Episode 1 - Introduction

The first episode serves as an introduction to the podcast. UGA Extension Horticulturalist Dr. Lenny Wells talks with host, Andrew Sawyer, about the new podcasts, upcoming episodes, the 2025 pecan crop, and finally, a brief synopsis of subjects covered during county production meetings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Whether it's pecan or pecan, we cover it all. Orchard management, growth and development, pest management, economics, from extension specialists, scientists, county agents, industry representatives, and growers. Brought to you by the University of Georgia Pecan team. In a nutshell, the Pecan Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Stallier. Hey everybody, I am Andrew Stallier. I'm Area Pecan Agent, Southeast Georgia with the University of Georgia Extension Service. This is episode one of our new podcast, and I'm joined today with Dr. Lenny Wells. Lenny, introduce yourself for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, I'm Lenny Wells, a professor of horticulture and extension specialist for pecans with the University of Georgia.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

And you know, for this podcast, you know, let's talk about what we're going to do. I'm going to be the host, and Lenny and I like baseball. I'll just tell you straight up. This probably couldn't have started at a better time because the opening day was this weekend. But I'm going to be the host of this podcast. And Lenny, I think it would be perfect for you to be the color commentator.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, I like that approach too. I think that's that's a good way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So, you know, what do we want this to be? Well, definitely, of course, everything pecans, everything pecans. Definitely the production side. So, what goes into making that pecan from April all the way to August and September, how they're grown. We need to talk about their management practices. And we might even do a little history as well. And we plan on discussing just a lot of the aspects of the industry, and we're going to feature various guests and other experts in the field. So that's kind of our long-term goals. Most likely we're going to start with the Pecon team at the University of Georgia, research scientists who work in specific fields. We got pathology, we got entomology, we have breeding. And of course, Lenny is our horticulturalist, and I am a support for that entire team.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Well, Andrew, let me let me mention one thing right here. Uh kind of picked up on as you were talking to start out. You said pecans and then you said pecans. Yes. And one one question I get all the time to the point that I'm kind of tired of getting it. Um how do you say it? Is it pecans or pecans? Well, let's get that out of the way right up front. So so what do you what do you say it is?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

You know, I have always come up saying pecan. And I actually, this is funny, but I did an ag day down in Pierce County this past week, and I got to talk to it was 400 kids coming from three different three or four different grades. And you know, in our world, Lenny, we we deal with the science. So we but when you go down and you present to the kids, you know, you gotta think of something else because a lot of what we talk about, I mean, they don't understand it, they just need to learn about the crop. So I showed them all these different jars of varieties, but part of my part of my presentation, I said, you know what, I need to know what they say. And I think of the 400 they told me that came through, almost everyone said pecans. And I think I had about six or seven, maybe eight, that said pecan. And I myself, being with y'all on the team and getting to travel and go to different states, I've kind of seen in Georgia we tend to be about 50%. At least from what I say. But I would like to hear what you say. But I'll tell you, when you cross the Alabama line, you better say pecan. So what do you normally say?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, I use both. I mean, it really just depends sometimes on the setting I'm in. Like if I'm giving a presentation or something, a lot of times I'll say pecan. If I'm working in the orchard, especially, especially if I'm aggravated with something in the orchard, I'll say pecan, I'll say pecan. Um, the best definition I've ever heard of this, or the best explanation, is I had a uh grower one time tell me when they're a dollar a pound, they're pecans. When they're two dollars a pound, they're pecans.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

How about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So that's kind of the definition of I've gone with on that.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

And you know, there's a there's almost a little bit deeper history of it, too. I don't know if we go into that this time, but that would be a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

We'll save that for for a later episode because we can get get get deep in that.

Beginner Topics And Upcoming Episodes

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Well, you know, in the first few episodes, we definitely want to cover some of the topics we cover in our PCAM Beginners Production class. We're gonna probably talk about economics of which is coming up here this week. Yeah, what yep, that'll be um March 31st. So most people are already registered. Yeah, we're right ahead of this. And um we'll talk about varieties, we're gonna talk about irrigation, and we still need to talk about planting care of young trees, you know. We're replanting a lot of trees right now after Hurricane Helene. And obviously, you got irrigation, that's a big and then your pest control, insect, disease, weed management, of course, equipment. So these are some of the first things we might talk about in these first few episodes.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah, and if you're uh if you weren't able to make it to our beginners class or or you're and you're still interested in this stuff, here's your chance coming up here in our next few episodes.

What Went Wrong With Last Crop

SPEAKER_00 6:14

And you know, we're just coming off of our annual county production meetings. That happens every year from January through the end of March. And these are counties that request the Pican team to come down to their county and share the new research information or update in this first episode. It wouldn't be a bad idea to kind of touch on some of those things we've discussed in our county meetings. Like, and I have an idea. What about last year's crop, Lenny?

Rain Driven Scab And Low Sun

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah, so that's you know, when we do these meetings, that's kind of what I've been leading off with is what happened to last year's crop, because there was a lot of growers that were disappointed out there last year when they got to harvest. And, you know, some of those issues were the the main issue was when they started harvesting, um the yields weren't there there like they thought they were. Um the wagons they'd haul into the cleaning plant after they ran through that cleaning plant, a lot of the a lot of it would blow out the other end uh in in the form of bad nuts. And so kind of what was going on there, you know, environmental conditions always influence production. Last year was almost a nightmare scenario of everything you don't want to happen in growing a pecan crop. Started off with, you know, through the summer, throughout the most of the growing season, we had excessive rain. And you would think for growing a crop of anything, rain's a good thing. Well, for pecans here in the southeast, it's not really the best thing. Most of our acreage is irrigated, so we can water those trees to get them the water they need. But when we're having to deal with rain, the problem there is uh our biggest disease that we have to battle every year, pecan scab. Uh it's a fungal disease, the more, and we'll you we'll talk a lot about this on this podcast over the different episodes. But the more rainfall you get, uh the more frequent that rainfall is, the worse the scab uh pressure is. And what scab does is it, you know, you get little black spots on the leaves that that can get to the point that they cause the leaves to fall off. Uh and then when the nuts start to form in size, you get scab on those nuts, and those nuts can scab up enough uh that they drop off if you're not trying to manage that disease. But also, even if you're managing it and you're you're able to basically win the battle and get the nut to harvest, uh, a lot of times you you get so much scab on there that it affects the quality. So that was one thing that was playing into it last year. Along with that rainfall, of course, we get cloudy weather. And when you have a lot of cloud cover, um, you've got less sunshine. And less sunshine is going to cause a reduction in photosynthesis to some extent, and that's going to affect nut production. So that played into it as well. Usually we see a lot of years where we have a lot of cloud cover, we get those issues. But I think the nail in the coffin, and probably one of the biggest things we had to deal with last year, was when we got to about mid-August. From then to about November, we hardly had any rain throughout a large chunk of the state. And that really wreaks havoc on a pecan crop because that's happening at a really critical time in the life of that nut. There's a lot of stress on the tree at that time of year anyway, because it's carried that crop load to just about to maturity, and it's trying to determine what kind of crop it's going to have next year. And so when all this stress happens, we end up getting uh some abortion of those nuts, and we'll have what we call sprouting, which is basically vibipary, which is the premature sprouting of those nuts while they're on the tree. Um we'll get what we call embryo rot, which the the kernel itself inside there kind of rots. And so you get a lot of the shucks that stick tight on the tree. We call them stick tights to where they don't really open up like they're supposed to, usually in October, because you have to have good soil moisture to get those shucks to open. And then also, if you don't have a kernel in there that to produce ethylene, that shuck is not going to open up. So you got all these issues uh related to the environmental problems that we had last year, um, and that was a big chunk of some of the issues that we saw. Another thing we talk about a lot in these county meetings, and it kind of plays into some of what we saw with the crop, is is um what we've learned about how pecans here in the southeast use water. And I won't go into great detail about this right now because we'll have an upcoming episode about it. Um, but basically we've we've learned that our trees, uh in some of our research here in the last couple of years, we've learned that our trees here in the southeast don't need a whole lot of water in April and early May. They tend to get most of what they need from rainfall. And then kind of peak water demand on the crop is from June or late May to early June as those nuts are set and start to size all the way through uh kernel filling, which is completed about the middle of September. After that, we see again a reduction in the water use by the tree. So, based on all this, we've we've made a lot of changes to uh our irrigation recommendations, and we'll be talking about that some later episodes. But that's been a big thing we've talked about. Um, and then also uh slowing down the growth on some of our young trees. I mean, we've had a lot of hurricanes over the past several years that has had a big impact on our state uh acreage and on a lot of our growers. And you know, one of the issues with that, we're really good at growing pecan trees, and we can grow them fast, and that's one of the goals is you want to get that tree into production as quickly as possible because it's eaten up a lot of resources out there on your land, and you want to start paying for itself. And we got really good at growing them fast, but I think we were growing them too fast, and that we were getting the tops of those trees that were kind of outgrowing what that root system could support. Um, they weren't getting good anchorage when we were just babying them with a lot of uh irrigation and stuff. The the feeder roots uh kind of stayed right there on top of, you know, near the surface, and those are going to blow down really easily in the wind. Um so we're recommending slowing down on the growth of a lot of these young trees, reducing the amount of water, reducing the amount of fertilizer that we give give them. And we'll talk some about that later too. You know, one issue we've got right now is is these high fertilizer fertilizer prices that we're seeing, um, based on, you know, of course, uh a lot of political stuff going on, and and you know, we generally recommend when we're applying fertilizer to or and and specifically I'm talking here about nitrogen. Um, we're generally recommended to split those applications so we don't put it all out at once. Well, this is a great year to try to do that because uh fertilizer prices right now, as of last week, um, have gone up 52% on nitrogen. You know, last year at this time I think it was about 60 cents per unit, and now I believe I heard last week it was like 91 cents per unit. So it's gone up quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And so people understand that has to do with the strait. In other words, a lot of the urea it's a it's a global market, you know, for for our fertilizer. And so much of it runs through the strait, and that's what's being impacted, just so they understand what's happening just with that nitrogen.

Late Season Drought Damage Explained

SPEAKER_01 13:51

So, what's going on there? I mean, 45% of the world's urea comes through the Strait of Hormuz. And not all over the course is coming here, and we get our nitrogen from other places too, manufacture some of it here. But um, like you said, uh that nitrogen fertilizer is a global market. So when anything happens to restrict that supply, it causes an immediate spike in the prices, and that's what we're seeing right now. Hopefully that'll go down at some point. There's concern also that we may get limited uh at some point too. So it could get better, it could get worse. But you know, it is a good practice to split those applications of nitrogen. You need about three quarter half to three-quarters of it uh in the spring, uh, because that's really when pecans take up a lot of that nitrogen. And then what we generally recommend is when you do that, then you kind of take a look at your crop later in the summer. If there's not much of a crop there, that that uh amount that you put out in the spring is going to be plenty for the trees. Uh if you've got a big crop, then you can come back with some more. And that would be the case this year. And if you do, hopefully the prices will be lower at that point. But if for some reason uh the supply gets restricted and we're not able to get get that later in the season, pecan growers need to realize that they're in a very fortunate position to be growing a long-lived perennial crop in regard to this particular issue because pecan trees uh are able to store a lot of that energy that they would need to produce that crop. We see oftentimes when we're doing uh research on fertilizer, uh, you know, we'll always have a control treatment that does not get any fertilizer. And what you see repeatedly in these in the research that I've done and research that others did way before me is that you generally can go two to three years at least before you see any drop in um production or quality or the leaf nitrogen levels in that tree. Uh, you can go two or three years with no fertilizer before you see any drop like that. And we don't recommend you know doing that, we recommend fertilizing annually. But if something happened and you had to put out a little less this year, it's not going to be the end of the world. Um, those trees will be fine. Um and then kind of the last thing that I've generally been talking about is variety choices. So uh, you know, not much has changed there. Um if you're planting pecan trees here in Georgia, the our recommendation is that you plant a variety that has uh good disease resistance to deal with that scab situation that I described earlier. Um, and you want something that has a high yield potential. So a lot of our older trees, older varieties may not have a real high yield potential. And we need varieties that are going to produce consistently somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds an acre, as opposed to 800 to 1200 pounds an acre. So that's kind of the stuff I've been covering. You want to touch on what uh has been going on with insect management just real quick?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Yeah, very simple. The main thing in insect management that our entomologist, uh Dr. Perva Barman, has talked about is really a lot on ambrosia beetles, it's just understanding that flight of the female uh beetle in February that attacks mostly first and second year trees. So the ambrosia beetle is a predictable pest of those first and second, particularly first and second year, as those trees coming out of the nursery are stressed from that transplanting, and that's all it is. But that female beetle, she just responds to the pheromone of that tree. And how do you recognize it? You have to you can either put out traps, but it's really a just a log of there's a number of trees you can use, like a cherry tree, that you cut down into about two foot, uh, three foot is plenty sufficient of a small log, and that log you can drill out the top and put denatured alcohol in a hole with a cork on it, and that ethylene is what those beetles are attracted to. Some people say, Why would you do that and bring the beetles there? Well, it's the beetles are gonna come out in February regardless, and this is the female, but if you can bait her to that trap on the edge of your orchard between your orchard and the and the woods, she can go there first and she'll bore into that bolt and push out the sawdust, what we call frass, and it'll look like a toothpick, and that's what you're looking for on those first and second year trees. If you see it on your trees, you need to treat that really quick. And it depends on how many beetles attack a tree before that tree dies, but it does stop the vascular flow of water coming up that tree, and um And it's stopping it because of that fungus the beetle has taken into that hole with it.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

The beetle actually feeds herself of that fungus, you know. So um um she's not actually feeding on the tree. So, and because of her not feeding on the tree, that's why your pyrethoid insecticide is best for the treatment of that bifenthrin. Uh, there's actually a national committee of entomologists working on this, and the ambrosia beetles attack other trees that become. But the bifenthrin does have some ability to sustain itself. You know, the sunlight breaks this stuff down a lot. That way it targets the beetle. But in metacloprinate, people ask, well, what about that going up into the xylem? She's not feeding on the tree, so it's a little bit different with that ambrosia beetle. And then in mature trees, this is the right time to mention phyloxra. That's the little galls that you see on the leaves after the leaves come out. The phyloxra is a tiny aphid-like insect that creates that gall. It overwinters in the bark of the trees. And when that bud breaks, it goes straight to that bud and starts feeding. And as the leaf comes out, those galls form, and that insect is inside those galls. So once you see the galls in late April and May, there's nothing you can do to alleviate that insect. And so right now is actually the only time you can do it. And we have bud break, the varieties are breaking different on bud. So some have already come out past two inches right now. And if you get that far out, we're probably too late for an application of iminocloprid, which does work to control phyloxra. But for the varieties that are still coming out within about an inch of them coming out, you got a very short window to target.

New Irrigation Timing Research

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, and that's always been the challenge with phyloxra is the timing of it. Because they're easy to control, but it's just a matter of you got to get it on there at the right time. And that's it. I think we've always struggled with doing that for a number of reasons. One, because people just aren't really anxious about spraying this time of year, understandably. And uh then second, you know, it's hard to judge when you look at that tree during bud break. It's hard to judge what the right timing is because the the bud break begins at the bottom of the tree and it kind of works its way up. So one tree can be in many different stages of bud break. But I think one thing that our entomologist, Dr. Perbert Barman, has has looked at over the last year or so is where most of these phyloxra insects are occurring on the tree. And it looks like what he's seeing is that most of them are kind of up higher in the tree, midway up that tree up up to the top. So if you can kind of wait until the bud break occurs in that part of the tree and and and uh get that application on before uh the buds on that part of the tree or the new growth on that part of the tree gets out an inch, if you can do it before that point, you're good. And I'll and also, you know, not every orchard is gonna have to have a phyloxter spray. Um most growers, you know. It's pretty noticeable if you have it. So if you've had it last year or something, you know, it's probably a good idea to treat it. And if not, you know, I wouldn't worry about it until you start to see it. It's not going to go from just having none one year to having, you know, eaten up your leaves the next. Uh there'll be a gradual transition usually, and you can when you start seeing them, you can start to treat them.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Really great information that uh Perba has worked on with phyloxra. You know, so next, and you know, we've shared a little bit of disease on the road at these county meetings.

Slowing Young Trees After Hurricanes

Nitrogen Prices And Split Applications

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. Um Dr. Clement Oliveira, our new plant pathologist, uh, he kind of came in last year to kind of kind of cross paths with our uh our legendary plant pathologist that we had for many years, Dr. Tim Brenneman, which who knew we need to have on here in one of these episodes. But uh, he came on board before Dr. Brenner had had completely left, so they were able to collaborate and work on some things together. And and one thing that Clemen saw and was able to identify right off the bat is that you know we have to spray for pecan scab here in the southeast with many of our varieties that are susceptible to to pecan scab. But there's some issues there, you know. Uh we've got a pretty good arsenal of fungicides that we use at this point. Uh we've got about six different chemical classes, but it is imperative that we rotate those chemistries, not just rotate the fungicide that you use, but rotate those chemical classes from one spray to the next. The pecan scab fungus reproduces so quickly, and when we're getting a lot of frequent rainfall, that pressure is so high that it is able to reproduce very fast. And over time, we'll talk a lot more about this down the road, but but that fungus can adapt to overcome uh either the resistance inside that the tree has innately in itself, and then also the fungicides that the scab fungus can adapt to overcome those fungicides, kind of like antibiotics. So if you're using the same antibiotic over and over and over for some type of infection, they're going to become less effective because that bacteria, let's say, or whatever is causing that illness quickly overcomes overcomes those antibiotics the more it's exposed to them. And the same thing with scab and fungicide. So we just really want to encourage growers to rotate those chemical classes. And Clemen is seeing in some of our best fungicides, he's starting to see insensitivity. And so growers need to be aware of the difference between insensitivity and resistance. Just because you have some insensitivity of that scab to a particular fungicide in your orchard does not mean that that fungicide does not work at all. There's different levels of insensitivity, and what they do when they test this is they put some uh some of the fungicide on a peachy plate uh with some auger. And they do it at different different plates at different concentrations of that fungicide. And so if they start to see at those the lower end of those rates, when they start to not work anymore, and that fungus is able to grow on that plate with that fungicide present, even at low concentrations, that's a sign that the scab fungus is changing and it's adapting to overcome that fungicide. It may not have happened yet, but it's on the way. And the way to battle that is to constantly introduce those fungicides, those that scab fungus to different classes of chemistries that operate to kill the fungus differently. And so you don't want to use the same one over and over and over. I don't even like to use the same one back to back. I think you need to rotate every single time. Um and that can be a challenge because we're limited with you know the the amount of fungus the different fungicides that we have out there to use. But that's a big issue, and we'll be talking a lot more about that.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

You know, for growers, it's not to understand, it's it's it's not the variety that changes, it's that scab fungus. Right. Yeah, that's what's very important in all of this to understand. I've been at the onion, at the Videlia Onion Research Center in Tombs County, we got a low-input orchard planted. So as those trees are getting ready to come into production, I've taken the liberty of working with some pre-emergent herbicide, and and that actually started by just getting to know my growers in East Georgia. Many have relied uh strictly on our post-emergent herbicide. The post-emergent herbicide just it kills the weeds that come up. But what we found when we sat down and looked at the numbers is I mean, you go back and look at, first of all, when I started six years ago now, look at how many trees were in the ground planted. So we had a lot of new young trees. So that sunlight that hits the orchard floor, so all that weed seed sprouts, and you're also battling some perennial grass like Bermuda and Bahia. Um, but something else is if you go back the last five years, look how many seasons this summer it's been raining. And that rain just flushes all that weed growth and it makes the grass grow. When you plant a young tree, irrigation and weed management are the two most important things you got. And I've been with these people for the last five years, and so I've seen these trees grow and they've actually done an excellent job. But when we sat down and looked at the cost of just doing post-emerge with these rainy seasons, Lenny, we've had to do quite a bit of post-emergent herbicide. And we, I've worked with the you and the Department of Economics here at the university, where we can calculate your labor cost and your fuel cost every time you drive over the orchard in a spray. And we actually find even using conservative numbers, we are higher in cost of weed control if we just use post-emergent herbicide. So that's one reason I said, I need to start figuring out a way to put these out in plots of using pre-emergent herbicide. So the pre-emergent contacts the soil, you got to get soil contact. So you do have to get it cleaned up from all the grasses area. You'll have to use, it took me about a year of using post-emergent herbicide regime to get it cleaned up to where I could hit the soil. But we got in PCAM, we are so fortunate. We got so many pre-emergent herbicide, and like you mentioned, Lenny, about classes and fungicide. Well, in the pre-emergent herbicide, we actually got a number of classes. They're all different, and that's a major thing to prevent resistance that we can get as well. Um, we start with our base programs like allion, everybody knows allian, um, and then chateau, which is flumioxasin. And allion, going back to it, has long been proven that once you use it a few times, the compound in dazephlam really builds up in the soil. And it builds up so well that we can actually do less rates of it. So, what I've done at the farm is I've compared full rate to half rate of alliance, because it is expensive. But we've also looked at our base, which is a rotation with chateau, flemioxazin. And then in the subsequent years, I've now been the fourth year, about fifth year of this, I've gone back to older plots and then put in herbicide we used to use like simizine, and then rated it simizine application, which if you put that up against allion today, you're gonna see a major difference in control. But if you use it in rotation, you can actually get more of an effect of it. You know, so at our at a very conservative, I have a I have a post-emergent regime with a rainy season at$121 an acre. If you you know, five, six years less age of trees, you get full sunlight and a lot of rain. But that's per treated acre too, right? Um thank you. That's per treated acre. So that's whatever you're spraying to kill for weeds. That's exactly what that is. Um this past few years, I've actually used a half rate of allian on virgin soil, which means that it never had endazophlam on it. And just last year, at 90 days after I sprayed, we still maintained 65% control 90 days later. So that's three months with not even a full rate. And the reason I Lenny, I I I've been trying to tinker with pulling down to a half rate on the first spray, I I don't necessarily want to come off of our recommendation of using the full rate. I just want to show it there is a big difference in the cost. So at a half rate of Alliance, I'm$84 an acre. But that$84 is less than that$121. And if the$84 takes us to 90 days, and so what it looks like is using those pre-emergent my chateau at six ounces is right at about$40. But your control is much less than the Allion. So you're looking at 45% control as opposed to 65%. Once you get that low in control, you're gonna have to come back and do another spray. But last year we did a 12-ounce rate of chateau and a six ounce. 12 ounce is the full amount that you can use for the whole year, but with a much less cost, that's$51 an acre. Then you might look at rotating herbicide, the second herbicide. So the 12-ounce gave us 61% control at 90 days. That is not different than the half rate of allion. But the difference in price is$84 of allion at a half rate versus$51 of chateau at a full rate. So you can see how once you start getting your orchard in a pre-emergent herbicide regime, that you will actually pull your cost of weed control down over time.

Variety Choices For Scab Resistance

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Yeah, and where this is most important, of course, is like on these newly planted trees or young trees. And I mean, this is just an established fact that that weed competition is one of the most detrimental things to the growth and survival of these young trees. Um, so the more weed competition they have, the harder time they're gonna have getting established. And, you know, once you have a canopy cover there and you've got some help with that shade on the ground, uh, your weed competition is not gonna be so fierce and and uh you know you don't have to worry about this to quite the same extent. But certainly as those trees are being established, uh you have to really try to beat those weeds back. You know, you want to make sure what you're using because some some varieties or some, I'm sorry, some uh some of these chemistries are are not labeled for use on on newly planted trees. You know, they may have to be two years or three years old before you can use them, and and others you can use the first year, so you have to be real careful about that as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah, the Allian, everybody wants to ask about it, but you actually can't use it until the tree is three years old. But the chateau, you can use it once or six months. And another one we've worked with is kind of newer, it's called Break On, and it's a group 12, like the old solar cam. I don't think many people ever use the solar cam that I've met, but the break-on is in the same class and it has a label that once that soil settles, you can actually use it so in the first year pretty quick. And so um that that really that really adds something to the tank. But you mentioned, Lenny, those trees getting older. Once they provide shade, that's a big difference. So my counterpart at Auburn, Brian Wilkins, he and I are now doing this together, and all of his orchards are basically mature trees compared to the trees I'm using are still classified as probably young. And he's doing the exact same sprays in his alliances at the same half rate of three and a half ounces at 90 days, he still had 96% control. So as your trees get bigger and there's more shade, these prees actually save you even more money. And some of these orchards, I've actually just just getting to know the growers. Instead of having to do two shots of a pre for the whole season, they'll just do one shot and it'll carry them through most of the season. And for growers, you do not have to have 100% weed control. You just it need you just need to have more ground out there that those roots can take up water and nutrients. This hopefully will help us as we continue to produce and you know deal with our cost of production.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

So Lenny, that was a fun episode for episode one, I'll tell you that. Yeah. And I look forward to being with you tomorrow. And uh we'll be talking about some of all of this in more detail as we go through our class.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Yeah, yeah. So so next time, I think our plan is we're gonna kind of talk about the economics of the con production. That'll be great. For episode two, right? Yes. So uh so we'll be touching on that next time. So well, thanks for joining me and look forward to the next one. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Thank you all for listening. Stay tuned for the next episode. You can get more information on the University of Georgia PCAN blog in a nutshell, the PCAN podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Stoller.