Transcript
Alexis : What up, friends?
Jessica : Hello.
brett: yu up
Plant People: Good day one and all.
Alexis : All right, I've got a question for you. Are you ready? If you were an inanimate, I can't say that word, an inanimate object, an anemone, if you were an inanimate object, what would you be?
Plant People: I don't know.
Plant People: And.
brett: If I were an anatomy teacher...
Jessica : then an Aminu Mimi.
Plant People: Hmm.
Alexis : Do you want me to give you mine? Because I've had the chance to think about it.
Jessica : Yeah. okay Yeah.
Alexis : I would be a rock.
Plant People: Ah, I was going to say the Blarney stone, but since you took rock fine.
Alexis : I would be a rock.
Alexis : yeah ah And then, you know, if anybody steps on me, whatever, it hurts them. It's fine. I don't care. What do I care? I'm a rock. Feels like a good life. but
brett: what kind of what kind of rock What kind of rock are you imagining?
Plant People: So you're slowly, yeah.
Alexis : Huh?
Plant People: You like igneous or sedimentary or what?
brett: What kind of rock are you imagining?
Alexis : The kind that you find in your shoe.
Plant People: Oh, God.
brett: Like small, so small.
Plant People: Gosh.
Jessica : Oh, so you can travel.
brett: Teeny tiny.
Plant People: You're a stone.
Alexis : Yeah, I'm a traveling rock.
brett: More
Plant People: You're a traveling rock. Oh, you're a traveler.
Alexis : I'm traveling rock. Just launching up in your tires so that every time it spins, you hear your ear clicking sound.
brett: like a pebble then. Hmm.
Jessica : i instantly went to a kid's book that we love called Ricky the Rock who couldn't roll. All
Plant People: Hmm. Hmm.
Alexis : You could, you're in books about rock and roll. I mean, people like a rock, right?
Jessica : right.
Alexis : Rock collections.
Jessica : They do. They do. Well, then you got think like, would you like, you know, you could be like a gemstone. Right.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: A righteous one.
Plant People: A righteous gemstone. Yeah.
Jessica : A righteous.
Alexis : A righteous person.
Jessica : Yes.
Alexis : Brett, what would you be?
brett: I think I would be a knife.
Plant People: Okay.
Alexis : very like That's a very Alexis answer in my opinion.
Plant People: Yeah. We're waiting for this to be expounded upon, Brett.
brett: I think it's ah it's ah it's a highly ah adaptable and usable tool, but does require some some maintenance in order to be functioning properly.
brett: ah Nothing too exciting, but also, you know, if if you need it it's and you have it there, it's pretty cool.
Alexis : So reason that's always in a survival kit.
brett: Me. That's the reason I'm packaged inside of a survival kit.
Alexis : Always having a night. I'm just out there causing problems with your survival.
Plant People: A rock.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: I mean, Charlie Brown's like, I got a rock and he wasn't happy about it.
brett: well you can yeah
Alexis : Unless, unless I'm a like rock that, you know, there's a cave inside that. So, you know, then I'm providing shelter. So it's a win-win. Uh, Ray, what would you be?
Plant People: Oh man, this is a tough one. I don't even, i don't even know.
Alexis : Don't think about it too hard. You just, just.
brett: I think Rey could be a like a really nice vase.
Plant People: i know i got.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Um,
brett: Like ah like a stoneware vase that's very...
Alexis : It made. Nice.
Plant People: We should have picked inanimate objects for one another. That would have been far more fun. Yeah.
brett: And he, and you know, he's, he is beautiful in his own right, but also does a lot to enhance the beauty of others, whatever is in the vase, you know?
Plant People: Oh, wow. That is being generous, Brett. Thank you. Thank you.
brett: I think you you could play the lead or the wingman very, very effectively. Yeah.
Plant People: Depends on the situation. Well, let's go with Brett's answer.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: It was far better than anything that my mind was literally b blank, Brett. So thank you very much. now Now we got to do Jessica though.
Jessica : Yeah, you might need to help me out because i
Plant People: Yeah, I know. je and Jessica's kind of jealous. You just gave me something amazing, Brett.
Jessica : I know it was really good because in my mind, I was like, I would be this.
Plant People: That was amazing.
Jessica : I'm like, no, that would break down over time.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : That's made of wood. Um, no, I would be, you know, and then I had my mind because
Plant People: Petrified wood.
Alexis : I mean, everything breaks down over time.
brett: Yeah.
Jessica : Right.
Alexis : It's time.
Jessica : I was almost, I instantly, because tractors and tractors in my life are, I don't know, maybe be a tractor.
Alexis : I like
brett: All tattoos are temporary, Mom.
Jessica : I don't know. My kids play tractors constantly.
Alexis : it.
Jessica : i hear that word 5 million times a day.
Alexis : All the people in your life love tractors.
Jessica : thank of all, right.
Alexis : so that makes sense. Yeah.
Jessica : And they can be passed down through generations.
Plant People: and their value increases over time.
Jessica : Right.
brett: Yeah, it gets better they get better with age in a way i was thinking I was thinking like an old ah like square body pickup because it's like classic people who know what they're doing know what they're looking at are huge fans.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : I don't know. i don't know.
Alexis : I like it.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : I like it.
brett: Doesn't go out of style, dependable. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Plant People: And if you're mean to or she'll run you over.
brett: So we were in the same boat.
Plant People: So perfect.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Perfect. Sounds perfect.
Alexis : I love it. But the real question is is, she a Ford or a Chevy?
Plant People: I feel like now you need to do Alexis, Brett.
Jessica : What what what ah what a question. yeah
brett: Oh man, Alexis.
Plant People: Alexis gave us hers, but we need to know what Alexis is.
Alexis : You don't have to. It's okay. I'm i'm fine with being rock.
Plant People: Dang it. Dang it. Okay.
brett: I think she chose herself.
Plant People: Okay.
brett: like I think that would be the most Alexis thing would be her her choosing her own destination.
Plant People: She did very quickly chose herself. and ah You're probably right. You're probably right. Self-determination.
Alexis : Well, anyways, thank you for indulging us. Those of you out there who are like, I thought this was like a plant podcast. It it is. um But it's also a random question and snacks podcast if you're new here.
Plant People: Eventually.
brett: Mmm.
Alexis : But today we are going to talk about something hopefully timely if you're listening in the, I guess it's early summer now, timeline.
Jessica : Yeah.
brett: I live.
Plant People: The random lead-in.
Plant People: Mid-June. Yeah.
Alexis : o but Gross to say.
Plant People: Hmm.
Alexis : I'm waiting for the heat to kick in I'm not ready. I'm not acclimated. I'm already very sweaty and it's not hot yet by Kentucky standards at least. So ah anyways, but we are talking about some scouting today um and just things you need, whether you have a vegetable garden or you're market gardening or you're in full-blown production, just some little reminders about things to be on the lookout for as well as tools to help remind you to be on the lookout because, you know, we can't keep it all in our brain.
Alexis : So
Plant People: This could go so many ways. i was thinking about this when we talked about this as a potential topic, Alexis, and the more I thought about it, the more my brain went in different directions. I mean, some of the, some of the, yeah, even more so than normal, which for me is saying a lot, you know, as a squirrel, but yeah, there's, there's a lot we could talk about here for monitoring in mid June.
Alexis : It's about to be go time.
Plant People: It's, you know, everybody switched over from that, uh, Yeah, it is go time. Things are growing. You know, the, hopefully the moisture is still there. Plants are getting bigger, which leads to a lot of additional monitoring needs as, um, you know, as far as kicking the conversation off with some basic concept, one of the biggies for me, uh, that necessitates sort of this monitoring is plants are getting bigger.
Plant People: They're shading. I'll pick on tomatoes.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: Uh, you know, they're one that gets splites and, and leave spots and things, bacteria and fungal, but, um, Plants are getting bigger, they're shading themselves, and that's a good disease environment. So as a baseline part of the discussion, when I'm working with people that come into the office and we're talking about monitoring plans, this time of year, i don't know how you guys do it or recommend it, but at least twice a week, if you're a commercial producer, as far as in fields looking for insects and diseases this time of year, probably as a good baseline starting point.
Jessica : Thank you.
Plant People: of your eyes on, you know, things going on, not just around the edges of the field, ah which you'll see some insect problems there first, but also in the middle of the field.
Plant People: We talk about w patterns and B patterns of walking, you know, larger commercial fields.
Alexis : Exactly.
Plant People: But yeah, I usually start, you know, conversations like that mid-June, like we're in now, mid to late June. yeah.
brett: Well, I think before, like even just, I think everybody who likes plants at some point likes to go out and just walk among them and take a look at things. And I i think one of the things, even as ah just a precursor to the to the actual targeted specific specific scouting, is like,
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: as you're walking around being paying attention to a few things here and there and just noticing things.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: It's, it's something that I, and I'm not, this is not anything groundbreaking, but like when I walk around with people who really know plants and know what they're doing, they'll, they'll see things and they'll notice things just from the accrued amount of time that they've spent.
brett: And it's something as simple as like, you see how this plant, that the color of the leaves is just slightly different from the other ones.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: Well, that might be an indicator that there's a problem or, See how these leaves are starting to droop a little bit and there's, you know, kind of some wilting of that going on here. Well, that might be a sign of something. Or why is this one so much shorter or taller?
brett: It's like just on its phase, it's like noticing differences and and a little more structure to your wandering around time amongst your plants.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah, that comparative analysis is like the backbone of when we're talking about crops with a lot of the same plant in an area that does this plant look like this plant?
brett: um
Plant People: That's like the backbone of just observation.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: um And.
brett: Exclude the bully and then make fun of it.
Plant People: Yeah, you know, and put them off to the side.
brett: Or exclud exclude the one with difference, be a bully, make fun of yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah. Give them a hard time.
Alexis : I always tell people, you don't have to know what you're looking for. You're just looking for something that didn't look like it either did before. if you have one plant, right? because sometimes you can't, if you're a home gardener, you might only have one tomato plant or, you know, one of house plant or whatever it is.
Alexis : But, you know, in a larger scenario, it's a little bit easier, but you're looking for either it looks different than the last time you saw it, or it looks different from its neighbor. That is the same variety. And you don't have to know anything else other than there's something different about it.
Jessica : Yep, just. Right.
Alexis : um And then you'd bring it to so bring it to an expert. You bring it to your county agent, say, this one is different. And you let them, you know, kind of walk you through other things to look for.
Jessica : Yeah, just know your normal, right? Like whether it's, you know, your normal.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : know your normal.
Jessica : And then if anything starts to yellow or start to, you know, change color and a lot of it, sometimes it does seem like it happens overnight, right? But, you know, if you're out there checking every day, my mind, i mean, I go to the...
Alexis : Mm
Jessica : disease as well, but I instantly go to insects, right? About how you should scout for them because those guys really like to hide on the undersides of leaves. That's where they like to lay a lot of their eggs.
Alexis : Cheers.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : um That's where they're going to start off at. Or like Ray kind of mentioned already around the outside of the fields, we'll start to see see them out there at first, because a lot of times our insects are on a lot of our weeds that we have around our garden areas.
Jessica : They like those. Those are like their host plants, but what they what they want to be on at first. And so then when they deplete that source, and then we have planted, you know, a nice resource for them to hop over on.
Plant People: Stinkbugs and Spider-Mots.
Alexis : yearss
Plant People: Yeah, all of those guys.
Alexis : yes
Jessica : Thank you, guys. Now I have a nice place to go and and feed.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: So in, in broad strokes, Jessica, you're, you're mentioning insects, Ray's mentioned disease.
Jessica : But it
brett: I think some of the other things that you might be looking for or thinking about is nutrient plant nutrients and whether they're getting nutrients and then water.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yep.
brett: Um, and I guess you could say sun in some cases, things might, it might be getting too hot for them or whatever.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: yeah
Alexis : Environmental impacts.
brett: It might be time to pull them out, but.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: environmental stuff too. And so that's, that was kind of what i was hoping to learn from you. It's just kind of the approaches to those different things. Um, and, and maybe start, I think one thing I've always struggled with is knowing when to water versus not water and it rained, you know, recently, does that mean I don't have to water for one week, one month, one year?
Plant People: and
brett: What's the deal with that? Um, do y'all have thoughts on that?
Plant People: That's a, that's a really, just a tricky one, especially those that are newer to plasticulture, know, mounded, heel, covered in plastic kind of production system. If you're new to that,
Plant People: it can be a little bit tricky. And if you're new to a field, it can be tricky even for experienced growers. But definitely if you do the field test, if you just take your hand and fill the soil four to six inches deep, that's one thing.
brett: Does that mean like, you're like, how are you doing that?
Plant People: There's a kind of a, ah yeah, which is kind of subjective.
brett: Like sticking your finger in it?
Plant People: And I love the comment you made a long time ago, Brad, a couple of seasons ago with Alexis, when you really questioned her, you're like, what, what does that mean? What does that feel like?
brett: What is wet for houseplant media?
Plant People: Um, Yeah, we were we had this whole discussion.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Well, there is a lot of subject subjectivity to that. That's why we have devices like tensiometers and, watermark sensors and things like that. We do have devices that were very accurately, as long as they're maintained, you know, measure.
Plant People: Yeah. you know, different aspects of soil moisture availability. ah But there is, you know, you have to have some method of gauging that. You just can't go out there and set your irrigation and just let it go because you have to pay attention to the environment, natural rainfall. Now, even with me saying that, and Jessica, I know you can appreciate this. If you're irrigating, it seems crazy, but if you're fertigating, running your fertilizer through the lines, you may have to irrigate even if the ground's wet. It's kind of weird.
Plant People: So there are some fringe cases there, but Brett, that's a good point.
Jessica : Right, right.
Plant People: You have to have some way of getting a handle on what moisture is available for the crop that you're growing. And there's some very good devices for that.
Alexis : And it depends on the size of the plant too, you know, like if it was, if it's a transplant versus a seed and, you know, we could, we could spend an entire episode just talking on water and the different sizes, but you know, if you've got a tomato plant, that's four, you know, three foot tall, you know, and it just rained two days ago, you may still have to water.
Plant People: yeah Oh yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: um
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : But if that same scenario rained two days ago and that transplant is six inches tall, it's not going to have the water load, right.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Right.
Alexis : That a three foot plant would move.
Jessica : And a lot of it too, just depends on after these rain events that we have, does it stay cooler and maybe it's kind of cloudy, right?
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So it's just paying attention to that too, because you can see where you have plants that they have been like so completely saturated, right? And then it just turns hot like the next day and they are already like kind of wilted, right?
Plant People: They will. Yeah.
Jessica : um So it's a lot of paying attention to that too, just your environment. around you, um it all ties into the scouting, right?
brett: Yeah. So, yeah. And i so soil type too, you know, there's some soils that drain really, really fast, which is good when it's raining a ton, but when you want to hold onto some soil moisture is not so good.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: And then other ones that will hold onto water like a sponge and just stay wet. And so when you're looking and trying to get into a field in the spring and it just will not dry out, you're mad.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: But then later on and when it holds onto that stuff. So I think I kind of what I'm hearing from you all is that the more that we can evaluate the actual soil moisture conditions directly, the better.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: um And so I've used a couple of different things in the home gardening sphere and they they work okay.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: I think they work as a part of a data triangulation process where you take multiple points of information and Know when it rained, know when last I irrigated, maybe use the tool, maybe use your finger to, you know, feel around that.
brett: But I've used these ones. They look like a long meat thermometer kind of, and you can take and push them in and take an instant read.
Alexis : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: A couple of years ago, the UK extension was in the horticulture specifically was really pushing tensiometers, which are these, um they look, they, what do they look like?
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: They kind of look like a, a pipe with a gauge on it.
Plant People: Kind like a, yeah.
brett: That's, that has a tip, a little perfect, like tip that looks like almost like ceramic-y and you soak it in water and then you take and make a hole and you jam it down in the soil and then it, yeah.
Alexis : yeah
Plant People: It is ceramic, yeah. That's like the gold standard is the tensiometers. That's what you're going to most commonly find, yeah.
brett: And what it does is it actually like once it seals up as things dry out, it like pulls the water out of the tensiometer, which creates pressure, which translates to a little gauge that shows.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
brett: So you can buy these there between 80 and 150 bucks, I think for the decent ones. Um, The ones that I was talking about that look like the meat thermometer are significantly cheaper, like 10 to 15 and up from there.
brett: But um like the old school, especially for home gardeners, the old school kind of stick your finger down about as deep as it'll go.
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: See if it feels moist, if it feels clumpy. You can also dig dig some soil and see if you can squeeze it and if it sticks together, that sort of assessment.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: But
Plant People: The stain test. Yeah.
brett: I think I have a theory that ah people fall into either the category of overwaterers or underwaterers.
Alexis : Yeah. Mm-hmm.
brett: And it tells me everything I need to know about your whole personality. So don't ever let me know what you are. But I know I am an overwaterer. And so I know if I'm hesitant, I'm probably like if I'm like, it might need some water.
Jessica : you
brett: I'm probably good. if I'm like, oh man, these things really need water, then I should listen to that ah as, as I develop my feel across time. But what do you all think about that?
Alexis : Yeah. If you want to technically feel like after you've had a good risk, what, as I call it a respectable rain, AKA a rain that just didn't, you know, come in really fast and deliver four inches of water, you know, in an hour type of thing, like ah boy right a good soaking rain, as we would call it a respectable rain, go out and
brett: Flash flood. Yeah.
Alexis : you know, take a shovel down into your soil or stick your finger, you know, into your garden bed or whatever, you know, however you want to be able to measure it and see what the soil feels like fully saturated and like get a, get an understanding of that.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And you'll, you'll know as you move forward, you know, if if you're one of those people who are useless, just like I, they're saying words and those words do not compute, then go out and actually, actually try it.
Jessica : Yeah, same applies like when you're just watering, right?
Alexis : And once you know what that feels like.
Jessica : Because we were in a really, really dry period and you could put your water hose like over to like water the garden on the ground.
Alexis : Yeah. Or just when you water them, yeah.
Jessica : The top of the soil looks completely saturated. But if you like just dug down a little bit with your finger, you realize like, wow, it's not saturated at all.
Alexis : silence
Alexis : Didn't percolate.
Jessica : Right.
Alexis : Yeah.
Jessica : So then you can kind of try to figure out how long do I need to hold that water hose over that plant, you know, during that time based on like your pressure and like whatever nozzle you have and
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : in for drification Yeah.
Plant People: And home gardeners, ah they can use a indicator crops is what I ah stress to new gardeners or home gardeners is, you know, look to your cucurbits that tend to collapse first.
Alexis : If you're in a new...
Alexis : Hmm.
Plant People: Some of that's a function of temperature and, you know, the way the plant works botanically, but they're the ones, they're the first ones. It's a large plant, binding plant that has a very small root system comparatively.
Plant People: So I use those indicator plants. ah
Alexis : Not smart.
Plant People: When I start to see those start to wilt, that's my standard for home gardeners. I'm just, just watch your cucurbits. some of your cucumbers and squashes. And when they, the leaves, the ends of the leaves start to go down, it's time to water.
Plant People: It's pretty good indicator um because your peppers and tomatoes are still in decent shape, but those crops will tell you when it's time to water the garden.
Alexis : I'm not showing signs of stress yet, but they they are approaching stress.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Thank you.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: on
Plant People: But now.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: On that exact front, you know we don't want our plants to wilt. Wilt is a sign of stress. Stress is going to make other, like when you get stressed, you're not as good at your job. ah But wilting also is not, it doesn't mean the thing is dead.
Alexis : You're sick.
brett: um
Alexis : okay
brett: people Especially people who are new to plants, they will see things that are wilted. And they think, oh, all hope is lost.
Jessica : that
brett: I just went through this. um We had some transplants that we put in and it got very, very hot, so hot that we could almost not keep up with the water. And they were looking a little sad. And Annie was really like, she's like, I think I killed them all. And I was like,
brett: No, no, no, no, no.
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: We're, we're, you know, they may not grow as fast as they would have, but they're going to be fine.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: and You water them sure enough next morning you come out and they're perky and looking ready to grow again. um
Alexis : Hello.
brett: Last thing I'll say about water ah was it's a in general general, the vegetable crop thing is about an inch of water per week during the growing season is the ballpark thing. Now what that means is if you were to, you know, have a one inch deep, you know,
brett: ah container that was the full spread of whatever you have planted. if that thing was full up to one inch across that whole area.
Alexis : Mm.
Alexis : For full canopy spread, you're saying?
brett: Yeah. And so, yeah, so across your whole garden wherever the, you know, and so in other words, you don't have to put down an inch of water across that whole area if you don't need to, if you could just put it where the plants are, but imagine a little box that's, you know, 12 by 12 around your plant or 24 by 20, 24.
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: And you're trying to kind of fill that up to over the course of a week, about an inch worth of rain. and Or if you're watching heavy weather gauge or you're watching the Mesonet or any of that stuff. So the more that you can monitor at the soil level, the better.
brett: And over time, you will get better at reading and knowing when if and when things need water.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: And, uh, mentioned that gold standard, Brett, talked a little bit about tensiometers pay very close attention. It's one of my most frustrating things i ever did when i was first growing commercial tomatoes was trying to get that thing set up properly, you know, follow whatever system you're using a watermark or a tensiometer.
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: yeah
Alexis : Thank you.
Plant People: If you're a commercial producer using one of those or another system, read the instructions very carefully because they have to be set up and they have to be, um, I know like watermark sensors, you can leave those in the whole season, but, tensiometers, which are a little bit more low tech.
Plant People: They take a little bit more maintenance. They have to have a good seal with the soil.
brett: Yeah, no electricity.
Plant People: pay Yeah, but no electricity. Pay attention to those things and, ah you know, follow the instructions on those. Really, really, really important.
Jessica : Thanks to Brett for sharing the price tag on those because it explains why when I was in college and I worked out at the research farm and when we broke a couple of those, the manager got really mad.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : um Didn't realize they cost that much.
Plant People: Wait a minute. How did you break a tensiometer? I mean, were you like, just, were you not boring the hole?
Jessica : but They had them in buckets.
Plant People: You're just jamming them
Jessica : There were so many of them, but still they were not very happy.
brett: Yeah, they had so many of them.
Plant People: Oh, but they this must be cheap.
Jessica : we were like, hey, we accidentally broke these.
Plant People: This must be cheap.
Jessica : Oh, it makes sense now.
Plant People: You broke a tensiometer.
brett: Yeah, well, there was probably probably some grant and they bought 200 of them and they set them up across the state and then people were like, wow these things are kind of finicky.
Jessica : yeah
Alexis : like
Jessica : that Probably.
brett: and i
Plant People: yeah
brett: um But they they do when they're working great when they're working right, they're they're great.
Jessica : That was probably what it was.
Plant People: Thank you, Brad.
brett: and and now
Alexis : You can connect, you can connect some of those to like your irrigation, right?
Plant People: When they're working right, yeah, yeah. you
Alexis : for like automation, like when it hits a certain level, your irrigation kicks on.
Plant People: You can.
Jessica : You can.
Plant People: On a larger scale, yeah.
Jessica : Yep.
Alexis : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Yeah. And I'll just, one other thing about water is you overwatering can be as bad as underwatering in certain circumstances, especially if you're in containers, because the roots don't have enough oxygen to function and they start to rot and die and that causes all kinds of problems.
Jessica : That was...
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica : Breathe.
brett: So it's not just a matter of if in doubt water, there is ah a balance, like most things in life that are good. There's a balance to be struck.
Plant People: And Jessica mentioned, she mentioned a very important concept.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Just because it wilts and the soil seems to have plenty of moisture, sometimes that's normal just because of temperature.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: ah The plant starts losing pressure, so don't don't forget that.
brett: Yes.
Plant People: Just don't go keep throwing water at it or there could be some other root issue. But if all of your plants look good and they're uniformly kind of wilting, it's a really, really hot day, just know that for certain types of plants that may be normal.
Plant People: So be careful about overwatering that Brett mentioned. Yeah.
brett: Yeah. So what about insects?
Jessica : I'm oh oh I was oh I had another one I had a segue too about cultural issues look at us who me Lexus
brett: ah where we would Sorry, what were you going to say, Jess?
Alexis : I had a beautiful segue there.
brett: Oh, sorry. Sorry.
Plant People: That was it.
brett: Sorry.
Plant People: She's
brett: Okay, I will little rewind it back.
Alexis : going to say that leads beautifully into disease.
brett: And now it's over to you.
Plant People: like, what?
Alexis : ah you know If the soil is wet and you have the the difference between what Ray is talking about, where if you have you know some slight will in some plants, even sometimes it's kind of more than slight, it's little more dramatic.
Alexis : and the ground is wet, but it's uniform, so 90% of your planting is all doing the same thing, then you don't need to worry about that.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : That's like an environmental issue. The plants will come back once the heat goes down. But if you're seeing a couple plants, one plant, you know maybe two or three all in the same area doing this, and the rest of the planting looks healthy, that could be a sign of root rot problems.
Alexis : It could be a sign of a couple of different things like nematode issues on the roots. It could also, but more likely it's a disease problem. And so you've got pythium or some sort of what we call water molds affecting the root system.
Alexis : And then those roots aren't able to take up water. They just don't exist anymore. So you can actually, got sacrifice one of those plants sometimes, pull it up and look at the roots and see, number one, are there any?
Alexis : So there probably should be if they, you know, do you see really big nodule looking things in the roots? um You know, are they looking, we say they so kind of slough off, like you touch them and they just kind of
brett: Black and slimy.
Alexis : It's great slimy, but sometimes they'll look like brown and they should, you know, instead of like a nice white color, there'll be a brown tan and they just kind of slough off.
brett: yeah
brett: Yeah.
Alexis : So that outer root will slough from the root cortex and that's a sign of disease problems. So that's my segue.
brett: But if you pull it up and the roots look good, you just killed it anyway. So good job, fool.
Plant People: Yeah, so death by extraction, so no big deal.
Alexis : You can replant it, it's fine.
Jessica : Yeah, replant it.
Alexis : And, you know, it's better to rip up one and it be nothing and you feel better.
brett: No. Totally.
Alexis : and you know, then you missed it and you should have been treating or something like that.
Jessica : Great.
Alexis : So.
brett: Well, I think it's also, if you're, if you're going to grow this stuff in the future, learning about it, you know, you don't have to, there's no pressure to produce a perfect garden year one. And if you're having some problems, pull it up, take a look, see, you know, learn something from the process rather than just sort of watching it decline and not knowing what happens.
Alexis : Right.
Plant People: That's a huge keystone of scouting is thresholds.
brett: Hmm.
Plant People: You know, and that applies to diseases and insects, especially insects, but it also applies to diseases.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: This ah thought of, you know, especially larger plantings, you're not going to have perfection, but you're not also not going to treat like go into, you know, 10 out of 10 mode.
Plant People: When you see ah maybe a minor insect at insect infestation in one section of the field, you may have to, you know, Kind of observe thresholds and see what those thresholds are.
Jessica : Right. I have a good example of that with potatoes we're growing in our backyard right now.
Plant People: so
Jessica : Um, I thankfully knock on wood, have not seen any Colorado potato beetles yet. Like I had like prepared myself for them.
Plant People: Oh, just wait.
Jessica : Uh, but have quite quite a few flea beetles, right?
Plant People: Oh, this has been a bad, bad spring for flea beetles so far.
Jessica : There are lots of flea beetles, but,
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: I have such bad, it's very PTSD on flea beetles on eggplant.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : The ribs.
Plant People: Oh, yeah.
Jessica : uh, yeah, they are terrible on eggplant.
Plant People: Oh, yeah.
Jessica : Um,
Plant People: The worst.
Jessica : But they're really not – they're causing damage, but they're not doing anything that's like –
Alexis : Irreversible.
Jessica : they're hurting. Yeah. Hurting things. Right. So I'm just letting them be right.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : I haven't reached that threshold. These are just for us in the backyard. Haven't reached that economic threshold level. We talk about of where it's like, Hey, like, is it worth the time and money to spray, you know, cause eventually even with all good IPM systems and I love talking about IPM.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Jessica : If you go through all the steps in the end, it's basically like, okay, do we spray if we use an organic or non-organic, you know, tactic to control an insect population or disease before it takes off out of, or, you know, out of control.
brett: So IPM is integrated pest management for those who it's a, it's a, the newer more, and there's some people who say that we should go beyond that even, but this newer approach, that's not just kill baby kill.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So with. Yes. Yes.
Jessica : Right. We're going to do a lot of other things first before we kill things.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : um Yeah. But like, however, on the other end of this, if I start to see some Colorado potato beetle eggs and I start to see maybe a few larvae and maybe if they're all like on one plant and I, and I might think to myself, oh, I'll just squish these right on this one plant. But knowing they're probably on all the plants if I find them on one, because that's just how that, that insect operates and You know, that's one I'm definitely going to just go ahead and start. OK, if I see them on more than two plants, I need to take action.
Jessica : Right.
Alexis : Yeah.
Jessica : um So that's.
Plant People: often
Alexis : It's not a coincidence at that point, right?
Jessica : Exactly.
Alexis : It's pattern.
Plant People: Yeah, it's a pattern.
Jessica : And.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: So, so let's, let's say in this example, you're not Jessica Besson entomologist and plant wizard extraordinaire. You find the Colorado potato beetles, you identify what they are.
Jessica : thank you.
Jessica : That's so important.
brett: What, what steps would you, or maybe be starting with identification, what, what steps would you take from there?
Jessica : FYI.
Jessica : Right.
brett: how would you find what you needed to do to take care of them? What, et cetera.
Jessica : First thing, i would make sure to get it properly identified because sometimes I have an example of just last week. Somebody told me that Alexis knows this because I told her ladybugs were eating their tomato plants.
Jessica : And I was like, there's no way. i was like, you have something else.
Alexis : Ladybugs don't eat plants.
Jessica : ah I'm like, you have something else on there.
Alexis : Okay.
Jessica : You know, are they eating aphids and took a look at them and they were Colorado potato beetle larvae on on the.
brett: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : So first thing's really important.
brett: We defended that Lowe's ladies honor. Good job, Jessica.
Jessica : I did Thank you. um Figure out what it is. So either, you know, there's a lot of great resources out there. There's a lot of great, i think, identification apps or use your local extension office.
Jessica : And one of us can help you, you know, figure out what's what kind of pest it is. And if it's not one of us, it's
brett: So is that like take an iPhone picture and email it to you?
Jessica : Yes, that works.
Plant People: That's a good spot a good place to start.
Jessica : ah good
Alexis : We'll bring it in.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Or bring it in. Please don't bring anything that is squished or send really blurry photos because you cannot tell what things are.
brett: carry it. Mm-hmm.
Alexis : Yeah.
Jessica : um And then also, what is it feeding on is very important because certain insects only feed on certain plants. ah And then once you figure that out, if you're taking it to the extension office, they can most likely make a recommendation of what can be used on that pest.
Jessica : And my way of going about this is I usually go, okay, what organic options are least toxic to user can I recommend first? Right. um But there are certain pests like our Colorado potato beetle.
Jessica : It's in that's one that you can put stuff on and it'll laugh at you and say, give me another and keep, me keep going on.
Plant People: pretty tough.
brett: Yeah, it's hard as the Rockies.
Jessica : Right. So, right.
Alexis : More please, sir.
Jessica : More, please. So that's where I, you know, start with it. And then again, i always tell everybody, if you're using a chemical, no matter what it is, read the label, read the label, follow the steps.
brett: The label is the law.
Jessica : It is the law.
Alexis : I want a shirt that says that.
Jessica : Oh,
Alexis : Maybe that should be one of our hort culture shirts and one day when we do it.
Jessica : oh that's a good idea.
Alexis : The label is the law.
Plant People: like it.
Alexis : I'm writing it down.
Plant People: Jessica, how about, ah before I forget, um since we're talking about insect monitoring, you've already mentioned a couple big concepts, you know, looking at the outside of the field and the inside of the field, looking on the upper side of the leaves, the lower side of the leaves.
Plant People: But how about the role of like, you know, sticky cards and things, especially for, you know, commercial producers.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: And when we we're thinking about things like spotted wing drossula and some of these other things, how how can that help with monitoring and scouting?
Jessica : yeah
Plant People: I mean, there's all sorts of sticky cards in there.
Jessica : Yeah. So I'm glad you used the words monitoring, right? Because we're not using those sometimes, um not so much with growers, but maybe someone in between being like a a homeowner and in between.
Jessica : They think you can use those as trapping to control these pest populations, like sticky cards.
Plant People: Oh, you're talking like the yeah the Japanese beetle pheromone traps?
Jessica : Well, no, even like yellow sticky cards, right?
Plant People: or Oh, gotcha.
brett: Yeah.
Jessica : Putting them out.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : No. The
Jessica : um But those are, yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Put out a billboard-sized sticky card and see what happens.
Alexis : evil.
Jessica : And if you accidentally touch one of those, it's not coming off of you.
Plant People: See what we catch. Got to catch them all.
Jessica : Yeah.
Alexis : now
Plant People: No.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Vegetable oil is the only way.
Jessica : yeah
Plant People: That is the way. Yeah.
Jessica : But those are great tools to monitor things, right? To see what our pest population numbers are, especially for the ones that are really small, like thrips and aphids.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : They're attracted to certain colors.
brett: doing...
Jessica : um
Alexis : e
Jessica : Yeah. ah Especially in greenhouses, high tunnels, that's a great way ah to monitor some of these smaller pests. When you even get up into like the fruit fruit trees, putting out pheromone traps, that lure in males and then the growers can, you know, look at those traps, count how many they're seeing.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : And once they get past a certain threshold and we actually have data that shows like, Hey, if you have more than 10, right, you're trapping, it's time to you need to spray, right.
Alexis : Thank you.
Jessica : Or you need to take some sort of action.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : um But those are great for monitoring, but not control of pest.
Plant People: Huge tool, yeah. No, that's just to know for more for timing.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: if it's like spotted wing drossula, we're pretty sure it's going to be here at a certain time, but for timing of spray.
Jessica : Right.
Jessica : Right. And that they like apple cider vinegar.
Plant People: Yeah. You can, and some of these things I noticed ah Jessica, and you mentioned in the past, you can like make your own traps and UK, the university has um instructions for making like the homemade spotted wing drossula, you know, monitoring devices and things, don't they?
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: and And, or you can buy them prepared, whichever.
brett: Something else that I would say it's it's a little bit on the front end or it's a little bit the opposite end of the spectrum from what Jessica has been talking about, kind of like monitoring what's there and keeping your eye on it. The other piece of it.
brett: is you know I like to think of myself as a pretty unique individual guy. like my my life experience has never happened to anyone before. and i you know if there's go to be some i' The thing is, when you're gardening with a plant, ah the things that are going to get at it are, with the exception of some novel pests that come in, for the most part, they're the exact same things that we're going to get at your grandma's tomato plants.
brett: back when she was growing them. In other words, we know really well that there are a specific you know handful of a few pests and diseases that are very, very typical on plants and the vast majority fall into that.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: It's just like you know different symptoms for certain diseases and you think, oh no, I've got some kind of lung contusion, blah, blah, blah. No, you have a cold, you're cough you've been coughing a lot, your throat and and and lungs are sore.
brett: That's what's happening. So a lot of times it's like, if you don't know if you haven't, and I didn't, so I had to do some background homework on this. If you don't know that aphids can be a typical problem on tomatoes,
Plant People: Mm.
brett: especially in a high tunnel, then you wouldn't even know to look for those things. And to know that if you're looking for for those, you're looking for this, you can look for this sticky residue stuff that they call honeydew. That's a sign that they've been feeding. Or for instance, the Colorado potato beetle. I mean, it's right in the name potato, but we do get those here.
brett: And now you know to look on the on the underside of those leaves. Because I think when it's like, When you're first starting with scouting, it's kind of overwhelming because it's like there are an infinite number of diseases and pests that could be on this and it's my job to find them and see what they are.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: But in reality, you're your list of things that are probably on there is relatively short. And the more that you know what the signs are, you can be looking for per crop.
Plant People: Yeah, absolutely.
brett: And that that's another thing too, if you're not aware of that, that Different insects and and diseases affect different crops. There's things that I'm not even paying any attention to on a, pi on a pepper plant that I'm looking closely for on a cucumber plant and vice versa.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
brett: And so um those are a couple of things just from the beginner who had to get up to speed side of things is like, it's not an infinite world of information out there. There's actually and a narrow set of things you can focus on.
Plant People: And sometimes you don't even see the insect. If it's like at a hornworm, you can see the evidence, the poop of the hornworm. um you can You may not see the lack of leaves overnight.
Alexis : The lack of leaves on your tomato plant.
brett: yeah
Plant People: It's skeletonized. Or if you're looking for something like a squash vine borer, you may be looking at the bottom 12 inches of the plant above the soil. But it's a great point, Brett. And knowing where to look is more than... more than half the battle because sometimes you're looking strictly on the underside of the leaves, sometimes on the upper side, sometimes both. And other times, you know, you're looking at soil level or other places on the plant. So, yeah, that's a great point.
brett: And there it is just ah it's a known thing. These aren't things that are... They have to be decoded.
Jessica : you
brett: Like this is stuff that we, you just know that, and and Ray, you mentioned earlier, and this is something I maybe wanted to bring up too, is we have different different diseases and insects that come in at known certain times of year, generally speaking.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah, we have some great resources for that at the university. One of my favorite, and if we could talk for just a second about kind of real-time tracking tools and then just general websites, ah one of my favorite timely tools – you know, for my whole time and that I've been in Extension, I use it personally and I recommend it to people.
Jessica : Thank
Plant People: That's Kentucky Pest News. And I really like this um this resource because it's very timely.
brett: Thank you.
Plant People: When we expect to see problems or when we are seeing problems at the university, ah there'll be articles on that that are, you know, very much up to date. So I really like Kentucky Pest News.
Plant People: I can't recommend that one enough. And as the episode got started and just before it got started, we talked a little bit about, you know, monitoring tools like the you know ag UK Ag weather Weather Data Center has lots of models that you can look at that pertain to scouting, monitoring, disease projection models, and some of that relates to insects too.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: But Kentucky pe Pest News, the Weather Center website, and there's some really great apps out there. One of my absolute favorites is MyIPM.
Plant People: ah It's mostly diseases. I think it has some insect information, but you download the base app and then you download individual crops that pertains to your um your operation. And it's just amazing. the The pictures are top notch and it helps you diagnose and then give some recommendations on, um you know, the next steps. Once a problem, one of you guys mentioned, you know, you need to identify the problem. But that's some of the resources that I use a lot.
Plant People: And UK also has what's called the Veggie Scout website.
Jessica : Uh-huh.
Plant People: And then we'll put that link in the show notes. And that's really good. It's an accumulation of scouting guides for Kentucky. And they're they're they're really, really, really good.
Plant People: But that's a good one.
Alexis : I love those scouting guides. I'm glad you brought those up because well, and app you know, apps can be really great, but sometimes you just want
Plant People: Yeah, I use those all the time. Yeah.
Plant People: I want the picture sometimes.
Alexis : Like stuff right in front.
Plant People: Yeah, a high quality picture.
Alexis : Yeah. the So that's what I love about those is, yeah, they're crop specific. And so not only do they have pictures of, and so it's insect and disease and, and, um, environmental issues, cultural.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Yep.
Jessica : Cultural, yeah.
Alexis : Yeah. So, you know, or for tomato, for whatever, but it's not only photos of like the insect or the, you know, the actual disease, but it could be signs that you're seeing or, um, symptoms that were signs and symptoms.
Plant People: You get hard copies of those from the all local offices.
Plant People: m Those scouting guides are excellent.
Alexis : Um, yeah, So yeah, I really love those nice colored photos.
Jessica : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alexis : And those are all free online. ah youre If you're in Kentucky, your extension office can also get you a copy of those.
Plant People: slick copies. Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah, yeah. So if you're growing any of these on ah even a semi-large scale, you might want some of those.
Plant People: You'll want those. Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah, I really like them.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: And that really incorporates everything we're talking about today as far as scouting and a lot of monitoring stuff as a result.
brett: Peace.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: But all the scouting stuff is going to be in those guides per crop, like Alexis said. And they're the they're the best that I know of.
Alexis : Okay. Okay.
Plant People: They're really, really good for conducting.
Jessica : They're really nice, especially circling all the back around when Brett at the beginning mentioned like other things besides disease and insect cultural issues. ah That's like one of my favorite things to talk about when I do a tomato class because it blows people's minds how many times they think there are issues with their tomatoes.
Jessica : The actual fruiting part is a disease or an insect and it's really cultural stuff. And those IPM guides have all of that in there that shows what
brett: what does What does cultural mean?
Jessica : So stuff that's been affected by like the environment, right? So um like an example with a tomato that has cat facing on it.
Alexis : A
Jessica : One, it could be the variety. Some of them just do that. And that's where your tomatoes look like really gnarly. um Almost kind of like split apart in a way.
Alexis : lot of the heirlooms do it.
Plant People: Looking at you, heirlooms.
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Like the whiskers of a cat going out in all directions.
Jessica : But yes, yes.
Alexis : Yeah. Or zipper they zippering is another one.
brett: Yeah.
Jessica : Zippering.
Alexis : It looks exactly like a zipper.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : that But it could be caused by thrips feeding on the flower or it could have been caused by temperature change when they were in bloom can cause it. um But there's a lot of things that, you know, we want to blame on nutrient deficiency.
Jessica : We want to blame on you know, insects, disease, and it's really just more of our environment or ourselves from all time back to the beginning because we didn't water them enough or or we watered them too much.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: With tomatoes, it could be anything.
brett: so
Plant People: Temperature, yeah, whatever. You name it, it could be at any one time, yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
brett: so wait Oh man, we had to chase down a, one of our trials had to chase down some pesticide drift one time and it was really hard cause it wasn't roundup.
Alexis : Your neighbor from five streets away sprayed Roundup somewhere.
Jessica : Oh, 2-4-D. Yeah.
brett: It was something it wasn't, and I don't know. Maybe it was two four d I can't remember, but it was, it was, it was tricky to, so um as far as fungal diseases, you know, I I've always known about the, um the, the,
Plant People: Dicamba, the worst. Yeah. Yeah.
brett: not i'd Not always known. I learned once upon a time about the downy plot, downy mildew sentinel plots that they'll, because downy mildew, as far as I understand it, sort of blows in seasonally.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: It doesn't overwinter here. And so it's literally like a migratory bird map for fungus.
Jessica : It's a snowbird.
brett: um Yeah. that And so there's ways to monitor that. ah A lot of the fungal diseases in particular, as far as I understand it, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of our protection against those are more preventative than they are curative.
brett: And so in that case,
Alexis : Yeah, if you've been around this podcast, you've heard us say it. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Yeah. and And so in that case, um you know, if you're going to do some sort of a spray ah approach, whether that be copper or ah some other kind of um or organic product or something a little more conventional, you're typically going to do that.
Alexis : Chlorothalonel. Yeah.
brett: are you Are you determining when and how to do that through watching the weather? Is there alerts from from Kentucky Pest News? What's the deal with that?
Jessica : Yeah. I know. Um, I watched it closely with, i got a couple of pumpkin growers in my County. So, ah you know, pumpkin growers want it to be, they want it rain now earlier in the summer.
Jessica : And then as we get closer to the fall, you know, August, they want, they're happy with it when it stops raining. Cause they won't, they don't want that spread of disease.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Jessica : Uh, but the, the, The pest alerts that UK has um for this disease and we've mentioned that downy, you know, goes south for the winter and they track it as it comes back up.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So a lot of these growers might be doing a preventative spray of copper or something like that through the season for just that downy, for that powdery mildew and those other kind of fungal things. But that downy is so, can be so detrimental to pumpkin growers late in the season.
Jessica : We start to get those alerts of like, hey, they found it in Tennessee. Hey, it's in Western Kentucky.
Alexis : Right.
Jessica : Hey, it's getting closer up this way. So that allows us as agents the opportunity to reach out to those growers or if you're, you know, you growers can sign up for this you know this information themselves um that hey it's time that you need to switch up that fungicide spray to something that can withstand that downy so we're not going to be spraying that chemical all season um we're only going to use it as needed because we want things not to become resistant you know to keep the efficacy right it and that's the other thing a lot of these chemicals are very expensive when it comes down to it the um
brett: Right.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : It's also expensive. Right.
Jessica : ones they're spraying to keep downy off late in the season.
Alexis : But there are like temperatures too. So, you know, even if you're a home grow and you're like, I don't really need, you know, alert set up, although anyone can sign up, you know, like um the models, which sounds scary, but I guess is technically what they are that Ray was talking about at UK ag weather. Um,
Alexis : Model is a scary word for me for some reason, but you can go on there. So fire blights of, you know, apples, pears, things like that.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Power blood's a good one, yeah.
Alexis : um You can see on here, you know, and though it's it's not like a scary model. it's just but It's just really simple information, kind of bulleted, easy to read. And, you know, they'll they'll say you can put in your date and in Kentucky, you can put in your county and your date.
Alexis : And it actually pulls weather information from the past four days or so.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Really good.
Alexis : And it says, hey, your um environment is good for, you know, disease spread and infection. So you need to be spraying.
brett: at high risk you're in a high risk environment you know situation
Alexis : And so that can be
Jessica : Thank you.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : You're in high risk environment, right? Because for disease, we need we need the actual um you know disease to be present. We also need the proper environment and we need the proper host. And so you know you can have fire blight sitting right there on your plant on the you know on your apple, but if it's 90 degrees outside, infection can occur.
Alexis : So um you know that way you don't you're not spraying for no reason. So there are those quote unquote models. I know that's what it technically is, right? But it's just for some reason sounds intimidating and it's really not.
Plant People: It sounds like it's heavily data driven, which it is.
Alexis : Yeah, it sounds like I'm like coding my MySpace again or something like this is.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
brett: yeah
Plant People: Dancing bears everywhere. Yeah. But no, it's very approachable.
Alexis : Mm
Jessica : Thank you.
Plant People: And like like Alexa said, it's totally customizable locally, which I love down to your zip code, down to your county.
Alexis : hmm. Mm
Plant People: It's all a lot of that is Mesonet driven, which is to say very local.
Alexis : hmm. Mm
Plant People: localized weather conditions so it's awesome so if you've never checked that out and that also includes things like growing degree days soil temperature all of that is on there it's an incredible resource that if you've never checked it out you definitely as a grower especially if you're a commercial grower need to go check that website out i mean lumens i mean the amount of quantity of light i found that on there one day it's just a really cool really really cool website but to One you guys making a a not so subtle segue into before, you know, we get off the show today.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Alexis : hmm.
Alexis : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: ah Brett, was a you that just started talking about like ah soil as, you know, aspect of monitoring, but soil nutrient levels. We don't want to forget that in our scouting and monitoring because I break soil down into and nutrients, I guess, not just soil, but nutrient levels.
Jessica : Thank
Plant People: down two different ways, especially when it comes to commercial operations. One is sort of the soil test that you're taking every year, every other year as a commercial operator. The second part of nutrient management is managing any kind of tissue nutrient monitoring that you do during the growing year.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: And is it you, Brett, that has some experience with using like cardiometers there on the farm? I know some of you guys or maybe all of you guys,
brett: I do have some experience. I have cardiometered a time or two.
Plant People: Cardi-metered. I mean, and that's something some producers use.
brett: Yeah.
Plant People: And, you know, you can get lab services for that, too, that are a little bit more extensive. But, Brett, you want to tell us about your experience with using cardi-meters as far as nutrient analysis and using that kind of in conjunction with soil test?
brett: Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things we, I, we always thought about, um, with nutrients is, you know, you don't eat, you know, to be able to meal prepping, right?
brett: You prep your food for the whole week, but you don't eat all of your food on Sunday night and then expect to make it through the rest of the week. And so a lot of times when we do managing nutrients, there's this typical thing of kind of like, let's put all the fertilizer that they might need over the course of the season out all at once, right at the beginning of the season, and then hope things go well.
Plant People: I don't know mine
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: Well, typically we would recommend things more like fertigation schedule or some sort of addition of nutrients across time. But the flip side of that is monitoring it.
brett: We want to make sure that the plants have enough nutrients, but not too much of it. And monitoring that throughout the course of the season can be kind of tricky because you don't necessarily, mean, you could take a soil test and that will give you some information, but you can actually test the ah the soil the plant tissue itself to see how much of some nutrients are in it.
brett: the The other reason this is important, and I'll talk about the cardiomy in a second, but the reason this is important is that some diseases and insects kind of look like these abiotic issues, these ah like nutrient issues.
Plant People: Yeah.
Alexis : Yeah.
Plant People: yeah
brett: A nutrient deficiency can look like early powdery mildew, or it can look like a zinc deficiency can look like whatever.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
brett: So um that's one of the cool things about that IPM guide is that there's several several pictures in there where they have like, this is the actual disease. And and right next to it is a picture of this is what a you know nutrient ah deficiency looks like in this plant. And you can tell there's subtle differences, but if you only saw one of them, you would maybe get them confused. And so um that's where they talk in the extension office and kind of having a team of a team and and a set of information to be able to go off of is good. But the cardiometer is pretty simple.
brett: um You pull a specific part of the plant off, it's a petiole, which, and I think it's on the most mature leaves, been a while since I did it, but you can pull that off and then you can crush it like in a garlic press or something like that and you create this sap, this leaf petiole sap.
brett: and you have this little thing, this little machine that you feed it into, ah and it can give you a reading.
Alexis : Juiced. jes
brett: you know the The better the machine you get and the better you are at the process, the more accurate your readings are going to be. But it's a way to do some instant testing in the field to see if you need to push a little more nitrogen or um you know if you need to make some adjustments to your to your plan.
brett: But in general, I think thinking about your nutrient management plan ahead of time and having some plant fertigation is another one of those words that kind of sounds scary, but it's literally just mixing fertilizer into your irrigation water in some way.
brett: And there are DIY versions of that. There are expensive injector versions of that and everything in between.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: Um, but what that again allows you to do is to feed your nutrients out to your plants more gradually, of course, across the course of the, uh, season rather than have them all go at once.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: Or if you get a big rainfall event it all washes out and then you have to add more later, but, uh, Yeah, you mentioned tissue sampling. You can take and, you know, pull a leaf or a branch or whatever off, depending on what the sampling protocol is. And you can send those off to labs. um And ah you can you want to do that in like different parts, either any of these like different parts of your field, any of this sampling stuff. You don't just want to go to one section and be like, OK, everything looks good and be done.
brett: ah kind of popping around and taking a look at it. But that that it comes back to, i think, you know, whether it's, ah whether it's nutrients, whether it's disease, whether it's insects, whether it's just to having a bad, the plant just having bad, um
Alexis : there's Weather is weather.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: A lot of it comes back to that initial, like just acknowledging that there is a difference that could be a problem and then putting yourself a position to
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: know what maybe the problems, the common problems are and how to identify them or how to ask someone who can help you identify them. I think that's the real, it's, it's not, it's like not very sexy, but to me, maintenance of a crop is what takes people from like casual gardener to like slightly less, you know, it,
Alexis : Oh yeah.
Plant People: And you're going to get excited over this one, Brett. And it's and my number one thing I tell people is keep records. And if you're if you're a data nerd and you love tables, ah you can put that information into Excel or you know the the data cruncher of your choice. But the main thing is keep records of ah one of you guys mentioned You know, these things, a lot of these pests and diseases happen at sort of semi-regular cycles during the year, and you'll start to notice those patterns.
Plant People: And that's really going to help you when you notice, you know, an insect problem here, a disease problem there, or dip in your calcium in a certain crop here or a nutrient. um But keep notes on all of these things, and that includes the weather.
Plant People: Now, the weather, you can look up historical weather, you know, from year to year on, you know, like UK Ag Weather site or whatever. But the more information you keep locally on what you're observing, what you're seeing, and at what time you're seeing it, the better.
Jessica : Thank you.
brett: Yeah. And I think, you know, you mentioned two two times a week for like official scouting, like if you sort of have a management plan and you've got a bunch of other things to do. But if you have a garden or even just a, you know, large, large, really large garden,
brett: um the more that you can spend time with those plants, even like every day or multiple times a day, and it can be fun.
Alexis : Mm-hmm.
brett: you could just be walking around, looking at them, watching the bees, whatever you, it's amazing how much more attuned your eyes and your feet, your fingers and will become as far as,
brett: seeing those like I have trees where now I can tell like a day or two into something being wrong with them. There is something ah and these are like pine trees or junipers that move really slow but just because there's this slight gradient difference of color.
brett: And I'm like, oh, I need to keep an eye on that or and need to do whatever. And I never would have had that before. And it's literally just from spending out time out there, hanging with them and observing them with People, animals, the same way, kind of, you just you just get to know them.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: um and it's pretty it's pretty fun if he makes you feel like a magician because other people don't have that. And like, how could you even tell that there was, like, well, it's a.
Plant People: I find that new producers are hypervigilant with all of this stuff.
Alexis : It's kind of magic.
Plant People: They they observe everything. They may not have the overview, but especially with if someone's a newer or they're leveling up producer going to the next level, they'll notice physiological leaf row on tomato or something that like maybe nobody would notice, but it's kind of cool to see when people are like hypervigilant, they notice everything and their eyes are just seeing things they're not used to seeing.
brett: Mm-hmm.
brett: Mm-hmm.
Plant People: It's pretty cool when you're vigilant like that and you're just kind of being a good observer.
brett: There's a kind of famous speech from David Foster Wallace, author of books that people read to in order to make themselves better than you, a nerd guy.
brett: but he
Plant People: Better than your books, yeah.
brett: But he did ah he had this this famous speech to a commencement audience. and He talked about how the true intelligence is about learning how you how to choose what you pay attention to.
brett: And that there's so many things in our world that you can choose to to pay attention to.
Alexis : Mm.
brett: And I think that's the case with this too, where you you just know, you start to know what to pay attention to and what to not pay attention to.
Plant People: Yeah.
brett: And in that not to pay attention to you lose that, like you let go of that choice paralysis overwhelming and you're just focused and a little more calm as opposed to trying to take everything in all at once.
brett: And the world becomes a little more legible, a little more calm. um And so, yeah, that's that's, that's the enhancing your skills with plants and and paying attention to them, I think is it's really rewarding in addition to being good for growing a garden.
Alexis : Do it.
brett: up garden
Alexis : It's fun. Trust us. wait Would we steer you wrong?
Jessica : Of course not.
brett: join us true leaves.
Alexis : Join us, True Leaves. Yeah. Well, um if you are True Leaves who are on Instagram, you can follow us at Hort Culture Podcast. ah See some of the posts we've got up there.
Alexis : You can also message us on there if you are so inclined to say anything. You can also say if you want to know. If you've got questions, you can shoot us an email.
Alexis : You can find that in the show notes. You can also tell us how much you love this episode by giving us five stars and telling us how great it was or any episodes that you would like to hear. We're always looking for ideas and we want to do stuff that you actually want to listen to because this is just coming up out of our weird brains and you never know which direction that's going to go.
Alexis : So feel free to always reach out if you've got questions, comments, thoughts.
Plant People: All directions.
Alexis : We'd love to hear from you. But we hope that you had a good time today You got some garden stuff done. You're going to go pet all your plants outside. And we hope that you'll join us next time. Have a great one.
