Cut Flower Farmer Presentation: Regenerative IPM

December 15, 2022

I was honored and privileged to give a talk on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in relation to my experience growing a regenerative flower farm in Western New York. The webinar was hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Delaware County for their Risk Management Series for Cut Flower Farmers on November 17, 2022. My presentation directly followed another given by Betsy Lamb, Ornamentals IPM Coordinator for NYS Integrated Pest Management.

Click on the photo below for a link to the presentation. Below the photo is the presentation transcript.

Link to view presentation on regenerative ipm for a flower farm:

https://vod.video.cornell.edu/media/Clip+of+Risk+Management+in+Cut+Flower+Production+-+Part+1b/1_195jmdmh

Presentation Transcript (excuse my rambling):

I'll introduce myself briefly and my business and what I do and also my background because I think that gives important context to the conversation. I'll talk just very briefly about regenerative vs organic floriculture and how, you know, how we deal with IPM for each and how it's a little bit different. There's gonna be an overarching theme of regenerative IPM that I'll go into. And then we're going to talk about putting that into practice by balancing our ecosystems. Then I'll give other quick tips and tricks for IPM that I'd like to share. Then we'll end with a final thought about addressing standards for local flowers because that's totally related to IPM, because it's all related to flower quality and our end product and how bugs and disease affect that.

So I own Heirloom Soul Florals, I started my business in 2018 and I'm a farmer florist. I'm located in Lockport, which is about 40 min north of Buffalo. I actually have two farms, which was not my original intention. I was lucky and privileged enough to purchase my own land this year. So I'm moving onto that piece of property which is photographed on the left here. And that's in Burt, NY which is a hamlet of Newfane, NY. We’re right under Lake Ontario. And then my other farm is on someone else's property. It's actually on a u-pick lavender farm in Cambria called Kin Loch Farmstead. And it's a 3/4 acre little plot that I've been growing on for the past five growing seasons. So what I have to say today is mostly experienced from this [3/4-acre] farm that I've been growing on for five seasons because my new farm I don't really have that much experience with yet. So just a little bit about my business. I mostly do weddings. I do both big full-service setups and a la carte weddings. I sell a lot of flowers wholesale to florists that are local, very local to my region. And I sell dahlia tubers and I do some workshops. I'm actually retiring bouquet shares next year because I don't actually like doing it. We all do different things in our businesses and I just decided to remove that.

So both of my farms I grow strictly organically with a regenerative focus. I think the least regenerative thing I do is I use landscape fabric. On the left you’ll see my farm, I used landscape fabric on my whole perennial plot. I didn't wanna do that, but I had so much going on that there wasn't any other way I could manage the perennial weed pressure there. So I think it's okay to give ourselves a little bit of grace sometimes. Besides that though, I would say that everything I do, including IPM, I ask myself before I do it, am I helping or hurting? And that's really a big part of this philosophy here. So my background, just really quick. I have been growing plants and gardening professionally for about ten years. I started in Detroit, which is where I'm from, and an urban farming project where we had nine urban farms throughout the suburbs and in the city of Detroit. And I learned how to grow organic vegetables there. And we used a lot of OMRI-approved organic insecticides and pesticides to deal with pest pressure. And then my next job, I managed a backyard gardening company, where in Chicago we designed, installed, planted, maintained, and harvested vegetable gardens in people's backyards, mostly on the north shore of Chicago. And because I was the manager of the planting and maintenance team, I've gardened in over 160 places. I have alot of experience with seeing different tiny little ecosystems and different diseases and bugs and soil conditions. And so everything that I'm going to stay here, it's all relative to your space. I think Betsy mentioned that quite a lot. It's like everybody's working with a completely different space. My farms are 20 minutes apart and they're totally different from each other and soil profile and bug profile and weed profile. So it's really important that we know what we're working with and observe. Just constantly be observational.

So integrated pest management for an organic system is pretty much just not using chemicals, right? We don't use harsh chemicals and we're allowed to use OMRI approved products. That's pretty much the definition for an organic system. Whereas for a renerative system, organic is the bare minimum. In regenerative growing systems, we're also working to address plant health through mindful soil regeneration. And we're also working to restore our ecosystem. To support native plant and animal species. And by doing that, we're increasing biodiversity and we're building pest resistance, pest resilience. Resilience is resistance. Same thing. We do it through biodiversity.

Biodiversity. It's a really big topic. It's a big overarching concept. But this is our regenerative IPM toolkit. So biodiversity is all the different kinds of life that we find in one area. It's animals and plants, and soil microbes, including bacteria and fungi. All those guys. And all of these species work together in an ecosystem to maintain balance of that ecosystem and to support life. So it's really biodiversity is the crux of life on Earth. It's the key to sustaining life on Earth, and it's the key to our balanced systems. When the biodiversity of our ecosystem is out of balance, problems arise in the form of unhealthy plants, unhealthy soil, disease, bug infestations, et cetera. So I choose to address the problem by asking myself, what is it that I can add into the system? Like what is missing from the system, as opposed to what can we eliminate or kill from it? And Betsy used the term macro and micro and her presentation in different way. I'm also saying that we need to addressbiodiversity at the macro and micro levels. And that means the micro, and this is just me saying this, this isn't like a, something I found. I'm breaking it down into macro and micro. So that's easier for me to explain the whole concept. So the micro levels are soil microbiology, which includes the beneficial bacteria, fungi and company. That's what I like to call them. When our soil microbiology is balanced and diverse, our plants are healthy. Bugs do not eat healthy plants. First part, the macro level is things we can see more like insects and animals and plants. And when our flora and fauna are balanced and diverse, they work in concert as nature intended, and they keep each other in check.

So the main goals of our using biodiversity as our regenerative IPM toolkit are: 1) We want to increase our plant health first. And we do that by increasing the soil health at the micro level by using mindful soil regeneration practices. And our second goal is to attract as many different species of plants and insects to help set the stage for nature to take care of herself. And that, I would refer to that, as ecosystem restoration. And the result is we as farmers, after doing this, you know, it might take a few seasons. We will have little to no intervention at all and dealing with insect pests in particular. And that can also trickled down into not having to deal with diseases either. That all sounds like a beautiful fantasy fairy world. But it's kinda, it's the world that I'm in. I really don't have a lot of pest pressure on my farm. My first [3/4 acre] farm. And I think it's due to a variety of things. I think that I have very healthy plants. So the bugs really aren't eating them. And that's because I've focused a lot on soil health. And then I've also done a pretty good job of harnessing, attracting a lot of things to the farm so that they keep themselves in check. And that's the whole concept of this biodiversity that I'm going to talk about.

So let's look at regenerative IPM in terms of increasing our biodiversity through soil regeneration. So we're starting on that micro level first. The very bottom line is, bugs do not eat healthy plants, they can't digest them or it tastes bad to them. I'm not a biologist. I have background in architecture, so this is really isn't my background. But what I've come to understand from reading a lot of books and listening to other people who know more than I do is that they only eat plants that are injured or sick and already in a state of decomposition. So by simply increasing the health of our plants we will naturally repel bugs. To do this, we need to improve our soil health first. I think that this is the first line of defense against insect pests and disease. So I'm not gonna go through all of this because this is a totally different topic. These are regenerative soil practices that I actually do all of these things on both of my farms. And this is a whole separate topic. But I think because I'm presenting this concept that we really need to improve our soil health in order to improve our plant health. That it's important for me to list all of these things. So it might not make sense. If you don't do any of these things, it doesn't make sense for you to just go feel like you have to do all of them at once. It takes a lot of planning. It takes a lot of planning and time to be able to do these things. Some of them cost money, some of them don't. It's just, you know, you really have to figure out what works best for you and your business. But again, always before you do anything, ask yourself, am I helping or hurting in relation to the biodiversity of the ecosystem on my farm.

To go along with this list of soil regeneration practices, which I guess, if you were to pick any one of these things to start doing, I don't know why I put cease use of chemicals and synthetic fertilizers on the bottom. But I would say that that would probably be the first thing you wanna do is just stop using that stuff. Then soil testing is also very important to address mineral and nutrient deficiencies. Because if you have a mineral and nutrient deficiency in your soil, your plants are going to be unhealthy to begin with. Soil testing is also great to monitor your improvement through the seasons. In terms of nutrients, some of them also measure microbiology and soil organic matter and all of that stuff. Then I would also try to not till as often. I would also say that that is incredibly important. And then all the rest of these things go along with that. I wanted to leave this list of books that I have read. A lot of books on farming, regenerative farming. These here are ones that I refer to constantly. I've read some of them multiple times. I go back to them in the winter to reread and remind myself, they're really beautiful resources. There's also this video here by Andrew Mefferd that's amazing on no-till farming. And there's these two podcasts that are also incredible.

So the first thing, soil microbiology. We have to improve our soils in order to improve plant health so that we have, you know, natural resistance to disease and bugs. That's a very big overarching topic, but it's important to understand because if we don't have healthy plants, the bugs are going to eat them. That's just what happens. So let's take a look at increasing biodiversity by restoring our farm ecosystems, which is more of a macro level. In terms of plants, animals, and insects. I forgot to put a picture on this slide. Good job Fran. Harnessing the natural native ecosystem, starting by planting a wide variety of native plants, will begin to restore balance to the system. So most of us, probably all of us are working on land that's been damaged in some way. Our ecosystems are somehow imbalanced. And it's our job as Earth tenders to try to rebalance those systems. So a wide variety of plants, particularly native species, will attract a wide variety of bugs, which will attract a wide variety of predatory bugs and animals. And that natural, balanced system will eventually take over. It might take a couple of seasons. It might take more than a couple of seasons. But eventually the insects and the animals will end up duking it out on their own. That's not perfect. There's always gonna be somebody who is doing something that you don't want them to do. But in general, this has been my experience that the more open and welcoming my farm is, for as many insects and creatures want to be there, they tend to balance themselves out.

So pest pressure can be greatly minimized over time by simply adding more of the right things to the system. So we're going to talk about in four ways, how we can do that. One thing is that we need to adjust our mindset and expectations of pests. The second thing is we need to do, well, I'm suggesting that you cease use of chemicals entirely. The third thing is that we should be creating habitat for native insects and birds by planting native perennials. And the fourth way, I'm just going to list a bunch of different ways that you can attract birds and other predators. Outside of planting perennials, native perennials. Adjust your mindset and expectations. Super, super important. Because the whole reason, well, we’re too stressed out to begin with. And I think we chose to do the most stressful job that we could ever choose. And I think giving ourselves some grace and that we can't solve everything and that we need nature's help is kinda relieving. So we need to re-frame the idea of what pests are because all bugs deserve a purpose in the food web, like someone is always someone else's food. And if we completely remove that one bug that we don't want, the other bug doesn't have food.

So, you know, Betsy said this a bunch of times that it's really important that you educate yourself on the bugs that are present. I'm not saying like, oh, all of a sudden, we don't care about bugs, we're not going to worry about them, blah, blah, blah. I think we still need to know who we're working with. We should still observe and even keep a journal or a record and even schedule into our calendars maybe once a month, like a walk through of everything. So we can be very aware of what we have because it also helps to track our progress so that we can see like who's showing up that was never here before. Changing our mindset and expectations like this might sound crazy, but my point of view is, everybody is welcome. Unless you're a vole or a deer or a groundhog, You are welcome. I hate those three and we'll talk about them in a little bit.

So the second thing, and I am not here to judge anybody if you use products, that's totally fine. And if it works for your business, that's great. I don't. So I would suggest that you cease use of chemicals entirely, even OMRI approved products. Because chemicals are designed to kill and they kill more just than what they're advertised for, even if it's an organic approved product because there's always some chemical, even if it's derived from a plant that is harmful to a lot of things and not necessarily just what it says it'll kill is a broad spectrum. So everything suffers from chemical application, including soil biology, and beneficial microbes that are present on the plants. So there's tons of beneficial bacteria and fungi that live on the stems and leaves of our plants that are battling the bad bacteria and viruses. And if we're spraying stuff then we're causing an imbalance of the good guys. Also bees, pollinators, and animals can be affected by these products.

So again, I come from a background of using a lot of products in a, in a preventive manner, including all of these neem oils, insecticidal soaps, BT etc. We used a lot of diatomaceous earth because that's the environment that I was working in and that's what we did. But I just decided to not do that anymore and instead try to use nature, just embracing nature's system and using that instead. And it's actually really worked for me. Now I think if you are somebody who uses a lot of chemicals and you go cold turkey on the chemicals, you might have a hard time. I don't have experience with this, but I have a feeling that the bugs might go a little nuts or something. The balance might get really uneven and it might take a little while to get through it. But that's also where the mindset and expectations come from. You have to understand that everything is here. Everything serves a purpose. I think if we just start maybe removing some of the most harmful chemicals from the fields than that's at least a start, a really good start.

The third thing we can do to balance our ecosystem is to plant native perennials, which is fun. I love talking about this because it's plants. So something that I learned from this absolutely fabulous book that I listed on the bottom, Nature’s Best Hope by Doug Tallamy, is that plants that are native to our region provide habitat for an enormously diverse amount of native insects. For instance, native solidago (goldenrod), I learned this in this book, support over 300 types of native caterpillars, which blows my mind. That's just so amazing to me compared to a non native Privet shrub. That’s just an example of a non-native shrub that supports next to zero native insects. So the reason why that's important is because I think Betsy had mentioned something about keeping birds away. I actually embrace birds because they eat bugs. And I think that we can really use them as a really beautiful partner in farming. So if you're growing berries for a living, that would not be great. But, you know, flowers, they're not really, I've never had a bird eat flowering plants, so it's not a concern of mine.

Where there's a wide diverse variety of native plants, there's a wide diverse variety of native insects. The birds here only eat native insects. So if we have a bunch of shrubs and plants that are not native, they're not attracting the native insects, which means the birds are not going to create habitat in these plants at our farm. All of us have tons of plants that we plant that are not native. I mean, as flower farmers we plant tons of hybridized non native plants and that's totally fine. I'm just suggesting that we incorporate as many native perennials into our fields as we can to attract all these different species of insects and birds.

So some ways that we can incorporate native perennials on our farm. Some of them are obvious, like you can plant rows of them within your farm for cuts. I have on the next slide a list of my favorite native perennials for cut flowers, and a list of my favorite shrubs for hedge rows. So I'll show you those in a second, but you can plant entire rows of this, like I have this picture of Asclepias tuberosa, butterfly milkweed. I have a lot of space. So this might not work for some people, but I choose to overplant butterfly milkweed. Because one, it is actually one of the top selling crops on my farm, believe it or not, I have people that go nuts over it so I want to make sure that there's enough for me, but also enough for monarch larva and pollinators that want to enjoy the flowers. So I don't have to worry about overcutting. And see, because it works, milkweed works as a trap crop for aphids. Betsy had mentioned trap crops before. Milkweed is my favorite trap crop because milkweed is the only plant in my whole farm where I will find aphids and I have it in several sections. On my first farm, I grow four different varieties and I grow it with the understanding that it's going to get aphids on it. I let that go. And I love this butterfly milkweed so much that I overplanted it at the new firm so that that wouldn't entirely happen to this planting.

Plant rows within your farm, plant rows of shrubs within the cut flowers. So I'm saying by that, I mean a few of a bunch of rows of production. Every couple of rows plant a whole row of shrubs. If that works for the way you deal with soil, the way you weed, whatever, or if you can make it work that way. Because what happens is the shrubs will grow up during the growing season and they provide a perfect perching place for birds. So you're basically inviting birds into the middle of your field. As opposed to just having them on the edges with hedge rows and things like that. Large hedge rows of native shrubs. And I suggest, you know, planting several layers of those. And by that I mean things that are at different heights. Maybe they blossom at different times of the year. They produce different types of fruits so that you're really providing permanent habitat for birds. And you're attracting all the bugs that the birds like to eat as well.

You could also, I plan on doing this at my new farm, plant a whole separate area with a native meadow pollinator thing that never gets cut. It's just for the wildlife. And then if you have open areas, I know we're all working with different size properties, but if you do have an open area, you should consider planting native trees to support birds and bats. And when they grow up really big, then you're supporting those really much bigger species of birds as well. This last idea here, I have not actually, I thought of this and I have not actually done this, but the idea of using native species as cover crops. So you would buy a bunch of native seed and use it as a cover crop, maybe in conjunction with our normal cover crops that we love to use. All of them are non-native. So I was just thinking if we tried to incorporate native cover crops that might actually support soil biology in a different way.

So this is my list of favorite native perennials for cut flowers and also native shrubs for hedgerows. This list is not exhaustive. There are so many more, but these are my favorites. So I would say everything on this list actually also makes a beautiful cut either for flowers or foliage, except maybe elderberry. But when you grow elderberry, you get those beautiful elderberry flowers and the berries. And you can enjoy them in a totally different way, and the birds love them too.

So other ways that we can attract birds and predatory insects beyond plant diversity, beyond planting native perennials is to always provide a water source for birds, frogs, and snakes. So sometimes it's as simple as filling up my wheelbarrow before I leave, like full of water and you have to keep on it and keep dumping it out. But I've also considered finding some like vintage bird baths because I think they would be cute and I love complicating things can also be beautiful and enjoyable. We should consider adding bird housing to fence posts and T posts. So my new farm, I had a really nice fence installed with the wood posts and I plan on putting bird houses on like every other one around the whole perimeter. That might be excessive, maybe a couple on each side. So the birds are actually living in there.

Overhead watering is also a topic, you could go either way with it. A lot of farmers overhead water and I have a fine experience and then other people overhead water and like Betsy said, they have diseases. And all of that. I actually overhead watered my whole dahlia patch this year because I didn't have enough time to set up my drip irrigation like I normally would. So it's actually worked out great for me. And overhead watering attracts birds to the flower field because they like to bathe in it and fly around in it. But it also repels spider mites because spider mites hate wetness. They like hot, dry conditions. So if your foliage is wet, they're just going to get right out of there. So, you know, I think I actually might go forward again with overhead watering next year. See how it goes. I'm feeling it's going to be great. And it's a lot easier than setting up drip every year. So that's just my $0.02 on that.

Allowing tall grasses to grow on your property will house grasshoppers. So allowing parts of your property, if you have the space, allowing it to grow wild, and just keeping a buffer zone mowed around your production area will help keep those guys over there. And then the mowed area will hopefully deter voles. I also use rock piles to house ground beetles. I have a picture of this on a couple of slides, so we'll talk about that then. And then again, I'm going to reiterate no and low till practices support habitat for ground beetles, spiders, snakes, toads and frogs. All these creatures that live down on the ground, if you're not disturbing the soil constantly, they'll feel comfortable and they will stay and they will help you in this battle against the bad bugs.

Quick tips and tricks that I have for IPM. This lovely photo was my farm last year after a massacre of voles. Voles and I are not friends. I absolutely loathe them. They came in last winter. We had really heavy snow cover and I basically set up a five-star hotel for them. Like I had landscape fabric down, I had mulch, everything with 3" of shredded leaves. I don’t till and I put a fence around the field so no predators could get in. No cats or foxes or anything. They were just happy as clams in there and basically destroyed half my farm. They ate my entire fall planted crop of flowers, thousands of flowers, and also a bunch of perennials that I had planted that fall because the roots were tender and they just had a field day. So I've got some things to say about voles. But first, let's start on the left-hand side.

The insects. So this is just beyond what I was talking about with planting native perennials and you know, that whole creating an ecosystem with native perennials. There's also other things we can do. We can interplant with umbellifers, which are those flowering carrot-like flowers with a tiny little floret disks on top. Predatory wasps love those flowers. So dill cilantro fennel and sweet old ammi. If you have the space, I have a lot of space, so I'm considering planting whole row dedicated to umbellifers, but in the middle of my farm. And I might even just like let them go to seed every year and just let them keep coming back and doing their thing so I don't have to keep planting it and dealing with it. I have also had experience underplanting tomatoes with sweet alyssum. And we'll assume is another one of those crops that I think Betsy said they attract hover flies and other predatory insects. It takes a really small amount of [sweet annie] plants to spread out and create this beautiful carpet. So not only are you attracting these predatory animals, but by putting sweet annie at the base of taller crops, we have a really nice living mulch. So it's keeping weeds down, it's keeping in moisture. And if you're a wedding florist, we'll assume is beautiful for boutonnieres and flower crowns, Just saying. So I think I'm actually going to consider planting a few of my rows of dahlias with an underplanting of sweet alyssum. And I would do that simply by scattering seeds. I've done this before in vegetable gardens. So I know that it's very easy to just scatter some seeds. You don't have to cover them. You could start the plants, but I prefer to just do it in the field. So we could do that with dahlias, sunflowers, maybe even zinnias, amaranth. Any big tall crops where there's bare soil where you're not using landscape fabric.

Also planting perennial grasses can host larva of ground beetles. They might also host larva of Japanese beetles. So just be aware of that. But I believe that if we have perennial grass plantings, that it'll host several types and they'll just go at it and deal with each other. That's just been my experience and how I approach it. So when I say perennial grasses, I don't even necessarily mean natives. You know, it could be anything.

Then we talked about trap crops a little bit. Betsy talked about trap crops quite a lot. My favorite is milkweed to attract aphids. So also, I have an invasive grapevine growing on a telephone pole, right next to my other farm. And it acted as a trap crop for Japanese beetles. Pretty much every year. This past year I had almost no Japanese beetle pressure. I don't know if that was everybody or if I was the only lucky one. But for some reason I had no Japanese beetles in my entire farm this year. But in previous years, the Japanese beetles would mostly flock to that invasive grapevine and it would, they wouldn't touch my other flowers. I'm not saying plant invasive grapevine. Bad idea. But if you already have it, maybe just like don't entirely remove it, just cut it back a little bit and let it do its thing. I've also used arugula as a trap crop in vegetable gardens. Planted it in the same manner as I did sweet alyssum, where I seeded it underneath a larger crop like eggplant and the aphids and other like flea beetles and pests would be super attracted to the arugula and they would leave the more valuable crop alone. So I feel like it could serve a possible use in flower farms. Why not? I think it's worth a try. Really. A philosophy.

Part of the philosophy of regenerative agriculture is that the soil is always planted. So the more the soil is planted, the more photosynthesis is being generated and that carbon being put back into the soil. So underplantings are great. In general I would also say, as a final thing here, like if something's just getting eaten year after year after year and there's nothing you can do, then just get rid of it. Just say goodbye. I've done this with asparagus. I love growing the asparagus fern. But the asparagus beetle was just too much for me. You have to remove the debris because the asparagus beetle lives in the debris at the base of the plants over winter. And I don't farm like that. I actually purposely leave most of the debris. I leave behind all the debris when I'm harvesting, when I'm stripping the leaves in the field. And if a plant isn't diseased, I will leave the small parts of it, maybe not a huge thick stem, but I leave all of it in the field. It never leaves because it's providing nutrition. Whatever the plant took out of the soil and it's holding, its holding it in its leaves and stem. And if you leave it there, you're essentially giving it back kinda like how a forest works, right? With the leaves. We don't remove the leaves from an old growth forest. It nourishes itself. So that's how I farm and this asparagus beetle and I don't get along. I just had to get rid of that crap. And also echinacea I ended up getting rid of because the Japanese beetles out here just kept decimating it. And I was like, You know what, this is dumb. I didn't have a lot of space at that time to give up for that. Otherwise, I might have just kept it as a trap crop, but I really wanted to use that real estate for something else at the time. So I said, You know what, let's just get rid of this. Sometimes you just got to move on to something else. So I planted digitalis in that space. So now that's an area that's being every two years replaced by digitalis, foxglove.

So let's talk about voles. I don't like voles. We have a very bad history with each other and I've heard from other people, that's the number one best defense against a vole is a cat or perhaps even a dog that eats them. But I don't have animals on either of my farms. I'd like to get cats at my new one, but I don't live there. That's the thing. I'm worried about them all winter and I don't have the infrastructure for it yet because I don't have an animal to take care of this animal issue. The second best defense against voles is a combination or all of the following. I've literally done all of these things except one of them. So the most important thing to do is to remove your landscape fabric and thick mulches over winter. The thick mulches kills me because again, I'm the type of farmer that leaves all of that purposely because I don't want the soil exposed and I don't want the little microbes exposed over the winter. But voles loved to live in it. So it's really important that if you do have vole pressure, you have to remove the landscape fabric. We can trap them. Which is a lot of work and I don't enjoy dealing with dead voles, but it is like a way to pick them off one by one. Soaking the soil with castor oil is something that I just learned from. There's a link to a video here by a gentleman who has owned a hosta farm in New Hampshire for like 40 years. And he had a terrible vole issue. And he goes through this 18 minute long video of how he soaked his soil with castor oil. You basically water the soil with like a mix of castor oil and soap and water. And it repels them like they won't make a home in soil that has it in there. Which I find fascinating. So I just did that to my farm, so we'll see how it goes. But I recommend watching that video. I've also heard from several farmers and Nigel Palmer talks about this. Nigel Palmer wrote this book, The regenerative growers guide to garden amendments. He's actually an engineer. He's some sort of like space engineer guy who got really into regenerative, growing and making his own biological amendments. It's absolutely fascinating and I recommend if you are not familiar with him, to look him up on YouTube and to maybe get this book out of the library. He says that mixing crushed shells, oyster shells or crab shells into your soil actually works to get rid of voles because it's gritty and I don't know if it hurts them and they don't like it when they're tunneling through. And I've heard people who have who have done this actually works. So I plan on buying the stuff in bulk. I'm sure it can be found somewhere on the internet. And adding it to my annual beds that will not have landscape fabric on them.

Using cayenne pepper is highly effective. It repels all animals, but again, it's something that you have to re-apply. So I made this because I was just really frustrated over having to like, always spray urine because it's disgusting and it also gets to be expensive. It's time consuming. It washes away in the rain, but when it sticks around, it works. So I decided I'm going to figure out how to make this stick around. So I bought some Tupperware from the dollar store and I poked holes in the top of it. There's a hole on each side right under the lip of this so that rain wouldn't get in. And I put the urine in it and I put it like every 4 ft down my lisianthus row because I was terrified that the voles were going to eat the lisianthus and they didn't eat the lisianthus! I don't know if it was a combination of all these things that I've been doing. I just pulled out all stops when it comes to voles, I just don't take chances. This is an effective way to keep urine on the farm without it washing away. This lasted for months and I put a rock on top of it so that it wouldn't blow away.

For planting tulips, I just planted tulips at the new farm and I literally dug my trench and lined the whole thing with hardware cloth, 1/2” hardware cloth underneath and over the tulip bulbs. And then I covered the whole thing with another piece of hardware cloth. This is how paranoid I am. Because voles have to be physically kept out. So I would not recommend using chicken wire if you're interested in doing that because they can actually get through a one-inch chicken wire holes and I would not take my chances. I would spend the money and get the hardware cloth. Next year, I plan on building some wooden raised beds. Dahlia May Flower Farm in Canada has them. She does wooden raised beds with the hardware cloth stapled to the bottom of it. And I would go as far as the staple the top of it as well because again, I'm afraid of the voles. Keeping them out of like tulips, they need a physical barrier. I was also thinking of like mixing the tulip bulbs all up with cayenne powder. But I just felt like a hard barrier would be more effective.

The only way to keep deer out is put a fence up. I mean, I'm sorry to break it to you, but I've been through this before and so I've done two types of fences. My new farm I paid a fence contractor to put up a professional agricultural 8-foot fixed knot fence. Because I plan on being there a long time. It's really exposed to the elements and I thought the amount of money and time we're going to spend erecting my own fence and the repairs because I know I'm going to mess it up. Like it just wasn't worth it. So I paid someone to do that one. My old farm, my husband and I put up a fence from deerbusters.com and it's like one of those plastic benner fencing. I'm sorry, I didn't put a picture of it here, but if go to deerbusters.com, so what my fence looks like, it's like a plastic mesh fence and it has these black poles that go into a metal footing that you just use a sledgehammer to bust into the ground. There's no holes that need to be dug. It's very easy to put up. It's very effective. It keeps them out. If you need a deer fence and you decide that, you know, deerbusters is the way you want to go, This is my one piece of advice. I would purchase the the mesh that is the thickest, that is the most expensive. I think I did the middle. Probably did the basic one. They claim it's supposed to last 10 to 15 years. It whips around in the wind and the mesh breaks at the top. But the the thicker one is at least twice, if not three times as thick. And I would say that it's definitely worth spending the money. So deerbusters.com is definitely a good resource.

Groundhogs. Good question. When I worked in Detroit at the urban farming project, we had ground hogs on like four of our farms. We trapped and move them, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. So I did not tell you to do that. I don't do that on my property because I don't have groundhog pressure. So I hope I don't get them. If anybody has advice dealing with ground hogs besides building like really tall wooden raised beds that aren't practical for us, please share and let's chat because I would love to know as well.

So I kind of talked about this stuff is, the bottom is a picture of cayenne powder that I used a couple of weeks ago on digitalis foxglove, believe it or not, which nobody except voles like to eat. But it had all this lush greenery and I was all worried about them eating it. So I covered it with cayenne, ran a couple of times and it looked like the cut. I was just curious to see what happened to it after the rain and it actually kinda still stayed a little bit on leaves. It turned into a light sandy color. This is gross, but I tasted a little bit of it and it was still hot but not as hot. So I think, you know, voles eat roots and they eat green stuff. So the castor oil, the soak of the castor oil with the water, that's good for roots. I would still be concerned about voles eating top growth and leaves. And this is only if you have serious vole pressure like I do. So for that, I decided to deal with it using cayenne powder. You can buy it in bulk at webstaurantstore.com or I'm sure other websites.

And then this picture on the right are the pictures of my little rock piles. I have really rocky soil at this new farm. So I've just, I'm starting to make these little bug houses at the end of my rows. And it's probably gonna be really annoying to mow. I'm probably going to have to go up and down this with a string trimmer and I'm gonna hate myself. But when I move the rocks, ground beetles and other insects scatter out of it. So something as simple as this creates habitat for predatory insects.

So that's what I have to say about IPM, like holistic IPM. We're talking about biodiversity on a grand scale. How do we harness the way nature works? How do we recreate nature's nnatural ecosystems on our farms by improving soil health so that we can improve plant health. And then on the other side, creating habitat and attracting all these predators and attracting everybody on the farm so that they can all take care of themselves so that we really don't have to do much. And part of that is also dealing with our own mindset of like not freaking out when we see bad bugs, we have to be okay with them. And just trust the process. So much of this is trusting the process to go along with that.

The whole reason we care about IPM is because we need to have a beautiful product in the end, right? If we don't, we can't sell flowers that are crap that’s been eaten and foliage that has a bunch of holes in it. But I think it's really important for us that we start asking ourselves, what is the standard for local flowers that are grown sustainably? We're choosing, people like me… I'm sure a lot of you are choosing to do things in a more mindful way. And we're not using pesticides, were not killing the bugs. The bugs are gonna eat the plants. So how do we change the mindset… or not change, but how do we just have an open conversation about, you know, what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in the local flower market in terms of quality. So we should be questioning as cut flower growers, as an industry, How much damage is okay for our locally and sustainably grown product. Do we have any leeway with this? Why must the flowers be totally perfect and uniform like their flown-in counterparts and the globalized industrial flower market? Why should we, not that we shouldn't be held to the same standard, but that market grows in a completely different climate. Climate. They grow on different time. They grow in a completely different way, they're using chemicals that are banned here. Like it's, it's beyond beyond. So of course there's not gonna be any damage, fatigue damage on those flowers. Surprisingly enough, There's a lot of disease. If you get flowers from local wholesaler. It's pretty bad sometimes.

But what I want to know is, why can't we just change this mindset which allows a bit of forgiveness in the field. So for instance, these two photos, this one, I mean, this peaches and cream dahlia here on the top has a couple of markings on it. And I would be perfectly okay with using that in my own work, even wedding work, retail work, that wouldn't faze me at all. There's a couple of florists that I have that I would feel okay selling that to because I've had this conversation with them. They respect what I do. And they buy. I have at least one person who buys from me, partially because of my philosophy, my growing philosophy, like people actually appreciate what we do. And this picture on the left is of a bridal bouquet that I made. And that Cosmos, that cupcakes blush cosmos in the front has a huge hole in it. It's got like two huge bug holes in it. And then I put it forefront in the bridal bouquet and I never got any complaint. I was confident that that was a beautiful flower. I'm not ashamed of that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I saw the professional photos and it was like zoomed in on this flower that has holes in it. And nobody complained. I got nothing but happiness from these people. So I think that sometimes we might be freaking ourselves out for no reason or, or, we're not because the standards are too high. So I think we need to achieve this by having open, honest conversations with our florists. Like I would say, to somebody, that I grow in a completely organic regenerative way, which means I don't use chemicals. Bugs eat plants and I'm not killing the bugs and they need something to eat. So they're probably going to eat some of the plants and some of my foliage sometimes has bug holes in it. And I actually think that wild look, you're going for it. It kinda works and makes it look a little more wild. But I think it's really important for us to just be honest with people. And I say this to my wedding couples, and I talk about it on social media as well. Because once we talk about it and we start saying all these things about all these great things that we're doing. But sometimes the flowers have holes. It's okay. The flowers are still beautiful. I think that it might make our jobs easier and it might ease off of the pressure that we have to get rid of all these bugs and all of this. So I just think we start talking to our customers more. If you feel comfortable with that, I can talk to pretty much any anybody about it. And I'm not uncomfortable because I'm confident that I have a very beautiful product, even if there's a few holes in it. And it's also important to note that, we can't be selling people crap. I'm not saying go go sell people crap. Like don't sell any thing that anybody that you wouldn't use in your own work, you know, we still have to vet the bad flowers. I just wanted to bring that up in the conversation because it's related to all of this.

Does anybody have any questions? I hope that you took something from this and were able to come up with regenerative ways you're able to fit it into your growing situation.

So Jenny said I use plain cardboard as weed block. What is your thoughts on that? So I refer to that as sheet mulching. I'm a huge fan of sheet mulching. It's a really great way to keep weeds down for their annual weeds. The perennial weeds will eventually find their way through. But it's also great because worms love breaking down the cardboard and it creates this really beautiful environment underneath it. I usually put like 2” or 3" with compost on top of it because otherwise it will blow away. I've also used paper like Builder paper from a hardware store and rolled out on bed that maybe I felt like the weed pressure is really high and covered it with compost.

I see somebody wrote, We got approximately 2000 native shrubs and trees from our conservation district. Yes, I get a lot of bare roots, my native shrubs in bare root form from the Niagara County Soil and Water Conservation District. I'm assuming if Niagara County has a plant and tree program, that every county has one, I know that New York State has one. I have not gotten 2000, but I have bought hundreds for like less than $2 a plant, close to $1 a planet. And that's a really good resource to you. And they grow pretty fast, takes a couple of seasons, but it's definitely worth, rather than buying full-sized plants. It's worth checking. Look at your county first, but also check surrounding counties because some of them have things like I can't remember. Another county, one of them had nine bark and the other one didn’t.

What is hardware cloth. So hardware cloth is like it's a mesh that comes on a roll and it's similar to chicken wire, but it is very rigid, square mesh. It's sturdier. And the mesh is a lot smaller than chicken wire. So that's what hardware cloth is, you can buy it on Amazon. Don’t buy it on Amazon, you can buy it at a local hardware store, a local feed store somewhere.

And let's see any advice on prairie dogs? Prairie dogs. Somewhere that doesn't have I don't know. I mean, I would probably fair burrowing animals similar to voles. I'd probably say all the same things for prairie dogs that I say about voles, but I literally don't know. I thought that those were like a foreign animal. What do I know?

Are dahlias best overhead watered? I don't know. I mean, I think that most people probably use drip irrigation, which is what I've always done. But out of desperation this year and the drought, I had to get water on my dahlias somehow because I was too busy to install drip irrigation this year, which sounds crazy, but that was just my life. So I put sprinklers out. It worked amazing. It also watered all the weeds. So there's that. But it really, I learned that spider mites hate wet conditions and spider mites were really bad this year because we had a drought. So I think there's a give-and-take and I think it's always worth trying.

Blue globe is a new one for Johnny's. Is it here a downside to having a thistle are talking about the globe thistle that I have in this picture. I'm assuming that that's actually not like a native perennial or anything. I just love that as a flower. And it doesn't have thorns on it. So you can actually cut it. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I can get them as plugs. Yeah, you can get them as plugs.

So do you make your own compost? Use JADAM? So I make my own compost but I don't nearly make enough of it to supply it for my farm. I actually get compost trucked in from a livestock farm. And the guy that makes it is pretty mindful about how he makes it. He uses different types of animal manure that he collects around. And then he also mixes it with wood chips and leaves. And he actually monitors the temperature and maintains it; he's made mentioned to me that he tries not to keep it too hot for the beneficial bacteria. So I trust the compost that I'm using, I ordered 60 tons of compost this year. There's no way I could possibly produce that much also because I keep most of my wastes in the field. Remember we talked about that. So there's not really that much left over for me to compost. JADAM is a Korean natural farming component of regenerative farming. I do some of that, but that's a whole other topic that, you know, I do do some of that, but there's so many different facets of it. I would say what I mostly do from that is create my own biological amendments. And I would look into Nigel Palmer's book on the resources for that.

Has anyone ever struggled with winter cut worms? Apparently they're becoming more prevalent in high tunnels. I fall planted a bunch of different flowers and overwinter them in low tunnels. And I've noticed the worms in both areas. How would you manage cut worms naturally in the winter? Any advice? Just looking that up because I hadn't heard of it. What do you think? Certainly some degree there's lots of information out there on them. And if you want something naturally earlier on in the discussion, someone said using Bt, which is Bacillus thuringiensis, which will work. I mean, going out at night and collecting, you have to do it like put your headlamp on and go out late because they're not visible often at night when they're feeding on your plants, right? You could put plant collars on, but again, it's a lot of work. Yeah, it's something I hadn't heard of, so I'm looking it up and seeing what I can find. Yeah.

That's a good question. I would try to think about what eats cut worms. Perhaps ground beetles, or wolf spiders?f Gross. Problem two is, what else is active when it's cold? You have broken egg shells mount for, you know, it's like using diatomaceous earth and are anything that cuts them around the plants. Diatomaceous earth would definitely kill them. I don't know what else is active that you wouldn't wanna kill with diatomaceous earth. But I would say if you sprinkle that around your plants and on your plants, it would definitely tell them. That's a good point. Wireworms? Same thing. I mean, I have wireworms in my dahlia patch, but it's not bad enough to where I'm super concerned about it. If I see a couple, wireworms here and there, it doesn't freak me out. What do you have like a crazy wire worm infestation?

Best sources for seeds beyond Johnny's. I order from a lot of seeds from Geoseed because it's typically in larger quantities and it costs less. They don't have a lot of organic seed though. So there's also fruition seeds, which is a local company. And select seeds is great. I used to order a lot from Baker Creek but I don't anymore because I don't know. They don't have the greatest selection for cut flowers in my opinion. If anybody else has great resources, can you please share, yeah, Harris. Sunflower selections is really affordable for sunflowers. Oh nice. I actually don't grow sunflowers, but it's really good to know.

Best sources for plugs? So it depends on what you're looking for. I use farmer Bailey, He's a broker for grow n sell, mostly for annuals. And I also get my perennial shrubs from spring meadows nursery. They're in Michigan. Unfortunately, they're shipped kinda far. I get a lot of beautiful plugs from North Creek nurseries, which is just below us in Pennsylvania. They sell a lot of native perennials. There's also a place, gosh, what's it called? I get e-mails from them all the time. It’s new moon nursery. They have tons of a perennial plugs. I'll put those in the chat before before we sign off here.

Pros and cons for mushroom compost. I have not used mushroom compost straight. If I were to use mushroom compost, I might use it as a mixture with my other compost. I don't see any problem with it though. It sounds like it probably is really good fungal, um, you know, if it's made correctly, the thing about compost is you have to be aware of what you're using because whatever is in the compost you're going to be introducing into your farm, which for me, in terms of weed seeds has been a serious issue. So it's really important to know what you're working with.

Collars. Betsy, can you speak about plant collars? I just put a note in there. I mean, I've seen them done with metal, I've seen them done with other things. It's anything that prevents the cotton worm from reaching the stem. So I'm going have even seen, I think paper ones that you didn't want, something that doesn't work. Well, wax cups or something, you don't want something to break down too fast. But I mean, the concept of going and putting a little collar around each stem seems somewhat overwhelming to me. But they were asking in general to about winter IPM. And some of the same things apply in terms of cultural control and so forth. Winter biological control and high tunnels, it's tough because most of the biological controls that we have don't like it that cold. They've gone, they've got into their dormancy in their hibernation or whatever. So they're just not around. I assume the same of of ground beetles and so forth, but they, maybe they have a lower temperature tolerance than some things do. Lady bugs have a little bit better tolerance, but not really enough? And other issues with ladybugs as well. So it is one of the things that I think we don't have very good handles on. And in terms of how to do biological control, in particular, in a cooler winter greenhouse? Yeah.

I think correctly that you grow roses? Me? Yes. Yes. Can you tell us some of your experiences with those? Because it just seems like that's a complicated thing. And how do you know? What I've noticed is like, every year the roses have been different. I also had a unique experience where the voles ate my roses, like chewed on the roots and the tops of the plants. So that really messed up their growth. But my understanding of roses is that they grow best under a tunnel in our climate. We should be choosing varieties that are more resistant to cold and disease to begin with. Most of the Roses I have are David Austin roses, like really nice English garden roses. And I don't have them covered with a low tunnel, but I think like building a low tunnel over them, if they're planted in a row, would be ideal. Or like heavily mulching them in the winter with wood chips because they really don't know, they don't do well and like super cold conditions and we never know what's gonna happen in the winter. There are some nice Canadian varieties that are really much more cold tolerant, but are they the kinds that I'm trying to think of the series? But there are the, are the kinds of people want and that's, you know, that's another whole issue.

I liked your comment about if it doesn't work for you don't grow it. So it's like, yeah, find the ones that work. So maybe everybody is telling I had someone I was talking to. They're like, well, nobody grows lilies because they say people don't want them. I'm like, I don't understand that. I think will be great to have them cut flower bouquets and so forth. But when she said, but she can grow well and she had some people that want them. So again, if you need to sort of balance that, what do people want with what actually grows well for you? And maybe you don't have cafe au lait dahlias, but you have something that's just as pretty in the same color range or whatever. Since that's the one I hear about all the time. Actually, it's also kind of a pain in the butt, right. No, I don't know. I don't have a problem with cafes. I grow hundreds of them and they're so beautiful, but they are like, I guess the first dahlia, that if a bug like I noticed the cucumber beetles on them this year, where I am and they were eating the petals, but again, I still use them even if there's two chewing in the petals.

So one more thing about the roses. I purchased roses this year from spring meadow nursery, which they are basically brokers would be the right term, but they sell proven winners plants, which are those all those hybridized landscape plants. I bought like three different types of proven winners roses. Because one of them, I've seen in a local landscaped parking lot area where there's a lot of traffic there. I mean, it's just exposed to the elements in the worst way. And those flowers are so beautiful. I'm really excited to see how those roses to the one that I'm particularly excited about is called at last. It's a peach kind of gardeny looking rose by proven winners and I just bought them in bulk. So we'll see opposed to buying hybridized plants. Again, I think it's important to incorporate as many natives as we can to do the whole biodiversity thing.

So I just found an article on sort of the history of that Canadian rose breeding program. And it has some of the varieties listed there. They were selected for hardiness and disease resistance. Cool, I might have to look into those.

Well, this was so much fun you guys. I just all the expertise here and the wonderful comments. And I do want to plug if there's not any more questions. Let's see. I want to go ahead and plug our upcoming programs. So we're going to skip next week because the turkey day. But we do have a lot more in store for you. And in fact, on December 1st, we've got crop planning with Jenny marks from trademarks flower farm. She's put a ton of time and energy into creating tools and really thinking out the crop planning process, which in my case, there's always a limiting factor for every flower farmer and for me it's greenhouse space. I can start all the seeds in the world. But then when it comes time to give them a home like right there at that one part of the season, I'm in trouble. So just really getting you thinking about how to plan. And as a special bonus for folks who attend, if you submit a crop plant, it doesn't have to be perfect, but we will send you a seed collection. So just a little bit of motivation to get it done before get into the real busy season. And then we have upcoming sessions on soil health. Fran actually gave us a great introduction to that today. Climate-smart Farming, very important season extension which kind of ties in with the climate smart. And then at the first of the year we're going to have one on wholesaling. We started talking both It's called ins and outs because it's both the buying and the selling. And we already discussed some of those sources today where you can buy things wholesale, which is very important when you're trying to make a profit. Apparently having trouble with the last session that it seems to give, take them back to the season executive session one. So the link is, you know, I think I just misnamed it. You sign up for that last session. I will change the name on that registration. I was doing a lot of copy and pasting that day. Then we don't have it fully scheduled and marketed yet. But then in January and February we're gonna do a whole series on marketing risk. And we would very much like to have fran back to talk about some of the other ways. What she does. I saw this amazing in-person talks. She gave markets, her DIY events, and this girl does everything. I would love to sing because pricing is a big deal and that's the one thing that we've been hearing about people. And it's a fascinating conversation is not even something and I work on, but I've been involved in some of the conversations and, you know, everybody has a different idea. Yeah. And they tend to undersell ourselves all the time and we have to work together to not do that. And I like to see people who haven't gotten their land yet. But they're starting to gather information. That's impressive. Love it. Well. Well, thank you all again so much and I hope to see you back here after the holiday. Good day. Thank you.