 Welcome, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm your host for the 2022 Field of Fork webinar series. It's our seventh webinar series. And we're really glad you joined today. Spring is coming, so we are all looking forward to gardening, I think. The next slide shows our upcoming webinars. On March 9, Shannon Coleman, an assistant professor and extension food safety specialist at Iowa State University, will be visiting with us about honey and its safety and use. And on the 16th, yours truly, Julie, will be hosting a webinar about food waste from storing food to composting. The next slide shows our webinar controls. Because of the large number of participants, we've actually had over 500 register for this series. We are inviting you to post your comments in the chat. So let's practice a little and find the chat box. Click to open the chat and then type your city and state in the chat box. And while you're doing that, I wanted to let you know that we have enabled closed captioning. So on your control panel, you should see a place where you can go and show those closed captions so you can get a play-by-play on what we're saying. So you can continue to type your city and state. And the next slide provides an acknowledgement. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. And I will ask all of you to take a couple minutes to complete a short online survey that will be emailed to you right after today's webinar. As a thank you, I have many prizes available to the lucky winners of the random drawings. But I need to ask you to be sure to put your complete address on the follow-up form, including your city, state, and zip code. Because we do have people from all over the north central region participating and beyond that. And finally, I am pleased to introduce our guest speaker. Ingham is a professor of food science and extension food safety specialist for the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her research group is currently studying the process interventions that affect the safety of fresh and fresh cut produce. And in the spring and summer and fall, Barb and her family enjoy both gardening and biking around the Midwest. So welcome Barb and it's all yours. Great, thank you so much Julie it's great to be here today. I hope everyone on today had a chance to listen to Tom last week we're going to hit some of the highlights of what we did discuss last week, and put them in a slightly different context I guess if you want to say and then we're going to talk a lot about. Once you have harvested all this safe and healthy produce. What do we how do we store it so that it's going to be available to us for a period of time. So I'm going to start by setting the context and that is looking at just incidents of foodborne illness in the United States, about 48 million Americans become sick from a foodborne illness every year. This would be about one in every six individuals so depending on the size of your family, or your extended family you would anticipate an estimated one of you, if they're six of you would be sick with a foodborne illness every year. One hundred and twenty eight thousand of those every year are hospitalized, and an estimated 3000 die as a result. These are preventable deaths, and that's one reason we talk about it, especially if we're talking about safety of produce. So the cost of the US economy is an estimated $80 billion every year, and we have parts of our population that are much more vulnerable, much more likely to end up hospitalized or potentially even to die from a foodborne illness. And these are young children. These are the elderly those 65 and older pregnant women, and those who have compromised immune systems these might be people that are undergoing cancer treatment or something like that so where their immune systems might be working just a little bit differently. So I'd like to put that into perspective and look at how does fresh produce contribute to what we know about foodborne illness in the United States. So here's some data it's it is a little bit outdated but it's the most recent that we have available to us. So the period of 2004 to 2013 and you'll see here along the the the access here at the very bottom we've got a whole different number of type of foods that may perhaps be linked to foodborne illness outbreaks. On the on the left hand side here we have number of outbreaks and outbreak is at least two people getting sick from a single food source. And then on the right hand side here we have numbers of illnesses linked to those outbreaks. So the height of the bar the blue bar is the number of outbreaks linked to that particular food item. In the first case here we have a multi ingredient, non meat item that might be something like a vegetable lasagna so it's got a lot of things in it but perhaps not meet in this case. So we have numbers of outbreaks based on the height of the bar, and then the number of illnesses that are tied to that outbreak are this is this kind of orange or brown dot here, and I've circled produce, because that might be a little bit surprising to some of us where, if we look at this continuum, we see produce bar is one of the highest that we have. It also has a very high number of illnesses tied to that so again a reason why when we talk about produce safety we're kind of putting this into context. So the next slide here is just some trending data have some data that's a little bit more current. So I wanted to share the information slightly differently. So here we have two different timeframes 2004 to 2010. That's part of the, the, the timeframe that we saw for the previous data, and then 2010 to 2017. So we have the actual number of produce outbreaks over those two different periods, the number of illnesses associated with each, the number of hospitalizations, and the number of deaths. So you'll notice within these two periods of time that the number of produce outbreaks did increase actually quite significantly. I also noticed that, that there were more outbreaks in the more recent timeframe, where we had multiple states involved multiple multiple states, reporting cases of foodborne illnesses tied to that outbreak so rather than something being localized to Wisconsin where I live, there may have been people that were second in this foodborne outbreak in North Dakota and Minnesota, as well as Wisconsin and other states. So that's one of the trends that we noticed so increasing numbers of outbreaks, increasing percentage of those that were linked to multiple states involved, kind of, you know, relatively consistent number of illnesses dropped but not significantly more hospitalizations, that's not a good trend we don't like to see that and a lot more deaths in the more recent timeframe so these are things for us to be aware of when we start talking about fresh produce. So that's one of the products that we grow in our garden. We're also normally, especially here in the upper Midwest where there's not a lot of fresh produce that may be available to us. This time of year where what we have maybe held over from the from the growing season where we're beginning to be out of those things, other maybe squashes potatoes, you might have but a lot of things that we love to eat. So that's one of the things that we're looking forward to as fresh grown right here locally so we're purchasing at the grocery store these trends are consistent with that as well. So there's lots of different organisms that we know that are associated with these foodborne illness outbreaks some of them, you'll probably have heard about salmonella, we all, I think many of us have heard about that. Listeria, another pathogenic E. coli, the top three that we're seeing in this second time frame here were E. coli 0157H7 and other pathogenic E. coli. Listeria monocytogenes, which is a problematic and then salmonella so things, terms that we sometimes hear in the news related to foodborne illness outbreaks. And one last slide here with some with some trend data produce pathogen combination so you know we've had numbers but what does that look like in terms of data. So again here in the United States from 10 year period 1998 to 2008 a little bit dated again but here's some information that we have. We're looking at different produce types, and I've highlighted some of the produce types that have higher numbers than other squares or other cells in the table, and then particular pathogens that those are associated with so we see salmonella highlighted a couple times here with leafy greens and tomato products. Norovirus with leafy greens fruits and vegetables and then pathogenic E coli here with leafy greens. And they remember it is, you know, it's a quite a while ago now but one of the first times many of us were thinking about produce was an outbreak linked to Kenloaf in 2011. Jensen farms in Colorado we had 147 people ill over 28 states and 33 deaths related to that. Right, more recently, so I wanted to just prime the pump and just get you thinking, not only again gardening but let's just think about produce in general. So in between December of 2021 and January of 2022. So we've got some ongoing outbreaks that the FDA is investigating their three currently we have packaged salad by dole or fresh express their 13 states involved in these outbreaks including Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin I tried to pick up those that from the Midwest I noticed we had some people registering for today that are in and Canada Canada also has an ongoing outbreak that they're looking at in terms of produce. The one that's where the FDA in the United States is looking at it we've had 17 illness and illnesses and 13 of those have ended up in the hospital. That's a very high hospitalization rate. There have been two deaths, one just last week, the second one just last week. One, two deaths and one has been in Wisconsin. So, because we're in the grocery store and then we're going to think about our gardens but I do want to point out the information when we do see these recalls especially this time of year when a lot of the produce that we're consuming, maybe from the grocery store, you're going to find a lot of good information on the package. If it's a package product like these leafy greens, there's going to be a best if used by date that's something that the, the regulators will ask us to look for. That's one way we'll track those items. And then there's also going to be some kind of code dating that's going to that's going to clue us in that it's that it's particular product from a particular facility. And I noticed recently when I was purchasing some lettuce it actually told me where that lettuce was from. It was from Yuma. And so they were tracking that it was right there for you to see so it's in the news. More than some of us would like to see but it is there and their their ways for us to be smart consumers. Why does this happen. Well, because they're often microorganisms on fresh produce they're coming from lots of different places. Consider based on any food product whether it be a vegetable fruit or an animal based product that soil and water are the two primary sources of microorganisms on on on the food that we consume. And animals can can contribute as well humans can contribute. And then there's other things in the in the harvesting processing, but soil and water are the two primary sources. Before we get too far into what I want to talk about today after I've set the stage is, do you think it's possible for homegrown produce to be contaminated with harmful bacteria or viruses. What do you think yes or no put that in the chat if you will. Okay, I've got a couple questions I'm going to read a couple off and then what is the is a bigger public health concern for fresh fruits and vegetables is it is it pesticide residues, or do you think it's harmful microorganisms. Which do you think. And I'll try to follow the chat as long as we as I'm looking. What do you think is organic produce safer than conventional produce this is a true fault statement. All right I'm asking you to think of three things what do you think about homegrown produce and contamination yes or no. What about public health concerns do we think pesticides are more problematic or harmful microbes. What do we think about organic produce and whether that's safer than safer than what I'm going to call conventional produce that produce that might either in our home gardens or elsewhere might not might be grown with more conventional methods not using organic practices. All right. We've got some really good responses. Thank you for that I wish I'd had a way to really give a some kind of a polling slide I should have done that to see what we're thinking and then we could record that. Let me show you some data that we have from over 800 gardeners. This is again from 2004, but, but let's see what people were saying so we know that gardeners actually at that point, didn't understand that their garden produce could be contaminated with harmful bacteria and viruses. The scope might be different, but we do have to realize that what we're seeing nationally could be something that we do need to take care of in our home gardens as well, especially because the people who are eating what we grow are the people we really care about. The chemical residues from pesticides were viewed as the biggest concern in this group of 800 gardeners and there's plenty of data that shows that this is not from a public health standpoint is not a significant risk. Pesticides are often a concern and we might use different practices as a result in our home gardens, but pesticides are not leading to these illnesses and certainly not the deaths that we're seeing linked to microbial foodborne illnesses. Many gardeners didn't use best composting practices and that's really unfortunate something we can do, and we do need to control, and we'll talk a little bit about that today. The gardeners thought that organically grown produce was safer than conventionally grown fruits and vegetables and, and some of you have, have responded in the chat, I've interested to note. We have plenty of data to suggest to say that this is not the case organic is not safer consumers often think of that, because of the different practices that may be in place in organic operations. But organic really is a, is a, it's an, it's an agronomic and agricultural practice in terms of the inputs that we might use for those produce items, but it doesn't mean that they're any safer it's still possible to contaminate organic lettuce in the, in the processing operation to get those bag salads that we all find very convenient so it doesn't, those don't equate as much as we might think that they do. And gardeners did not consider water a source of harmful bacteria and I kind of gave that away a little bit before when I indicated that soil and water contaminate were primary ways in which food sources might be contaminated. Right. So we're going to look at the continuum and just hit some highlights what are some really easy food safety practices that we can think about as we're moving into the gardening season that we can think about we're in the grocery store. We're going to look a little bit at growing. And that'll tie in with some of Tom's great comments last week. We're going to talk just briefly about harvesting. And then I did want to spend a little bit of time on handling and storage because this is where, you know, we've spent all this time as I mentioned earlier on on on growing healthy fruits and vegetables and so we'd like to have those available we'd like them actually to be healthy. And part of that is the fact that they're safe for us to consume for our families to consume and perhaps to share with neighbors. And those kind of things so let's dive into the growing part and this is what ties a little bit with last week. So a review of some of the important things we're going to spend just a little bit on looking at these things in a slightly different sense. Healthy gardens grow safe and healthy produce so we're going to look at location and where we might think about location from a food safety standpoint. Sun is important sun actually has a has an antimicrobial effect. We're going to look at drainage within the garden. We're going to look at watering done right Tom talked about that last time I made notes for my own home garden as I listened last week. And then preventing pests, something we talked about last week and how those are all important not for all, not only for the for the growing quality of the produce but the safety of the product that we might harvest for a healthy and bountiful harvest. So good gardening practices as we think of those with the food safety lens. We actually face on a smaller scale, much of the same challenges that those growers do that are growing acres and acres of produce we want to a good growing location we want safe and healthy soil. We want safe water, and we do need to prevent contamination as much as is in our power. And we face some of the challenges for doing all of these. So let's look at location. So I was talking about sunshine and those kind of things and here, those are important as well. Your fruits and vegetables have their own ability to fight fight off pests. And so we want to have those just as we want to be healthy the healthier we are, the more likely we're able to fight off an illness, the same will be true of fruits and vegetables so grow them in a sunny garden location with well drained soil. I was interested last week with some parts of the upper Midwest and certainly I think Tom was mentioning about the Dakotas does don't get as much rain in Wisconsin, we're very behind on rain this year and I'm interested to see how that's going to impact our growing season for our gardens. But when we have had in the recent past we've had these rain events, which might bring like 18 to 20 inches in a weekend, and we just can't deal with that. We've had it happen in June we've had it happen in August those are the two months that tend to, we tend to see these events. So when we end up with with a I took this, this picture on a bike ride by husband and I love to bicycle. So outside Madison Wisconsin where I live and these were, these were fields where are some of our farm market growers. We're using this land and when we see rain that we see fields with water that's pulled like this, that water transfers bacteria from perhaps an animal operation nearby. So transfers that might from an overflowing stream and and so not as a safe water source for drinking that kind of thing so. So these are things to be aware of do you don't want to necessarily be downhill when you, if you are you want to make sure that the soil drains. So try to locate your garden away from animal waste storage again water being able to move things from from one location to another so you can find produce and contaminated and that's such so unfortunate. We do want to keep animals out of the garden I'll talk a little bit about that later to specifically and test soil for nutrients and heavy metals. So it's really important and most important we find if, if there's reclaimed land that is being used if this land has been in your family, and, and you know the history. This isn't as important but if you're, if you're, if there's a community garden area where we've, we would recommend that those gardeners then test their soil, specifically nutrients are good, then you'll know what, if the soil is going to support effectively a garden in that area heavy metal contamination can be important for more of our, of our urban gardens, where we might be reclaiming land for gardens and, and you want to make sure plants can accumulate nutrients, including heavy metals and that can mean that the produce itself is not safe. If a flooding event does happen you find yourself in this situation recommend that you contact your extension office those of us in Wisconsin hopefully those calls would come to me through our local educators. The same with the states where you may live, because extension educators can help you kind of think about is the produce that you have safe to consume. All right, healthy soil grows healthy produce so not only the location this, the, the soil itself. So healthy soil, which an organic matter, Tom had some great tips for us last week about that. Here's where we talk about composting so composted plant or animal waste, proper composting is really important. Composting will actually destroy things like Salmonella that may be on produce that maybe it's rotted or something like that and so you're composting that so proper composting will will deal with that proper composting of will also help to prevent the spread of disease so if you compost plant material from your garden like my husband and I do will compost will take cabbages out and we'll take the outer leaves off because they're soiled and and maybe there's some often some worms there and we'll just compost those right in our in our own plot or we might take them to the compost pile. Proper composting are going to destroy the some of the the organisms that might be there that are also plant diseases. So we'll help to prevent the spread of that locate your compost bins again away from the garden so that you don't get leach leach leakage or leaching from your compost bin into your garden, properly composted organic matter reaches 150 degrees for five days. And I know some states do have a master composter program. We have one in Wisconsin and those are great places to learn more about proper composting. Okay, water for your garden. This is against something Tom talked really effectively about not using foliar application of water especially at certain times of the day it spreads disease. It's not healthy for the plants drip irrigation is really great. People like my husband and I have a small garden we garden in a community garden area which I love because it's very social. We always find ourselves watering with watering cans. That we just bring into our bring into our plot, but watering at the roots is what you want to do. You do want to choose safe water sources so city water well water rainwater are all good sources. Different variations of how those might be treated so that you know, you can use that. Sometimes you're using water from a stream and those kind of things. If possible, I sweet, we will note here choose potable water. So this is drinkable water for watering late season crops so you know the type of water that you use gets more and more important. And the, the fact that there's solar radiation the fact that things are outside all of these environmental factors can help us in destruction of pathogens, like salmonella or thing that may end up on the produce may be coming from water. So late in the season is when this is more important than it frankly is early in the season, where we just know we'll have that time outside in the elements that can help with some of that pathogen destruction so when you have a choice to make. And water supply is perhaps limited, or you're trying to figure out it's most important late, as you can imagine, late in the year, late in the growing season, when you want to make sure that you're, that you're using water, if possible, that's potable. That's not always possible. And so when that's the case, don't stress about it right, but just be more aware than you might have been about the quality of that water, as well as the other things Tom talked about last week. Hand washing. I just can't talk about hand washing enough, and, and I know we get tired of hearing it, but hand washing is important. I show you here on the right, the upper right image, this is one of the hand washing stations the garden where I grow, where we created at the start of the pandemic, in order for those of us to be able to still gather together and because hand washing has been important throughout the pandemic. We were scrubbing in and scrubbing out of the garden, and that tied to other things has meant some of us are healthier than we have been in, in prior years, because we haven't had the colds and all these other kind of things that we might have associated with hand washing is also good because we carry diseases, we can transfer plant diseases on our hand from crop to crop. We also can carry some human diseases about 20% of us carry certain diseases that can cause foodborne illness on our hands. So, it's a great idea to scrub in and scrub out of the garden, if you're at all able to. Here's a more standard, just using a car boy with water to scrub in and out of a garden that took a picture of that as well. Steps to clean your hands, you've all heard this before wet your hands with clean water and apply soap scrub well for 20 seconds rinse and dry with a paper towel. In this particular setup here in our garden you just kind of shake the water off there's no paper towels available. There's a bar soap right here. And there's water that's coming out of a little pipe that's right here. It is okay in gardening because that's often going to be a little bit easier, especially water isn't available where you garden, use hand sanitizer. It's not as effective in all cases. It's better than nothing. And it's actually more effective in some cases so hand sanitizer is perfectly acceptable. Just wipe your hands together and let that out those are generally alcohol based and let them evaporate and off you go into the garden. All right, another step for for for produce safety. When we think about this cleaning steps have to do again with the tools that we use and we're thinking of soil and water as transferring these potentially harmful organisms to things that even or might be in our own garden. One of the ways that we can keep our produce safe that we grow is don't let a lot of soil organic matter build up on the on your shovels on your hose on your rake so scrape that off with a tool that you might have a trial or something. If you have water available it's great to rinse things off before you store them prior to the next use. One another thing about tools that are clean is tools can transfer diseases the soil that's there caked on your shovel can transfer disease from your potentially tomatoes to your potatoes and those kind of things so clean tools. Again, are part of that safe and healthy produce and the plants potentially themselves also being safe. And that's a great idea that containers use for harvesting are clean. And if you want to sanitize sanitizing is an extra step. We do, we sanitize after we clean, and here's the steps to sanitizing if you choose to use that in a community garden like for I garden, where we'll notice there's some often tomato blight starts in one plot and we're worried about spreading that to other plots, and we might share with containers. We're definitely cleaning and sanitizing because we just don't want to spread those diseases from plot to plot. So sanitizing steps you will clean with soap and water to start with we need to basically remove the organic matter that's there. Then we're going to rinse with clean water. And if you have like a shovel at the end of the garden season the garden where we garden has a garden work day these are wonderfully social and lots of fun events. Our trowel or shovels and rakes and those kind of things in these big buckets or troughs with the dilute bleach solution. And then we just let them, we hang them up to dry. We just need 30 seconds. These dilute bleach solutions would be one tablespoon of regular bleach per gallon of water, don't have the bleach scented just regular bleach that's a little harder to find these days. We're more often to find concentrated bleach or they might call it ultra bleach. Then you use two and a half teaspoons use a little bit less, because there's more chlorine, which is excuse me, which is the active ingredient for that so that's cleaning and sanitizing for safe and healthy growing and safe and healthy harvest as well. Talk about animal control and then we're going to move to harvest. So animals can be source of damage to crops. These right here the top picture that picture here on the left, those are the beats from my garden. We had tried fencing and I don't know what happened but yep, you can the the animals, they can just they enjoy what you're growing is as much as you do and sometimes more I think so. This can be a source of contamination so when we see this we don't want this because I grew those beats for me. I love pickled beats which was the reason I grew them. So I don't want to see this for that reason I also don't want there to be any contamination that's transferred from the animals into my garden. So we try to prevent animal access as much as possible, keeping weeds under control is a good thing. We've in my garden we use a lot of mulching that's what we've chosen to use keep weeds under control that mulch can also harbor sometimes rodent specifically so there's a balance there. There's no doubt about that. Place your garden in an open sunny location this is back to our first slide where we were talking about reviewing some things from last time where location does matter. And add barriers such as fences when possible. I know when we're talking with with growers and talking about produce safety from those who might have acres and acres and also talking with those farmers about trying to keep, you know, pests animal pests out of their fields. It's impossible right we it isn't it just isn't going to happen you're not going to be able to fence acres and acres and acres that we have a farm crops that we we have to deal with this. But those of us who have garden plots, sometimes it is possible, and where possible this is what we want to do add barriers such as fences. We must have the smartest animals in all of the gardening world because they seem to be able to evade some of these defenses that we put up, but it's a good idea to take care. We have deer in the gardens where I am and they like to, you know, just basically lean over the fence and into things so we tend to plant things towards the edges of our garden plot. That the deer won't like that they won't consume they love peas so we have definitely moved the peas away from that so something to think about again these areas where these were pathogens may be coming into your garden. It's pretty varied. All right. Just briefly about harvest and then I've got another question for you here so. Specifically about harvest and safety. It's a quality issue to but safety and quality go hand in hand so avoid harvesting after a heavy rain. Certainly those significant rain events but produce that is that moisture will allow will allow for to grow and potentially proliferate I'm just looking before I go any further I see a great question from Alexis about pets in the garden. Yes, you do want to keep your pets out of the garden cats carry toxoplasmosis, which is a, it's a parasite, pregnant women are specifically susceptible to toxoplasmosis so you do want to keep pets when it all possible. Pets in many families are like children and sometimes better behaved than children, but if possible, do keep your pets out of your garden. Yeah, whenever possible so that's a great question. Again harvesting again for not only quality but safety things that are going to that are going to last long in your refrigerator on your in your perhaps a storage area that you have at home. You can use clean hands and clean tools. Again, those can transfer diseases even in the harvesting process, harvest into clean containers. Don't make things you know that you've spent all this time growing potentially unsafe rents and clean water to remove soil only we'll talk about that as well. So don't bring these don't take those beautiful tomatoes that probably aren't going to have soil all over them and wash them in the garden and bring them home and expect them to last in your refrigerator because the more moisture we have the more likely there are to decay. We don't want things though that aren't going to that are better destined for the compost bin. Put those there. Rotting disease heavily damaged just don't bring those inside find a compost bin that you can put those in and use those to fertilize the next year's crop time the harvest to maximize quality. This is a standard gardening practice for quality. It's also good for safety what's going to allow pathogens to grow or moisture, perhaps from a morning do that's on produce items those will also compromise quality as well. Avoid the heat of the day whenever possible that's going to stress the plant stress potentially the fruits and vegetables as well and to sort produce by type for ease of storage. And I'm going to get into a lot of detail about that here, but let me ask you before we get into this, what are we going to do with all this that we've so enjoy eating because you can't eat all of it all at once, as much as we'd like to. What is your favorite crop to harvest. I'd love to see ours as potatoes my husband has always grown potatoes I didn't grow up growing potatoes I grew up in the south. So what we grew sweet potatoes if we grew anything. But my husband loves potatoes. Because it's magical you never know what's going to you're going to find a tomatoes well actually true there is nothing better than a garden tomato. I'm sorry what's in the grocery store just can't definitely tomatoes peas people are saying peas. Those are those are great to melons, you know when you sometimes get a melon especially if there's a little bit of heat, and it's warm. That's it's and you can carry those around those are great. People do said only herbs maybe so it it yeah, you might have different things. All right. What we're going to transition to we've got safe produce and we've got it super healthy because you've chosen done all the things right in your garden. Let's think about keeping those healthy and safe for us once we get him home right. The first tips is to plan ahead. Right, so this is going to relate to some of the varieties that Tom talked about last week. Unless you're prepared to deal with all of those tomatoes coming in at all of them at exactly the same time. Perhaps you're going to preserve that produce in some way for the winter. Maybe stagger right when you're putting things in the garden because you so you can, you can stretch out that harvest season. But plan ahead also the time of day, you know, look at your schedule. Those are all both important storage for safety and quality so we're going to talk about that. And then I'm also going to highlight so Julie did talk earlier today as she introduced this topic that in a couple weeks she's going to talk about less not waste food from storage to composting. So, that'll be a good idea, a good chance to pick up additional tips to all that garden produce, as well as other things keeping it safe and healthy. And then later on in the series preserving the bounty of the harvest. We're not going to talk about that today but many of us are home canners. We have freezers that are full at the end of the harvest season so some of those tips will be coming up later in the series to so certainly think about that. Just a reminder here real quick we'll get into some details you don't need fancy storage containers when when you look on the website for just some images. You know I saw these yeah it looks kind of nice looks pretty that's for sure. But you don't need anything fancy. Generally, plastic storage containers many of us are using plastic. There are specific produce storage bags you can purchase as well but it doesn't really have to be fancy. Things that you can do to help that will be you know how you store them and where you store them and that's our next we're going to start into that topic here. Let's get the scoop on plant metabolism. So for those of you who like me. We eat some meat in my home we don't eat a lot, but we're we're not vegan or certainly not vegetarian by any means. So for those of you who like me do eat meat and sometimes people will tell you oh that it's just terrible to eat meat, right. Because of that, we need to remember that unlike meat plant tissues are still breathing, they're respiring after harvest, right animal this is not true with the beef animal, or with the hog that we might slaughter. This is true of produce. So we like to paint the picture that produce is breathing or respiring. As you place it in the boiling water to cook it for supper is screaming at you. Plant material up until the time that it's consumed or cooked is respiring goes through respiration in this respiration process glucose which is a sugar that's in plant cells is combining with oxygen. Just as when we breathe, we use oxygen and as a result carbon dioxide water and heat energy are all produced. So fruits and vegetables, we bring them out of the field. And this is why harvesting in the middle of the day is such is so bad because just as we get hot. And we can pant and our animals are dogs we take a dog for a walk it's going to pant as you is it's hot vegetables can kind of do that too they're going to be respiring more actively. In the day, they'll be producing more carbon dioxide, losing more water and producing heat as they're they're trying to basically cool off a little bit. So temperature is important to control this respiration reaction, the cooler the temperature, the slower this rate of respiration will be. As I said, that's plant respiration and a nutshell, and there's whole courses at universities on plant respiration. Another thing we do want to think about though is in this respiration process. So here we go time after process and relative rates so generally, once we harvest this respiration rate is going to drop. You'll see that here on the graph. Or however, some fruits, and it's only fruits, some fruits that have this burst of respiration. At the end of their life, they're going towards what we call senescence which is plant death. They're in this burst of respiration towards the very end of their life. They also release a gas known as ethylene ethylene is a plant hormone. This is natural for these plants to do this. But there's certain other plants tissues that respond to this ethylene so they give it off as just they give off this ethylene gas is just natural for them to do this. Apples are a great example. Apples are climacteric fruits, they're going to give off this burst of respiration as they do that they're going to give off this ethylene gas. So this get the effling gas, when it's trapped in a storage container accelerates ripening of other things. So climacteric fruits that give off ethylene are tomatoes, avocados, apples, pears, peaches, kiwis, bananas and melons. So these are all going to give off this burst of respiration and they're going to, they'll give off this effling, all fruits and vegetables to some degree will respond to this ethylene that is given off. So what we place and what its nearest neighbor is in our crispers if it's in the refrigerator can be really important because of this effling gas and this respiration. Okay, so produce storage is like Goldilocks right and the three bears, it wants it just right, not too hot, not too cold, and potentially not in with some nearest neighbors as well. So generally the general summary that we have temperature and humidity are key. If we want to keep produce delicious, not only safe, but really high quality. After we've harvested it because of this respiration reaction, we want to be aware of these heat and water and then we're going to say where is the next slide right. So we want to package to retain the fact that the water is going to be given off. We're towards the end of winter, but you know in a closed car in the winter, if there are a lot of people breathing in that car what happens to the windows in the car right they fog up. So my husband looks at me bar would you stop breathing because you're fogging up the windows, well I can't do that, and neither can the plants. So sometimes you can actually see this moisture being given off as plants respire. We'll notice that we package them really tightly in a plastic bag you might notice moisture collecting. We want that moisture to be collected it creates some humidity, and that's good for things not drying out too much moisture collection, however, and things are going to mold, they're going to deteriorate because spoilage bacteria, and yeast and mold are going to want that moisture that will encourage growth so it is a kind of a balance there with water, the heat, the heat, the heat issue is the fact that lower temperatures generally will slow down your inspiration. So we just are going to get a longer storage life out of the produce that we have they'll be quality produce for longer. So we're generally placing things in a cool environment. And with some kind of package, really the type of packages up to you, you'll see some hints in in a couple slides on what what what those hints might be. So if you do that, I've got a table for you, and I will get you the the URL so you can print this table off if you want if you'd like. There are certain things that cold is not good. These are really the prima donnas of the produce world they're often linked to to more tropical in origin. And this is, we've all seen chill injury right if we can see it in bananas right if you put bananas in the refrigerator, just because they're maybe browning too fast. It's not a problem you can still eat the bananas but but you're they're going to take on this brown modeled appearance. And what happens with these items that are susceptible to chill injury is the enzymes. The enzymes that catalyze this reaction that make this reaction possible. When it's too cold, they, they just go haywire they there. It's your plant tissues just basically break down. And it's basically the tissues breaking breaking down in the, like in the skin of the banana. It's okay it's still safe to consume it just doesn't look as good for sure it makes great banana bread when you store them cold too long because I'll soften. So sometimes we see chill injury in the garden. You know if you if things are late in the season, but often we see them when we're storing them at home in the wrong location. There's some things that are pretty susceptible sweet potatoes you'll notice browning right away. And cucumbers they're going to get that watery pitted look, if they're in a temperature, you put them in the crisper in your refrigerator, and I do this myself. But you'll notice chill injury or spots of chill injury same thing for eggplant you'll see the darkening of that skin tomatoes, tomatoes lose flavor. Yeah, they just don't taste the same and that's a symptom of chill injury asparagus the same and green beans. It's not to say that we don't use our vegetable crispers but it just means that once we place them in that location, they're just not going to maybe be the same they won't taste as long. So chill injury, if there's a balance between lowering the respiration rate for these fruits and vegetables, versus the fact that you're going to notice these symptoms of chill injury, pitting and softening loss of flavor failure to ripen. It's harmful to the plants, we can certainly consume anything that's been chill injured. We sometimes just may want to trim that area out. We made us notice some tissue damage underneath. Alright, so here is quick guide, use your computers recommended storage for fresh fruits and vegetables the one I'm recommending here is from University of California Davis. And you'll notice their storage locations for vegetables fruits and melons, and you'll have some different options story in the refrigerator from the get go harvest those in your, in your garden and go ahead and bring those straight into your refrigerator. Then there's those that actually like to look to ripen on the counter our second category and then to store at room temperature. We got a little asterisk there the blue star refrigerated storage will help deter spoilage quality is going to suffer when these go that really like to ripen, and then you put them in the refrigerator or actually your start off being better stored at room temperature. Again, we put them in the refrigerator we cannot generally eat as much as we have all at once. But, but there will be some loss of quality, but it is a quality issue. When that happens, I'll cut peeled and trimmed items should be refrigerated so once you cut into it. This is for safety, we do need to store those things in the refrigerator. Alright, so for quality and safety overall, we don't want to rinse produce prior to putting it in the refrigerator into storage. Whether it's on the counter or in the refrigerator unless we're removing field field heat for that and I see Scott put in the chat function I believe he put the URL for that chart that I just had up there package to maintain moisture but not too much moisture so that might mean poking some holes in a in a storage container, or a storage bag that you have refrigerate all cut peeled and trim fruits, this to ensure quality to ensure safety, sort sort and sort again. So, you know, we find things in the back of the crisper that we didn't realize we have but you'll benefit certainly from being able to enjoy those items. So sort things and make sure that you're removing molded items and rinse and clean water prior to eating or preparing. Just remember that a rinse and water is is good. It's recommended, but it cannot be counted on to ensure something that's unsafe so if you have a flood event, and you bring bring in produce and say well I'll just rinse it before I eat it or prepare it that absolutely is no guarantee that the produce items will be safe. All right. With that I have motored and I didn't leave a lot of time for questions but Julie may have some for us and we just thank you for your time today. As you can see there's some some topics coming up that will build on this and we'll have a lot more information for you as we continue the series. So I do have a few questions for you. Okay, are some store brands distributed by dole or fresh express. So, if there is a recall where yes. So large actually dole maybe dole is a is a brand just as Kroger would be or something like that. So generally what happens in the food industry is there's a large processor that's processing a lot of things and then they're just going to take and put the same product into lots of different bags, depending on who they're packing for. So it is, it is quite common that dole product maybe it may be a dole facility that you'll find that in a different brand. So you have to keep be aware of recall notices, they will specify what to look for on that package. All right, so now you have another question on lettuce. If it says it's been washed three times should we wash it again. And are there any cleaning agents that are effective. That's a great question so the recommendation for triple wash lettuce is not to wash it at home. There is evidence that we actually tend to spread contamination, especially if you wash it directly in the sink. So, because other things have been in that sink. So you don't need to do that. The best thing with any kind of leafy green is just make sure that you're aware of recalls because when they're happening, they're generally happening pretty broadly. And so those are people like me who limit leafy greens that we consume. It's they're almost invariably from the garden. I eat a lot of celery salads this year. Recently I did buy a package of mixed greens with misgivings my daughter was visiting and she loves so I just I did that for her. And I don't eat things that I don't leafy greens that I don't grow almost invariably. Yeah, so these are choices we're making it's a pretty, we just have to be more aware of where our food is coming from that we maybe did 20 years ago 30 years ago. I have a question about water and some people use well water and the question is about arsenic and well water should you use it. Is it okay. I have a great question and probably public health in your area so plants can concentrate certain things like arsenic. So, if you're worried about that if that's something that you're aware might be the case, you could certainly I would recommend that you have your water and if that's the case then I would say work with a local extension agent to see certain plants tend to concentrate these these metals more than others. I know rice is one we don't usually grow rice in our gardens, but you might be able to use that with well water, more comfortably. If you know a little bit more about the types of plants you're growing how those respond to arsenic that may be in this well, but it would be definitely be worth checking. That's a great question. Yeah. Is the produce section of the grocery store a good example to follow of what should be refrigerated and what shouldn't be refrigerated in lieu of chill injury. That's a great question. I hadn't thought about that before but I would say yeah you probably have a good idea there. You know the, the, the grocery stores generally are not keeping things on the shelves for very long. So, they're, they're kind of transient so if things can stay out at room temperature you'll notice tomatoes avocados are susceptible to chill injury. You'll notice those are sold at room temperature asparagus as well so generally yes, things that are that are outside of the refrigerator. That would be a great place to hold them or think about holding them once you get them home. Just time for a couple questions because the chimes are going off at NDSU. Due to COVID this person says that they wash vegetables with salt and white vinegar and store in the refrigerator to last longer. Do you have any commentary on use of vinegar washes or salt or anything like that. So salt will not be antimicrobial at the level at which we use it so you can do it but it won't be effective. It actually may pull water out of the produce and that means it's going to go limp more rapidly so probably not a great idea. There is some evidence and that's one of the things my group is working in on or these organic acids. Vinegar will work. It also changes the color of and can change the flavor so it's not harmful to use any of these or produce wash solutions you find in the grocery store. So the best thing you can do is grow things safely or make good choices at the grocery store. And then you don't need to do these other things. The problem with rinsing is you're producing water. So you might be trying to combat pathogens but then you're going to things are going to spoil more rapidly so with that. Here's your final question and before I tell you your question I want to thank you and thank all of our participants today. It's been a really informative session. So final question a few years ago package leafy greens were contaminated by wild pigs and it was rumored that the E. coli had actually been absorbed into the lettuce roots and could not be washed off. Is that true. It was an outbreak it was linked to animal husbandry and growing conditions. And we do know that plants are able to internalize pathogens, less through the roots, more likely through stowmates openings on the leaf where they do this breathing for that. So it is true you can't wash it off so we would tell everyone to rinse things prior only prior to eating or preparing, but don't rely on rinsing with clean water as a way to make something safe, like, because it's not necessarily going to happen probably won't. And I also need to remind people Julie that there's an evaluation right to remind people to please fill out the evaluation after today. Those of us who are privileged to be part of Julie series would like her to get the evaluation information she needs because we know we've enjoyed presenting and hope that you have enjoyed listening as well. So when the evaluation went into the chat right there so if you aren't if you're still on with us, click that link and give Julie that evaluation data with that. Thank you very much Barb and thanks again to everybody we hope to see a lot of you next week to learn more about honey. See you in the next week after that so Barb has given me a lot of good things to consider to maybe add to my presentation as well. So thanks everybody and thank you Barb.