutilized. We'll go to Dogwood. It's one of the few medium, small to medium-sized tree that can handle a good heavy amount of shade. Zone 3 US native has really nice scaffolding branches. The picture lower right is not very large, but it just shows its size. It does show the white flowers that it will get. It does develop a nice purple fall color. It has blue fruits. One of the few trees, you can really put on that north side of the house, get some height out of it. It's really, really nice. Wind resistant. Now I'm not going to show all of these. We're just going to hit some highlights, but European Larch is one that does well in wind. It's used pretty extensively in windbreaks. Hackberry, more so into our interior type plantings. Here's Hackberry, also a native, really nice structured tree. Again, very cold hardy, tolerant of a lot of different conditions. Very urban tolerant as well. You see a lot of these in our urban centers, Bismarck, Bargo, Grand Forks, et cetera. About 40, 70 foot, so a bigger tree. We don't have a lot of trees that will get to a really big size, but Hackberry is one that does really well. I do want to talk about a few cultivars as we go along. There's some unique opportunities here. Prairie Sentinel Hackberry out of J. Frank Schmidt out of Oregon made this selection. It's a really nice fastigiate upright tree. Only gets about 12 foot wide, which is very atypical of Hackberry. Now we can put in a tree into some really tight spots. Can handle drought. It can handle the wind. A lot of these trees that we're talking about do have a lot of crossover. They're not just wind tolerant. Hackberry is drought tolerant as well. It's very adaptable to different soil types. They do cross boundaries. Drought tolerant. We're dealing a lot with drought lately. Here's a pretty, not in a huge extensive list, but Hackberry again. We have Northern Thornless Honey Locusts, Kentucky Coffee Tree, Flowering Crab, Amer Cork Tree, Burroke, Japanese Tree Lilac, American Linden, Eastern Red Cedar. A lot of these you probably have seen on boulevards because boulevards are quite dry and they're often then approved for these lists. I just want to hit a couple of them. Thornless Honey Locusts, NDSU has by far the hardest selection into a zone three. If you see on my bullets there, I've got zone three in parentheses. That's because it could be a little iffy overall, but with the proper genetics, we're fine. Northern Acclaim does great in a zone three. Also a native as well. Get that nice dappled shade. It's turf friendly too. Kentucky Coffee Tree, this is one that is a really ugly tree when it's first planted, but it develops into a really, really nice high quality tree over time. It's also a US native too. It virtually is completely pest free and also tolerant of urban conditions as well as drought. So really, really nice selection. Here is a cultivar espresso. It also is seedless. It's a male selection. And so we don't have to worry about those big chunky pods that they'll have, but they're heat tolerant, drought tolerant, and cold tolerant. This one's zone four. So we're trying it out in the zone three to see how it will do. This is one of my favorites is Amber Cork Tree. It too is a solid zone four, potentially zone three with some testing. We're testing this across the state. It is a non-native 40 by 35 foot. It also is pest free too. So these are the things we want to look at. Not only plants that do well in these harsh conditions, but also have that compounded benefit such as being pest free. So a really nice one for drought tolerance as well. A couple cultivars. His Majesty, that's one that's been around for quite a while. That's a nice selection. There's also a newer one out of the University of Wisconsin called Eye Stopper. It too is a really high quality cork tree. Bur oak. I think we can all agree that bur oak is an extremely adaptable use throughout the state. It's the only oak that's native in North Dakota. It is in the white oak group. Just again to talk about a few cultivars to add some variety now to the bur oak because most of them have been grown as seedlings. We have urban pinnacle oak. So a much narrower upright form, only 25 foot wide. And then this newer one cobblestone. It's been selected for having the accentuated corky bark. And so it just adds that extra feature. It's still pretty standard size 55 by 45, but does extremely well. These on the boulevards, urban pinnacle, much better choice for boulevards. This is one out of Canada, out of by lens nursery called Top Gun. It too is also a much narrower selection. So 55 by about 15, maybe 20, but super cold hardy. Again, much better choice for boulevards than seedling. Japanese tree lilac. You see these popping up all over in yards and on boulevards. Hardy zone three, not native. 25 by 20. This is one we'll talk about a little bit later, utility friendly. You can see in this picture, utilities running above it. Also pest free. And there is a cult of our snow dance that is completely sterile. So it will flower quite prolifically and at a young age, but it doesn't produce any of those seed pods. Wet soils. Again, not a completely complete list, but just a couple selections. We have Box Elder, Ohio Buckeye, and then Naiobi or the Golden Weeping Willow. There's some good choices. Acer Nogando, the sensation Box Elder. Box Elder typically does not get a nice fall color. I'm always looking for trees that have more than one benefit. And here now we have a U.S. native that decent size 35 by 25, but it gets a red fall color, which is not typical for Box Elder. Not only is it tolerant of dry soil, but it also can do wet soil too. So it's a full gambit. So here we're talking about wet spots, but this could also have gone into our dry soils as well. It's a male clone, so you don't get all of the fruit produced and all the little seedlings. So great choice, sensation, seed list, and fall color. Sailing soils. So now we're not talking about necessarily pH, we're talking about salt. And so Baroque, Thornless Honey Locusts again, Black Walnut, Eastern Red Cedar, and American Elm. We've heard quite a bit about Elms tonight, so we'll hit a little bit on Elm. We already talked about the others. So I want to bring up Juniper here. This is the Eastern Red Cedar, but it's also called a Juniper. And this specific cultivar is Taylor, Taylor Juniper. Hardy Zone 4, Possibly Zone 3. We're looking at that in a more northern planting as well. 30 foot by 3 foot. And completely deer resistant, which again we'll talk about a little bit later here too. Drought resistant, dry soil tolerant as well. So just a really nice selection. It can handle that salt. It can handle it dry. Picture on the right is just showing several of them grouped together. Center picture there showing it basically standing as sentinels on either side of this high end home. And they'll get as tall as that root line and just filling quite nicely and requiring no pruning whatsoever. American Elm Prairie Expedition. This is an NDSG release. It's one that is DED resistant. I like to say DED tolerant because all Elms can get Dutch Elm, but it has the ability to fight it off. So it won't kill the tree, but it will maintain a good quality tree. It is by far the heartiest of all the American Elm cultivars. This is the one that should be used. It is still going to be a big tree. It has the traditional cathedral style of form to it, which is quite nice. And as all Elms are, very fast growing. You do have to maintain a good amount of pruning scheduled with any of the Elms. Compacted Sites. So here's the list. We've got Prairie Horizon, Menture, and Alder. That's also an NDSU release. River Birch. Silver Maple. Hackberry again. American March. So we have a different species from the European. This is our native species. It can do very well in compacted sites. Flowering Crab Apple. And then Arborvite. So here we have another Evergreen that we can use. So here is the Menture and Alder. This is approved on a lot of the Boulevard lists throughout North Dakota. Hardy Zone 3. It's non-native, but it can withstand just about any condition you throw at it. Wet, dry, compacted. It just does really, really well. It is in the Birch family, and so it does have these cone-like structures that do persist into winter, which gives it another ornamental value to it. Fall color is not very exciting. It's kind of a green, yellow, but these cones do persist and add some character to it, but really, really die-hard tree. A newer one that is just hitting the market now finally is Northern Tribute River Birch. River Birch is not considered to be hardy, but this one is. This is a selection that Dr. Herman, Dale Herman, selected. Zone 4 definitely. We're testing it in Zone 3 as well. It's a U.S. native, and typical of River Birch would be chlorosis in compacted soils and our high alkaline soils as well, but this one is pH-tolerant. So we don't see the chlorosis. We get a nice lustrous dark green leaf during the growing season. Nice yellow fall color, but then we get that exfoliating bark as the added winter feature. It can be planted as a single stem or a clump. We don't want to have suckers because then we get that included bark and poor structure, but what is typically done with the clump forms is that the nursery will put in three different plants into a single pot to make this clump, and that's what. If you want clump form, make sure you go for that. Utility-friendly. So we want to have a maximum height of 25 foot. Fortunately, a lot of communities are burying their utilities now, so it's not as much of an issue, but it still is an issue in many places. So again, there's a much more extensive list, but in lieu of time, I just wanted to hit a couple of them tonight. So here we have Flowering Crab, Japanese tree lilac again, and then Prairie Gem flowering pear, which I believe that Greg talked quite a bit about these small trees, so I did not want to go into detail. I just wanted to hit a couple highlights. I'm not sure if Greg talked about this one, but this is one of my favorites, is Mary Lee Flowering Crab. There's a big trend now for these upright columnar type form of crab apples. You know, these are not your grandparents' crab apples anymore. They're quite wide, and they're fitting into some really nice tight spots on boulevards. Again, much better choice, because less pruning is required, but they just fit into these spaces quite nicely. This is zone four. We're testing it in a zone three as well right now. That's, again, why I have those parentheses there. About 24 by 10 foot has that narrow upright habit to it. The buds come out, they'll be budded pink, but then open up as a double white, and it's also fruitless, and it has really good disease resistance to scab, to fire blight, and so just a really nice selection. Actually, this is not an NDSU release, but it's an NDSU alumni release, so I'm pretty excited about that, but this is readily available in the trade now, and doing very well for us. Prairie Gem flowering pear, again, this was already mentioned, but Pyrus usuriensis, this is one of the species that's hardy here, also pH tolerant, has a really fast growth rate. The lower right picture there, you can see its form. This has not been pruned. It's about the most perfectly shaped small tree that you can possibly get. What's nice about it is the white flowers do emerge before the foliage, so you get quite a nice show. Also, it's very tolerant of urban pollution as well, so it often shows up on our boulevard list. More information about our program can be found at these websites. This presentation, obviously, will be online, not found at these websites, but if you want to know more information about our releases that have been selected and do very well for North Dakota, please visit these websites, and then my contact information if you ever need any information. Thanks. Okay, thank you Todd, and you just mentioned about how this presentation will be available in the future online, and we have Bob Burge to thank for that, our web technology specialist, who does everything here at the Spring Fever. He is the nuts and bolts of the operation, makes a run so smoothly. Just so appreciate Bob's efforts, and we've been getting those YouTube videos up in a day or two, so you can tell your friends tomorrow about all the great talks that you saw tonight. Please share with your friends so you can watch a repeat version of it, or an encore performance. Todd, I've got a few questions for you. How about this person likes that Amur cork tree you talked about? Oh, yeah. Is that common for a nursery to carry? It's probably a little bit more on the rare side, but they are definitely available, so if you ask any garden center nursery to get one in for you, they definitely can. So let's go over that, because this is a common question. So if you like one of these kind of unusual trees, you can go to your local nursery and specifically ask them to order a tree, this cultivar for you, and they will order it for you, and then how does that procedure work? Exactly, because nurseries are a business, so they're in the business to sell trees, and they're going to sell trees that everybody wants, and so if you want one of these more rare trees that people don't know about, you just simply go in, and some nurseries are a little bit more adventuresome than others, and so you have to go in, you may find it, but if you don't, you just talk with one of their nursery workers there, and they should be able to get one on the shipment pretty quick, because all the nurseries here in North Dakota will get several shipments during the growing season, so it's not like you go in spring, and that's all they have. That's right. Okay, how about, here's a general question, they were an American wind, and it's eight years old, the rabbits got to it, and now it looks like a bush. What would you do if that was your tree? Would you just keep pruning it, trying to keep a single leader, or would you just start all over? With it being a linden, with it being that small, I would start over, because you're just maintaining bad structure, and it's going to be a fight, a long run, just better off getting, yeah, starting over, and make sure you live trap or do other things to get rid of your rabbits. How about, how do you prune a pagoda dogwood? Good question. Really, with a pagoda dogwood, you don't have to do a lot of pruning. The nice thing with pagodas, they don't sucker extensively, like most of the dogwoods do, they get minimal suckering, but that's something you want to pay attention to, but for the most part, it really develops a good structure on its own. You may have to thin it just a little bit, or do some minor structural pruning, you know, branches that are crossing over each other, but very little pruning is really required with a pagoda. Yeah, that natural horizontal. Yeah, that layered pagoda look. Okay, our linden lover with a hungry rabbit has a follow-up. He says that base of that linden tree is really thick. Are you sure he should still start over? Do you want to send Todd a photo? Yeah, yeah, definitely. He could send me a photo. You mean you can select a single leader and let it go again. It just kind of comes down to your choice. When a leader comes out like that and you prune it to a single leader, will that be developed into something as strong as a plant that was never cut back? It really kind of depends on the angle that the branch is coming off, because in a sense, it's really not much different than the way trees are produced clonally anyway, because they're often budded, and you'll have that kind of a croaky kind of angle coming up out of the tree, so it's not very different from what's being done in production anyway. So it's definitely doable. Okay, so there's hope for that linden. It sounds like you really love it, so there's hope. How about that sensation, that box elder? Does it keep its leaves long enough to color or do they drop like the other box elder? Well, the only experience I've seen with sensation is in Bismarck and in Fargo, and that being the banana belt that we are in North Dakota, that it does color pretty decently, and it's more of a cold selection, so it colors better in the colder climate than it does in warmer climate. So it seems to do fairly well. We don't have a lot of them here in North Dakota to get a good sense yet. And it does not have any seed pod, so it would not attract the box elder bugs as much. As much. That's important. Still wouldn't put it necessarily right next to my house. Okay. How pH tolerant is that Northern Tribute River Birch? That is extremely pH tolerant. It's kind of scary how pH tolerant it is, because River Birch is not known to be able to grow in compacted sites really well with that pH aspect, and has performed very well for us. It was selected in soil that was above eight, and it's been growing and tested in above eight. The cultivar is Dickinson, so this is actually a selection that was made from a parent tree in Dickinson, North Dakota. Okay. How about that prairie jam flowering pear? Is that a fruitless pear? No, so with that species, it's just like the calorie pears as well, and your edible pears, that if you have another pear nearby of a different clone or a different species, it will produce some fruit. They're generally quite small, but generally, let me say generally, it's going to be fairly fruit-free. There's one question that nobody's answering tonight. All right. There you go. You've got an angry customer out there. Your demanding answer. How about you've got drought hardy, tough trees, but really, how long do they live? Do you have some that are like, I know Greg talked about the choke cherry. It wasn't one of those favorites. That's a relatively short-lived tree. Do you have some that are especially long-lived or maybe some of the extremes? Sure. No, there definitely is quite a wide variety when it comes to life expectancy of a tree. Actually, Tom and I were talking about this, about how a lot of people want fast-growing landscapes. They want that instant landscape. Whenever you look at a tree that generally grows fast, it means that it has poor wood structure, so it falls apart easy as well as short-lived. Some trees, you're quite lucky where they will be grow quite fast, but then they'll slow down and they have decent wood like elms. All the elms are known for extremely fast growth rate when they're young, but they're actually a long-lived tree. They do slow down. They get really good structure to their wood compared to, say, a silver maple. Silver maple that grows extremely fast. There are those trees where you'll plant it and take it down in your lifetime. Silver maple, you get good 40, 50 years out of it, you're doing well. Boxel, they're the same way, but the hopes is then you're either dead when you have to go to remove it, so don't worry about it then or move. Right, and the other person can deal with it. There you go. They'll never be the wiser. But there is quite a bit of variety. Generally, with a lot of the smaller trees, they tend to be a little bit shorter-lived. The barokes, long-lived, slower-growing, there's a lot of variety. Also, you're recommending quality trees that are relatively pest-free, relatively disease-free, so that's going to help their life. Exactly. Okay, how about an Austrian, a U.S. tree goes, Australian pop or super poppers? Any comment about them? Every plant, right plant, right place. Poppers have their spot. Again, not next to my house or where I park my car. But if you do need something that will grow quick and established to give you a little bit of a windbreak or some shade, there's nothing wrong with it. But realizing that in the future, in the very quick future, you're going to be dealing with limb breakage. If there's a bad storm that comes through, weak-wooded, short-lived, and again, that's one of those trees that myself, I'm 45, a five-plant one, I'll be taking it down when I'm retired. Okay, well, talking about a fast-growing tree, this person, it's an unusual question as far as they want to replenish their fireplace wood supply. Oh, we got a good tree for that. Well, actually, there's a lot of great information online. I'm not going to tell you what the best are because I don't know that off the top of my head. But there's a lot of great information online for the BTUs that wood actually does put out. So you can definitely find that online very readily. This person has a comment about the off-tree that attracts a lot of A-fit issues, and that was deep. Then they got out the chainsaw, sounds like. There you go. I'd say if A-fit is your only issue, you're doing well. Well, I think this guy, you're just an ounce of prevention. So I saw the mistake earlier. Cut your losses, maybe that's before it gets too bad. An ounce or a quart of chainsaw fuel. Okay, this is going to be a hard one to ask. Okay, there's two trees that are growing out of an overgrown lilac patch. When these two trees grew, they ended up becoming arched or slanted. The lilacs are gone now, and the person's trying to strap the two trees together that are slanted to make them more upright, and they keep tightening the strap every six months, a couple inches. Is it realistic to think that these trees are ever going to grow upright? That's a very difficult thing. I mean, you can keep trying, but think about the habits that we've formed over the years, how difficult it is for us to break habits. And you are trying to break a habit that has been created, but now you're also fighting compression wood, which has that strength that the tree has actually put on that had to compensate for that angle, and you're fighting compression wood, which is very, very difficult fight. Yeah, you know, this could be a good one, Judy, that yes, if you take a photo of it, that could be helpful. And also, if we put a type of tree it was, that might make a big difference too. Okay, any last questions out there for Todd? I'm just going to give Todd's email. So that can help with your photo questions. Okay, I don't see any of the questions. So I'm going to say thank you, Todd. That was great. And we're all on time. That's even better. So thank you, Todd, for that really interesting talk. It was wonderful. Okay, we're just going to wrap it up here. I want everybody to get home tonight with the terrible weather and all, especially in the southern half of the state. Just talking a little bit about next week, next week, we're going to wrap it up. Hopefully we won't snow next Monday. That would be amazing if we could just have one Monday when it didn't snow. We have a series of special topics that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about, first of all, about some of the bugs that, exotic bugs that are invading North Dakota or right on the border ready to enter. So we got to find out how to identify these bugs and how to combat the bugs or slow their spread. We're going to talk about disease management too. And then I don't know if a lot of gardeners know that, is that NDSU has a plant health clinic available to you that can help you identify and manage diseases. So we'll learn about what the features that they offer to gardeners. And lastly, we'll wrap it up by a research summary about some of the major high value crops that we're doing research on, including grapes and hops and Juneberries, potatoes and blackberries. So we got all that next week at Spring Fever Garden Forms. Tell your friends about it and everybody have a good night. Thank you everybody. It's great.