Minnesota Gardening Podcast

The Key to Healthy Soil

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This episode is the audio from our October Masterclass: Key to Healthy, Living Soil and focuses on the importance of soil health in gardening, emphasizing the role of organic material, soil organisms, and sustainable practices. Our community discusses the EFS framework for maintaining healthy soil, the significance of understanding soil structure, and the impact of community engagement in gardening efforts. The session also highlights the need for eliminating chemicals and fostering a supportive gardening community.

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Brad

SPEAKER_00:

Today is a special day. So much number. So we'd love to have you won 100 meters at the end of October. And we are making our way to our open 2020. And now we have a October 2023 and October. October masterclass. Each month we have a food, and this month food and October is healthy soil. And this masterclass is all about the healthy, thriving soils that we have under our feet. We're going to start out with a little quiz. And so I don't know, you're not really required to use the comments on this, but I would like you to like shout out an answer. And the only way I can hear it is if you use comments. So this is a true or false quiz about healthy living soils. And so I'll give this a little preface on the fact that a lot of people don't think about soils as living. A lot of people don't think about soils as needing to be healthy. Soil is just there. We walk on it, we grow things in it. We don't really need to do much about it, but there's so much more going on in soil. And there's so much more happening, and it's really, really critical for what we need to do to build healthy landscapes. And so I'm really happy that as we're doing our weekly lessons with members, that that is something that the starting place and the baseline for where we are going with things. So with healthy living soils, it's really important to recognize that there is so much happening under the soil. And the more that we mess with soil and the more that we use chemicals on soil, and the more that we try and control it, the less healthy it becomes. And so uh here are a couple just true and false questions here. Statements is a better way to say that, for soil. So, true or false, one tablespoon of soil contains more organisms than there are humans on the entire planet Earth. So one tablespoon of soil contains more organisms than there are humans on the entire Earth. Is that true or false? Any guesses? Thanks, Katie. True. Any others? Liz goes for a true as well. You guys are correct. It is true. There are uh way, way, way more organisms in just a tablespoon of soil than there are humans on Earth. And so I think that was a really interesting place to start with this because it's really critical to understand that all those within your soil, there are microbes, there are nematodes, there are bacteria, there are viruses that are in there. There are lots of things that are extremely healthy to our ecosystem as it has evolved over time. And a few things that are unhealthy, for sure, for humans and for other things, but the vast majority of it are all good, healthy things. Next question: There is more carbon stored in the soil than there is carbon stored in the atmosphere. True or false? There is more carbon stored in the soil than there is carbon stored in the atmosphere. Look at you guys getting the hang of it. I love all this. Beautiful, beautiful, true, true, true. Yep, all true. Uh yeah, there is and this one I thought was really fascinating when I found this statistic as I was preparing for this, is that uh we usually think about carbon and uh carbon as it involves climate change and other other things that are happening around us as the number one source of uh carbon. But there's more carbon stored within the soil than there is in the atmosphere. And so we and actually there we we do a really good job of talking about trees as ways to get carbon into the soil, but actually perennials. Prairie plants, prairie grasses, those kinds of things are an even better way of getting carbon because they have so many life cycles of those roots every year, they get more carbon into the soil that way, and so it's a really cool thing. Trees are great, and prairie plants are also really great. Next question takes 4,000 years to build just one inch of topsoil. Takes 4,000 years to build just one inch of topsoil. All right, must be true. A couple of the guesses come in here. Maybe they're not guesses, maybe you guys are just that smart. Um has no idea. So yeah, this uh one. I also heard prairie plants store so much carbon in the roots. Yep, exactly. That is 100% true, Grady. This one is it takes 4,000 years to build just one inch of topsoil is false. And I don't know if that was tricky or not, but it takes 1,000 years to build an inch of topsoil, and so that's still a pretty uh incredible number on its own. So it takes between 750 and 1,000 years to build one inch of topsoil. Um and I this question uh is kind of a personal thorn in my side. One of the reasons why I uh just hated my agronomy class is that in I have a degree in horticulture from Iowa State, and so I have horticulture and design and took an agronomy class. And so agronomy is the study of soils, and it was solely the study of soils for row crops. I was state university, but still it was obnoxious and it still pissed me off because I very much didn't want to be a farm kid just doing, you know, row crops and planting corn and soybeans and stuff. And so with that, they talked about organic matter and how growing up we had always done no-till, and we so we left the corn stalks, left all the things on top of the ground, and so that would work its way down and build organic material over time. And the professor was saying how much of a waste that is and how we're losing organic material, and there's nothing we can do about it because of this thing right here is it takes a thousand years to build an inch of topsoil. And we have pretty much gotten rid of most all the topsoil through all of our farms, through poor agronomic processes. We have gotten definitely rid of almost all of our topsoil in our landscapes and urban areas. Anytime a new house gets built, they pull that topsoil all out and you just get the junk that's left over. But our professor was saying you should always take all those things off to use them for other things because it takes over a hundred years to increase by one percent the amount of organic material in the soil. And it was just such a short-sided myopic horizon, it just pissed me off. And so that's a long time later because I'm not that young anymore, and uh still pisses me off to this day. Um, all right, true or false. Next question soil can die, and I should have put die in air quotes when treated poorly, meaning that all the all the microbes, all the bacteria, all the friends that are in there can absolutely die if it is treated poorly. And uh this question I don't love, so I'll just kind of skip through it. Uh it's true, absolutely true. We can uh kill off our soil if we don't treat it well. And then last question uh is a good one. Uh healthy soils, living organisms make up 10% of the soil by volume. Healthy soils, living organisms make up 10% of the soil by volume. What uh what do you think that one is? True or false? Guessing false, is it more? Who else has guesses? Anybody? 5% false. The answer is false, correct. Healthy soils, living organisms only make up 1% of the volume of soil. And it made sure to make to say 1% of the volume, because uh even though there is so many, are so many things happening in the soil, by volume, uh the soil is still mostly organic material, which is usually decomposing organic material, it is things like rocks, soil, sand, silt. We'll get to those kinds of things later on here today. But even though it is so critical in getting keeping our landscapes healthy and safe and moving, there aren't that much by volume in there that are growing. So this is what the profile of soil looks like. And soil, as you think about geographic, geologic entities and how everything has layers and layers and layers. Soil is the same way. Soil has its own layers, and so it starts out at the top with organic layers, and so that is the real growth points of where all the plants are growing from. And then we also have the topsoil, and the organic layer and the topsoil together are the uh it's called the rhizosphere. I'll write that in here for you because I didn't write it down on the nerd points for anybody on that one today. But uh the rhizosphere is the top layers of the soil where all the action happens. That's where most of the living materials are, that's where most of the um roots and decomposing roots and all those things are all held generally in that top organic layer. And so you have the organic layer and then the top soil, sorry, in that top rhizosphere layer where all the growth is happening. Then below that, you have the subsoil, which is kind of a mix of the two things. And so the subsoil is what happens there is it stores a lot of moisture. And so it generally has larger pores, it has larger areas where moisture gets stored. And so when the roots get accessed, that through the subsoil, and then it can percolate up through the top. And then the parent material and the bedrock are the bottom couple of layers. And so these layers can vary wildly depending on where you're at. So, like solid ancient prairie grass areas in the Midwest, they can have three to five feet of topsoil, but then you go to, you know, western South Dakota, and there's no topsoil. It's just subsoil, a little bit of organic layer, and then parent material and bedrock down there. And so it all depends on where you're at and what's going on, the different layers of soil. And so with this, you also want to make sure that you're understanding the living beings that are in our soil also live in layers. And so that organic layer on top has lots of insects that live in there, a lot of different earthworms and those kinds of things live in that organic layer. And then the topsoil and subsoil layer, the same things kind of happen. And so you have uh topsoil layer, you just have billions and bazillions of nematodes and bacteria. And the most important one we're gonna talk about today is fungi. And we're gonna make sure I'm on the right spot. Yeah, we're gonna pull out of here for just a moment. I move I rearranged my office, so I've got uh whiteboard. So if I end up talking to the whiteboard and not to the microphone, make sure to virtually kick me and just let me know if you can't hear me. Um, but first thing we're gonna talk about is the Fs framework. So EFSS. And so that is eliminate chemicals, feed pollinators, save water, store carbon. And so soil, healthy soil does all four of those things. And so anytime you use chemicals, that pills things that are living in the soil. So if you are using a pesticide, that's killing the bacteria and the fungus and the lichens and those kinds of things that are living in our soils. So you want to make sure not to use those at all. So our goal here at Minnesota Gardening is to eliminate as many chemicals and completely eliminate, if we can, those chemicals in our landscapes. Same thing goes for fertilizer, uh, especially petroleum-based fertilizers. It happens some with organic fertilizers as well. Actually, I'll take that back. It definitely impacts negatively the soil health using organic fertilizers in general. It is uh, we want to get away from it as much as we possibly can. So we want to eliminate those chemicals. And then for feeding pollinators, having healthy soil makes the plants grow a lot better. So that's there. Having these soil layers, it also cleans our water as it goes down into the aquifers, and so that we're saving water and then storing carbon. So, as we talked about, that carbon sink that happens in the soil by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere down into the ground, and it makes it so we're mitigating climate change and doing a lot of good things there. And so we are great asked about the whiteboard. I don't know if uh I'll make sure to say what it is. I don't know what's uh happening with that, if it's trying to focus on me or something, but hopefully uh we'll see. So I'll try and stay out of the way for the moment. Uh, so F's. So the F's framework is where we start here at Minnesota Gardening. And uh, we've already talked about the 1% living, and so there's a lot of living material that's really small, tiny guys. And so we need to make sure and that those are extremely, extremely sensitive to chemical changes and to water availability and those kinds of things. So we need to make sure that we're taking care of those things and protecting our soils as they are a living, functioning being here for us. Fungus is the next one. So, fungus is the thing that I find to be just endlessly fascinating as it comes to landscape. And so we are learning more and more and more over by day, it seems really that new research gets released as to the interconnectivity of fungus and plants, how they have evolved and grown to really, really rely on each other. And I'm gonna pull up a couple slides here to kind of show how that is. We're gonna start down here. Fungus, this is kind of a janky slide, but it was one of the best uh I could find for illustrating this case. Basically, what the fungus does, one of the things that the fungus does in the ground is it acts as an extension of the root system. So a plant can have its root system that lives in one spot. Plants can't move, they can't uh they can grow toward water, but they can't pick up and move to someplace else. But what they can do is enlist the assistance of other things. And so how they've evolved is that fungus has grown to work with the root system of plants and help them out and deliver what they need to get delivered. So if a pocket of, you know, calcium is over here, but the root system is over here, the mycelium and the fungus will bridge that gap. And so they will create a pathway for bringing the giving access, not via root, but they will give access to the calcium over here to this root that is here and let them share and go back and forth. So mycelium, so the the I'll get to that in just a second, the the uh string-like bodies that are part of a fungus, a mushroom, are 700% larger than the root system of a plant. So they can uh give a 700x impact for accessing water, nutrients, materials, everything that they can uh through the soil to those plants who are unable to move. And so fungi will move for these plants in order to access the things that they want. And so they do that by this, I think is just endlessly fascinating again. So hopefully you guys are not too annoyed with my nerding out on this today. But uh, as you look here, these larger tube-like structures are the roots, and so those are the roots that are growing through a substrate, and these little strings that are through here are the hyphae, which are the fruiting body basically of a uh of a mushroom. And when you see a mushroom on top of the soil, you see that one fruiting body of the mushroom. And so that has the spores that go out into nature so they can make more fungi uh throughout. That's its reproductive process. But underneath of the soil, there are these mycelium, hyphae, um, all sorts of different structures underground that are delivering that are moving materials back and forth. And so it's just tubes basically under a ground. And so this shows how the hyphae, so the really small tube-like pieces on the fungi, they grow into a root. And so the plants allow them to grow into a root system to directly deliver and pump in things for the plant. And so this isn't a one-way uh thing either. The mycelium and the the fungi will deliver nutrients and things to a plant, but the plant will also, uh, it's been uh proven recently that the plant will uh of all of the sugars that it makes for photosynthesis, it delivers 40% of those sugars into the soil to these fungi, which I think is just really, really crazy. And so this is a slide of those things. So these are two little pine trees, seedlings that are growing as well. It's also been recently proven that the seeds carry spores for pre-inoculating the soil where those plants are going to grow. So, like these fungi came with the seeds for these pine trees, which is just incredible to me. So you can see how they started growing, and they are part of the reason why plants can be successful is because they get access, these mycelium that grow a lot faster than the roots and the root hairs do. And so they grow out and they are able to access nutrients, they're able to access water and they're able to do all these cool things way before a plant has the root system and the and the growth there to be able to do that on its own. So it helps them succeed and thrive. And then it also you can see in this photo that the two seedlings are connected via the mycelium from the fungus. And so I think it's uh a super cool thing that happens. And if you take and think about from there, like what the impacts are. So when we are growing food, for example, and you're starting seeds in the spring for tomatoes and whatnot, we grow our plants in sterile soil. We grow our stare our seeds are sterilized. So we make sure that that has a lot of chemicals and fungi uh and fungicide and all those things that are on those plants, and a lot of them come pre-inoculated with those chemicals on them. And so from there, we're growing all these things in a completely sterile environment, and they don't have the assistance of these fungi in order to make these connections, in order to talk and communicate back and forth. And so it's it's really interesting to me as we go forward how much we're gonna learn about what the natural habitat is for these plants and for seeds and for seedlings and their ability to survive and thrive. And so it's also been shown, which I think is really interesting as well, is that there are the way we do landscape now, is we've got a plant and then a whole bunch of space and another plant because God forbid the two trees were touching or anything like that. And uh you think about the forest, and those are touching and they're close enough where the roots are are commingling and things, and so there is a lot happening between those roots and the mycelium and the fungus and the different uh transportation bodies underground that it's really important that those trees be close together so they can communicate and so they send uh different signals back and forth between the trees through the mycelium. So it's I'll I'll stop with it from there. But just this living underground mechanism that we are just learning about has such huge potential for where things go and what what happens into the future. So I'm really, really excited about that as it goes. So we already talked again. Anyone has questions, if you don't want to just hear me spouting off about things, make sure to put them in the chat or I can uh or just ask and I'll uh open it up so you can ask questions and go from there. So we talked about soil structures, so you know that soil structures are really important to maintain those structures. One thing I didn't talk about is water, and so water has to be able to flow from the surface and down when it's wet out, and when we get we're getting rain so that it can fill that subsoil moisture back up. But then also the soil water has to be able to flow up. So when it gets dry out, we need these plants to be able to access that water mechanism, and so it needs to be able to go from the subsoil up in back into the topsoil as the topsoil draws out, dries out, and the plants draw the water into the atmosphere as they are moving chemicals and nutrients up and down their trunks and their stems. And so, with that, it is really important to recognize in soils that water has a very difficult time going from one texture to another texture. So let's say this is a really sandy soil right here, and this is a really clay soil down here. If you are watering and it's raining from the top, this really sandy, loamy, healthy soil will uh come down and it won't be able to go through. It's called a soil interface. It won't be able to go through into that clay. It's just the way water flows and the way water works. And so it will all pool above that clay area in your landscape. And so they used to do a lot of uh encouraging you to add organic material and do a lot of things to improve the soil, like right around when you're planting a tree or right around when you're planting a shrub to put a bunch of compost in with that plant. Um and that ends up being really dangerous because what happens is the water is unable to get through through those different that creates an interface, and so the water is unable to get through and penetrate that native soil. So what's already there is what the plant has. And so it uh you have a hole where you dug for the tree, and it ends up filling that hole with water. And then what happens is those roots end up circling where the water is, and the roots can't get through into the clay either. And so uh you want to make sure when you are planting plants, we don't follow the same old information that we should be adding all these amendments and different types of all these amendments and different types of organic materials and things into the soil around the plant. We want to make sure that that is as close to the native soil as it possibly can be. So you can loosen it up, you can make sure, but it's still gonna be the same kind of thing and the water will still be able to go through it. So you want to make sure not to be able not to be creating those interfaces. And so there are very few times when we recommend amending the soil through any landscape processes now, not even for perennials, because what happens is we want to make sure that the plants that are there are ones that can thrive. If you have super needy things that you really want to grow, a Japanese maple or a rose of some sort, then absolutely you'll need to amend the soil and do that kind of stuff. But if you're planting a prairie garden in your backyard, then you want to use that existing soil in that area and you don't want to amend it with a lot of different things. So now you can add fertility by doing compost on the top, which we'll talk about in a couple weeks here for the uh Minnesota gardening members in the weekly lessons. And so we'll have that piece there that we'll talk about as ways we can improve fertility on things, but underground and in the soil, we want to mostly leave it alone and just leave everybody there at the same time. So that's uh water interface is a big thing to think about. Next one on the list is carbon storage, and so all these things are really critical for storing carbon underground. So we need to keep moving as much of that carbon. Now, we as you know individual homeowners cannot impact enough to change what's happening in the the greater world, but we can make a difference if we all pool our resources and do these things together. So this is uh Doug Palamy's big vision for homegrown national parks. And so by having enough homeowners pooling together and getting more carbon sunk into their into their soil at their own houses, through trees, through prairie plants, those kinds of things. It's really important that we have that and continue in that mindset that we are working together to help with these things. All right, so now kind of the nuts and bolts of uh things. We have landscape wellness. And so we have hopefully you all have taken it, but if you haven't yet, you can go to the main menu at MinnesotaGardening.com and you are able to go in that main menu and uh take a landscape wellness quiz. And so that landscape wellness quiz gives you a spectrum as to where we're at on the the health of your landscape. And so we want to take folks who are going from just a very standard suburban chemical, all lawn, just few plants, uses a lot of chemicals, uses a lot of water to keep that lawn moving. And uh, we want to make sure that we're going from that to a thriving, healthy landscape. And along the way, we've got a detox uh stage, we've got a nourishing stage, we've got a thriving stage is where we want to get to for thriving, healthy landscapes. And so that's what we're doing at Minnesota Gardening is helping people move through that continuum so that we are able to help reduce the rates of cancer, helping to making sure that we are saving and feeding pollinators and songbirds, making sure that we are saving water and we're doing really cool things like that, which we can only do together. And so it's a good thing. Mulch is a really important piece of this soils concept. If you think about a prairie, it is completely covered with plants, and there's no in general, unless you've got a gopher, there's in general no soil exposed. And so all that soil is underneath of the plant stems and leaves and old decomposing plant parts from the previous years. And so uh it's really important to emulate that as much as we possibly can. And so there's a stupid term called green mulch, and uh, I hate it with a passion, but that's what it's known as, and so I'm I'm a follower, I guess, and so we'll uh continue to follow on the green mulch uh uh track here. But what it is is we want to make sure that we are using plants as protection for soil, and so that raindrops cause a tremendous, shocking amount of damage to soil and soil structure with erosion, and that's I mean, that's just what they do. So we have these landscapes now that are a plant with a lot of mulch, hardwood mulch in between, and then another plant on the other side. And um, we want to make sure that that whole thing gets filled up with plants because mulch is even worse than having lawn in areas for what it provides for local ecosystems. They don't provide anything for it, takes a lot of chemicals to keep all the weeds out of there. It takes a lot of water because it is generally in an irrigation system, it doesn't provide any food for pollinators or songbirds or any habitat whatsoever. And so we want to make sure that we're having as many plants in there. And so that's where the stupid green mulch term comes from, but it is what it is. So we're gonna go with it. So we want to have green mulch wherever we are in our landscape beds, and so it's having as many landscape beds as we can to do those four things. Next one is eliminate, uh, stop using chemicals, stop using fertilizer wherever you can. We have a small fertilizer recommendation for the fall, uh, which is purely mostly nitrogen for plant health, and so that we don't have erosion happening in our lawns. If our lawns aren't taken care of, they will erode, and so then we have phosphorus and we have algae blooms and we have all these bad things that happen. So we want to level this playing field out a little bit and make sure that uh we are not having a ton of erosion. And so we recommend a half a pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet for our turf in the fall. Next one is kind of a quandary for everyone is no till. And so a lot of people have a problem with this one, but we want to, in order to maintain those fungal networks that happen underground, we are learning more and more every day that we don't want to dig. We want to leave those alone because every time you stick a shovel in the ground, uh, it breaks up those networks and it breaks up those tubes that are underground and those uh connections between the plants and between the my the different fungi and different things that are living underground, um, it breaks those all up. And so we highly recommend not tilling and not digging any holes unless you absolutely have to for things. And so there are weeding that has to get done, there are other things that have to get done. But if you are uh building a new bed, don't till it all up. Again, unless you have to. There's obviously reasons for doing that, that kind of thing. If you have uh food garden beds, you want to promote as many of those fungi underground as you possibly can. So if you have a uh tomato uh that is growing in the ground this fall or next spring, whenever you clean up, you just want to cut that right here, and then you leave this section underground. And so you will uh it'll decompose quickly, you'll just plant around it and everything will be great. So leave that there in order to have all those root systems and all that things decompose underground. That adds organic material to the soil, but it also doesn't cut up the um uh mycelium network, fungal network underground. All right, last one for today. Is organic materials. So it kind of goes with what I just talked about. And the importance of organic materials in our soil is critical. And so as you think about, as I was talking about western South Dakota, and as you think about the badlands and the soils out there, there's no topsoil. It's just bedrock and substrate. There's no actual or very little actual soil that is there on the ground. But you get just, you know, a couple hundred miles east of there. And uh there is lots of soil. And so it just depends on what is going on. And uh the key difference between those two things is organic material. So organic material holds that soil together, it promotes the fungal networks, it helps to provide micronutrients, some macronutrients, and it helps to keep all of that soil together. And so I'm almost done here. So if you guys have questions, if you have things you want me to expand on more or talk ad nauseum about at you a little bit more, make sure to add them into the chat and I will uh start to answer those questions as we go uh go through here. But uh that organic material in the soil is the number one differentiator between healthy soils and non-healthy soils. And so that organic material is also the fungal networks. Those are organic materials, those are bacteria that are in there, and there's just a lot of different things that really, really promote organic life cycles in the soil. And so you've got if you think about how the roots grow, the roots grow down into the soil and they die back. And so then you've got all these new pathways for water and for air to access deeper into the soil and keep moving that way. And so that organic material in the soil is the number one differentiator. So you just know, you can smell, you can see that uh dark, rich soil that's high in organic matter and just is a wonderful, wonderful thing to have, which is why we want to make sure that we are leaving the leaves. And so we talked last month about leaving the leaves and making sure that we are ha leaving those leaves on top of the soil so they decompose and they continue to uh release nutrients into the ground that those plants need. And so it's uh really, really good things that way. So that is the end of my whiteboard and of my uh let me make sure here. Oh, I've got one more thing. I just want to make sure that everyone knows. Um, right now, here we go. Um, right now at Minnesota Gardening, there we go, we are having an October membership drive. And so I want by the end of October to have a hundred members. We have like 40 members right now, but I want to have a hundred members by the end of October. That will between the hundred of our members, we will literally save thousands of chemicals from going out on the ground. We will literally feed millions of insects and songbirds, and we will literally save millions more gallons of water and save fresh water. And so the goal here is to really collectively work together and get some things done. So we're having the October membership drive. So if you uh aren't a member, please think about joining. Um, if you are a member, you can absolutely switch to an annual membership if you would like at a really cheap rate, but also make sure to invite friends. If you have anybody that you know that would be interested in being a member of Minnesota Gardening, you can uh invite them here. And so we the annual membership ends tomorrow. We've had it open all this uh past week at$127. Sorry, I should say$197. Annual membership for$197. Sorry about that, ends tomorrow. So the end of the day tomorrow, it's the last day to get our annual membership for$197. And we've got uh a bunch of new members who have come in, and I'm really, really excited. It's 56% saving over our monthly membership of$37 a month. And so we just want to get as many people in for the October membership as we possibly can. So there's a lot of cool things over at Minnesota Gardening, and please become a member because that's how we keep this action going. So again,$197 for a month, just go to MinnesotaGardening.com and I'll actually add it on here for you. And you'll also get an email here in 20 minutes or so that will that will give it to you as well. But here's the link if anybody wants to uh join with an annual membership. So that's there. All right, so now I actually get to the questions. So if you have questions as well, I'll make sure to add them. So Katie says regarding the tomato example and not pulling plants out, do you leave the cut plant matter on your vegetable garden beds? When do you cut them off at the dirt level or do you clear it out? So it depends on the plants. Tomatoes are super um susceptible to a lot of different blights and fungus and all sorts of all sorts of problems. And so tomatoes I always remove, not always, I generally remove tomatoes in the fall. And so just cut those off at soil level to get the leaves out of there because the leaves are what generally carry all of the blight types of problems that tomatoes have. And anybody in the tomato family, so tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, those kinds of things, you want to rotate those, and so you want to not have them be in the same spot for more than two, three years at the most, and move them to a different spot after that. And so, um, so you want to rotate those because they are really susceptible to soil-borne issues, and so I cut them off at soil level. Everything else below that is fine, it's not a problem whatsoever. And then I toss that all of my flowers, all those other things, beans, like all those kinds of friends, I leave those all winter long. I do not uh clean those up, I just let them be, and they mostly decompose over the winter. And uh, if they're a problem, then I cut them back and move them around in the in the spring. But most of them are all okay, and they're a cover crop basically for the winter, and they work really well that way. So uh that's how I handle those in the vegetable flower food garden type situation. Liz, annual flowers, I leave most of those. I don't cut back, but I I also don't care about messy. If you're somebody who really, either yourself or a partner, is worried about being tidy all the time, then maybe that is something you want to clean up. But if you have beds that are uh not going to be seen by anyone or anything like that, or you don't care about, then absolutely leave those. Um there's zero reason. Those things can all go back into they'll decompose, they'll add nutrients back into the ground, and they'll be in good shape. Like if you leave cosmos, they'll reseed for you and you don't uh and you don't need to ever plant new cosmos. So that's the benefit of leaving those things. That picture of the tithonia that I uh put uh in earlier in the share part. That Mexican sunflower is a volunteer. It grew from seed, where the seeds where I planted, not a single one of those grew. And so uh I was really happy because they didn't start to get big until July, August, that kind of thing was when they finally started growing, and it was pretty cool to see. Is the rotation locations advice true for just tomatoes, or should we be rotating through the raised bed rolls for everything? Tomatoes are the number one thing, and uh, if you are um yeah, tomatoes, so anything in that family that tomatoes are in, so there's tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes, those are all in the same family, and they're all susceptible to a variety of uh blights, leaf blights generally. So as you grow your tomatoes, you those those bottom leaves, they all tend to eventually get gnarly and brown up and and that kind of thing. And you can have a lot more it grows up the stem. Those are all soil-borne pathogens that are from splashing, and so it can absolutely happen. I don't have too much of a problem with it at my house. My mom, she has a huge problem with it on the farm, and so it's it's different for everybody. Um, like I can't, I also have a huge, huge problem with powdery mildew. No matter how much I try, I cannot grow any cucumbers at my house because I have a huge powdery mildew issue where powdery mildew is just here, and so I can't grow tomato, I can't grow cucumbers. My peonies get it really bad. Um, so it's that kind of thing. So it all depends on your location and what your experience has been. If you haven't had a problem with it and you've been growing tomatoes there for 10 years, then uh it's not a huge issue for you, and I wouldn't worry about it. Um, but if you do see things start to degrade, move to a different bed and uh do it, do it differently there. I hope that answers the question. It wasn't too long-winded on things. Um time for a couple more questions if anybody's got them. Um I just want to appreciate and say thanks again to the folks who uh haven't been here before, who have uh joined, and folks who haven't who have come to with us today. So Ellen and Katie, thank you very much, Katie, for being a new member. Robert, Liz, Katie, the other Katie. Um, Grady is always great to have you all here. I just really, really appreciate everyone's support. Please share with your friends and happy to be here. So the rest of this month, our weekly lessons, we have compost and mulch next week. We have macronutrients, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus the following week, and then macro new uh micronutrients and organic material the last week of uh the and uh then we go into landscape wellness from there, which is going to be a combination in November of reflection and goal setting and making sure that we are headed the right direction all together and what we can do. So that's the month of November coming up, and uh just really appreciate everybody being here. So thanks again, all I really appreciate it, and uh, I will see you again soon. So I will post this tomorrow. The video will be available for all of our members and the membership side, and I'll also post the audio as a podcast that'll come up uh tomorrow or the next day, so that uh we'll be at the Minnesota Gardening podcast that everyone can listen to. So thanks all. Have a wonderful, wonderful night. Uh on behalf of my family, I'm glad that the the internet held strong for the night. So we'll be good there. So hey, September masterclass, yeah, it's posted. I'll find it and I'll tag you on it. So we'll we'll roll with that, and I'll make sure that I actually posted it. That's the other piece. So we'll I'll tag you there no matter what. So, all right, everybody, thanks for being awesome, and I'll talk to you again soon. See what I mean? I hope you enjoyed it. Yesterday, and so I just again want to invite you that you can go back to 100 and just so you know what our goal is with a hundred members of Middle Garden. With 100 members, we will be able over 10 years to eliminate 7,500,000.