 Wait, look at these. Okay, so these are my Okay, so they're, I don't know. They're cilantro or basil. All right, now what do I do basil. They're basil um Keep them in a super sunny spot. They they like it really sunny and hot and warm and then show them to me again. When do I separate them. You could start now. See how leggy they are. See how they're reaching sideways. Yeah, they don't have enough light. Okay. They want light from straight up over them. So when you have light through a window, they just grow towards the window. Okay, but you could separate them out and then every day just rotate them. So they grow like if they're if the windows here and they're growing like this rotate them and they'll start growing the other way. And then so I get another little pot for each one of them. Yeah. Oh, you can do to per pot that size or something like that. But yeah, I get one pop. They're each going to turn into a big plant. And then when they're like four or five inches tall, you can pinch the first couple leaves off and then they'll get bushier instead of one long skinny thing. Oh, you got a lot. Okay, you got a basil farm happening. Okay, cool. Well, there's cilantro and rosemary, but I will rotate them. That's good. Yeah, I don't know if that was a that was a pandemic thing I did The cilantro can just stay in a little clump. You don't have to split it up. Just the basil should get split up. Okay. All right. Okay. And the rosemary Leave it alone. It'll take like a year to germinate. It probably hasn't even germinated yet. That's like next year's rosemary. Oh, really? Yeah, rosemary is usually done from cuttings, not from seed. Like if you want to actually have rosemary to harvest this year, from seed, it takes like two months to germinate and then it grows like this much in the first two months. It's really slow. All right. And then here's my other question. I have bleeding hearts that I got from the wall door from you from the nice and then and it gets like it's immense. Yeah, yeah. Can I split it up now. It's just coming up. How big is it right now like that tall. Yeah, maybe small. Are you, if you split it up now, are you going to be really good about watering it and like taking good care of it after you divide it. I could be. I could be. Yeah. Yeah. Then you can. Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, we've been having some horticultural tips with Julie Rubau. Thank you so much. And red rag wagon plants with an exclamation point is your business that you have run for many years now. Yeah, we're so glad to see you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. And I, I imagine that you have had to rethink how you do business in the last month and I wondered if you might share with us. What challenges you've been facing as a small farmer. I think all the business schools are going to have a lot of interesting case studies and all this is over. I mean, it's so fascinating, like just what we've had to do really, really quickly. And so we've switched to an online ordering model instead of in the, you know, people can't come in here anymore. We still have our wholesale business, which is more or less the same because most of the businesses we sell to wholesale are still open, like all the grocery stores, city market, healthy living, hardware stores, gardener supply, everybody's still open. And then for our retail, we can't allow people to walk around and look at plants. So we're just selling everything online and doing curbside pickup home delivery. And I am incredibly lucky one of the people I hired to work in the greenhouse happens to have a degree in digital media from Tulane and she was like, I can help you with your website. And she's done an incredible job. And the other thing that was incredibly fortuitous is one of our customers is marketing and business growth specialist and he sent me out of the blue and email saying he I'd never met him in person, but I followed him on Instagram and he sent me an email and said he was willing to help us and he's a really big brain that knows how to do all these things in terms of systems and overhaul and workflow and training and So he has just stepped in and totally helped us create all these new systems. It's been astounding and everyone on this crew is amazingly smart and was able to just completely pivot and adjust our retail manager, Lily has just like stepped up to the play and learned all new tricks. We're all learning all new tricks. And it's it's incredible what we've been able to pull off and our customers are so amazing. They're purchasing plants and coming and buying them. And we're also getting a lot of new customers, which is really interesting. So it's been quite a ride the past couple weeks. How do you think that you're getting new customers is that word of mouth or are you advertising. We don't do any paid advertising. We just do social media, our newsletter word of mouth. I think it's mainly social media and word of mouth. I had in place a plan to do advertising this year for the first time ever because I was like, Well, why don't we try it and someone who works here. His wife is a media advertising expert. That's what she does for a living and she's a great she puts together a little plan for us. And then once once the stay at home orders were put in place and people realize they really wanted to garden our phone and email were just off the hook busy. So I was like, I'm not going to do any paid advertising. This isn't the year to try that. So that's such an interesting instinct that people had once. I mean, like me with my plan, your box of plants. Yes. The farm. It's just some kind of crazy thing in my that I want to actually survive the apocalypse with basil but I think that people to talk a little bit about what you think the psychology of this period. Yeah, I mean, I think that gardening is I always say this is like our tagline gardening's the antidote right it's like the solution to too much screen time being sedentary eating the wrong foods it's like gardening has the answers to all of that. And I think in this time where people are a stuck at home a lot more they have more time on their hands they can't do other activities they might normally do. And they are they want fresh food like right out their back door and I personally feel completely soothed when I I I garden with my headset on with music. And I go out by myself and listen to music and have my hands in dirt and that makes me like calm instantly, you know, and I'm sure other people feel that way too and there's just nothing that feels more grounding and balancing and having your hands in dirt. And right now it's I think true for a lot of people and it's really exciting when I talked to new gardeners who are just discovering that and it's so fun it's like my favorite thing to do. Are you still able to interact with people. Oh, that part's so hard. So with our curbside pickup we asked that people keep their windows closed and just hold up a sign with their name on it and it's, it's, um, you know, I've had customers for 26 years because they were with me when I was in my previous business and they're my friends I love them you know and I have had multiple days where I go out and ask for someone's name. Or, you know, look at their sign and I didn't even recognize someone I've known for 25 years. It's like the way we're all relating is so different we're afraid to like connect and it's heartbreaking I mean I just go back in the greenhouse and burst out in tears like multiple times a day I mean there's people. I love our customers and that's been incredibly hard and I'm going to get choked up, but it's, it's, um, it's been really nice to connect over email and phone calls and we are doing webinars actually have one scheduled right after this and um, so that's been, that's been better than nothing you know and like when we do a webinar it's amazing for an hour or two hours whatever it is like nobody's thinking about a pandemic no one's thinking about politics we're all thinking about onions or gardening or whatever it is and it's, it's nice it's better than nothing you know. So we've had in this house some observations about the food supply. But we're really not very informed you know we think that there will be food shortages and the rice in Vietnam isn't going to be exported anymore and then even in this this country there's real distribution issues but I'm wondering if you could share your perspective on food security for the state or even more broadly what you know what are you seeing in this time. I'm not an expert either so this is just really anecdotal. I've only been in a regular, I haven't been in a regular grocery store since all of this started I only shop at family cow farm stand which is the little farm stand just right here that our friends and neighbors run they milk cows and they sell their raw milk and then they also sell really nice products from other local producers and that's where I do all my shopping right now and they only allow one person in the store at a time anyhow. Little businesses like that have been booming right because everyone's like afraid to go in big grocery stores so all of a sudden they're discovering these little farm stands and that small producers can actually keep getting food to people pretty easily. So I think that's been an interesting thing to observe and then the bigger picture about commodities and things like that I don't I don't know I don't know but you know yeah everything's harder right now every single thing is harder you know you wear a mask your glasses fog up everything takes like 80 extra steps to do and I'm sure that gets multiplied out on that bigger scale and having food in your backyard while it might not give you all the calories your family needs for a year it certainly feels good and you know even a beginner gardener can grow all the salad greens they need you know for fresh salads all summer long and a more experienced gardener or someone who's willing to really learn a lot about gardening can grow quite a bit of their food you know and if you think of potatoes and sweet potatoes and onions and leeks and things that are a little more calorie dense yeah there's a lot you can store through the winter excuse me and and grow to have you know really abundant pantry let's say. What are you hearing about farmers markets as an alternative this summer. Well I think most of them are closing for the whole summer so that they can give farmers like if they close now farmers can. Make a plan to find other distribution methods whether it's increasing their CSAs or throwing up a farm stand or an online store and doing home delivery so in a way it's easier to make the call rather than leave everyone hanging. So I think most of them are saying they're closing I'm not I'm not sure but that's just what I've been hearing from friends and then. Yeah most farmers I know are just yeah increasing other ways they're still growing just as much food because they know that the need is there but they're just switching how they distribute it. And the same with farmers that grow for restaurants they're all having to switch you know how they how they distribute the food the same people that eat in the restaurants are still eating you know we still have a need for the food so. I don't think there'll be a shortage of vegetables in this area but I do know that CSA sign ups are filling up really quickly so I think there is just a huge amount of interest. I hope it stays I hope that interest stays I hope people who weren't eating locally before. You know enjoy it enough to keep doing it after this is all over. Have you been doing webinars for a while or did you just start them. We just started them because of this yeah they were always in person actually I'm sitting in the classroom where we usually do them and. Yeah yeah so it's new and how are people attending them. How are you finding that as a way of sharing what you know they're filling up like the. Yeah yeah so he who works here she did one on medicinal herbs last week and I think she had 30 people in it I have 20 people today in my onion workshop. I mean it's it's great you know people are just they're hungry for information and it's great. I love that there are people who want to learn about onions it just makes it feel better about everything. It's so great it's fun. You know it sounds like you know not only is this your regular time but you have been reinventing your business do you have any free time do you what are you watching any movies are you doing anything to relax. Well I took a day I well it wasn't a day off but I worked from home on Tuesday so I had to take a walk which was really nice. I got to see hepatica blooming and trillium but in bud I got to see moss with the sun hitting it on ledges it was so stunning. It was at the lake so it's just a really pretty walk. Lily and I have a sauna so I take saunas to relax which is really nice but other than that no but I never have time off this time of year I never I go home I eat dinner and I go to sleep at eight and I wake up at three so it's just the way it is this time of year. Well I like it though. I bet you do. I mean you haven't been here for a long time and we are always happy to see when your plants are out at the co op it means it's a good time of year. So thanks for taking time. We're busy. Good luck with the webinar and and really thanks for sharing how you've been innovating and carrying out the work. Thank you so much. Alright Julie. See you soon. Oh I'm doing this instead of a handshake. That's so good. Alright bye. Thank you.