Ep. 6 - Holiday Food Poisoning Prevention

In this episode of Stone County Extension Saves the World, Anna discusses how to keep your family safe from food borne illnesses this holiday season.  Tyler talks about cleaning up gardens, composting, and why folks should get there soil tested.

Transcript

Hello, welcome back everyone to the Stone County Extension Saves the World Podcast.

Hello.

It's Monday.

Monday. It's another Monday. We've made it through another week.

But it's been a good Monday.

Yeah, we had a little bit to do.

Yeah, a little eventful morning.

We've got a big week planned, but this morning had some unexpected tasks.

Yes, I let exercise that extension get fit this morning. And one of our members had caught a skunk and she couldn't find anyone that was gung-ho to come take that thing away for her.

Yeah, people don't want to get sprayed.

Yeah, wonder why. And one of the other Get Fitters was like, I bet you know somebody. Could Tyler do that? And I thought, well, I better ask him before I volunteer him.

Yeah. And I was willing to do it. I was like, it'd be a good experience. You never know when it would come in handy. I mean, if someone, I get calls all the time about how to trap these critters.

Yeah, we've relocated a few.

I've done armadillos. I've went and caught snakes.

Yeah, we've had a few. We had a couple snakes around here.

I have had to go look at bats one time. I don't want to mess with those. So anybody that's like, oh, I got a critter call the extension office. I heard on a podcast that he'll come get it. I do not do bats.

You draw the line there.

Yeah, I draw the line at bats. But relocating a skunk, it was Pretty easy. I just, I got a blanket. Like they had done caught it in the trap and I just pull up to her house and I was like, all right, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna walk around and. Hopefully he don't see me and I'm just gonna toss this blanket on him and then I'll go take him and relocate him.

I'd like to add that the blanket trick doesn't always work. One of Brandon's cousins got sprayed as they took the blanket up. So it's not foolproof, but it at least kind of knocks the spray down.

Yeah, I like walked by our shed, I guess his living under a shed, but I like walked around and got close. And I was trying to be silent, but she's like, he's lifting his tail. And I just like threw it over him and just kind of stood back and waited for a couple of minutes. And then I told her what I was going to do to him so she wouldn't worry. Because some people are like, oh, I want rid of him, but don't kill him.

Don't take him to loads of ridge.

Yeah, don't send him to heaven. But I didn't send him to heaven.

You sent him to the National Forest.

Yeah, the Ozark National Forest. So if you're out there.

He was really pretty. If you want to see a video of him, he's on our Facebook, UADA Stone County Facebook page.

Yeah, but so when I picked him up after I threw the blanket on him, I carried him, put him in the back of my truck. And he kind of, I kind of start smelling him then. And I was like, oh no.

Yeah, he brought him to the office.

Yeah, I brought him in case y'all wanted to see him. We didn't. So then I took him down to somewhere in the Ozark National Forest. And like she had said that you just, that trap, you just turn it upside down and the thing will open. Well, like I was gonna try to video and, you see those videos of when they release like bears and stuff. And I was like, all right, I'll video this. And so.

If he turns around and gets you.

Yeah, I was videoing and like turned it over and turned it upside down and it didn't open. And I was like, what the heck? And so I set my phone down and started fiddling with it. And then I see his head head poke up and it had come open and then I just stepped back and he luckily just kind of ran off in the woods. And then I was able to pick up my phone and I videoed him. I thought I didn't get in the way.

Fire at you or anything?

Yeah, he, I think he knew that I wasn't gonna eat him.

Yeah. Well, that's a good deed of the day.

He didn't get me. But yeah, he was a pretty white skunk. But I'm ready for next week. Getting through this week. We've got got brucellosis vaccinations tomorrow. And then Wednesday, we're taking the youth leadership kids to the ropes course. And that'll be fun. I'm participating this year because we did it last year and me and you just kind of stood around and let them get up there. So I was this and it was seemed like a long day. And so I figure if we could participate with them and.

I'm afraid that I'll get up there and not get down.

They'll be able to release you down. Sure. I've done the ropes course.

Or lower me.

Yeah, I've done the ropes course at the 4-8 Center. It's pretty fun. And we'll get up there with the kids. The one that they have over there is the jump off thing. I wonder if we'll do that where you climb up the pole and then you get up and stand up and like swan dive off of it. You gonna do that?

No way.

That's one I'm gonna, that's what I'm looking forward to. I'm gonna do that. And Friday, going back, I'm gonna do the fun day at the middle school, do the archery. And then we got our food drive.

Yeah, it'll be a good week.

And then so busy week, but then next week, taking leave, going deer hunting, and it's Thanksgiving. I'm ready.

Time for all the fixings.

Yeah, I'm going to eat all the fixings.

What's your favorite fixings?

I like ham. Ham's good with cranberry sauce. And then I like stuffing.

Or dressing.

What's the difference?

Well, one's in and one's out.

Oh, well then I don't know that I've ever had stuffing because I've always had it out of the casserole dish.

Out of the turkey.

I've never had it out of the turkey. What's it made out of? It's guts.

No.

Mixes guts together.

I think it's more bread based than cornbread based, but I'm not totally sure because cornbread dressing is one of my favorite fixings. And then I like, I like fried turkey. I do like ham. We've kind of got spoiled. We like one kind of brand of ham at my mom's.

Church yesterday, they had like a little potluck and I usually don't eat like sweet potatoes or anything, but I was like, well, I better try that. I don't want to offend anybody, so I'll just try a little bit of everything. But there was some sort of sweet potato dishes like mashed up, but dag, it was like they put sugar or something, brown sugar.

Marshmallows on top or more of like a crumble top?

It was like, I don't know. how to describe it. Like the inside just looked like mashed sweet potatoes and it was like, it wasn't like yams with the potatoes on it, but.

Well, yams are only out of Africa.

Okay, well, I don't know the difference.

You've not had a yam. I don't know why they call them that because, yeah, sweet potatoes here, yams in Africa, totally different.

Different thing, different family.

I spoke to the kids at real special school about that.

I should probably know that being an ag agent. But I had no clue.

I'm the agent today.

And I'll be the FCS.

Yeah, the, oh, that'll be great. The sweet potatoes are part of the morning glory family.

Sweet potatoes are part of the morning glory.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

One year I grew a four pound sweet potato. The whole, I made a sweet potato casserole out of my 1 sweet potato. I had a garden at the river that year. And so it was funny because Brandon's uncle Gary Don took a photo with it like he grew it. And then it ended up in like a family calendar. But yeah, I grew one sweet potato, weighed 4 pounds and made a whole casserole.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, I think I had about 10 pounds per hill. It was this good year.

Yeah, that is pretty good. But whatever it was, That thing. I was like, dang, that's good. It's like a dessert. Like it's real sweet.

My family, they like sweet potatoes more like fried in butter, but Braden's family loves sweet potato casserole. And so that's what I usually bring. But mine has marshmallows on top. I've done a few variations, but.

Yeah, it seems like it tastes like you, but it's kind of like the sugar was in it. Yeah. I don't know.

And then some have nuts, some have coconut.

Yeah. Whatever it was, first time I tried it, because I am kind of picky.

Yeah, you are a bit picky.

But it was good.

And then Madison, she likes ham and shoe peg corn, or it has like cream cheese in it. And then she likes yeast rolls, which I love a good yeast roll.

Yeah.

I've been trying to figure out yeast rolls for the last several years. We get a lot of requests for classes. And so maybe one day when I grow up.

Sourdough rolls.

Absolutely. Yeah, you could. I really like that yeast flavor for the holidays though.

Yeah, I like a good roll.

Yeah, I'm not wanting the sour. I want more of the sweet rolls.

Get some mashed potatoes and some brown gravy and then get a roll and then slop it up.

I've got a story about my great-grandpa. My dad said that he would get barrels of slop from the nursing home.

What kind of like the old food?

Yes.

Okay.

Like all their old food.

That's not what my first thought was.

And one time he was trying to get the barrel off the back of the truck and it kind of all fell out at once. And he said the slop just went like all in his face. Oh man. And he just wiped off his glasses and then just fed the pigs. And that's my pig slop story.

I'd have been gagging.

Speaking of that, I, since my husband does not listen to the podcast, we talk about it. And so for Christmas, so we'll find out if he actually secretly listens or not. But have you seen those people eating sostroming, that fermented fish from where they're out of the cans?

Yes.

I bought some. I cannot wait for that to come in. And Tyler started gagging when I was telling.

I can't imagine. I've seen the videos of him eating it. Like just opening the can.

I've only seen, yes, I've only seen one guy that just like ate more than one piece.

Yeah, it's like they open the can and it goes.

You're supposed to open it underwater, but they're, you know, eating it to watch them get sick and video it. But I cannot.

What did he say? He said, I think I could do.

Yeah, he's like, I think I could do better than them. So that means we got to find out. And then I'm going to bring it here and we're going to see how long Tyler lasts. Which won't be long.

Won't be long.

I just can't imagine how bad. how bad it smells. It must be pretty bad.

Well, smells get me.

Yeah.

Like that's because anything something just imagine something gross and you see it there and like I'll look at it and then the intrusive thoughts take over and it's like, what if I licked that? And then I'm like, Oh my gosh.

Why would you think about licking it?

I don't know.

Because I was sitting here thinking of the worst, one of the worst smells I've smelled and licking it never crossed my mind.

Yeah, that's the first thing. When I see something gross, it's like, what if some of that splattered in your mouth? What? Yeah, see.

Why?

I'm just telling you my thought process.

Just think about the soft.

I have a weak stomach, seems like.

Yeah, you do. I mean, I do too. I can't say anything.

We, yeah, we get grossed out pretty easy. Like, Remember me trying to tell you that story one time and I couldn't even tell?

Don't start.

I get to thinking about it. Yeah. But so Thanksgiving's coming up.

Yeah, it is. Okay.

So how did we do on our poll? We were talking about our favorite stuff. The reason is we did a poll. Or Anna did.

Yeah, we had a poll and we have 146 votes and the clear winner was cornbread dressing. So it had 42 of the 146 votes.

And then not stuffing. Leave like something new.

Stuffing had three votes.

I think they knew.

I think they knew. I feel confident.

They're smarter than me.

I know one knew for sure because we've talked about it before. But cornbread dressing had 42 votes and then the 2nd place was 15 votes with ham. So it kind of, it got past turkey. Turkey had 14. And then after that it was sweet potato casserole. But at one time rolls was winning. So it got past and then pump pecan pie and then just got all the rest of the fixings.

Gotta have them fixins.

All the fixins, they were just kind of fell in line after that.

I mean, I'll grab a piece of turkey every now and then. I gotta, I'll put, it's usually really dry.

Well, if it's fried, deep fried, it's not dry. It's good. And then I like that. I like ham too. I eat turkey at one family deal and ham at the other. So I kind of eat different fixins at different places.

Well, at one of ours, apparently we're having fish this year. He caught a bunch of fish.

Oh, like a fish fry.

Yeah.

Well, that'll be fun. It'll be different.

Yeah, I think so. I like fish.

And Thanksgiving's the only holiday that we really have traditional foods, usually at Christmas.

We do a little different. We go over to my grandma's at Shirley and she fixes a bunch of different stuff. Like my aunt makes this rice stuff. It's got like, it's in like a casserole pan and it's like rice and it's got like mushrooms in it. That's really good.

That's good. Does that have chicken too or?

I don't think so. It's like rice and mushrooms. I don't know what she calls it, but I get some. Yeah.

Yeah, at Christmas we do like finger foods like wings and shrimp and all those things. So I really get my, traditional Southern dishes at Thanksgiving.

Why'd you, what were you gonna talk about with this poll? Like, why'd you send it out?

Well, it, with Thanksgiving coming up, I was thinking about food safety. And so, how often have you seen food sit out all day?

Yeah.

I've seen it here and there, and I know what happens.

Well, if I was in charge, it most definitely would sit out all day.

Because you're going to eat all day.

Well, I mean, I'm just going to be like, it'll be fine.

I'll be fine. So the best practice is to have everything put up within two hours. so that you can have it as leftovers. If you leave it out for more than two hours, you should discard it. It's not safe anymore. So kind of the rule is keep the cold foods cold and the hot foods hot. So if you're trying to keep things cold, you may kind of like nest some bowls or some different things into ice, try to just keep those temps down. Or if you're trying to keep it hot, maybe a chafing dish or a warming tray.

What type of stuff could happen if, say, you leave it out? longer than two hours.

Well, bacterial growth and then say that somebody was sick and was there and may have got their hands onto some things and left at the correct temperatures.

How are you doing? How are y'all grabbing food at your family? Just reaching in the pot, scooping it out.

No, not my family.

Oh, you've been a place wherever the... That's what we do at our houses. It's like... Just scoop the casseroles out and put it on your plate. You know how I am about washing my hands.

Well, that's conserting.

So think about that, folks.

Well, give plenty of tongs and scoopers, but... If they, maybe if you sneezed or something, for instance, or it had bacteria on it and it sat at the improper temperature. Or flies also can bring in Shigella. That's a foodborne illness. So like they'll land on. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? They'll land on feces and then they could come land on your food and possibly transfer some things. But anyway, two hours needs to be back in. Keep cold foods cold, hot foods hot. So below 41 degrees Fahrenheit for cold, 135 or above for your hot food. So crock pot, it's a great moment for it to shine, keeping things warmer, those warming trays, chafing dishes rather. And then make sure that If you keep if you keep them at safe temps, you can have those as leftovers. And that's a major goal for me because I don't want to cook the next few days. So make sure you keep them that safe temp and you can have them for leftovers. And then when you reheat them, you want to get them to a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees.

Speaking of leftovers, how like how we'll always keep our leftovers in the fridge and then sometimes like a week later, I'll be like, I wonder if that's still good.

You can technically keep them for seven days, but probably three to five is probably the top end of what you would want.

So someone need to be eating your leftovers within three to five days.

Three to five days. And if you're kind of tired of them, you know, you can shred the turkey and make dumplings or I have a friend I went to high school with and he makes turkey gumbo. You know, you can repurpose some of those things you might be getting a little tired of. Ham and beans. You can do some different things. I've seen where they've taken dressing and make like croutons out of it before. That sounds kind of good.

Yeah. What was it you're telling me one lady did with like pickled eggs, put that in deviled eggs?

Yeah, one of my EHC ladies would do pickled eggs as deviled eggs.

I bet that would be good.

Now pickled eggs would also be good for charcuterie boards. I'm not big on like a pickled chicken egg, but I love pickled quail eggs. And I've made some here. They were really good. Yeah, they were good. Now pickled eggs do have to be refrigerated for say safety. They're not going to be shelf stable. But a pickle quail egg with garlic and peppers, that's really good. And then speaking of pickles, so we've got pickles here on our table. I'm not big on cucumber pickles, but I love the other kind of pickles. And if you're doing a grazing board or a charcuterie board, you also need to be safe with that too. So anything that needs to be refrigerated, you need to only put small amounts on your table and change those out fairly often. So, but these Pickled green beans are delicious, and then I'm working on pickling some asparagus. It's more of a refrigerator style pickle. Yeah, pickled okra. You know, those are some cool things. you could add to your boards this holiday season.

And they're good. Like we tried some of this, we got laid out on the table, some of those pickled green beans.

Yeah, those pickled green beans. That recipe is good.

The recipe on the pickled okra is good too. Probably the best that I've ever had.

Yeah, you need to have fresh okra and that's kind of a little hard to get a hold of right now. But you could get some pretty fresh green beans at a few stores.

It's a good opportunity to, think about your garden next year. I had me some okra to do some of the best pickled okra that ever existed because it was good. Like I'd eat, just the canned stuff from the store and that's good okra. And then we were at the, what, the conference. And at one of the hospitality rooms, he had some pickled okra and pickled green beans. And he's like, yeah, it's out of that book. That's so easy to present. Yeah, so easy. I just use that. And he's like, I use fresh dill. And it was.

Yeah, my sister keeps me in with the fresh dill. And then we've actually had a little bit of dill in our AeroGarden.

Yeah.

But yeah, if you really want to elevate your charcuterie boards or grazing boards, make your own pickles like that and have a variety. We had a restaurant in Kansas City last year and they had different pickle things. So they had pickle beets and different stuff. And that was like your, instead of chips and salsa, you got some kind of pickle. And that was really cool.

Yeah.

And, but speaking of charcuterie boards, you also need to keep those. pretty, you need to be safe with those two and not have them at an extended period. So if it's a meat that's cured and already can be at room temperature or cheeses, like your nuts, your crackers and all that, can stay out. But you need to be changing out your fruit and vegetables within every two hours. Condiments and different things like that, just do small containers so you're regularly changing that out and you're not exposing those things to long-term bad temperatures. So in the soft cheeses, you're going to need to make sure that those are not, those are not just sitting out and make sure there's plenty of tongs and toothpicks because people are bad on charcuterie boards to try to just grab it with their hands. So really try to encourage.

Yeah.

If.

You have my thought process, if it's not coming off on my pants, it won't come off on this food. Let me go in here.

That'd be fun.

Let me touch test. That's how I, if you're anywhere with me.

Oh, are you eating with me?

I'm like, that one's firm. That one's.

Oh gosh.

Oh, that one will be good.

You'll never be invited to anything. Oh, well, you know, it's fine to touch your own food, but food that other people are going to be eating, that's not okay. So you don't want bare hand contact with ready to eat food. So tongs, toothpicks, Try to eliminate anybody who's questionable in their hand washing skills and try to mitigate some of the flu season and things spreading around.

I'll be more aware of that now. I mean, you can say that you've made an impact on me. I've started washing my hands a little more after you've started talking about all the gross things. That's good.

It's about time that you wash your hands better.

I started washing my hands better.

Speaking of cleanliness, what are some things people could be doing in their garden right now?

Yeah, it's that time of year where mid-November, Thanksgiving's next week when you say cleanliness, I almost smell myself.

You forget deodorant sometimes. Good thing winter's coming.

I'm a gross person. But anyways, so what you can do in your garden, to clean it up. Probably most of our stuff's played out after the frost, unless you're doing like a cool season garden, but your warm season stuff, tomato, peppers, they've probably all.

Yeah, Karen's broccoli was looking great the other day.

Yeah, but so what we can do for them is go in and take them out. We don't, you know, pull them out of our beds or pull them out of the ground and just kind of get it, you know, cleaned up for next year, cleaned up. We don't want a bunch of dead.

And you said, too, we could snip them, right?

Yeah. So rather than pulling them out, roots and all, it'd be better just to cut them, at ground level. That way the roots can decompose and that'll add organic matter to your soil. And that's something that, you know, being sustainable, if that's your goal, increasing your organic matter by natural means is kind of one of your things you're thinking about. And when we cut that root ball off and leave it in the ground, it's going to decay. All the microbes will feed on it and increase your organic matter. In a garden, we typically want our organic matter to be like 3 to 5%. And how we can increase it is either planting like a cover crop or something, that's going to grow have biomass that we can, either lay it down or you can terminate it some way. How they do it in like those no-till gardens is they'll like use like a log and a stamp and like crimple it like you'd see in like you'd do a crop circle. You kind of terminate it by that way and then as it decomposes it stops it from growing and it'll increase your organic matter or we can say, pull out those old plants and throw them in our compost pile and compost them over, the winter, allow it to rain or snow on it. And that is that pile, depending on how you do it, it'll heat up underneath there and then that'll slowly start decomposing and that'll turn to compost. So you can do what's called fast composting or slow composting. And with fast composting, after it heats up, it's going to start cooling back down if we'll go in there and turn it, flip it over. It'll start that heating process again and we can speed up the amount of time we get to compost. But a lot of people just do a pile and they'll just throw their scraps in there, old garden stuff as we've cleaned it up, throw the old plants in there, adding green matter. One thing with compost we think about is having a good nitrogen, carbon to nitrogen ratio. Have you ever heard of the browns and greens in composting?

Yeah, from you.

Yeah. Makes sense. You've heard of it. So typically, like if it's a larger piece of wood, that's going to be a higher carbon to nitrogen ratio, whereas like green stuff's going to be lower. You can have a mixture of that, but what you want to shoot for is like the 25 to 30% carbon to nitrogen. ratio and that's going to make your best compost. So you can look that up online to see they'll give what the different carbon nitrogen ratio is for different things. So you can kind of figure out well I can add this that's a 7 and this that's a 20 or this to try to get to your 30 to 1. 30 to 1. And what we can use compost for is it's not really people think of it like oh it's my fertilizer. Well yeah there are nutrients in it but It's more of we're adding organic matter. And what organic matter does is like in a heavy clay soil, it can loosen it up to make it more well-drained. Or if we've got a really well-drained sandy type soil, we can add organic matter and it'll make it better water holding. And we want to have good water holding capacity, but we also want to have good air space or pore space in there for actually air. We don't want the roots just sitting in water, you know. they'll drown or rot at least. But so we can use that compost to increase our organic matter. And then if you do, if you can add other amendments, which would be like your fertilizers. And typically what we're looking for is your macronutrients is nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Your secondary nutrients is like sulfur, calcium, and then your macros are going to be like molybdenum, copper, boron, iron. Those are going to be like micros. And so the plants, they don't need as, they still need it, but they just don't need as much. Kind of similar to us. They need a little bit more nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and then not as much calcium, sulfur. One way we can know how much to add is by doing a soil test. And here in Arkansas, we offer free soil testing through, if you're listening in another county. You can just take, we need about a pint of dirt. You can take it in and I've collected over the years. People bring them in like mason jars or coffee cans or zip locks. Or you can stop by an extension office and get the actual little boxes. But what we're going to end up collecting is about a pint of dirt. And fall is a great time to do soil testing. Just because we can, you know, If our pH needs to be changed, that takes a little bit of time. And if we're waiting until the spring to say we do a soil test and it says we need lime, we put it out. Well, it's going to take it, you know, maybe up to a few months for it to actually change our pH. I've been to a few trainings where we've had soil scientist guys there and they say it's better to use a soil probe rather than a shovel. Just because if you think about digging with a shovel, you might create a little wedge shape where say more of the top is represented than the bottom of your sample. And with a cylindrical shaped probe, it's going to be the same width on top and bottom. So we're getting an accurate representation for, you know, if we're digging down 4 to 6 inches, we want that all to be the same. You know, we don't want to have more on the top of the, say, the top soil represented than the three or four inches deep. And we have probes here at the office that I loan out to guys or ladies, anybody. I'd loan them out and you just have to sign saying you'll bring it back and put your name and address.

So we know who has it. Yeah. When we get to looking for it.

I loaned one out in July one time and forgot and.

Oh yeah, it didn't get wrote down.

Yeah, it didn't get wrote down. And then it showed up one day and I was like, cool. I thought this, I wrote this off.

It's like a two years later.

But I got it back. It wasn't quite two years. It was like a few months. They come and borrowed it in July and then brought it back in the fall. I think it was a couple years ago, wasn't it? Or last year.

Last year, I think.

Yeah. But we loan out probes and when you go take a soil sample, whether it's a garden or a hay field, how we want to do it, we don't want to just dig down in one spot and fill up the box, but we want to go and get several sub samples and that could be 12 to 13 or 12 to 15 little core samples and then we mix all that dirt together and put that in a bucket and shake it up or something and then that's what we put into our pint box and So also it's a good recommendation that your sample doesn't represent more than 20 acres. Say if you're doing a pasture or hay field or food plot, but anything that's growing out of the soil, it'd be a good idea to get a soil test done. Again, they're free to do. They're easy to do. Soil test, what it'll tell you, it'll tell you like your pH. For Garden vegetables typically want to be around six to a seven. For grass, wants to be a six to a seven. If you're growing like blueberries, that's where it likes more acidic soil. It wants to be like a 4.5 to a 5.5. And say we do a soil sample and then it comes back that we need to adjust the pH. That takes a little bit of time to play out like if you how we might want to raise our pH if our soils too acidic and here in Stone County a lot of soils typically like a 5.5 to 5.7 just naturally and for grass we want to raise that up a little bit or for vegetables we want to raise that up a little bit and we'll apply something like lime and there's all different types like there's your ag lime and your pelletized lime On our soil test, it gives a recommendation for how many pounds or how many tons per acre. And like if you're doing a garden, it'll be pounds per thousand square foot. If you're doing like a pasture or hay field, it'll be on pounds per acre or tons per acre. And we can put that out in the fall and it can change and be ready to go, change our pH by the time stuff starts growing in the spring. And I think I've talked about it on here before about how, you know, it can, if the pH isn't right, grass, even if our fertility's good and grass are, and there's plenty of nutrients, the soil, plant available nutrients in the soil, it might not be able to access them. It gets bound up in the soil. So we want to neutralize that soil with some ag lime if we need to raise the pH. If you need to lower the pH, we'll add stuff like sulfur. And typically, like most of your stores where you're buying fertilizer, they'll have like a soil sulfur. It's like 90%. And that'd be for something like someone growing blueberries or if you've got like acid-loving shrubs like azaleas or something. we'd want to add a little, keep that pH a little bit lower. But fall's a good time to do it. I mentioned cleaning up, your garden. Now would be a good time, cover with mulch or something, or if you're starting a new garden bed, we could lay down some black plastic and that'll kill all the grass underneath it. That way it'll make it for easier planting in the, when you start in the spring.

Yeah, you're not fighting.

Or if you're planting for like a, wanting to have like a cool season type garden, you know, you want to get prepared because that stuff's either start, you put it in the ground back in September or you can go in like in February and plant like your broccoli or lettuce or any of your cool season type crops. What else?

Anything like if you've got equipment?

Yeah, so tools, like if you're using like shovels and stuff, it'd be a good idea to sanitize them, wash them with some warm soapy water, add any lubricant, rust protectant type stuff, WD-40. If you got like some pruners, we're going to be doing some pruning possibly in late winter doing dormancy, especially if you got stuff like fruit trees or roses or anything that's going to be like summer flowering, like a crape myrtle. We typically want to prune those in dormancy because they're going to grow their flowers on the fresh new growth. For fruit trees, we're just going in there and doing some like You want to do heavy pruning during dormancy, like right before that rapid growth, but it'd be a good idea to make sure that those have been stored properly, you've cleaned them, sanitized them with some sort of disinfectant. A good disinfectant would be like a 10% bleach solution, but it is corrosive, so washing that off and lubricating so you don't have a big rusty mess when you go to use them next, but it'd be a good idea to clean up your tools and get them stored away properly for next season. Because if you're like me, you know, you'll lose something or you'll not store it properly and it gets messed up and you go to use it and then you're like, I'll just buy a new one.

Oh gosh, that can get expensive.

It can get expensive. So save yourself some money. Clean your tools, disinfect your tools. Think about whatever you've used that tool on. It got contaminated if you had problems with disease. These are just some small cultural practices that'll help, you know, help us out in the future. You know, I usually leave a lot of stuff for future me to deal with.

Yeah, current use not too worried about it.

And future me, he's usually a lot better about doing those things. But sometimes I get wild hair and I'm like, you know what? I'll be nicer to old future me. Treat.

Him better.

Treat him better and get it done. Well, thanks for listening. I think we'll want to call it good. Do you have anything else you want to talk about?

No, just happy Thanksgiving.

Have a happy Thanksgiving. And then Christmas is coming. You got your Christmas tree up.

No, I feel strongly the day after Thanksgiving. So my holiday, Christmas holiday decorations are out.

Yeah.

I love fall though. I love fall. but I do leave my Christmas decorations out till Elvis's birthday, which is January 8th.

Elvis the dog or Elvis the singer?

Well, I did have Elvis the dog, but Elvis the Presley, Elvis the Presley, Elvis Presley, the singer.

Yeah.

Cause I mean, there's nothing to look forward to seasonally.

You gonna hang up any Christmas lights?

I don't know if I'm gonna do lights this year.

When I was a kid, mom used to have me hang up Christmas lights and I'd get up in the trees and stroll them out. Mom said, it's so Santa Claus could see us.

Oh yeah, nowhere, nowhere else.

Yeah, see where the house is. So I'm more than willing to get up there and hang up those Christmas lights. But as I got older, I guess it was because of my bad behavior. I was like, Santa, he ain't coming. So I don't want to get up on the roof.

Yeah, you're going to get coal anyway.

Yeah, so I wasn't really worried about him finding where I was.

But, man, Santa, Santa still leaves me a stocking. I've been a good, I've been good.

I've been good in years.

That's probably accurate.

Yeah, I bet. Well, happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving.