Ep. 21 - Step Up Your Gardening Skills

This episode is pretty much all about gardening.  Tyler and Anna discuss gardening issues common to Arkansas.   Throughout the episode they discuss some simple garden practices that are easy to implement and greatly increase chances of growing a successful garden.  Check it out. 

Transcript

We're going. You ready to go?

Yeah, I'm ready.

We're going. We're doing a short pordcast. We're doing a pordcast this week, podcast. And we're just doing one to do one, I think. I said we just talk about gardening because it's really ramping up.

I've caught the fever. Now that I have flower beds, not so much vegetable gardening, but now that I have flower beds, I've been I need to be put on a budget.

Yeah, it can get real expensive real quick. And so I guess that's what we could talk about, some tips to ensure your success. This one's all about gardening, I guess, today, because it'll be easy and quick and hopefully we won't mess up a lot. And I can edit it real quick and get on to hope.

For iLead, yeah.

It is a shame for I lead that everything's 1,000,000 miles away.

To you anyway.

To me anyway. Yeah.

Everyone else may be happy about it.

Yeah, they're all happy. And I'm like, I got to drive 3 1/2 hours. I hope I can stay awake.

Well, you're the 25-26 class of I lead, and I'm going to be the 26-27th class of I lead.

Yeah. We're what? We're cohort 5, so y'all 6.

I'll be 6. back to gardening. So like I said, we have started our flower beds and I've been a little gung-ho, but I will add, I've only gotten perennial type plants. So whatever I'm doing, as long as I take good care of them and, you know, they're tough and survive, then I won't have to buy them again. So that's one positive about perennials.

Take care of them. So annuals, perennials, what's the difference? A perennial, like Anna said, is going to be one that comes back year to year. Think like a tree. Annual is going to complete its life cycle in one year. So it's going to, you know, plant the seed, come up, be a plant, flower, and then die. But in our garden, if we're dealing with the ornamentals, it's good to have a mixture of colors.

We forgot to unplug the phone, but we'll carry on.

Yeah, we're just going with it. It's one of those days. We had our asparagus class earlier today.

We did.

I think it went pretty well.

It was good. We pickled asparagus first and I was really happy. Not that I'm not love to have people come to my classes over and over again because I think that really reinforces, but it's always great to get some newbies. And usually when we partner, we'll get some new faces. And so we pickled asparagus. We did quart jars this time and they all looked wonderful and they all sealed.

We put in another bed out there at the community garden. So we've got We're in our second year with the beds we started last year and they haven't harvested any because with asparagus, you're not supposed to harvest a whole lot the first three or so years and they're kind of spindly looking already. The soil where we put them is not the best. So we're not going to harvest them until end of the 4th year. Realistically, if you plant asparagus, it's a good idea. You want to Probably preferably get like asparagus crowns. One guy that was here today, he was talking about starting them for seed. And I think the way he described it, he's trying to transplant them. And I don't, if I was starting from seed, I'd just, I would direct sow them into the bed where they're going to be. It takes like three additional years, I think, from seed. So whereas we're starting a crown and then on year 4, we're really able to get a full harvest. it's going to be, what, seven years before you're really able to start harvesting if you start from seed. So preferably you want to get asparagus crowns. It's makes it, it'll speed you up a little bit. But first year, you know, you plant them this spring and you can plant them here in Arkansas from like, as soon as you can get out there and work the soil, get you, know, start preparing it, dig you a trench, plant them about 9 or so, 9, 12 inches deep, and then cover those crowns with a little bit of soil. And then as it grows, slowly fill in that trench. But we can plant from now until June 1st. Asparagus is typically one of the first things that pops up in the spring. We want to harvest it from about, March when it ours popped up in March and got hit by the frost, but then harvest it from April to June and then let it go to, I call it fern. People were saying fern. Yeah.

It's fern.

I think it's fern is what they, that's what I call it.

I call it frond.

I'm not confident.

Let's see.

But, so asparagus, if you, now's a good time to plant some asparagus if you want to have it. One thing about it, is one of those perennials. Whereas most of our vegetables, we treat them like an annual crop. We, you know, grow, start them in seeds, grow on transplants or buy transplants, and then plant them in our garden. with asparagus, we kind of want them in a location that we're okay with them being there for the next 15 to 20 years. So if you're going to plant out your garden and want some perennials, think about that. It's going to come back year to year. What'd you find out?

I didn't really find out anything, but apparently there is a fern asparagus that's like a house plant. So my Google search was confused.

Yeah. I wish they wouldn't. It's like, as long as these search engines have gone on, it's like the worst.

They feel like they get worse. It seemed like you used to could put anything into them and it would be like, how did it find that? And it would give you a really good resource. And now it's like, it seems like ads, people paying maybe rules the roost.

Half the time you like look at the AI and you're like.

I know that's wrong.

Yeah, I know. What are you talking about?

Yeah.

Just sometimes just make stuff up. So you got to be careful about that. I was listening to a podcast earlier and the guy is, you know, a bigger podcast and they were talking about gardening on there. And I was just like, Even I was like, you're doing it wrong. He's talking about stuff like, and he's like, I ain't able to get anything. I was like, yeah, you're doing it wrong.

I think people just make up stuff about gardening. I've seen such terrible advice, or it'll be someone with a big flat platform and they've never done it before. And they're like, this is how you do it.

Yeah, you see a lot of that.

It's like you've never done it.

I see a lot of like YouTubers get on there and that's, they're like, And it's like, I know you've never done it. Like, yeah.

You could tell. And in two gardening, what may work the first year may never work again.

Yeah.

With, you start getting the weeds and the bug pressure and things like that. It seems like when you open a new spot, it seems to be free of a lot of issues.

Why is that the case, you think?

Obviously the bugs are like unaware that you're going to be there. And then, you've taken out all the perennial type plants and then boom, next year, surprise.

So that we can use that to our advantage and do what's called crop rotation. So You think about it, you're planting the same thing year after year. Tomatoes go in the same place. Or let's use squash, because everybody, like squash bugs, everybody battles them. And it's hard. Once you get them, it's hard to deal with them.

Have you ever tried to squish one of them? I have literally taken my fingernail, separated 1 in half, and the front half walked away.

I'm just like, maybe he didn't survive very long.

Well, maybe not, but he walked away.

Yeah, they're tough little creatures.

They are tough.

But so squash bugs, attack any type of squash. And it's like once squash bugs get, they'll get into like a few different things. Like there's several things that are related to squash. But what if we could, if we're putting squash same place year to year, those squash bugs know, this is where I live, this is where I can stay, and my favorite food's going to be here. And that's where I go year to year. Whereas when crop rotation, you know, we're not planting the same thing the same place year to year. We're moving it around our garden.

I think, too, that's also where cleaning out your cleaning up well at the end of season instead of just letting everything die and stay because they can harbor or different plants or if you leave wood and different things out there, right?

Sanitation's gonna be, if you're having issues, that's like other than like checking your soil. And like, how we always say, like someone will call in, well, first thing you do is you need to test your soil. There's a, I got a story about that. I had a guy come in and he was like, he's like, I'm having problems raising my chickens. And I was like, what do you, what do you mean? What are you having disease issues? He's like, I just can't get any of them to hatch. And I was like, well, how are you doing it? And he said, well, I go out and he said, I get in my tractor and I really prepare the soil. I get it. I get it nice, well-prepared seedbed where you can go out and you put a footprint and it just makes a, you know, a perfect footprint. And then I plant the eggs and And then wait, water them for weeks and nothing happens.

What did you say you're planting?

Eggs. He's trying to get chickens. And so.

You're lying.

No, he come in and he said that. And I said, I was like, are you serious, dude?

Are you? are lying to me.

No, I was like, dude, are you a dummy? You're planting eggs. Did you even do a soil test?

Oh my gosh. I walked right into that.

But anyways, in gardening, soil testing is important, but then stuff is going wrong, you're getting disease and stuff's not growing well. Probably the next thing is your cultural sanitation practices. You're being nasty around your plants and they're getting disease. Like even...

That reminds me of a story. where some people that worked with Brandon said, this one guy, he was a naked gardener.

What's a naked gardener? Is he doing it naked or?

Oh, he was in a naked gardener. Excuse me. Naked ones when you're up to something. I think he was just gardening. You're going to have to get this out.

Naked gardening.

This guy would be like, you better call me before you come over.

Call me before you because he's doing naked gardening, not naked gardening.

Yeah, naked gardening.

What is naked now?

Naked means you're up to something and naked. Naked is you're up to something in the nude. And naked, you're just nude.

Naked, you're just nude enjoying yourself. Naked, you're up to something. Okay.

If you went streaking, you were naked.

Yeah, okay. I never done that.

Shoot.

My goodness, we're.

We became popular. We became popular. I know somebody who's grown and married, and when the Hogs won a certain baseball game and went to Omaha, they went streaking. Not very far.

I'm sorry if you're hearing this on the podcast. We're just like, I'm not going to do much editing other than at the beginning and at the end.

We didn't have a lot of time this week today. This afternoon was our only time and I had to take Stormy to the vet, so I pushed us late.

And Madison's out there all by herself, probably like, yeah, sorry folks, but so we've we've determined What's the difference in naked and naked? Do a soil test, crop rotation.

Don't plant eggs.

Quit being nasty around your plants and getting them up. You'd think, you know, they could tolerate a little bit of dirt since they grow her out of the dirt, but think of this. So I've seen this happen to where somebody, you know, they get a plant and plant it out in the garden and you baby it, water it, fertilize it, grow it up, and right before it's about to give you some fruit, whatever it is, it just dies. We send it to the lab and it's got a virus. where'd that virus come from? Well, that virus could have come from dirty hands planting that seed. And so we have to kind of be real particular about cleanliness when dealing with plants. There are like some, you can find it online, like doing heat treatments to seeds that kind of sterilize them. I've tried it before. I didn't notice much difference, but I, you know, I didn't see any disease pressure, but they still sprouted anyway. We heated them up and it was like, you know, at this type of seed at this certain pressure, I think I found a fact sheet on that is from Utah or somewhere. It was extension base.

I remember you doing that. I remember you being really careful disinfecting everything.

And then as, but theoretically, if you have, wash your hands, make sure you don't have, one thing is like, I learned this in college, is like if you're smoking or use tobacco products and you're touching tomato plants or tomato seeds, you can transmit that tobacco mosaic virus. And so be.

That's wild. You wouldn't think that after all that processing, it would still.

Yeah, it can. So we could. transmit disease at seeding. Another thing I've seen happen is people get compost from, the neighbor next door who's a farmer and got, they've got cattle or horses or something and they get that manure and then put it out in their garden and then all of a sudden their plants start getting herbicide injury. What's happened? Well, certain herbicides can pass through that animal. Like you could spray it and the next day or day of, they could graze behind it because it's so on the label. But it'll pass through them and end up in their manure at a high enough concentration that it can damage plants.

I think you've had a phone call about that with horse manure.

So let's say, okay, what happens if we've done that? How long? is it going to stay in my garden? Well, it's hard to say. What you can do is take that manure and do what's called a bioessay, where you get some sort of seed that you know is good that's going to germinate and you plant it in that manure. And then if it, I think like pumpkins are real susceptible, tomatoes pretty susceptible, but you start that seed and then it shows signs and As long as it's still showing signs of getting hit with that herbicide, then it's no good. But once it does, once it shows that it could survive, then you could use it. And it's just about a timing thing that the herbicide is going to break down over time with sunlight and depending on what the half-life is. But how long it could be in your soil if you put it out there, who knows? Like the, I went to a training the other day and we asked one of the specialists and he's like, organic gardening says no, you can't use restricted products for three years. He's like, so maybe three years, but there's no real research. And so what he recommended is if you got that manure, and you're not sure what it's been fed, do that bioassay where you plant some seeds in it and just see if they sprout and show any signs of that herbicide injury. So there's you another tip. What other tips we got? Got the tips of our fingers.

Speaking of that, so I was working in my garden and I noticed one of the cats had decided that my flowerbed was its litter box. So maybe glove and hand protection when you're working in the soil would be a positive.

Yeah.

I know armadillos can dig into things.

I remember, do you ever watch that show House?

A little bit.

I remember I seen an episode, or I think I did, where this kid, he was, He couldn't talk, but he'd like, he'd ended up having worms from eating raccoon poop from playing in a sandbox. So, you want to be careful. And it's that type of show today.

Man, worms.

Yeah. I thought I had worms once.

I got worms. It wasn't worms, but I thought I had worms. One of my nephews had worms. My mother-in-law said she just wormed the kids every so often out of good measure.

Have you ever heard like how they'd say to tell if you had worms? Yes. I wonder if that really worms.

The flashlight check at night.

Well, not only that, but like putting tape over yourself, your ****. So like they'll come out at night. I heard that, like they'd come out at night and so you'd put tape over. And then the next morning you check yourself. I don't know if that's real, but I've heard that.

Don't know if that's an extension based resource.

That's not extension based. That was just, I was saying that's something I'd heard. I would probably we get calls about everything. And I mean, I've had to, you've.

Had to check some samples. For bugs.

Yeah, check samples for bugs that there were no bugs and people coming in showing me they thought they had like a bug in their skin, but I couldn't see nothing. But usually. So it's like, what I recommend is go to the doctor. So if you think you have worms, go to the doctor.

Unidentified bugs, go to the doctor.

Yeah, go to the doctor. Back to gardening.

Did somebody bring a kissing bug in one time?

It was assassin bugs of some sort. I don't know if it's an actual kissing bug.

I remember that.

But I've had all sorts of stuff brought in.

Bringing your bugs.

Yep, bringing your snakes. I'll ID them. I like snakes.

Yeah, you've caught a few snakes. You probably shouldn't have through the years.

What else you got this week?

Tomorrow, from where we're recording, is the meat evaluation contest. And then Thursday, I'm going to attend FCS Day at the Capitol and our state Capitol.

And then- What are y'all going to do?

I'm not sure. I know that several are going to have displays and I think there's going to be like a meeting and hopefully.

I'm going in there, throwing sourdough at everybody. Here you go.

No.

Oh, we were just, we'd made a bunch of sourdough and we were tossing it out to the senators and it got a little wild.

Negative. And And I don't know, I've never been to FCS Day at the Capitol. 4H Day at the Capitol was fun with the kids. And then after that, I have Music Roots concert with my girl. It's going to be Folk Fest this weekend. And so the Music Roots kids have concerts on Thursday night. So if you're in town, come on over. And Friday, yeah, Folk Fest. And so there's Folk Fest.

You remember when we were trying to describe Bean Fest and it's like, well, I've never actually been.

You've never been to Bean Fest?

I've never been to Bean Fest, like other than like in the evening.

So fun fact, the festivals were like the only time I felt like Robin let me run wild and free as a kid. And so I love festival time. It's my mom was a little strict.

Were you in the rig where we got pulled over by BJ? Like we were driving in the traffic and it was like there was a bunch of us in my car.

No, we had to come pick up. some of your people one time. Oh, were you with us the time that I had my marshmallow gun I bought at one of the festivals?

And we got yelled at.

I shot, I was pretty accurate. And I shot a guy in his little fancy car and through his window and hit him. And he came over there. And I think he thought y'all did it. And he started to yell at them. And I'm like, I did it. And he wouldn't yell at me. He kept yelling at the guys. And then I hit someone else's car. I mean, it was a mini marshmallow. My goodness. Good grief.

We're trying to give you a treat. You're acting like we're a bunch of jerks.

You should have just opened your mouth.

Yeah.

But you would think I was like shooting rocks at people's cars for goodness sakes. I was just a teenager. My goodness. That used to be prime cruising time was the festivals. Anyway, Fridays we have our strawberry class, our first ever. And then Saturday, me and Brandon are going to the shooting sports training. And guess what? It's festival. So there's a like 80% chance of rain on Saturday.

Yeah. Something needed to break the drought. We were thinking we were going to have to have a drought meeting just to end the drought. I was like, well, I mean, theoretically, like mid-May, if the drought ain't broken, or if we're seeing like it ain't, I say we plan a drought meeting.

For a field day.

Yeah, a drought field day, and I guarantee it'll rain.

Your field day is pretty Johnny on the spot. It's either going to be the hottest day of the year or it's going to rain.

Yeah. But as long as I don't fall down, it'll be a good. So wrap up today. We've asparagus, talked asparagus, talked some gardening tips. This one again, all about gardening today. You got any other gardening tips, any old-timey gardening tips?

I know one thing that I've done that freaks people out is so tomatoes, when you plant them and they're little and if they're already bloomed. One year, my husband's grandma was like, oh, I feel sorry for so-and-so. She was pinching the blooms off the tomatoes, she told me. She doesn't have a clue what she were doing. She had no idea that I'd pinched the blooms off of all of them when I planted them because they were just like a foot tall and I really wanted them to focus on the roots. Is that a?

The thought process behind it is, if we're just now planting a transplant, it's going to go through a little bit of shock from going to the tray into the ground. And so we don't want it to really focus a lot of energy into trying to develop fruit right away. So yeah, we'd want to pluck them blooms off. So it puts a little bit more energy into getting the roots developed a little bit more. before we start allowing it to go through fruit. So what'll happen, a thing lining with that is what'll happen during the summertime when it gets really hot, like starts getting above 95 degrees, a lot of plants will quit blooming. And it's just, it's due to the weather. You just either wait it out till the weather starts cooling off, or you can try to force it to bloom. And we do that by stressing the plant. So we'll go in and just break off or prune off a little piece of that plant, and it kind of sends stress signals to the plant saying, oh no, I'm dying. I need to, you know, extend my bloodline and make some seeds, make some fruit, and it'll kind of force it to bloom.

Really? I've never heard that.

So another tip there. What would be another good thing?

If you have blossom end rot, what should they do? Because inevitably you're going to get that question.

Blossom end rot, it'll happen in tomatoes, peppers. I think I've seen it. I think it can happen in squash. Blossom end rot is a, it's not a disease, it's a nutrient deficiency. And you're typically deficient in calcium is what's happened. And then what happens is it's not always that your, you know, your soil doesn't have calcium in it. It's that that calcium's bound up in the soil and the plant can't take it up. Could be due to your pH being off, or it could be that you're watering too much, or it could be that you're not watering enough, or it could be that there just isn't enough calcium there. They do, you know, so what to do if we have that? They do make some like foliar sprays that I've read mixed articles. Some have said that they They work. Others, maybe not so much. But so how can we prevent it is make sure that we have enough calcium or nutrient, that calcium in our soil. And we don't want to add a bunch of lime, but some people like throw a little bit of lime in when they, or some Tums. I've heard of people like doing that, taking a Tums. And like when they go to plant their transplant, they throw that Tums in the bottom. But We can also use, if you're using commercial fertilizer, something like calcium nitrate. It's water soluble and you can put that in there. But it's blossom end rots and nitrogen are calcium deficiency. I used to know like how to, like where to look at the plant and what all the nutrient deficiencies, because all them nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, they can be mobile or immobile in the plant. And depending on where you're having issues show up can kind of point to that nutrient deficiency. So nitrogen is one that I remember. It's mobile. So if there's a, if your plant is nutrient or deficit, what am I trying to say? Nutrient deficit deficient. If it's deficient of nitrogen, it will take nitrogen away from the older plants since it's mobile and move it to the younger plants. So you'll start seeing symptoms of yellowing like in your older, it's typically lower leaves of a plant. So you can see that and be like, okay, maybe I need to add some nitrogen. Whereas iron's another one that's really easy to identify. You'll get what's called iron chlorosis where the veins of the leaves will be like green or bright green and then in between it'll be the yellowish color. Have you ever seen that? Like it's not naturally that way, but I have seen it. That's an iron deficiency. And that'll happen a lot in like blueberries. And most of the time that's because the pH is off.

Now they like the sole pretty acidic.

They like it to be acidic, like 4.5, between 4.5 and 5.5, whereas most of our other vegetables like to be right around that six to seven range. blueberries like to be acidic. And if, a lot of people around here, we're like right on the line of like a 5.7. So we're too acidic for like vegetables. So we need to add a little bit of lime, but it's a little bit too alkaline for blueberries. And so we need to add some sulfur to bring it down a little bit. But if you haven't prepared your soil beforehand, and you put those blueberries out there or that plant out there and it ain't able to access those nutrients, those deficiencies show up. And so that's why we always say, soil test first thing. So you kind of know where you're starting at.

Do you know if the, I've heard people talk about like pH testers they have going out and testing the soil. Are those accurate? Do you know?

I'm sure they're somewhat, like probably within, a couple of points. I don't know. I've never used one, but I would imagine there would.

But a soil test will give you an accurate.

Well, yeah, a soil test will give you, if you do an accurate soil test, like if you go out and dig one spot and bring that in, and that represents, you know, 20 acres. Yeah, maybe that's not a real accurate test. But If you do a good soil test, yeah, it'd be pretty accurate. Like if you're getting a good representation of the tire area that you're wanting to know about.

How many samples would that be?

15 to 20. The more you get, the more it's representative, the more better it's going to be. Soil testing, oh, I was going to mention sprays. So one thing we do here in Arkansas have to deal with is a bunch of diseases. I know people will say, well, I want to go organic. Again, that goes back to your cultural practices, selecting for disease resistance, selecting the right varieties that a little bit more resistant to the diseases. But that doesn't, you know, it's resistant, doesn't mean immune. You could still end up with that disease. So one thing we might recommend if you've had problems with disease, not only doing that crop rotation will help, but maybe doing a therapeutic fungicide spray program. We have to do this in fruit trees to where we're going out weekly spraying every 7 to 10 days. Like if you have problems with early blight or late blight in tomatoes, we're using some sort of fungicide spray. There are organic labeled fungicide sprays. You'd be looking for OMRI, OMRI approved, or using something like chlorothalonil is pretty good general garden fungicide. For insects, we battle insects. Japanese beetles have becoming a big issue. We, Master Gardeners, had a girl come in and talk about beneficial insects. And they sell, like their company sells beneficial insects, but they said that if you do it right, you could, it will work. And it makes sense, like using predators like lacewings, their larva, I guess, will eat aphids. So if you have aphid issues, predatory mites to eat, you know, spider mites and other problem-causing mites. And then there's beneficial nematodes that will get in the soil and they'll kill harmful nematodes. That is an option for you. But just Knowing the management practices you can do and giving your garden the best opportunity to thrive, making sure we're providing water, that's probably a lot of what people forget about.

It's not a lot of fun to water a bunch of fruit trees with a water hose or a water tank.

Yeah, fruit trees garden, it's going to need water. What I've always heard about anything people are trying to grow, you ask, well, how much water per week? And any specialist I've ever heard about pretty much anything you ask is like the equivalent would be an inch to an inch and a half of rain per week. So we want to provide water, weekly water. If it's real hot outside, that might be you're providing a little bit per day. Water is going to be essential. Again, check your soil so you know the fertility. Follow good fertility practices. Follow good cultural practices. Make sure we're not bringing any disease in. We're doing crop rotation. We're able to identify bugs and know if it's a good bug or a bad bug and if it's at a threshold that we need to actually do something. Any other tips?

I really liked the Japanese beetle traps, personally, for my fruit trees.

Well, I'm now mixed on them, the more I kind of review them. First I read an article.

I'm not saying that's going to keep you from spraying.

No, but it's good if you got them.

Oh, I'm not about to put that out unless I already have them.

So that's one thing I read about it.

Because it attracts them to it.

Yeah, it's got a pheromone in it that they get attracted to it and then they get in there and they drown, I guess. They can't get out. They can't get out. But if you don't have problems with Japanese beetles, you put that pheromone trap out there, well, you're going to attract them in. If you have them hanging enough up, probably preferably away from your garden to lower the population. One thing that beneficial insect lady said is they, I think it was beneficial nematodes, you put them in the soil and they had done a trial and those nematodes attacked those Japanese beetle grubs. They're living in the soil and they said it, they had a lower population. They didn't, they, she said that they didn't have to deal with them hardly as much as they used to. So maybe that's an option. I have to see more research about it before I'm like, yeah, that's the way to go. But it is something, as a gardener, it's like we try different things, you know, we can experiment with stuff. Seems like there was one more thing I was going to say that popped into my mind that I was like, oh, that'd be good. But I can't remember.

Do you know what it was about?

No.

Oh, when we had somebody in today talking about having a bunch of radish tops that reminded me of that story about your family planning all the radishes and nobody liked radishes.

Yeah, we'd had, dad was out there, he'd plowed all the stuff, and we'd like, we were doing like with the strings out there, spacing them out all nice. And just like, we're planting a bunch of radishes, who eats them? And he's like, I don't eat them. It turned out nobody really liked radishes, but we were planting a bunch.

That's funny.

I see my Uncle Fred earlier when I went over to Subway to get something, he said that they're, There was a freeze in Florida, pretty much wiped out the tomato crop. He said they're having trouble getting tomatoes.

Already.

Wow. So he said you could, they run a fruit stand and he's said you could travel to Birmingham, Alabama. And he said it's like $80 a box. I think that's what he said.

So tomatoes might be a thing. Tomatoes expensive right now.

Well, he said, you know, they've got them at Walmart and and they're really not any more expensive. And I was like, I would imagine they probably got access to them greenhouses. Like up north, that's what they're growing stuff in greenhouses year round. Like 40 acre greenhouses.

Wow.

Yeah, huge.

One greenhouse.

Huge greenhouses, yeah.

How about hailstorms are a major deal?

I don't know. Well, it's like up north. Do they get hailstorms up there?

Yeah, I think so. I don't know.

I've never been outside of Arkansas. I've never left. I've never left Stone County.

They still get ice storms up north and all kinds of things.

Well, all right, gardening episode. It's about 40-ish minutes. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Any more funny things? You got a funny.

Not off the top of my head.

I can't think of a funny thing either off the top of my head. well. We'll wrap it up.

I guess that's it. Is that it?

I don't know. You got anything else?

I don't know.

Yeah, that's good. Tips, tips, tips. Got it. listen to our podcast. Oh, I remember what I was gonna say. We were getting, we're getting a lot of weird downloads from all over the world.

So who are you?

Yeah. Is this a like AI?

Is this a person or is it a robot?

Are we trying to get scammed?

Maybe whenever the Artemis went around, it picked up a few aliens.

Yeah. Now we're getting these aliens to listen. I don't know. Think it's a good episode. good enough?

I think it's fine.

I think it's fine.

I mean, it's hard not to get excited when the temperatures are getting warm and you finally get to plant something. So good luck.

Good luck. All right. See you next time.

Oh, I didn't know we were.