Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Our Garden Plans for 2024
112 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we're going to share our gardening plans for 2024. What are we going to grow, where are we going to grow it, and how are we going to make it thrive? Tune in and get inspired by our green dreams.
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Hort Culture Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
Winter Comfort Foods
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, it's another winter day here on the podcast, but we have exciting things we're talking about. But one thing I feel like I want to talk about that the cold reminds me of is comfort food. So what is, I need to know what is your comfort food when it's cold and you have time to make something. What is it?
00:00:38
Speaker
Soup, beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread. Ooh. Dang, that's good. Old-fashioned. In the 1800s, you had plenty of fun. Oh, yes. I've got some cornbread, some iron skillet to make some really good cornbread, I'm just saying.
00:00:51
Speaker
Brett, what's your comfort food? Well, I didn't know if, if, you know, we, we talk about Ray's eternal youthful looks. I didn't know with his vampiric background, if he was going to say the blood of a fresh victim or. Yeah, that's for an epitaph. I see. We call him Peter Pan, but vampire works. I assume Peter Pan was a vampire. Count Peter Pan. Ooh, yeah. That's a spin-off fantasy series. Peter Pan is a vampire. Hmm.
00:01:20
Speaker
But I would say I have, I have several.
Nostalgic Comfort Food Stories
00:01:22
Speaker
One, Annie makes butternut squash, mac and cheese. That's pretty much a winter staple. My dad makes a really good chili that I enjoy. And, um, our, our week, you know, normal in the week, uh, is some lentil soup with kind of veggies and spices and that kind of stuff remind me of my grandmother. She always made lentil soup.
00:01:41
Speaker
Mm, wow. Yeah, Josh. Lately, this winter, it's been like big. Speaking of lentils, I put together this like lentil-based curry, masoor dal, if you're into like South Asian food. It's pretty cool. It's like tomatoes and onions and red lentils. Yeah. Slow cooked. Yeah. With some naan, even though you can do it with rice, naan is awesome. And then the other one,
00:02:07
Speaker
is I found this way to kind of scramble eggs. It's like this Cantonese sort of recipe that's involves like toasted sesame oil and oil with so like fried egg and rice.
00:02:20
Speaker
Okay. All right. These are recent, those are recent. Those are very recent. Some real good. There's a lot of words that Josh use that I'm not sure about. Mine is a little bit more related to yours, Ray, but I made over the cold weekend. I made like,
00:02:41
Speaker
cheese grits with like an heirloom red corn and so like from scratch cheese grits and I'm telling you man just it just eating a lot of grits but I've developed an affinity for them later mom always had it was like
00:02:59
Speaker
We'd have instant oatmeal and instant grits and I mean she'd make like old-fashioned grits but that was just like something that was always in the house that you could have if you wanted some like hot breakfast. We had hominy instead of that. Yeah we had hominy. I did not enjoy that so much though. Yeah. If you have any grits left over I think I maybe talked about this before but it's one of my
00:03:20
Speaker
If you take them and like once they've re-congealed kind of into a semi-solid state, you take them and cut them into like cubes or strips and you can pan fry either side of it. Like polenta. First time I ever had that was at a restaurant here in Lexington where they had a shrimp and grits that was, you like cut them in cubes and the center of it oozes.
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah. Historically for making me think of biscuits and gravy because gravy, any, I know I've asked this question before, but I like to ask it throughout the winter because I think we change our taste, maybe change.
Seasonal Changes and Food
00:03:56
Speaker
So I don't know, but I made cheese grits and they were delicious. And Tyler ate the last tiny bit of them. And I was so upset. You said you have so much more and I'm like, yeah, but they're not made. And I'm so upset about it.
00:04:11
Speaker
a kind of interesting thing of like the season seasonal thing, not only of taste changing, but of food changing. We a couple years ago, we were getting more like local milk. And we made yogurt. And I noticed in the course of the we were making yogurt year round. And in the course of the the summer versus the winter, of course, this is obvious to anyone who has had good dairy.
00:04:34
Speaker
the composition of curd to whey to everything else changed because of the cow's diet across that period of time. And so it would be a little runnier during one time. I think during the summertime it would be a little runnier, a little more whey, a little more protein in the diet, and it would be a little less runny in the... And I confirmed that by looking it up on an extension website because... Nice. That's where you can find good scientific information.
00:05:02
Speaker
You say good dairy. That was my first memorable dairy experience. My grandmother, I kept bothering her. She was milking a cow. I was just fascinated with that. I thought that was so weird. Who was the first person who ever thought that was a good idea and then drink that? I kept bothering her and wanted to see the process. She's like, well, come down here. She just squirted the milk straight from the cow into my mouth. My first thought was,
00:05:25
Speaker
I said, so warm. But beyond that, I learned to churn butter and all that stuff. And you said good dairy. There is a difference. Fresh dairy and other. Yeah, and fresh milk. I do remember those. Those are good memories. But I do remember the milk being very warm. I was like, wow, that's super warm milk.
00:05:46
Speaker
I don't know if it's a sign of getting older or what, but I remember trying buttermilk when I was young and like being so grossed out. And now, I mean, I don't want you to pour myself a glass of buttermilk, but I do. Oh, man. Take a little swig when I'm making pancakes, you know. Just let it go one step further and I love cottage cheese, but I do not like buttermilk. But cottage cheese now, I'll just take a big spoon and eat that.
00:06:09
Speaker
Oh, I love that. With a summer tomato and fresh. Oh, tomatoes or peaches or whatever. No, see, I don't do sweet cottage cheese. That's weird to me. I don't love it. I love it. Pot apples or peaches, either one. I love it. Or just that's my salad dressing. I want tomato and I'm going to put cayenne pepper on it and some salt. And it's like spicy. I know. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about my dad lately and he does
00:06:35
Speaker
cottage cheese with pickled beets and black pepper and salsa. And I remember, I don't have a weak stomach, but I can remember actively gagging at the thought of that as a kid. But maybe I have to circle back and try again. No, that sounds like. I feel like taste changes, you know, like my appreciation for sour now exists, whereas it used to not, except in candy form. That's why a lot of kids like
00:07:02
Speaker
I actually don't like something. It's not something with some kids. It's because, you know, they don't, they don't want to try it. But for a lot of kids, they don't like something because they can taste compounds that your adult taste buds don't taste. So you have to like, you know, in extension, we do the hello bite. You have to try everything at least once. Right.
00:07:25
Speaker
Anyways, I'm sorry. I got us off on food and this is a plant podcast, which, you know, I mean, well, dairy is a type of plant together with your corn grits is the grill milk from the milkweed milk from don't drink that.
Heirloom Gardening Insights
00:07:42
Speaker
But as you, uh, as you have, it'll prevent you from getting eaten by predators though. They don't like latex either. Sorry. I cut you off.
00:07:53
Speaker
As you have seen from the title of this episode, we're just talking a little more personal of our own stuff and stuff that we're excited about for this upcoming growing season. I'm sure there's other professions and hobbies and things that you can start over with, but
00:08:14
Speaker
I think that's the most one of the most exciting things about like growing for me is that you can start over every year like it's fresh and it's a clean it can be a clean blank slate unless you put your cover crop down but even then it's very much I think
00:08:30
Speaker
a new chance to start over. And I think that's really just really exciting. No matter how many years you've been growing or involved in this is that every year is new. And I just, it's, it's so, it's so great. Even, even after all these years and all the sweat and stuff, it's, it keeps you going. It keeps you motivated. There's always something new to try or do, um, what keeps me kind of at it, or there's a new variety.
00:08:56
Speaker
One of the things I want to do this year is, you know, I've grown a garden for so long and had a commercial part of a commercial operation, you know, years ago. And I still grow varieties that I can purchase over the counter, but I'm like, wow, when there's such a good source of, you know, the typical tomato varieties at the local farmer's market or local grocery store.
00:09:14
Speaker
One of the things I want to do is maybe grow some heirlooms. And the reason that I've not been growing more heirlooms in my own personal garden is that I don't have the best airflow where I put the tomato plants. And so I worry about some of the heirlooms are more prone to diseases. They don't have quite the disease resistance of some of the newer varieties. But I want to grow some wackadoo stuff. I want to grow some of the old Cherokee purples. I want to grow some of the heirlooms that are older than that. I want to grow some that I can't readily purchase.
00:09:43
Speaker
It's one of the great things about a home garden, and I'm the only one that eats fresh tomatoes. I have a family full of, full of salsa lovers, but I'm the only one that will go out and eat a fresh tomato. So I, since I'm the only one consuming those things from the vine, um, without some kind of, you know,
00:10:02
Speaker
Additive, uh, salsa. Not even between two pieces of bread. Like, come on. Yeah. No, they will not eat like an apple. Uh, I would just, I'm just talking about just picking them off. I will make a tomato and mayo sandwich in the summer. I love that. But I love my tomatoes, but I want to grow some interesting, uh, heirlooms. That's one of the things that I hope to do this year. And we're very lucky here in my county that we have one of those libraries that do the heirloom seed giveaways. And I need to work with him a little bit more closely on that anyways, but
00:10:31
Speaker
Um, yeah, get into some of that and bring back some of the varieties that maybe my parents loved, uh, that you can get really easily. I want to do that and also do some beans, some greasy beans, some, uh, bring some of those seeds back because I'm losing our family is losing those seeds that we've had in our family forever. So I'm going to not only grow those to consume, but grow those to repopulate the seed bank that we have. So look at you, Ray repping the home place need to need to, but, uh,
00:11:01
Speaker
I was thinking, you know, why am I growing the typical? Well, they're easy and they're, they're thrifting, you know, they produce a lot, but I, for my own personal garden, I don't want the best producers. I want the ones that have the qualities that I remember as a kid through rose-colored glasses.
00:11:15
Speaker
I want those that may not be the best packers, that may not have the best qualities to ship for long distances, but they have these tremendous eating qualities. These heirloom varieties are known for that. I'll make it from the garden to your plate for sure. Yes, it'll make it, I'll make just take the bread and some ale down to the garden and a knife in my pocket. Make the sandwich on the vine. Yeah, and just leave it. I'm on photo. Let's push this freshness to the bleeding edge.
00:11:47
Speaker
You've heard of vine ripened, vine eaten. Ooh, man, that could be a thing, Josh. Yes. It's like, you want to taste freshness? You're tasting the roots practically. You're going to have to like really trellis that appropriately.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, maybe something where they're hanging down kind of like grapes, where you can just sort of get under them. Yeah. You can't put that on your irrigation because you're just, you're pulling on the water column, you know? Yeah. You can see your water and you start to stand and your rain barrel go down.
00:12:19
Speaker
when you start to. This guy's off potentiometers. Oh, man. The flow rate is going crazy. What is happening? But yeah, hey, why if you have a small home garden, that's one of the best things is just trying whatever makes you happy. Now, commercially, we would definitely not that wouldn't be our rubric for decision making was whatever made us happy. It's whatever makes a customer happy and we can produce a nice uniform product. But
00:12:44
Speaker
If it's just me at home this year, I'm going to grow some academic stuff. What do you say, Alexis? It's an education problem. You've got to educate the consumer about what will make them happy. I tell the consumer what they say. I'm happy that you're going to sell them. Trust me. This makes me happy, and this is what I'm doing, so it will make you happy too. If I'm happy, you're happy. Yes, me. I'm an expert. I'm happy your tires stay inflated.
00:13:07
Speaker
My entire like thing and extension is every time someone says them, I'm like, you can trust me. I'm a professional. Just any time about anything, not plant related at all. You can trust me. I'm a professional. Love it. What I lie to you. What I do that might tell a story. What about the ball boys? How are you guys feeling about 2024?
00:13:33
Speaker
What other projects?
Personal Gardening for Joy
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, so we have, as I've mentioned before, I at one point was working at the Horticulture Research Farm. And when I stopped working there and took my current job,
00:13:46
Speaker
I kind of, I don't know if I missed it or felt the need for continuity, but we kind of created this little mini, mini, mini scale vegetable micro farm in our backyard. So everything was basically the same as it would be in a field environment. So header line, regular, you know, Toro drip tape and all that fun stuff. And it was insane. And for a couple of years, it was, it was cool.
00:14:15
Speaker
And then Annie is my wife. Annie and I had a frank conversation about, we're not really enjoying this anymore. It's a job now. You walk out and you just see all the weeds and it's stressful and all those things. And so we made the decision a couple of years ago to transition away from doing as much of that stuff and more toward a fully landscaped backyard.
00:14:41
Speaker
So not converting them back to grass, but going to a fully landscaped backyard. We put in a patio last, uh, a couple of years ago and, and have spent way more time out there. And so my, my focus is on, I do bonsai trees, as you, as I've probably mentioned before. And, but a lot of like a woody perennials, herbaceous perennials, some annuals, uh, and then Annie grows and makes lots of different herbal teas. So we have, I don't know, 30 or 40 jars of dried stuff from this last year that are.
00:15:08
Speaker
will be dwindled by the time that comes around and so that's something else that we will be planting. I have a whole bunch of different seeds and stuff that I'm going to be starting either for bonsai or for just trees to give away to people or plants to give away to people as well as we'll be starting a bunch of herb seeds too but that's kind of our
00:15:27
Speaker
general MO is to lean into the little park instead of the little mini farm. Oh, I love that description in a little park. That seems so fitting. Yeah, like a space to be in and access it from rather than to work. Just because it's functional doesn't mean it can't be fun. That's right. The two are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes I approach gardening that way, but
00:15:55
Speaker
For me, just messing around out there is fun, but for my wife, um, she sees it more as functional. But what we did last year is we, uh, added a couple rows of flowers and she came down a lot more. She visited and got more involved in. I love that. And so we're going to continue that for the very reason you said, Brett, is that enjoyment at home. I mean, that's, if that needs to be one of the functions, it needs to be one of the functions. But I was like, oh, well, these flowers are taking up tomato space, but.
00:16:23
Speaker
that got her involved. And then Reed was down there a little bit more chasing butterflies and stuff. So it was a more of a good fit for the family for the very reasons you just mentioned. You kind of sometimes have to take a step back and see if what you're doing is accomplishing all that you wanted to do. So I think it honestly started because I was during COVID, you know, trapped at home a lot or here at home a lot more than I had been at other other times. And I would sit out on this very poorly poured, cracked
00:16:51
Speaker
old mini patio thing and we didn't have any shade cover in our backyard is kind of south southwest facing and so I would just sit out there and after you know noon or after 10 o'clock depending on the day I would just be like cooking and so I got some umbrellas and stuff like that and I started thinking like I would enjoy being out here a lot more if we had a shaded space to sit and some like pretty cool things that don't require me to go and pull weeds and trellis them every third day
00:17:21
Speaker
And turns out I was right. So going and sitting out there and now having a space to kind of have people over and all that kind of stuff. But it just, we also, you know, we do, we have a CSA share and we still buy stuff from the grocery store and from farmer's market and all those places. And so the food side of things, we decided to let, let some people whose passion is growing food do that. And we would support them and,
00:17:49
Speaker
serve that delicious food and eat it out in a space that we really liked. And that was, I don't know, there was a little bit of pride for me in letting go of the mythos of, you know, people think, you all come across this probably, people would ask us, you know, on our whole lot is like a quarter
City Gardening Challenges
00:18:06
Speaker
acre. And the area we had in cultivation was generously a 10th of an acre. And people would kind of ask, so do you guys produce all the food you eat on that area? And I was like, yes. It's all potatoes. Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker
every inch of it. Yeah, pretty starchy. But there was a certain mythology about like, oh, this is what you're supposed to do, you know, you're supposed to have the garden and the hipster homesteader, yuppie, whatever we are. And letting go of that, I found not only did I enjoy it more, but like, I don't feel pressure. I don't feel like I have to go out because I'm not selling this stuff. This isn't, you know,
00:18:44
Speaker
Alexis is doing stuff because she wants to build this business and do that. I know that there are times where you don't feel like going out and doing the thing, but you're doing it because it's part of a bigger ambition, a bigger dream, a bigger vision. For us, we just decided that vision was a little bit different and have been very, very happy with the results of that in our lives.
00:19:06
Speaker
I love that. I love that you made that a place for you all and, you know, just kind of rethought your goals and just, again, it's that blank slate every year. And it's a reminder that you can change your mind. Like, I think sometimes, you know, I know a lot of time we spend a lot of money and time getting an area ready. And so, you know, maybe it's not that.
00:19:28
Speaker
You just stop doing it all together, which that's fine too. But maybe instead of veggies, you grow a few more flowers or vice versa. And so I love that freedom of change. It's the only constant, right?
00:19:40
Speaker
And I do think, to Ray's point about, I do enjoy an occasional tomato fresh on a sandwich or whatever. I have been thinking about getting, I have some, but I'm getting some other kind of bigger pots and growing maybe like two or three tomato plants or maybe some jalapeno plant or something like that to go along with the herbs.
00:20:00
Speaker
Just as a like, we don't, my mindset was like, I'm only going to put out 25 tomato plants. What the heck? It's like, that was just insane. That was, that was what we were doing. We would can them and then we would, it was like a whole thing and we liked it.
00:20:16
Speaker
But eventually it was like, I don't want a can. Do you want a can? Let's fire up the kitchen. 90% humidity outside. Let's see if we can equalize that inside the house. Bring it in. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it was just, but it was an exercise in like letting go of some of that ego and embracing humility and being honest. And it was really, you know, pretty nice fabric of a food fabric there. It sounds like you have access to some high quality local stuff. So.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. That plays into that decision too, it sounds like. Yeah. And like a lot of people, we are a little more financially stable than we were when we moved in. When we moved in, it was just my income, which was not very much at the time. And now we're both working and that's important to us. So we spend our money there and spend our time doing other things. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Nice.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, kind of echoing off that. I mean, I definitely understand that transition, you know, coming from you were working on the South Farm and then get that place and it's like kind of having that mindset of like, let's maximize this productive space. And, you know, living in the city, it's very different than kind of being out in the country where it's like a pain to get out into the grocery store and maybe
00:21:30
Speaker
You know, you have a farmer's market, but you have all that space where it's like where we are. You know, you have the quarter of an acre plot, a tenth of it to kind of work with. That's kind of accepting that as sort of the direction I'm trying to go in. I have only owned this space for, I guess I'm entering my third year in February.
00:21:50
Speaker
And very little has gone on in the backyard. And oftentimes I find myself kind of paralyzed by, I want to do, say, one activity, and it'll make me think, well, in order to start that right, I need to do this first. And like it'll kind of be this, like I keep moving backwards.
00:22:09
Speaker
from when I started thinking about it. But my priority is to get a space set up that you know reflects that I am in the city and I have access to like fresh produce relatively easily. I don't have a lot of space to work with and bang for my buck because I'm obsessed with like functionality and
00:22:28
Speaker
what I can get is I've been obsessed with my memories of working my first farm job. My first task on the first farm job was taking care of a very well developed and surrounded by kind of hardscaping and masonry, but this really
00:22:49
Speaker
awesome kind of culinary and tea herb garden that was just set up with really nice like it was a raised bed but very highly raised to the extent that it was like you could sit on a shelf and work with the plants really easily somewhere that's just very comfortable to maintain right and so I can get those like fresh herbs into the garden so it's definitely in the scale of like a kitchen garden but primarily focused on like
00:23:18
Speaker
fresh herbs and stuff that I could pull in.
Designing Functional Gardens
00:23:20
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time and effort in 2023 kind of working on my kitchen. And now it's like I feel like I need to have a kitchen garden that goes with it that'll kind of like feed into it. You could not have executed your kitchen vision
00:23:37
Speaker
in that space any better than you have. It is like for what you want, for how you use it, it is incredible. Incredible. It's been like a revelation. Like, I mean, it's made me so excited about trying new things and making new things because it's just like, God, I can reset the whole kitchen and clean everything so fast that I can get wild. Like the investment of time and energy to think through things is like,
00:24:05
Speaker
gone. Make it happen. And so now you pull your herbs and you've got to flow into a straight line. Like it's kind of fun to think about. And so I'm trying to like bring like the execution of doing that kitchen remodel. It's such a highly functional space already. And it's like you want to have the minimal downtime. So it was a real headache.
00:24:29
Speaker
kind of thinking about the order of operations. And I find myself in the same sort of analytical paralysis about the outside space, but seeing and being happy with what's happened with the kitchen has kind of made me rededicated to like, you know what? I can do this. I just need to like...
00:24:50
Speaker
playing it out and it'll happen. And you're thinking too about doing some what we in the biz would call hardscaping. Big time. Yeah, big time. I want it to be very like... What is hardscaping before we... It's landscaping with stuff that's hard. So like everything about the plants. Right, right. It's like pavers, it's stonework, it's stuff like that. It's places that
00:25:15
Speaker
You know, it's set up for kind of supporting traffic and God, I bet you there's a really awesome, concise definition. But let's just say like rocks and papers is what comes to mind, sand and stone. Like I've been thinking, definitely that first kitchen garden.
00:25:31
Speaker
a herb garden that I worked on was heavily hardscaped, you know, so it's not a place I need to weed, you can go out there and just kind of sweep it off. And my own trips to like the Cincinnati Botanical Garden, and how they do stuff at the zoo with like hardscaping and landscaping where it's like, I mean, they have a lot more capital and labor to work with, but I think
00:25:56
Speaker
how quickly they could create an instant landscape feature. It's just like- It looks like it's been there forever. Yeah. I'm trying to accept my limitations, but seeing that and seeing what's possible in small spaces is really inspiring into what you can do with a backyard to create something that I want to hang out in, but can also
00:26:24
Speaker
pull things about your whole conversation with the kitchen garden reminds me I've been I don't know why I'm so obsessed here lately with them, you know, and these are current videos from around the world and maybe some areas of the world that are not as industrialized or as developed. But there's a tradition where they will have a kitchen garden
00:26:42
Speaker
But literally the oven in the kitchen area is outside of the home beside where the garden is close by. I guess number one is they don't need all that excess heat in hot summers inside the home, but there's these beautiful big ovens and these patio areas that are gorgeous and functional and a very old style that I'm sure has been around for hundreds of years. And I love those videos and they'll take like, you know, quarters of carcasses of meat, and then they'll take fresh herbs from the garden.
00:27:10
Speaker
They'll marry all that together, break it down and put it in these ovens or make these meals or make all the bread, all the beautiful breads. But you have been watching a lot of those and your conversation reminds me of that, is that the kitchen area was designed with the indoor and outdoor space in mind with the kitchen garden. It's incredible. That's something I, you know, is more longer term, but bread has a space that's kind of like outdoor kitchen-y with that patio.
00:27:39
Speaker
it makes so much sense, especially in summertime. I mean, like those spaces, there's so much heat given off. Grilling or smoking really long kind of like
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah. And I will say about that very specifically. So I'm not, you know, I don't, I don't represent any brands yet, but if anybody wants to sponsor me, influencer status, if you're, if you've heard of the, if you've heard of pellet grills before, as soon as the thing that feels little wood pellets in, well, to me, they're doing themselves a tremendous disservice by marketing it just as a grill.
00:28:16
Speaker
because it allows you it allows us to I on my pellet grill I I bake bread I bake cookies I bake like a pyrex dish macaroni and cheese in the middle of the summertime sometimes you want that you don't want the heat and it's basically it is like a electronically controlled oven that's outdoors for that kind of hybrid effect you can still grill on it and all that kind of good stuff but
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah, another thing you were saying, another thing I just echo what you said earlier about the hardscaping. That was something I don't think that I fully appreciated until maybe the last couple of years. I started doing some research on Japanese gardens in particular, but also other styles of gardens. And the hardscaping is actually in a kind of more, the traditional kind of more minimalist, the plants are important, but so are the stones, so are the areas of a hardscape like gravel or whatever.
00:29:08
Speaker
You don't have to water rocks. You don't have to fertilize rocks. The area that they cover, pretty much weeds won't grow directly under them. And I've integrated some hardscaping. And so if that's something, if you're kind of stuck and you're trying to, you want to do some landscaping around your house or you want to do something different around your house and you're stuck and you just keep throwing out plants like we were for a long time, putting in some of that hardscape kind of stuff, which is a huge part of the landscape industry.
00:29:34
Speaker
makes a huge difference because like it kind of gives like the frame for the picture and if you're really into the plants or it can be the picture itself and the and the other things are uh yeah i i yeah i'm really really excited to see that some of the stuff that develops with which how you execute that stuff and i'm sure i'll be over uh
00:29:51
Speaker
sweating right alongside you. We live about a mile apart or less from each other. I think it's like half a mile. So yeah, pavers when we're laying those. You guys will be making pizzas all summer long in these big pizzas. I'm busy making my pay per day, but I'd be happy to come over and watch them dump a scoop or something. And eat the pizza.
00:30:08
Speaker
it is hard to kind of overstate the function of pavers and hardscaping in a landscape because you know it's like when I think of those times like now even or times when it's muddy right you have this dedicated area that you can maneuver about your garden and
Simplifying Garden Maintenance
00:30:25
Speaker
do things without disturbing or messing up the soil or messing up the plants that you can you know wheel a wheelbarrow on all that kind of stuff or just you know
00:30:35
Speaker
maneuver about without getting your shoes totally muddy and unable to bring them in the house. You can run out there real quick, do a quick thing, and run back into the house. Yeah, and one of the things we use to do to solve that in a lot of American landscapes, and you know, you all know, I throw no shade to anybody on anything, is grass. Like grass, grass doesn't get muddy the way that mud gets muddy. If you're interested in doing some lawn replacement, that's kind of been a hot thing over the last number of years.
00:31:02
Speaker
I do think hardscaping and some of that planning can be your friend because if you are like me and you're ambitious about your ability to weed everything, don't be. Don't make my mistakes. It is not my garden, but I'm definitely interested in putting more clover. You mentioned lawn areas. I'm just going to, in late February, early March, I am just going to throw some clover seed in because it is possible. Clover seed's tiny.
00:31:27
Speaker
You can do that with clover, whereas you can't do it so effectively with grass seed. But I just want to get some more clover in my going down leading into my back lawn area. I'm not going to break any neighborhood rules or regulations because nobody can see it. So they can. Yeah. But in my back, I just want a bunch of clover in there. Yeah, it's it's nice. That same first farm that I worked on, we had a lot of pathways that were grassy and they were heavily seeded with like that perennial white clover. And oh, yeah, that's exactly what I'm going for.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, it was pleasant. I mean, even if you run out there, you know, right time of the year, you can run out there barefoot. And that's awesome. Yeah, these will will love you, too, especially if you step on one. Yeah. But usually when we have the cousins over, I have some that I actually let it grow this year.
00:32:13
Speaker
and put nothing on and encourage the clover to grow. And we got, we had pretty good success. I didn't specifically seed a lot, but when the cousins, Reed's cousin and my son's cousins would come over, we did mow right before then. And that would take, you know, the bees motivation away to be there. So that's how we deal with that. But had no issues with that. I mean, we don't have a ton of traffic. I mean, it's clovers not appropriate for a high traffic. You know, it doesn't have a lot of tolerance for that in some cases, but it works perfect in our backyard, small backyard. And it's, it's, uh,
00:32:43
Speaker
very low maintenance. So I'm just going to encourage it all I can. So that's one of my garden. It's not exactly like a vegetable garden thing, but it's in my home backyard area. It's one of the things I'd like to do is get more clover going.
00:32:56
Speaker
No, I have a favorite white clover like a Ladino or like a new soccer. I've heard of and seen pictures of these like micro clovers, but I've never seen anybody use them. I looked at a gray area. I looked into micro clover and they can be really great, but in Kentucky, they don't if I remember correctly, they don't deal with humidity. They get a lot of disease pressure and where we're so humid.
00:33:25
Speaker
And then there was something with, I don't know if it's either drought or, I forget which way it swung, but it was like, it either didn't like a ton of water all one time or didn't handle drought very well. So like you kind of had to be particular about where you put it. Common white is our best bet. It has a wide tolerance and it, when everything else was brown in Kentucky in the summer, that's one of the things that's going to be green and loving it is just common white, common white clover.
00:33:56
Speaker
But the microclovers are different, yeah. What about you, Alexis? You probably have the biggest plans and maybe the hardest to summarize. Making big moves.
Optimizing Planting Schedules
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking about that, of just kind of what I was changing. And I think, so this year I'm taking, I'm not doing anything in July.
00:34:16
Speaker
So I'm pushing all of my spring, like what I would normally plant like for summer, like things that you would plant around here. We, you know, plant after, um, the Derby is when we say like our last frost date is. So those types of things, when you would plant your tomatoes, all that jazz, I'm waiting and putting those in probably a month later, uh, to push them into more of an August timeline. And that goes from a marketing standpoint. So I don't sell as many flowers in July.
00:34:45
Speaker
in any market that I have wholesale, retail, people aren't here, you know, it's hot. So I'm pushing all of that at least a month so that I can have those flowers when I need them.
00:34:59
Speaker
and just not, I'm going to try and use July to catch back up on all the things that I let down in spring and just maybe have a little bit of time for myself when it's hot and I don't necessarily want to be outside and I want to be in my backyard that's shaded and maybe putting in my own little garden bed. I did that this year.
00:35:22
Speaker
my own like flower bed that was just, it was just for enjoyment and not for, you know, production. I mean, not to say I would have had a bit so weird, but it is, it is so much production. Yeah. It's enjoyment. Yes.
00:35:42
Speaker
I put flowers that I could cut on but they would be the kind that I might bring in the house. Yeah, I might use them in a bridal bouquet but it's more for me so that's really exciting. That's awesome. I'm really glad you did that. I didn't realize you'd done that.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's right outside and it's right outside where my favorite chair is. Like we have a little side porch that's shaded in the summer. And so my goal is to, our backyard, so we have a spring house in our backyard as well as a cistern and we also have a old retailer. And our backyard is sloped and very, cause it slopes like kind of down into the spring house area. It's very rocky. We, it's almost completely shaded.
00:36:20
Speaker
So it's it's like really hard to mow but it's also like because it's sloped it's hard like to put you know it'll take a lot to put in hardscaping so I'm just trying to terrace it almost or something yeah something it just there would be more inputs than me just you know doing like a couple weekends worth of a project you know like like
00:36:41
Speaker
Retaining walls and you. I'd like to maybe take the year to kind of hash out a general plan for that kind of place to be enjoying. So that's like kind of more on a personal level. And then from a kind of commercial standpoint, yeah, it's the giving up my July.
00:37:05
Speaker
And by giving it up, I mean reclaiming it is more of a reclaiming my July. Giving it for one part of yourself to the other. Yeah. And then I also want to get more involved, want my business to get more involved with my local group of people, like locals. I think that that's where my market will eventually shift over time, you know, over the next 10 years or so, doing more local sales, looking at CSAs, looking at
00:37:33
Speaker
We don't do farmer's market, but that kind of thing, people doing the farm stand. So I want to be more involved with my local chamber and just showing up or sponsoring events. If you're doing a charity fundraiser, maybe I'll provide an arrangement or something for you to give away. So that's kind of where my brain is for, and we took on a lot less
00:37:58
Speaker
But for the farming standpoint and garden standpoint, and I think that's where my brain is at. Now, of course, I'm also an extension agent, and so there, I'm lucky that I get to
00:38:13
Speaker
I get paid to talk about plants and that's fun because that's like something I love to do. Right. And luckily I have a community that has told me, has voiced a lot of things that they want to see and they're things that are just like super cool anyways. So it's going to be like fun to, you know, get involved with that and.
00:38:39
Speaker
So that'll be cool. I feel like this is technically a work podcast, but I talk a lot about myself more personally. We're more interested in Alexis the person. We're more interested in the flowers in your backyard. Well, I like to think that growers, whether you're a large scale grower or a home gardener, takes what
00:39:02
Speaker
what I'm maybe talk about personally and not as extension agent Alexis and you can use that and you're like, oh, well, here's someone who is an agent but also is using this so it can't be all bad. So hopefully that's the vibe. That's awesome. Yeah. So maybe we'll look at doing a, um, a 5k
00:39:23
Speaker
to raise money for me and Josh to get some hair plugs in 2025. And we can count on a wild roots contribution for that. Yeah, yeah. We'll spot our wild roots past the shirts. You can do like the hair roots, collabo. You can give me the really cheap ones that look about as natural as like a row of corn and bathtub. A quick glued patch of brown moss on your hand. Bald boys no more, 5k. Former bald boys. So you are, I assume you've already started
00:39:54
Speaker
seed starting no i don't start seed starting till february 1 and that's like another thing where i claim my january and and part of that is just like i buy plugs of the stuff i would have to be starting right now it's just financially makes sense but also it was like it made sense for my own brain because
00:40:13
Speaker
I don't ever really shut down until Christmas. Like my brain does not. I still have things to go. I'm still finishing up the year. Still dividing dahlias and digging and all that. So like Christmas is like I start to shut down. So I need all of January and then February seed starting is so exciting and I really do enjoy it, but I need
00:40:32
Speaker
Like the fact that January, everyone is like, January is a hundred days long. I'm like, I wish it were 200. I need two days long. You have perennials and biennials and other things that you're kind of fostering through the winter as well. It's not like it's, or just letting them rock and roll on the ground. It's not like it's a hundred percent angles. Yeah. You got the high tunnel rolling. Is the eucalyptus still hanging in there?
00:40:58
Speaker
I, we just cut it because I needed to be able to cover it for the cold negative temps we were getting. But, so I just finally cut it down. I mean, it would have gone probably until today in the zero degrees, but yeah, I had a, I had to cut it. It was, I posted a picture. It was taller than me and I was like, my baby. And you will just to give people a kind of a timeline or a sense of what
00:41:23
Speaker
I assume once things kick off, you'll be kind of planting stuff every week for a while, or is it more like- From like a seeding perspective. So once you have your stuff in the, sorry, once you have your starts of stuff, when do you start putting things in the ground or in the high tunnel?
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of have, so my high tunnel stuff has all been in. My high tunnel's pretty much full. The only thing I left I have to put in are my sweet peas, but the tunnel is full and will be full until the next planting of stuff will probably be in April or May. And when was that, when was stuff planted into there? October, November. Cool. And well, and December and I have another round of stuff that I was going to put in there, but I decided to put my sweet peas in that spot and I'm going to try a,
00:42:08
Speaker
experimenting with some crate stuff, but, uh, for my January stuff, but so yeah, I kind of like focus around major seating, like major times. So I'll have my first, uh, I've got stuff outside under like. Remay row cover. Um, that went in in October, September, October, and then.
00:42:32
Speaker
I'll plant outside around the first week of April. So that's kind of usually my goal is somewhere between the first week and the 15th, whenever the seeds are- And that's some of the more cold hardy-ish stuff. Right. And then usually the next big planting would be that kind of first-ish week of May, right there around Derby Day. But like I said, I'm pushing that. So I'm going to have plants ready for where I have some grow kits that people buy. So they'll be able to buy those and take them home.
00:43:01
Speaker
right on time for May, but I'm going to push that and either plant late May or first of June. So to give myself a little bit of a break, which will be, it'll be really nice in the spring and then hopefully it'll be really nice in the fall when I have higher quality product later in the season and not have to do multiple successions. So.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah. We'll see. That's the theory, but plants don't read the books. Sounds good on paper. Yeah. And that just as a throwback to our starting transplants episode that you start with when you want to put it in the ground and then you say, okay, I want a six-week-old transplant or an eight-week-old transplant, whatever the age is, and you work back and that's your seed starting date because there's a lot of people who get real excited. January, February, they throw some seeds in a tray and they're like,
00:43:50
Speaker
I have a 12-foot tomato plant in a 50-cell tray. What am I supposed to do? Just that kind of- Start over. General theory. Yeah, exactly. Start over eight weeks out from when you're one. Yeah, that's cool. I got a call today from a flower grower this morning.
00:44:07
Speaker
And she's like, should I have been, should I have started stuff already? And I was like, no, like if, if this is your goal, let me put it this way. If this is your goal, then no, you're not behind. February 1st is when, you know, I do stuff. And that was, I think reassuring for her that because it's so easy to get caught up. Like if you're on social media, if you're on Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
00:44:29
Speaker
Everybody's doing stuff, but like you need to remember, are they in your zone? Are they planning on doing, maybe they are in your zone, but they're planning on doing the extra labor of covering things or they're going to bump stuff up or they're going to do something different than you. Don't get caught up in what they're doing and feel the pressure. Go buy your schedule.
00:44:48
Speaker
You know, look at what you're doing. Trust that you've done the math, right? Maybe do the math again, but then trust it. The math has been done. Look, read the books or call, you know, call me if it's flower related, I can usually spout that off, but don't get caught up because it's better to have.
The Patience of Plant Growth
00:45:06
Speaker
It's better to transplant a week or two late than have a transplant that's root bound because it will out, that late transplant will out-compete the root bound one. But Alexis, what if bragging rights are on the line with your neighbor with the first tomato? I will go buy a cherry tomato in a pot that already has tomatoes on it, stick it in my garden and pick the tomato and be like, first. What if the joy of hodlaculture comes from winning the competition? Yes.
00:45:33
Speaker
Joy comes from being number one if you already has customers lining up for his eat on the vine tomatoes sandwiches he holds the bread with the I do let's them take a bite out of it. Amazing it's going to be taking freshness to a whole new fresh level.
00:45:53
Speaker
This is called super freshness, so it's going to be a thing. One of those tensions too with the the earliest thing even even with the high tunnel even with all the technologies and stuff.
00:46:04
Speaker
It's kind of interesting that there's only so far that you can rush a plant. And, and, and what I mean by that is it could very well be that you put that plant in the ground, you know, on the date that you want to put it on. And then it just sits there essentially frozen in time and you could have put it out a week later and there's no appreciable trade-off there too of like how, how, and how much labor are you willing to put in to protect this thing? And it's much easier to protect it inside your little seed starting area than it is to put it out in the
00:46:33
Speaker
wherever you're gonna put it. And that was something we always, it was always, I remember Kathy Raymeyer out in Eastern Kentucky, back when she was doing some high tunnel stuff.
00:46:45
Speaker
And she would talk about these, like, I think she referred to them as the Janus days. I can't remember if that, that it's like this period of time where like everything slows down so much. And so with, with high tunnels, you maybe could either have enough growth going into that slowdown that you can harvest. We would do that with kale, for instance, we'd have these big bushy kale that needed to be harvested if it was a normal window, but they were so slowed down that we could just have that log to harvest. But the point mainly being.
00:47:13
Speaker
You can only push things so, so fast and we live in a fast pushing culture. And so don't, don't get in too big of a rush. And if you get them in, if you get your tomatoes in, in June, early June, you're still going to be eating some tomatoes this year. And, uh, you might miss some, you know, blight windows that come in, you know, in May, like totally. I always think there's kind of a reason for being late. Like what I have learned, even as someone who like commercially has to have things available, right. And have all these.
00:47:42
Speaker
people that I'm selling to, I feel like there's always a reason and I'm always glad. My first disappointment, I'm like, man, these dahlias, these dahlias should have been in a month ago because that's been me more than one year. But then when I see that my dahlias look a lot better in September than someone who got them in way earlier, I'm hitting my better market window than when they had beautiful dahlias in July.
00:48:10
Speaker
And that's just as an example. So, you know, it's okay to, I know I'm going to feel envious when I see beautiful zinnias in July and mine still have it bloomed. What is it that you were wondering why Brett and Annie produce, what was it that they get maybe blooms before you do? Oh, our peonies. Oh yeah, they get peonies. Brett came up with that real quick, I noticed.
00:48:32
Speaker
It's not a competition. January 17th, I've got a whole bouquet of them cut in here in the red, just about ready to open. We get so we have the crew climate. We have both the microclimate in the heat sink of Lexington and everything else creates this two week window of bragging rights. Literally the only time in my life that I will have flower bragging rights over Alexis and it's in no way my
00:49:00
Speaker
anything I did. It correlates very nicely with the number of social posts that you're going to make. That's right. They will be on all the platforms. Lots of things. Feeling bad for everybody who doesn't have peonies yet, but we're mad. I feel like every time Annie puts that, I'm just like, she's just rubbing it in. She's just posting a beautiful photo and how happy she is and how much light, you know, how much it's giving her energy and, you know, it's not about anybody else. And I'm just like, she's just, she's just rubbing it in. I'm going to tag you next. I'm going to tag you this year. That's what I have.
Unique Plant Choices
00:49:30
Speaker
Well, one thing one thing one very specific thing I wanted that I'm growing this year maybe and maybe everybody can say what you know one thing that they're gonna be trying that they're most excited about or something to close us out here, but So I came across There is a and I've talked about I think before in the podcast, but I'm actually growing it I've got it stratified and scarified and stratified waiting to go in the seed starting trays is
00:49:56
Speaker
Ilex vomitoria, also known as yopen holly. The vomitoria is- It feels like you should eat it or drink a tea just based on the name. Vomitoria. Actually, Josh, thank you for bringing that up because the reason for that name is actually European ethnocentrism in the process of naming the plant. All right. Decolonize it for us. I'm about to, as a white guy, let me decolonize this.
00:50:27
Speaker
So I'll preface it by saying it is the only one that I can find as far as citations or evidence for, though I've been informed by Ross Clark, the professor emeritus of horticulture from Eastern Kentucky University, who's a recent acquaintance, that it's probably not the only plant that is this way, but it's the only one that we really know well.
00:50:52
Speaker
is the only North American native species that contains caffeine. Oh, yeah. I just looked it up and saw that. Wow. And so what happened was there were some some dudes who knew Latin who observed groups of indigenous people drinking this tea and also doing a bunch of other crazy stuff. And then they would throw up. Let's make more of it. You know, it was kind of like it probably was the upper to kind of counteract some of the other things that were going in some, you know,
00:51:20
Speaker
uh, ceremonies and other things. And it was just part of the process, but it does not in fact, make you Vomitoria. It's, it just has, and so I'm going to, it's hardy. It's supposed to be hardy to hear. And it grows, I think, Texas and, and other places like that, but it is.
00:51:38
Speaker
Huge range. It's like. Yeah. And there's that you can buy. Virginia to Oklahoma, Texas, all the way down to Florida. You can buy it commercially. The people that there's this Yopin Brothers, Holly tea that are Yopin, Yopin Brothers tea or whatever they sell. I've tried it tastes kind of like regular tea. But the I'm Andy grows all the herbal teas and that's great. And it's, you know, very calming and soothing. But, you know, I need to just get a little little jolt in the system. Looking for that octane hit.
00:52:07
Speaker
So I'm going to try to grow that. It's a perennial. I'm going to try to get one established there. And we have a couple other to make maybe like an herbal tea blend with a little bit of caffeine is an exciting potential product of the Wumple House backyard. You will have added something very unique if you're successful to the jars of dried goodness that you guys already have collected. Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah, pretty cool.
00:52:37
Speaker
Any, any reviews on the taste on that? I'm just curious, Brett. Like it tasted kind of just like a standard. It tasted a lot like a TT.
00:52:46
Speaker
regular tea, yeah, regular tea, camellia sentences. And in case any, I've gotten into, Josh got me kicked off on tea. And so naturally I couldn't just enjoy it on a low level. Yeah, you had to go deep in the middle. There's like a Wikipedia entry on black drink, which is like about this, that has got some cool pictures. And I'm just picturing your face on some of these.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, but it's like green tea, black tea, all that kind of stuff. It's actually the same generally the same species, different varietals that are just treated in different ways. So green tea and black tea are not different species. They are just different treatments of the same species, which I did not know until recently. I'm not about that. But yeah, it's going to be interesting. And it just tasted kind of like somewhere between a black tea and a green tea. Pretty subtle. Hmm. Yeah. Awesome. All the plans.
00:53:42
Speaker
Dad always said that gardeners and farmers were eternal optimists, always banking on the future. Well, other than your Cherokee purples or anything, Cherokee purples and other wackadoo varieties, I think you said, of tomatoes. Any other particular things you're looking forward to trying this year, Ray? No, the only other thing I'm wanting to do, it's more hard scapy, but it's better water delivery to my little revamped garden area. I've redone my garden area.
00:54:10
Speaker
I mentioned on an earlier podcast when we were talking about rain barrels is I want to do a better job collecting that and I have a nice elevation drop which gives me pressure, passive pressure down to that garden area and I want to redo all of that and make it more efficient and maybe be able to collect a little bit more water at one time because I don't have enough now. A small barrel is not going to water this bigger garden.
00:54:35
Speaker
So that's the only other thing that's a big project that's not a plant, but it's a delivery, you know, getting the water to the, the garden, try to do a little bit better, but yeah, hope to do a better job with that and capture a resource. That's normally just kind of going literally down the gutter. Yeah. Nice. Always with the plans. Josh.
00:54:58
Speaker
What? I already talked about my hard skating. He said, what? I'm already doing something. Is there a plan? I'm going to pave the world, man. Do you know what phase one might be?
00:55:08
Speaker
I mean, I feel like it's gonna be mostly hardscaping if I were to start with some plants that I'd wanna get going would probably be common culinary herbs, rosemary. I really like onion chives a lot. I don't get enough play in my food. Oregano, basil probably, yeah.
00:55:35
Speaker
I mean, your common cast of characters. I'm really advocating for you, Josh, a outdoor pizza oven because I am looking for that pizza. I mean, that would be cool. And like, man, you can make like a lot of like like the non thing that I started messing around with it. It made me get back into like playing around with dough if I can. Oh, yeah. Is that artisan bread and five minutes a day is like.
00:56:00
Speaker
That's my thing is understanding how to get something really quick. How can we have this? Yeah. And something I like about that process is like there's basically like a master dough recipe that you can then use to make all kinds of stuff. And that would be a
00:56:18
Speaker
Welcome, like a welcome component to that would be like an outdoor kind of oven situation. I got a friend who put one of those together on his own farm and, you know, they do like pizzas and stuff. Oh, man. Awesome. That would be probably like not next level. Yeah. Next level. Yeah. Alexis, you got anything beside your reclaimed July?
00:56:41
Speaker
Marie, um, if we're thinking new things I'm trying, which were, had already been put in motion several months ago, but I am shooting for Valentine's day tulips this year. So I'm just experimenting with about 200 bulbs. Well, and the other thing I'm experimenting with, I'm doing all of my tulips in crates. And while I've done that before, I still did them in crates outside. Like I planted them.
00:57:06
Speaker
the crates I've just kind of mulched up next to them. But we've not been getting the cold that we need. So all of my tulips, which I only do about, what did I do this year? About 1200 tulips, which isn't... That's it? Yeah. Well, yeah. I think I did like 21 year and I was like, this is awesome. For the conversion, that's 2400 lips. Two lips. Tom's about two.
00:57:34
Speaker
But anyway, well, I mean, you can fit like 60 to 75 bulbs and one like crate. And these are, you know, like not milk crates. They're, you know, kind of two milk crates a size, but as far as width goes, but anyway, so I'm doing them all and they're all in my cooler right now. And I check on them, you know, making slightly panicked and whether or not they're going to grow and do anything. But I did pull all my tulips out for Valentine's day. They're officially in the greenhouse and we will see what happens.
00:58:04
Speaker
There are a hundred things that could go wrong, but it was relatively low, like, you know, low cost for me. So it's worth a shot. If I can have some to fresh tulips on Valentine's day. So I'm excited. Oh man. That's awesome. That's really exciting. I'll let you all know. I'll keep you posted. We'll know soon enough when it's so cold in January, January, beginning of February winter time, it's fun to dream.
00:58:32
Speaker
about all the things that we want to do and all the improvements we want to make and maximize on our enjoyment of everything. Sometimes I'm a victim of mom planning. August is the one that's actually 100 days long. Yes, that is the one when you regret your life choices. Awesome. Well, we hope that you guys, our listeners, our true leads out there.
00:58:55
Speaker
Maybe fellowship have come up with some awesome things that you all are doing or, you know, maybe you're inspired to make some changes or you're inspired to not do the things that we're doing because maybe it sounds crazy to you.
Gardening Inspiration and Encouragement
00:59:10
Speaker
Whatever. Listen in the flower world, that's chump change. If you're not doing 60,000 tulips, you don't do commercial tulips.
00:59:21
Speaker
You're just dabbling around like a baby. Pretty much. But anyways, we hope that you all maybe find something and are excited for the new year. Again, as always, feel free to send us an email that is in the show notes. If you've got any ideas, you can also send us a direct message on Instagram at Hort Culture podcasts. We would love to hear from you. We've got some people who have reached out to us with some cool ideas.
00:59:48
Speaker
We're gonna work them into the schedule. It's exciting. And we've got some really cool guests coming up as well. So we hope that you will join us for those episodes and stay posted. And we are just happy to be here. So thank you for having us and have a great one.