Transcript
Brett: Hello, hello. Welcome back to Hort Culture.
Jessica : Hey,
Plant People: Hello again.
Brett: Jessica, Rae, how are you all?
Jessica : I'm doing good.
Plant People: It's good.
Jessica : how are you?
Plant People: Doing good. Ready for fall weather.
Brett: Mm-hmm. I'm pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. We're, we've been riding ups and downs in our temperatures around here. And I think we're, we're at the point where you start looking at your watch and saying, is it fall yet?
Brett: But you know, in the event that we're not going to have fall just right away, I'm curious, do you all have a cool treat? Keep cool type treat that you prefer this time of year?
Brett: um Yeah. Ice cream, popsicle chill.
Plant People: You mean like food treat? Yeah. yeah
Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: ah I don't know that it's a cool treat, but we mentioned it on our last episode. Something that I associate with fall now because of our wonderful orchards. Maybe it's a keep cool treat. I think it's a pretty cool treat is apple cider donuts.
Plant People: We mentioned that the last time. And I just want to expound on that conversation because I feel passionate about them.
Jessica : They are delicious.
Plant People: We also talked a lot about fried pies, which got me pretty excited. But I don't know if that's ah that's a cool treat, but it's one that I associate with the weather getting cooler.
Brett: Yeah, very brief recap of that ah apple cider donut conversation was that we went to an orchard. My wife came out with apple cider donuts only to inform me those are for our neighbors, not for you.
Brett: So alas.
Plant People: ah Brett, the bitterness still seeps through, ah bitterness.
Brett: Yeah, yeah. But my my bitterness is only matched by the sweetness of those donuts that I can imagine our neighbors really enjoyed.
Plant People: Ooh.
Jessica : ah
Plant People: Yeah, they probably do it.
Brett: To be fair, the kids were really excited about him, so like, whatever, but the the kids that ended up receiving them.
Plant People: By kids, you mean Brett or the kids that actually ate all of them?
Brett: ah brett Brett, the kid, the kid Brett was excited, but ultimately then spurned.
Jessica : well
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah. yeah
Jessica : Dreams are crushed. Yeah.
Brett: What about you, Jessica? You and the squad, your squad.
Jessica : well, I am very fond of ice cream, but we've done a lot of like popsicles this summer. we did, um,
Plant People: Ooh.
Jessica : a lot of like, we really like pineapple. So we made pineapple popsicles.
Plant People: You made popsicles. Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah. We made them ourselves with like the little mold. um Yeah, we did a couple different kinds. per Surprisingly, per recipes from Sesame Street, ah but we have watched where there's a foodie truck with Cookie Monster.
Plant People: Love Mason Sesame Street.
Jessica : It's a big thing in my house right now. And they demonstrated how to make pineapple popsicles. And we were like, you know what? We can do that. And they were actually really delicious.
Jessica : ah The lemonade ones were a little tart. I did not care for those as much, but my children still ate them up and said they were fantastic. But there's a lot of things that kids think that are fantastic tasting that I would i would question at times, but they've enjoyed them. So we've had a lot of popsicles this summer.
Brett: Well, you just brought up another idea, another question that I have in our little intro here. um So I asked this to people on our team the other day. So the these the five main you know flavor types. So you got sour, sweet, bitter, umami and salty.
Brett: Do you have a favorite and a least favorite?
Plant People: For like popsicles?
Brett: Sour, sweet. but No, not for popsicles, just in general. ah and not ah Not a fan of a salty popsicle, to be honest.
Plant People: I'm just thinking salty popsicles or sour. Well, maybe it's sour.
Brett: And the darn things just won't stay frozen.
Plant People: it's Salty popsicles. Yeah. Dang it. I don't know. Man, can we pick two like sweet and salty?
Brett: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. I love that combo. Classic.
Brett: You like sweet and salty?
Plant People: Oh, yeah.
Brett: What about what about the up the other end, the ones that you don't like as much?
Plant People: Oh, bitter, anything that's, ah but I like black licorice. Some people would call that bitter.
Jessica : ah
Plant People: I don't know, but maybe the bitter stuff. Like I will not be one of those guys sucking on a immature persimmon. That is not my jam. Sorry.
Brett: With black licorice, you are not going to beat the allegations of alive in the 19th century, right?
Jessica : Yeah.
Brett: it just You're just not.
Plant People: I love black. I know, but I'm going to own that. I love black licorice.
Brett: I like that.
Plant People: It's an acquired taste.
Jessica : I like sweet. And then i i want to, If you know me well, i have this thing that I want to like sour things and I want to like lemon.
Brett: Hmm.
Jessica : And it's this very comical thing now that like I always try it and every time I have like the same like facial reactions, but I like want to love lemon like so bad because there's so many things you can bake with lemon and all of these things that sound fantastic. But then every time it's like,
Jessica : The only time I ever got close enough to it was all three of my pregnancies. I liked sour things during those times and, and two boys and a girl.
Brett: wo
Jessica : It was just all three of them. Still. I like sour things during that timeframe.
Brett: What kind of sour stuff were you going to in that at that point?
Jessica : So was probably,
Jessica : Um, this last pregnancy, I ate a lot of nerds gummy clusters.
Brett: Hmm.
Plant People: Yes, you did. Yeah.
Jessica : Ray was around me when he saw that I was like, would you like some nerd gummy clusters? I would just pull them out of my bag.
Plant People: i mean, you introduced me to different kinds of nerds and I'm like, wow, I didn't know these existed. Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah, but I enjoyed like
Plant People: so
Jessica : more key lime pie and like sour kind of things than than I do now so but I don't really care for bitter i would say like bitter would be below um sour because I'm trying to make the sour work I guess
Plant People: ah Brett, you have a complex palate. your're in Your answer here is going to be interesting to me because I know that, I mean, you and Annie both, I mean, you have this affinity and I've seen you even fix amazing food. So ah I'm going to be interested in your take on your own questions.
Brett: Yeah. Well, so anyone who knows me is not surprised that the snobby um elite, it whatever answer that my my favorite is probably umami flavor.
Brett: um Maybe.
Plant People: You're going explain that to me a little bit.
Jessica : Yeah. do what i
Plant People: Expound.
Jessica : I need to know more about that because I might be able to rank mine differently.
Plant People: Yes, please.
Brett: Yeah. So I think one of the things we sometimes do, ah and this is again, it's just making me sound like such a snooty person, but I think umami flavors have ah like a really important They get they're given more primacy and thought about more in like some Asian cultures um as a as a flavor that and and also sweetness is used differently in Asian, like a lot of Asian cuisine, other places too. um But it's like you think of it as like so the savory component, but not the saltiness.
Plant People: oh
Jessica : Okay.
Brett: So the things that you tend to associate with umami are things like um beef is one example, like the beefiness of beef A lot of people consider that, you know, ah to be the umami flavor.
Brett: Mushrooms have a lot of earthiness and savoriness and depth of flavor. um Miso paste, soy sauce, even Worcestershire sauce to some extent.
Brett: um Again, the saltiness and the umaminess go together a lot in a lot of those, but it's this other thing.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : Mm-hmm. huh
Brett: And it's, it's, it's almost like the it's a blend of sensation and flavor, at least in my experience of it, where it's like almost like a creaminess or a richness that is just not, you know, if you think about a sour stuff or tangy stuff is like, there's a brightness to it.
Brett: This has more of like a richness and a, you know, a mouth there's mouthful as can be associated with it. Um, so yeah, something that has like a really, ah a depth of flavor,
Brett: It's not exactly saltiness, but often I think it's associated with saltiness. um Yeah. so like bean Some beans.
Plant People: I have to rethink my answer. Yeah. I have to rethink my answer because all those things, foods you just mentioned and salsas, I love all those things. So, yeah.
Jessica : Yeah, same.
Brett: Yeah. but the the but The problem is I love all of the all of the flavors. So to even say this one's my least favorite, but my least favorite would probably be sour. um
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: But I love like vinegar and tanginess, but I'm not like a picklehead or like a sour.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: I love sauerkraut, but I'm not like a, I love Sour Patch, or I really like Sour Patch Kids, but I don't love them like some people do. Or like,
Plant People: Yeah, I'm the same boat.
Brett: um
Plant People: I'll eat them on occasion.
Brett: yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: And so, yeah, I think for me, for me so so Sour is the lowest one. But Umami is one of those, it's kind of hard to, it's harder to to define.
Plant People: top
Plant People: Sounds like it is hard to define.
Brett: It's something that, and it's, we don't have as many reference points, but like,
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: It's almost like, you know, if you're really, for for me, like a hamburger has a really strong, I just had a really nice hamburger at the the night jar down in Berea last night. um And it has this, just this, oh man, like savory, ah you can tell we're coming up on lunch recording this um flavor to it that's, you know, it's just hard to beat.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: A hamburger sometimes just hits just right when you get that flavor and juiciness and prepared in just such a way.
Brett: Yeah.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: ah That's probably my favorite food ever when I get the one just to my liking is that hamburger. I mean, it's hands down amazing.
Brett: Yeah.
Jessica : That's something else, not to just be like, oh, the weird things Jessica liked when she was pregnant. But also with all three of my pregnancies, I wanted cheeseburgers.
Jessica : And that's how some of my office coworkers figured out I was pregnant before I told anyone else.
Brett: Oh, wow.
Jessica : Yeah. Because I always bring my lunch to work and suddenly I was just like, hey guys, I'm going to go pick something up.
Brett: You'll tell. Yeah.
Jessica : And they were just like, what is she doing? And like, I was suddenly getting like a cheeseburger with an ice, ice cold Coke. And they were like, something's going on with her. And by the third, by the third kid, they were like, that's her tail.
Plant People: your routines your your routines had changed.
Jessica : Right. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : and then and But now I'm back to bringing my lunch to work again because I've had some people try to convince me. They're like, doesn't the dairy barn sound really good today, Jessica? And I was like, oh, it does. But I have my lunch.
Jessica : And they're like, man, she won't go out and get us burgers now.
Brett: Wow.
Plant People: Man, maybe that's just a test.
Brett: Yeah, that's the tell.
Plant People: Yeah, that's just a test. They're just testing you. out
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: Well, so, yeah, I mean, i think and that that opens ah ah to another prompt that maybe we can we can do in another future episode of for extension people, their go-to, you got to get something on the road.
Brett: What do you get? And a burger would maybe be ah maybe a good answer for that. But
Plant People: Oh, road snacks. We could, that could be its own show for this guy.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: I'm a gas station connoisseur.
Jessica : Yeah.
Brett: I feel like you between, yeah, but between all of us, honestly.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : yeah yeah
Plant People: that
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: ah But, but there is this component of being an agent where, and be, you know, work that I do too sometimes where you go out and you're going to visit people on their farms or at their house or at the, you know, getting these calls for a home visit, farm visit, and the whole range in between.
Plant People: ah yeah, absolutely. Food adventures.
Brett: And so I thought maybe you' kind of be a cool idea to talk about some of the visits you all have been on, you know, recently, maybe this year or some other ones that come to mind and and like some of the lessons or the information you shared, you know, what are the common ones or maybe what's an odd one that sticks out.
Brett: So maybe we'll just start with with Ray. do you have a visit or either a recent one or otherwise that sticks out and what happened? What'd you learn? What did they learn? What'd you talk about?
Plant People: I'll talk about trends, I guess. More of a trend than as ah because it was multiple visits.
Brett: Specific one, yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. Since it was, you know, weather played a big role this year in kind of site visits. um So people um you were asking early on when there was so much rain, I got questions that or they ask as a kind of an add on to the main visit.
Plant People: You know, we'd go and look and of course weeds were growing in production areas. So I answered a lot more questions this year and just kind of throw out thought through the processes with people on, um, weed suppression and weed control because everybody got behind when it stayed so wet for so long. They're like, you know, we're mowing in between the rows this year of our production areas instead of cultivating or, you know, some kind of, um, chemical control product. Uh, they were, they were just straight out mowing, ah in some cases, but, um,
Plant People: A lot of my discussions early on during the year, um we didn't have a lot of irrigation questions because there was not a lot of that needed in a lot of instances, depending on the crop.
Plant People: But a trend for the springtime was just thinking through and working through weed control. And I'll give a specific example. Yeah,
Brett: but Before you, before you jump into the example, I was just for those, you know, some folks who their, their whole orientation to weed control in a home garden might be, I go out and pull the weed out.
Plant People: yeah go ahead
Brett: And even if it rained, that's not a big deal. um Why, why would it be like rain would prevent you from, did you say cultivating? What does that mean? Like, why would that prevent you?
Plant People: Yeah, we we've ah talked about it on the show before. One of the things you just don't do, and it's bad even for home gardens. And it's, ah you know, we know it's ah really bad in a commercial setting, but it's just not good. Even walking, even foot pressure on a waterlogged soil does bad things. It causes lots of compression, loss of soil structure.
Plant People: um And it just is difficult because everything's muddy. But my main concern is soil structure. especially commercially, but also for homeowners, just not being able to get out. It was a very wet spring in spring in Kentucky. If you were outside of Kentucky, this may not make a lot of sense, but for reference, it was, a I guess, the wettest spring we've ever had in Kentucky.
Plant People: um But it was hard early on to get out and work, and I encourage people not to do so, to have a lot of implements out on wet soil, no cultivation at all when the ground was really wet.
Plant People: But even foot traffic in gardens, I've dealt with the fallout of that before where people will say, man, because a lot times gardens, if it's a small space garden, they'll have like a lot of heavy pressure on just a really defined footpath.
Plant People: And I'll get a ah kind of a follow up comment the year after a wet spring like this. And they'll say, man, ah tried to go out and till that. And it was like tilling up concrete or they tilled it in the fall.
Plant People: And it was just all compressed and hard. It did a lot of a lot of damage. So I tried to encourage people to be careful of that. But also at the same time, you know, we don't want, um especially in production areas, we don't want the seed bed to increase even more with things like crabgrass. That stuff going to seed, I would see these producers or homeowners and crabgrass starting to go to seed or some of these really problematic weeds.
Plant People: And that's just going to create problems for years if you get, you know, that seed load into the soil.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: So there was just ah a lot of questions, a lot of site visits, a lot of discussions on weeds early on. That's before we had to deal with diseases and everything later in the season.
Brett: Yeah. Well, I interrupted you. i think you had a specific, maybe a specific example related to the, yeah.
Plant People: No, I was just going to give that example of ah weeds going to seed.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: That's one thing we really don't want is
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: I would see that starting to happen. I'm like, well what are your options? And that's when we talked about mowing and things. People don't generally think about taking a push mower to their, if it's smaller production area, going out and mowing.
Plant People: But I'm like, anything you can do to keep those, to minimize pressure on your soil, but also, you know, minimize the number of weeds that are going to seed. So yeah, handled lot of questions like that.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: It was just weather related. And, you know, what's this going to do to my tomato? Is it going to delay ripening? but all that All that happened later in the season with, with you know, the fluctuations of temperature.
Brett: What
Jessica : Right.
Jessica : Right. As we get to this time of year, for me, I've missed the big spring, you know all the questions in the early spring this year for me.
Brett: and about you, Jessica?
Jessica : But around this time, and we start to see tree questions start to really hype up because
Plant People: Everything had fungal leaf spots this year. My goodness. Yeah.
Jessica : Well, we're a lot drier where we're at than where you guys are.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And so
Plant People: I noticed that when I was down in your area.
Jessica : and so we're seeing the the traditional what happens when you get into late summer with large trees. Your tree might have been struggling all year, but it really starts to show those signs of that struggle as we get later into the summer.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : That's when we start to notice the dieback occurring, um you know leaves turning brown sooner, anthracnose, all of those kind of things really showing up. Uh, so I have had a couple of the visits of, i have large trees that are suddenly declining and I kind of go through the process before doing a home visit of, can you send me some pictures?
Brett: Thank you.
Jessica : Can you, ah bring in a sample?
Plant People: her
Jessica : If it's nothing, you know, that we can easily tell that way, then I come out and do a home visit. And um a lot of the things that I was just seeing were trees that have probably had some damage from like several years ago, right?
Jessica : From like wind damage several years ago.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : And it's just been, they've slowly been declining, but you just don't see it until they start to get stressed.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : And we've gotten suddenly, last year, we had a really bad drought at the end of the seas summer and it's getting really dry again here again.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : And so those trees are really starting to show show those signs. So a lot of those, a lot of, um see them, unfortunately telling people that like,
Jessica : there's not much you can do for a giant tree that is declining.
Brett: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jessica : That's not, you know, has some sort of disease or insect pests that we can control. um Or gently, you know, talking to people about like, they've tried to fix it themselves with tactics that we don't necessarily recommend anymore or things that they have just seen online. Yeah.
Brett: and
Jessica : that they think is going to help their tree, you know, and navigating those waters of like, you know, you have, you know, I know you're trying, you you know, you're trying your best to help the tree, but let's try to take this route.
Plant People: Tree questions are tough.
Jessica : ah So I've had a couple, couple of those recently. Those are like gearing up, but that's like kind of normal for this time of year for to see large tree decline.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. I like this time of year for diagnostic work, um and it's a discussion I commonly have. When you have a period in Kentucky that typically gets a little bit more dry,
Plant People: the tree gets ah starts to experience you know environmental stress or you know sometimes it's natural, but a little bit a bit of environmental stress in the form of a reduction in water. But it's a great diagnostic time and it's a great time to have conversations with people. And always ask if it's uniform all over the entire tree, is it uniform over the entire tree?
Plant People: you know Well, if they answer yes, then we start to talk about that could be you know lean us towards environmental stresses because diseases are rarely uniform. And that's probably the most important concept for people to know about, like especially mature trees is,
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: A disease or insect damage will show itself unevenly because that's the way diseases and ah certain types of damages work You know, things like verticillium, it'll be just one side of the tree this time of year.
Plant People: That'll be dropping leaves and the other side's fine. But I guess the point there being environmental stresses show up as the entire tree behaves exactly the same.
Jessica : h
Plant People: lack of water shows up the entire tree, generally exactly the same. If it's some sort of disease at work or some sort of insect damage, that is typically uneven. But that's the most important concept. If I could get that concept, you know, across to people, look for that first.
Plant People: And we see that this time of year. So it's a good time of year to have that conversation with people about trees, larger trees.
Brett: Yeah, like with like fire blight, for instance, it'll see you'll see one or two branches that are just look like they were literally blighted by fire with other leaves that are OK.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: And maybe it may spread, but it's not like all the leaves all at once turn brown um in in the in the way that it would if that tree was really, really drought stressed or there was some other environmental factor involved.
Jessica : That's
Plant People: Yeah. yeah
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Well, on the on that.
Plant People: Fireblood's a good one, yeah.
Jessica : and ah
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Oh, yeah, go ahead.
Jessica : ah I was going to say continue on with our trees, like large trees, it's hard to die you know diagnose what might be going on with them. But kind of just to share like a story of a home visit I had once with a newer planted tree that newer as and it had been in the ground for two, maybe three years, and it started to decline, right?
Jessica : And ah the owner was just like, you know, I've watered, I've mulched, I cannot figure out what's going on. And, you know, we talked through it. And I finally went out there and we looked and it just kept declining. And eventually, you know, it didn't look good. Like there's no chance this tree is going to come out of this.
Jessica : So with smaller trees, you do have the opportunity sometimes to actually figure out why this tree just suddenly died.
Plant People: Yeah
Jessica : Right. Because like the location, because this homeowner was just like, yeah, let's pop it out of the ground. I mean, it's dead anyways. Let's take it out. And he had had some landscape company come in and plant these trees.
Jessica : And so I remember going out there and he wasn't home. And he had kind of like halfway popped the tree out for me. And so I got down there and I was like actually digging around in the soil and ended up finding that the tree had girdled itself because they hadn't taken off the wire basket and there was burlap in there when they planted it
Plant People: yeah
Brett: Oh,
Jessica : Right. So it's one of those things. It was like exciting because I was like, we know what killed your tree. But it's also like, oh, I'm sorry.
Brett: Right.
Jessica : This is what killed your tree, you know. um But with, you know, smaller trees or smaller plants, we sometimes have the opportunity when it's those things. more cultural environmental things to actually figure it out versus it's frustrating and it's hard for people to understand.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Right.
Jessica : ah Like you have had this tree for like 30 plus years and now it's just suddenly, you know, declining.
Plant People: And that's one of those that'll show up at the least amount of water stress that if it's got a girdling root and girdling roots are just shockingly common, especially for tree species, certain tree species, or maybe it's just because there are a lot of maples planted in Bourbon County, but
Jessica : yep
Plant People: It goes back to how the hole was prepped and dug. And in a lot of commercial settings, you'll find that an auger was used to dig holes. So it's very prevalent girdling roots, which is just simply a root that goes around, makes a lasso around the tree or a portion of the tree and just tightens around as the tree grows and puts on diameter.
Plant People: ah But it's extremely common. I see that all the time. And so I end up digging around the base. One of the first things I do for young trees is I'll dig around the base three to four inches down. with the homeowner and we'll look for those roots, but incredibly common girdling roots.
Plant People: And now your situation was a little different where you had the cage and rope and yeah you lots going on there.
Jessica : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Lots going on.
Jessica : huh
Brett: Yeah. Well, in the, in the world of of trees, but also not trees, it was a difficult year for our fruit growers, um, in multiple different ways.
Plant People: Hmm.
Brett: Uh, did you, I know Ray, you've got several orchards that you work with and,
Plant People: Yeah. In fact, ah or to our local orchard ah that we have has put out you know public service announcements, giving an update. And I love when they do this. They do a good job with social media, but they're trying to temper people's expectations. Yes, they will have fruit, but they gave an update on the fruit crop this year. you know Everything from blackberries and raspberries to peaches that you know have a lot of winter injury.
Plant People: And we had cold snaps that just really reduced the production way, way, way down on fruit in Kentucky this year. And that goes for, you know, things like blackberries and raspberries, strawberries, you you know, even apples that are typically more hardy.
Jessica : Thank
Plant People: There are some, yes, but greatly reduced. It has been a very tough year. And our local orchard does a great job there in Bourbon County and of educating people on that. I think they do a good job.
Plant People: But they just ah really just wanted to let people know several weeks ago that, hey, it's an incredibly tough year. Here's what's going on with orchards generally in Kentucky this year.
Plant People: It's just been an extremely challenging year. And that started all the way back in the wintertime with really cold snaps, as I said, that destroyed a lot of fruit buds on things like peaches. And then we just had lots of overcast days, we had lots of moisture. It was just an odd year.
Plant People: that translated to problems across the board in orchards. It's been really, really tough.
Brett: Yeah, I saw that that post and I actually saw one of the comments below and I i think it was it's that good kind of customer education and engagement. Someone asked because some people don't know you know, they don't have really a sense of how how a peach grows or an apple grows that.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: the question was, you know, does this like, did your, did the tree die or was it just the fruit crop that's lost?
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: And they and they said, we actually did lose some trees because we had brutal cold um and early, relatively early.
Plant People: They did. Yeah, young trees.
Brett: And it was like December, it got really, really cold and it was warm for a prolonged period in the fall and then got really, really cold, really fast.
Jessica : Yep.
Plant People: The fluctuations is what's so tough.
Brett: So there
Plant People: I mean, if it's consistently cold, as long as it's not incredibly cold, consistency is more important. But the fluctuations, I think ah really we're we're even learning things now on new trellising systems, age of you know certain varieties.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: a lot was learned. I mean, unfortunately learned the hard way.
Brett: But in in general, what happens up happening is that those trees form flower, depend on the type of tree, but they form flowers somewhere in that March, April, May window.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: And then and they form buds first. And then the the flower, but those buds then are at different stages of opening.
Plant People: yeah
Brett: And the more open it is, the, you know, just like us emotionally, the more open it is, the more it's open to damage. um
Plant People: yeah
Brett: And so if you had the later into the year that a frost happens, the more damaging it can be to those. And there's all kinds of interesting things about the temperature that it takes to damage a bud at a certain you know stage.
Brett: But so and it went anyway, just for those who are, who are not familiar with, with that, what ends up happening is the cold comes and it damages or completely kills and knocks off these flower buds, which are the things that will eventually get with pollinated become apples or peaches or whatever in the spring.
Brett: And so, so they did lose some trees to cold, but also it's just so next, next year as you're enjoying and looking forward to spring and looking at your, you know, seed catalogs and everything else in March, April and and may keep an eye on, do we have a really cold snap and and think of our fruit producers, but, um,
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah, they they'll have fruit this year, but now they work together.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: Farms across the state work together. I mean, they'll have great fall activities. They'll have some availability. So definitely go out and visit those places. But just kind of keep in mind, it's been a really tough year for those, but they always make it work with their activities and availability one way or another.
Jessica : yeah
Plant People: They'll, you know, talk to other orchards in the state or or make some kind of arrangements to have, you know, something there on the farm for you to come and, you know, take part in. So, yeah.
Jessica : We saw it with um tomatoes, stuff going in the vegetable direction with these high temps that we had, right? With the heat advisories and all of that, like a lot of people were saying like, I have all these tomatoes and they're just sitting there.
Jessica : They're not turning colors and or like the, you know, the gaps you see.
Plant People: Yeah, prolonging, yeah.
Jessica : And I kind of like always explain to people, was like, you know how hot it is outside and you don't want to be outside? Like the, not that the plants don't want to be outside, but they're just kind of like, ah, it's too hot. I'm done, you know?
Jessica : Right,
Plant People: High tunnels, it's even magnified even more.
Jessica : right.
Plant People: My goodness. In high tunnels, it's even worse.
Jessica : right
Plant People: Yeah. But tomatoes are a great one, ah Jessica.
Jessica : so
Plant People: We got lots of calls on those. And we just, in general, we lump a lot of different things together, environmental and physiological, like leaf rolls and white flaking, like the tissues of tomatoes.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Like a lot goes on. If you've never grown tomatoes in a home garden or a commercial setting, There's a lot more calls when the weather fluctuates a lot. And a lot of it, we it's hard to predict because varieties are different.
Plant People: And heirloom's way different than a modern cultivar. But in every tomato, I mean, there's just so much difference between cultivars of tomatoes and varieties. um but Just the issues that they have with the flesh of a tomato or setting fruit on tomato, or if it does set fruit, it stays green for a long period of time.
Plant People: It's almost like a tomato is a benchmarking kind of crop. in that there's a, ah it's a very durable crop and it's a consistent crop, but environmental issues show up in tomatoes as much as they do any crop.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.
Brett: Well, another is that we that some of those things, you know, cold, abnormally cold winter, abnormally wet spring, those are kind of some, they are variations on the norm.
Brett: um But there was a, with with our strawberries, we had this new um new disease issue, this neopest issue.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: Did you all come across that? I, you know, I was curious if if folks...
Plant People: I think all commercial strawberry producers are dealing with that or if they didn't personally deal with it, they're dealing with the supply chain of where the plants come from.
Jessica : Yeah.
Jessica : Right. So my husband grows strawberries and that was an issue. We, at the last second, canceled our order last fall because we could not get plants that were guaranteed clean.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And the worry is, you know, with that disease, it gets in your soil and it remains, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : um So, i and and we look look back, looking back on it, we think we might've already had it. It's one of those things that there's probably way more people out there who already had, who had it um and didn't know they had it. But I can say from, from farmer's market experiences, personal experiences with other growers that we work with um who did go ahead and get plants and planted, their production was greatly reduced of what they were bringing to the market because the berry quality was just not there this, this spring. So I know that's a big thing that people are really hoping that they come out with ah resistant varieties or there's, you know,
Jessica : some resources for for those growers because ah you're right, Brett, that was a big thing that was impacted this spring at farmers markets that I know I'm involved with and around that they who people who normally had tons of strawberries, it was a much shorter window for strawberries this year.
Plant People: Yeah. They did not produce as long. Yep.
Jessica : Yep.
Brett: Yeah, well, it's this odd. So we we recently did a ah recorded webinar thing, just an update on price report on information from our price reports. And we covered a couple of crops and one of them was strawberries. And it's an odd quirk of strawber of ah farmers markets, I should say that.
Brett: Even in those situations, the prices don't necessarily change much. It's just the supply that's there. It's an odd quirk of that.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: Hmm.
Brett: so um But that was a question that we had was, this was a crazy year for strawberries. How how is it that you know the prices kind of sent were similar? Prices from 2025 were similar to 23, 24, and they weren't the highest of any of those years.
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: um And so there's not a real good reason for that other than...
Plant People: ah You know, wondered that, Brett. i i I was thinking about that because you would think that supply and demand, but I think by the time you realize there's a scarcity, the window's gone. So it's like this um this lag.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Brett: yeah
Jessica : huh
Plant People: By the time you realize that there's a scarcity, know, supply and demand would have normally kicked in with prices, you know, ah the situation, i mean, you're already past it.
Plant People: So I wonder, do you think there might have been some of that or something else? do you have any insight into that at all?
Brett: i would I would welcome Jessica's perspective on that because i I have my own thoughts too that I can share, but I'm curious what you think, Jessica.
Plant People: mean, we're Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : I mean, I think it was just like kind of just like as Ray said, it was it was such like a short window. i feel like this year of like people having it, that there wasn't any time
Brett: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : To like be like, oh, there's not going to be, and you know, ah there's not going to be any left.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : I can raise the prices really high. Right. Because I think a lot of them who I know who went into it, the few vendors who did have strawberries, you know, they were hoping that they would have good ones and they would have them last a lot longer.
Jessica : But it was just it was just significantly a shorter amount of time. And the same thing with, you know, blackberries a little bit this sheer Like going back to your other fruit stuff, like just being that winter injury.
Plant People: Yeah Yeah
Jessica : I noticed that as well, even though those aren't as like, I mean, they sell fast. People want them, but it's not like a strawberry.
Plant People: Yeah No strawberries are Yeah different animal Yeah
Brett: Sure.
Jessica : Right.
Brett: Yep.
Jessica : Um,
Brett: Time year to like the, the idea, like capturing that imagination of fresh product earlier in the year, people were ready for it by the time, you know, July rolls around, people were like, I still like produce, but not like I did back in and May and June.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Right. Right.
Brett: Yeah.
Jessica : But I really think it just happened so fast.
Brett: I,
Jessica : Like then the people were like, oh, it's already over.
Plant People: I just didn't expect.
Jessica : Like, why can't I get any more?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : You know?
Plant People: Normally the windows are pretty extended, but not this year.
Brett: I think
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: i think there's just this weird this weird dynamic with farmer's markets where you are you're setting your prices in a way that you you aren't getting as much, maybe as much feedback through like a supply chain, for instance, as you would be in other cases where it's like somebody's paying more or somebody's buying, you know ah selling for less or selling for more this time of year.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brett: So that way then the the price gets translated, whereas it's more
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Brett: I'm growing it, I'm putting it in this container and then I'm selling it to my customer. And so there's just less opportunity for reflection on the costs and the going price and all that kind of stuff.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brett: But there's also like I don't know, there's just this general tendency within farmers markets, for instance, like tomato prices throughout the course of the season stay more or less flat the whole year.
Brett: And so like somebody's charging, if somebody has a high tunnel and they're able to produce a tomato in June or maybe even crazy late May, Often they're not charging a significant premium compared to the price that they're charging in the middle of July, the middle of August, which is very bizarre.
Brett: I mean, you do see some of it tapering off, but if you compare that from farmer's markets, if you compare that data with ah with produce auction data, it the produce auction prices look very much like what you expect any market to look like.
Plant People: It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: It's a big U shape.
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: Prices are high in the beginning, high in the end, and they're they're low in the beginning.
Plant People: one
Jessica : yeah
Brett: And then the the supply, or sorry, they're low in the middle. And where that's where the supply is the highest. And so it's just this, there is this, I'm starting to call it the irrationality of farmer's market pricing, or maybe it is rational and it's just something I don't understand that.
Brett: And maybe it's worth worthwhile to people to, I'm going to sell you the straw, even though it was a harder year, i'm going to sell you these strawberries at the price that I want to sell you to sell them to you at, but please come back and buy tomatoes and sweet corn and other stuff later.
Jessica : Right.
Brett: um that That kind of relationship establishment, but that that's, just an interesting aspect of this year in particular that, that kind of jumped out from some of the interactions I've had.
Plant People: That is extremely interesting between farmers markets and other forms of marketing that it's not reflected because, you know, we told we talk a lot about, well, you have to price something properly or establish a baseline.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: You have to know you like your input costs. Well, if you have a high tunnel, you have all of these additional input costs that are spread out over.
Brett: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : right
Plant People: yeah I mean, really interesting. Yeah.
Brett: Yeah. And there's more risk, you know, like if you put out, if you put out a, to you know, your tomato plants on April 15th and a frost comes on April 19th versus waiting a little bit.
Plant People: Yes.
Plant People: Sometimes that's supplemental heat.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: That's more management when you have to manage the venting. If it's manual venting, it's just everything, all the inputs and risk.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: I mean, you have to be paid for risk too. That goes back to the strawberries.
Brett: yeah
Plant People: where you're like, why would you raise your prices?
Jessica : Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: you know I was talking to a couple of producers. I'm like, well, I mean, with neopest, these new to diseases, it's harder to get you know those guaranteed disease-free transplants in so And there's more risk yeah there's just more risk in the system.
Brett: Well, and you're you're paying the same amount to put out the thousand plants 200 plants or whatever.
Plant People: But yeah.
Jessica : oh yeah
Brett: And then you're getting a small fraction of the yield that you're then able to sell. I mean, that's that's the ah you know economic basics of the decision making.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Brett: So yeah, it's an interesting just an interesting one. And and it's ah one of those quirky aspects of these direct markets and small small markets. Yeah. Um, yeah, well, what any, what else? I mean, we're, we, we've kind of covered some of the spring stuff and here we are transitioning into late summer, almost into early fall.
Plant People: Kind of summer, late summer. I
Brett: Uh, what do you expect to be coming or what is coming in now?
Jessica : I've recently had a bunch of like lawn, lawn care stuff.
Plant People: was going to say lawn this year.
Jessica : And cause asked Ray for some help the other day with one that I had, but again, we Ray, has he messaged me back?
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : He's like, Oh, I've seen a lot of brown patch right in our area, but it's really dry here.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Right. So not so much of a i fun fungal, like kind of fueled stuff.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: It's a different, it's, it's amazing.
Jessica : Right. Yeah.
Plant People: I did not realize there was such a difference. ah Jessica, how would you, you're with more South Central Kentucky. I'm definitely like Central, North Central Kentucky.
Jessica : Mm-hmm. huh
Plant People: There's a huge difference in the mid-1990s. mid growing point of the season till now there, you guys are much drier and worst we remained, you know, ah we had much more rain than you guys did. So we're dealing with like brown patch, which we don't really concern ourselves a lot with the lawns, but you know, homeowners that have a higher level of management, we've been getting a lot of that where you guys,
Plant People: it dawned on me, I was like, wow, you guys are much drier. What you're seeing in lawns is just hot spots or dry areas of soil or different varieties of grasses that don't deal with the heat as much.
Jessica : Right. Yep. ye
Plant People: Your problems are completely different, but you know I don't get a lot of phone calls on on as far as lawn diseases go, but I've gotten more this year because you already mentioned it brown patch. But ah what are you seeing? you're You're not seeing that. You're seeing like hotspot type issues, aren't you?
Jessica : Yeah, just like, and like you said, I think like variety of grass that's already starting to like not take the heat as well and maybe like go like kind of dormant with it.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : ah That, and then as you mentioned crabgrass earlier, I've had several like crabgrass samples come in but wanting to kill it and it's already like giant, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And so they're like trying to put crabgrass killer on it.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : now. And it's like, oh, that's just a waste of like time, money and chemicals, you know, because that's not going to touch it. A mature plant that's going to seed.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : Right. So I've had several of those um come in. Several of those. And it's interesting, right. You might ah come across this as well, that are people bringing it in that like these landscape, not landscaping, but lawn care companies have told them you know, it's one thing and they keep wanting to treat their yard. And so then they eventually are bringing it up here, you know, to find out what it is or what we can do and help them and educate them about it and it give them, you know, provide those extension pubs that are like, Hey, actually this is the best time of year to treat for crabgrass.
Jessica : Don't let them keep charging you more money to treat their yard and put unnecessary chemicals out there ah and all that stuff.
Plant People: Yeah, yeah.
Jessica : So I've had a cup, quite a few of those um come in. And I'm just wondering if it also correlates with the current weather conditions, because people are like, I want my yard to be nice and green.
Plant People: Well, for you, definitely, because the only thing that's green out there is probably some clover and weeds, like ah especially crabgrass, which loves hot, you know, it doesn't mind hot, dry with the root systems and it being the type of ah weed species, what we consider a weed species.
Jessica : Right.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: And it's, I know there's nothing more frustrating to our homeowners seeing there, if they have a predominantly, you know, cool season grass lawn, fescue, you know, that stuff will be still be green, but not as green as like that crabgrass is growing.
Jessica : It's happy.
Plant People: And what I encourage homeowners, yeah, it's very happy, is just simply make sure you you may not need to mow your entire lawn, but just do not let that crabgrass go to seed.
Jessica : it's happy
Plant People: That'll add to the problem. Years, it's sort of a ah cyclical problem where, you know, it increases the weed seed bed in your lawn, and then next spring you're going to have more germinate. So then you have to, if you're a homeowner that's concerned with issues like that, you're going to have to do a pre-application of product and then a post-application for what you miss with the pre-application for crap. It's this whole cycle.
Plant People: So the one thing you don't do is keep mowing, even though your lawn may not need to be mowed overall, mow those ah weed species to try to keep those from going to seed. And Jessica already mentioned it.
Plant People: If it's hot and dry, which it is, it sounds like where you are, Jessica, the chemical products add stress to your lawn at best and at worst. ah They don't get translocated because the nature of those chemicals. They don't get pulled into the plant because the plant's going semi-dormant.
Plant People: You know, that includes some weed species. So the product doesn't work well. And weeds at this point in the season, they may have already produced seeds, so there's no need to spray them. there's There's a lot of issues we could talk about there.
Plant People: But ah your issues, Jessica, are different than my issues.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: This year, people were shocked, myself included. My back lawn is hot and dry, shallow soils, and I can normally get by in the summer mowing every 14 days. It's been amazing this year. I've had to mow every five days the entire year.
Plant People: It's absolutely blowing my mind. I can never remember while I've lived in this location having to mow my lawn in the back every five days rather than every 14 days.
Plant People: It's just one of those years where I'm located at in the state of Kentucky. so
Jessica : And isn't that amazing to be like, we're both in Kentucky. We're really not that far apart.
Plant People: An hour and a half apart, hour, hour and a half, yeah.
Jessica : Right. And just how different, you know, our homeowners and our farmers and the growing seasons are going.
Plant People: yeah yeah
Jessica : and um So, and then that also makes it unique for those markets to tie that in because a lot of these vendors are coming from multiple different counties.
Plant People: it does
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: a
Jessica : And what products they can offer versus, you know, maybe you always had a guy that you got cantaloupes from and then he doesn't have them this year. But so, you know, the one next to him does, he normally don't. And that's just because of their growing conditions or whatever that they have.
Plant People: Yeah, lots of disease pressures we've we've had. Of course, commercial producers are accustomed to dealing with that. But, ah you know, it's been tough.
Brett: Yeah. Well, it speaks to me to the the extension, our extension system and the idea of like an office in every county, especially with things like climates and in not even, these are bigger than microclimates, but you know county level climates or re little regional level climates that that's really interesting.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yep. huh
Brett: And it's also, it also is a ah testament, I think, or ah it speaks to the value of just this type of information being available at that local level, because it's, you're both saying so people are coming to me and because their grass is brown, their plants are brown.
Brett: And it's two very, very different reasons that are, it requires this analytical and, and familiar analytical lens and the familiarity with the situation.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : yep
Brett: Cause it's something that people don't necessarily understand is sometimes that too much water and too little water look like the same. They look kind of similar. There's differences, but they look kind of similar that plants not happy.
Plant People: Yeah. Brown.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : You can love a plant too much.
Brett: Yeah, exactly.
Jessica : I've had to tell several people that i'm like, you loved that house plant a little too much. It was wilting because it was drowning, not because it was it is dry.
Brett: Yeah.
Plant People: You're drowning. It's drowning in your love. yeah
Brett: Yeah. Well, and and ah if you're interested in lawn care stuff, go back and listen to our episode what we did with Jason Vaughn a couple episodes ago. We talked about his experiences with managing some very, very impressive turf at some cool um big, big name golf courses, but then also talked about how he manages his own lawn with kind of a low input ah approach and pretty reasonable and it looks pretty good. So um I would go and go and check that out. Well, any other, any other kind of things is, so this, you know, I think we'll be talking to folks in kind of early September um at this point.
Brett: I would just say, i would echo what Ray said earlier, just because people maybe struggled with fruit or struggle with some other stuff, this agratururist agritourism season that's coming up is so absolutely critical to a lot of our small farms.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Brett: And so if you haven't made plans to, and you think, oh, we'll make plans.
Jessica : um
Plant People: Yeah.
Brett: I can tell you the time between, if the time between ah May and August went quick, The time between September and Christmas is, yeah, it's so make me if you I would just, you know, encourage you or challenge you, whatever that might be, make a plan to to go out there and visit.
Plant People: A few critical weekends. My goodness. Yeah.
Brett: Maybe it's after work. Maybe it's ah on a weekend. Go out and check out one of these agritourism operations if you haven't um or even if you have and and invite a friend along because it's it's a fun way of spending some time outside.
Brett: A lot of these folks have put a lot of time and energy and money into making these cool spaces but for kids with slides and with hay bales and rides and all kinds of things like that. In addition to picking some picking some apples or or eating some cider donuts, I'm clearly going to have to i'm goingnna have to make a plan to get them for myself because apparently the support within my household has dwindled.
Plant People: I love it all.
Jessica : Me too. And you you won't regret those cider donuts.
Plant People: Not to rub it in. cider donuts, Brad. Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: I'm glad you brought it up, Brad. I didn't want to rub it in.
Jessica : Oh, they're so good.
Plant People: Look for a podcast on site at a local orchard while we eat cider donuts.
Brett: um Oh,
Jessica : Get you some cider donuts and a cold glass of apple cider or hot.
Plant People: Let's do it. Let's do it.
Jessica : I don't know what your preference is.
Brett: Or hot. Yeah.
Jessica : I like cold, but...
Brett: One of my, one of my earliest horticultural memories is growing up in Louisville, we would travel across the river to Huber's orchard and winery, and we would get ah Christmas, cut a Christmas tree.
Brett: And we would then retreat back to their, ah you know, you'd get thoroughly cold cutting the Christmas tree. And then you'd go retreat back to their store area where if you cut a Christmas tree, you got free hot apple cider.
Brett: And,
Jessica : nice
Brett: I I'm sure I'm sure it was delicious, but at that time it was like the most delicious thing that I've ever had. And so, um, yeah, I, I think just we're, we're almost there to the cooler time of year. And so just think about our our producers and and think about making that, making that a priority.
Plant People: On our way. On our way.
Brett: So I think I'm going to wrap us up here and just say a reminder, if you can follow us on Instagram at Hort culture podcast, you can also email us at Hort culture podcast at gmail.com.
Brett: If you have ideas for episodes or, you just like something we said, or you just want to say hello to one of us or all of us, um you can do that there. um If you have a chance to leave us a quick review and rating, we appreciate that. It helps us out a lot. helps us be seen by more people.
Brett: um But with that, I say, as we grow this podcast, we really hope that you'll grow with us and we'll talk to you next time.
