 Welcome to our fourth session of our 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm a food and nutrition specialist with NDSU Extension and I will be your host for today's webinar. As you can see, our upcoming webinars are featuring two more horticulture experts. We have Tom Kelb, who is a specialist located in Bismarck, and our University of Minnesota colleague Randy Nelson. We certainly hope that you join us for the entire series of 10 webinars, whether you're watching them live or you are watching the archived versions. Several have already been posted on our field to fork site. We are using the Zoom webinar function this year and you will all be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. But people who are watching this live will be able to ask questions in the chat box. So as you listen to Esther today, please go ahead and type your questions in the chat and I will pose those questions to our speaker after her presentation. And next I have a special request for all viewers of the live talk and any of the archives to maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future. I ask that you take the very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. We will have random prize drawings so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win. And after submitting your survey you will be redirected to a second survey and that's where you can enter your name and mailing address. I have two acknowledgments today. First to the USDA agricultural marketing service for our field to fork funding which has provided lots of materials for all of our viewers on our website. And we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and we certainly thank all of these entities for their support. Well now it's time for our featured speaker and I'm very pleased to introduce Esther McGinnis and associate professor and NDSU horticulturalist. Dr. Esther McGinnis is the NDSU extension, horticulturalist specialist and associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences. In addition to managing the NDSU extension master gardener program, Esther conducts research in the areas of native and ornamental plants for rain gardens, pollinator gardens, and home landscape use. Her graduate students have also engaged in high tunnel production research. So thank you Esther and it's all yours. Thank you Julie and thank you for asking me to be a part of field to fork. So a big hello to everybody out there we've got a gorgeous day. I'm just honored that you are participating in this webinar today instead of being outdoors so thank you for that. Before I begin my presentation, I'm going to share with you our NDSU non discrimination statement. NDSU does not discriminate in its programs or activities on the basis of protected classes. Now today, I'm going to be talking about cut flowers, and I'm really going to be wearing a different hat so we wear different hats. I'm not a horticulture extension specialist, but in addition, I have a research appointment, and as part of that I advise grad students and, you know, write grants and conduct research. So I'm going to be talking about research today instead of, instead of my normal extension talk. And this is exciting because it's very much a collaborative team effort. So Harleen Hatterman Valenti and I co-advised two graduate students. We advise Jacob Clusa, and I'm going to be, you know, talking about his research with cut flowers today. We also co-advised Kyla Splickle, and she did her research on vegetable cultivar trials. Now the two helped each other out because we produced, we replicated the trials one in Williston and one in Absaraka. So very much a team effort between our master's students, and I'm happy to report that they did in fact successfully defend their master's thesis and have gone on to bigger and better things. I also want to thank the North Dakota Specialty Crop Block Grant for funding our research, and that's very much on display here today. So I guess I just, I'm going to ask people to respond in the chat box. Are there any individuals that are currently producing cut flowers? So I'll ask Julie to take a look in the chat box and see if we've got people that are producing cut flowers. You have a couple so far. Good, good. Okay, and then, then I'll ask, are there any individuals out there that are producing in high tunnels that are on the webinar today? So I'm seeing mostly field grown, yes. We're getting our first high tunnel in a couple months, yes, yes, we have them, so we definitely have several. That's terrific. I mean, that's really exciting to me to see that we've got more and more individuals that are growing in high tunnels. You know, if there's ever a state that could benefit from high tunnels, it's definitely North Dakota and then of course our neighboring states too. Well, for those of you that have not engaged in high tunnel production, I'm just going to briefly define it and show you a few slides on how these are constructed before I launch into cut flower production. So high tunnels are essentially inexpensive unheated greenhouses, and they are covered in plastic, you know, sometimes up to two layers of plastic. And the whole purpose of high tunnels is to in fact extend the season. So what we have is we have the sun that's beating down on these high tunnels, and they passively trap the heat in the high tunnels, and they warm the soil. So, most high tunnel producers can get at least a month's worth of season extension in the spring, and then another month in the fall. You know, which puts us at a competitive advantage when we're selling at farmers markets, particularly if we can bring, you know, crops to market a month earlier than out in the field. But using more specialized technology, say for example, heat cables, or using thermal blankets and low tunnels we can in fact go much, much later into the season and we currently have producers in North Dakota that are able to overwinter select crops. But so far we're just going to talk about producing cut flowers during the spring, summer, and fall season today. So I'll show you a few slides. We did have a high tunnel construction field day. And we had a number of individuals, maybe even some that are on the webinar today that participated in this. We purchased our kit from Rimmel, and it's a fairly large high tunnel. It's 30 feet wide by 96 feet long. And by having a high tunnel that wide and that long, the center part of the high tunnel does not freeze during the winter. And one nice thing about this kit is that we've got six foot side walls. This allows people to work on the edges of the high tunnel and not have to bend over. Although that's not a problem for me. If you know me, I'm not exactly the tallest of people. We also have a sloped gothic roof. And that's very important, because we want that snow to instead of building up on that fragile plastic we want it to just slide right off. And then for our end walls, it's framed in timber. Although there are options, if you want one that's a little prettier, you can spring for polycarbonate end walls. So just some photos as we built the high tunnel. I think we've got Harleen here up on a ladder. But with this kit, all the holes were pre-drilled and we just bolted the pieces together. And this came together quite quickly. Fortunately, one of our grad students actually had a degree in construction management, and she did an absolutely fabulous job of keeping us on track. Now, to the west here you can see we've got a windbreak to protect the high tunnel. And that's really important. So I mentioned that this is covered in plastic. And that plastic is pretty darn expensive. So we don't want a storm to come through and rip the plastic. So nice to have the windbreak there. But also that windbreak is far enough that it's not shading the high tunnel. So we're walking a little bit of a line there. And here you can see that my students Kyla and Jacob are bolting together the little footboard here to keep out some of the larger rodents and to add a little bit of strength to the high tunnel. Now here's one of the finished high tunnels. This is the high tunnel out in Williston. And this is after the plastic has been installed. I'm just going to say a word on installing the plastic. You don't want to do this on a windy day. You will be carried away. I can guarantee that. So pick a nice calm day to stretch the plastic. That's not an easy process. Other things to note here, we've got large doors to permit machinery to enter. We've got end vents here. And then we've got roll up side walls, which we automated. It's very important in summer to have venting going on because we don't want there to be heat delays for the crops. All right. So that was just a little word on, you know, the purposes of high tunnels and to give you a snapshot of how they're put together. We really kind of did it a little bit like in a, like they used to build old barns as far as, you know, coming together as a community. All right, so now we're going to talk about our research trials. We had two trials side by side at each location. We grew cut flowers in the high tunnel, and then we grew a separate trial out in the field, right adjacent to the high tunnel. So we could see, you know, they're growing in the same soils, using the same, the same cultivars and treatments, but we wanted to see if we could detect a difference in yield and quality of our cut flowers. So as I mentioned, this was conducted in two separate locations. This was on the eastern side of the state in Absaraka. And Absaraka is about 40 miles west of Fargo. And then our western site was northwest of Williston, at the Williston Research Extension Center in Nessan Valley. So a little word about the cut flower economy. And I think this is going to surprise you a little bit. Cut flowers are primarily an international crop. So we imported 1.4 billion in cut flowers in 2016. And just to give you an idea, in that year, 90% of the cut flowers that were sold, you know, whether through the grocery store, you know, through florists, came from international sources. We only grow 10% of our domestic flowers. And this kind of, this kind of rubs me the wrong way. I like to see a lot of local production. So that was, you know, part of the thinking that went into this project. Just to give you an idea, you know, the roses, the carnations, the florist chrysanthemums, the Ulstramaria, also known as Peruvian Lily, are largely produced in Columbia and Ecuador. And they have a competitive advantage. You know, land costs are low in those countries, you know, and throughout Central and South America, labor costs are just a tiny fraction of what they are in the United States. They're growing outdoors in mild climates, so they're not having to expend much for energy. And then they're probably subsidized by their, by their governments too. So you may be asking, how can we compete with the global flower economy, you know, when we're at a disadvantage as far as land and labor costs. Well, our answer is to focus on specialty cut flowers. So specialty cut flowers are those some of them will sell at a premium. But other cut flowers that are specialty, they're not grown in other countries because they may have very complex growing requirements. So they're harder to grow, and they just don't want to deal with it. Now there are other cut flowers that may be easier to grow, but then they don't withstand transport and shipping. You know, as you can imagine, these cut flowers that are produced in other countries, you know, they're, they're, they're thrown into boxes and shipped by airplane to the United States. And that shipment is notness may be harder on some species than others. Well, we chose to work with three different flowers, which we consider to be specialty cut flowers. First is Snapdragon and Snapdragon. I mean, we do see that produced more frequently for farmers markets and such, but Snapdragon is notoriously difficult to ship. And I'll show you in a few slides, you know why that is. Dahlia is also difficult to ship. And then we chose Lizzie Anthis. Now Lizzie Anthis, you know, not so bad as far as shipment, but it is a bear, an absolute bear to grow. It's just so slow. And speaking of Snapdragon's we tested two different cultivars. We tested rocket mix and rocket mix would be the pastel flowers that you see in the photos, and then Potomac white has the beautiful white flowers. Now these are, are definitely cultivars that are, are grown for the florist market, as opposed to being betting plants, because we do grow Snapdragon's to be landscape plants to, but these were chosen because you know they have that tall spire of flowers. We also chose it because this has these have been demonstrated to be good field crops, but we didn't know how well would these do in the high tunnel, would there be a difference. So our Snapdragon's are very popular, because you know they have that vertical interest they draw the eye upward in the bouquet. So they're, they're very much appreciated for giving architecture and shape to a bouquet. Snapdragon's we really wanted to try because they're a cool season crop. We wanted to see you know how, how early can we get them into the field and into the high tunnel and still produce a crop. We do know that if Snapdragon's are properly acclimated that they can take a frost, they can take temperatures as low as 25 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, but, but the key term there is acclimated. So we want to toughen up or harden up our Snapdragon's before they go out into the field or to the high tunnel. And the reason for this is you know imagine you are starting your Snapdragon's you may be starting them indoors. You may, you may be starting the seed in a greenhouse. So, at that point you're really pampering the plants. And can you imagine the shock of after being pampered you know at 70 degrees all of a sudden you toss them outdoors and plant them into the high tunnel or, or the soil. With the Snapdragon's and, and with all the crops that we grew it was very important to carefully acclimate them. So put them out for a few for a couple hours the first day. And then each day just gradually introduce them to spring temperatures a little bit more a little bit more, you know first during the day hours and then eventually, you know after about a week and week and a half, they can be outside all night. But that's that's important first and foremost, if you're starting your plants indoors got to acclimate them. Other things we know about Snapdragon's are probably not the best crop when you have hot temperatures that reduces their quality reduces the stem length. It also reduces the caliper strength of the stem. And then a Snapdragon's need highlight intensity. We've worked with two different Dahlia cultivars. Are they gorgeous. The one on the left is karma chocolate and karma chocolate has that lovely burgundy color, and then the leaves have kind of a bronze bronze effect to them so very attractive, the whole plants attractive in the landscape. On the right is karma Irene, and Irene has more of a an orangeish reddish color to it with more of the standard green foliage. But unlike, unlike Snapdragon's Dahlia cultivars tend to be more of a high value cut flower. These are cut flowers that are prized in the floral trade and. So these command more of a premium than the Snapdragon's. Dahlia's, they're also difficult to ship so they're less likely to be grown internationally and then flown flown into the United States, and that's because with our Dahlia's, they need to be shipped in water. You can't just throw them in a box and then re hydrate them when they get there like you can with some other plants with Dahlia's they need to be shipped in water and that just adds to the logistics of of shipping them. So it's better to grow these in the United States so that they, and locally so they can be shipped, just a short distance. Now, unlike Snapdragon's Dahlia's are a warm season crop, and then they do better in mid summer. So we wanted to see what happens if we plant Dahlia's at the same time as Snapdragon's will they be able to take it. You can certainly buy buy in Dahlia's and buy in their tuberous roots. You can, you can start them in from seed and then they're also stem cuttings that are available. Now with Dahlia's they can also be grown as a perennial in warmer climates, like zones, you know, seven through 10. The third crop we worked with was Lizzie and this and I wish I had a better picture. This is the only picture I took of Lizzie and this. This is after they're already really open, but we worked with three cultivars Mariachi misty blue echo blue and ABC to blue. Now I found this picture this isn't our picture but I found this this photo just to show you, you know how how this is really become a prized flower. It does look a lot like roses before it opens up fully. It comes in colors that would not be traditional for roses. So, very highly prized in the floral industry, it's very expensive and very prized by the wedding industry. So you can see we're working with crops that that run the gamut you know as far as you know price and and and growing requirements. So now with Lizzie and this. It's, it's from the genius you stoma. This is a cool season crop and I'd say it's more of more of a cool cool season crop almost then snapdragon. It's also native to the United States. It's grown in the in the South, it's, it's native to the Southwest. Now as I mentioned this is a bear to grow. It's very slow to grow from seeds you have to be very patient. Barblash which are campus garden manager does start Lizzie and this every year in the greenhouse. I think she starts them like the end of January, with the hopes of planning them out Memorial Day weekend so very slow to to come from seed takes at least three months if not more to grow three to grow three to five leaves. So this is one that's really difficult to grow. We did not start Lizzie and this from seed for this experiment we didn't have the time we we purchased in plugs which made it a whole lot easier. One thing to know if you are starting this from seed, there are two stages, you've got the seedling stage where you're just trying to grow enough leaves that you have enough support to to produce flowers, and during that point in time, you have to grow them at cool temperatures, night temperatures at 70 and above will ruin the crop at that stage, so you have to grow them on the cool side. And the second stage is the bolting stage where they will send up their flowers. And even at that point night temperatures, it can be a little bit higher. The optimal range is 65 to 70 if it goes too high. It then will cut back on flower production. So a little bit tougher to grow. You'll hear our Louisiana's plants going into the ground for the trial, you can see they're they're really, they're really tiny compared to the snapdragons on the left hand side. All right, so here's the trial set up in the high tunnel. So we've got two trials going on within the high tunnel. We have Kyla's sprinkles vegetable variety or cultivar trial on the far end and then the flower trial is on the close end. Now you can see that we've got plastic walkways and then we've got three, three rows of drip line going down the center. Now, we've got things spaced here to try and optimize it. We know that with our Dahlia's we need a lot more room that we need for our snapdragons and for our Louisiana's. One thing to keep in mind with cut flowers is, it's very important to keep them upright. I know some individuals do stake their flowers but that's really labor intensive. Instead we use netting. It's very important particularly for our snapdragons. With our snapdragons. They are what we call gravatropic gravatropic means that, you know, if the stems are bending over they will sag and bend. And they'll never straighten up again. So that would make it very difficult to, in fact, to sell them or for them to be marketable. So netting was just really, really easy way to keep the cut flowers upright, you know, very inexpensive and didn't require much labor. So here's the outdoor trial. This is much later in the season when you can see that our Dahlia's are the predominant crop. Right, so you may be asking how did we standardize our planting dates, you know, obviously going to be much cooler outdoors than it is in the high tunnel. Did you plant on the same date or how did you standardize that. Well for our experiment, we decided to rely upon the soil temperature. So we used those two soil temperatures, 13 degrees Celsius, which is roughly 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and then 18 degrees Celsius, which is about 64 degrees. So we wanted to use that as our, as our date for planting. Now, if you remember, we built the high tunnels in spring of 2016. So this meant that our high tunnels were not up for as long as we would have liked, since they were built at the end of April. And in fact, the soil temperature did not warm within the high tunnel to 13 degrees until May 20. And then it reached 18 degrees Celsius by May 30. So not much different from when we planted in the field. So we got about five days difference here in 2016 for the 13 degrees and it looks like eight or nine days later to reach the 18 degrees Celsius temperature in the field. But once we got to 2017 remember the high tunnels already in place and was able to optimize the solar energy. So in 2017, in Absaraka, we were able to plant our first, our first crop on April 24 when the soil temperature reached 13 degrees Celsius. And then the second planting date was May 6. So you can see, you know, side by side, that's, that's part of where the season extension is coming in. The soil temperature warms up a lot faster in the high tunnel. And then when we look at the planting dates in the field adjacent to the Absaraka high tunnel, we planted the first planting on May 17 and the second planting on May 29. And then we did, we did the similar system out in Absaraka. I'm sorry, Williston. All right, so I'm going to show you maybe half dozen slides showing you our data. So we're going to pretend that we're researchers, and I'm going to explain statistics just a little bit. So we collected a ton of data. I'm just going to show you our yield data, the average number of flower stems produced per square meter. So I'm going to show you some slides on our field production and some on our high tunnel. And I highlighted that in yellow to make it a little clearer. So going across the bottom of the slide, we've got 16 a and 17 a standing for the years and the location so 2016 Absaraka 2017 Absaraka, and then 2016 and 2017 Williston. One thing I need to explain is that when you're looking at statistical data. The differences between cultivars or treatments are not significant from a statistical point of view, unless the letters are different. If you have letters that are overlapping. That's not considered a research effect. It's not considered significant. So in 2016 and 2017, we had, we were growing two cultivars, the blue would be Potomac white, and the orange would be rocket mix. So two cultivars of snapdragons. While there's some differences between the two cultivars. It's not significant from a statistical point of view in Absaraka, but we get out to Williston huge difference and the difference is large enough to be statistically So that's all I'm going to talk about statistics just know that we had much bigger differences and significant differences out in Williston. So one thing I want to hammer home with this slide is that if you're going to be engaging and cut flower production. There will be differences for you based on your location. So we saw differences from one side of the state to the other side of the state. It's good to do some trialing of your own in your own soil and in your own location, because it may be different, and it's good to compare cultivars. Here we saw out in the field that Potomac white produced, you know, maybe one third to one half of what rocket mix did out in Williston. So good information to know. And it's showing you there was a difference with the two cultivars based on soil planting temperature. So Potomac white, there was no difference. Regardless of what day you put them out it was about the same yield for snapdragon. Over on the right hand side. It showed that was snapdragon. The earlier you got them in the larger the yield was. So planting at 13 degrees out in the field with the soil temperature versus 18 degrees was beneficial. And we had more stems that were produced at the 13 degree temperature versus the later planting. So, you know, keep these figures in mind, you know, we've had here a range of somewhere from 50 to 193. Now this is these are the average number of snapdragon stems produced in the high tunnel. So, in the high tunnel, much, much larger figures, you know, we're breaking 300 in 2016 abseraka. We did not see any differences based on soil temperature planting date, which was interesting in the high tunnel. We saw some differences based on location. 2016 Williston had a lower yield than the two, the two years in abseraka in 2017 Williston, you know that there's there's definitely going to be some variability based on year that could have been you know differences in temperature in 2016 Williston. Or it could be the fact that we've got different people growing in Williston versus in abseraka. We did notice a cult of our difference in the high tunnel rocket mix produced 280 stems on average versus Potomac white, which produced 202 stems. So, what we're noticing we're noticing cult of our differences, both in the field and in the high tunnel, and we're noticing much higher production in the high tunnel. Now going to Dahlia. So we've got kind of the same setup here average number of Dahlia stems per square meter in the field with Dahlia we had chocolate remember the burgundy colored flower and then we had Irene which was more orangey. So, in three of the locations we did see a cult of our difference. We saw that Irene produced significantly more stems on average than than chocolate did. We did see 17 ambseraka and both years in Williston. We did see differences for planting date, but once again it was cult of our specific chocolate it didn't matter when you planted it whether it was at 13 degrees Celsius versus 18 degrees. And then with Irene. We saw that later yield planting at 13 degrees temperature for the soil versus 18 degrees. Now this is out in the field this is something we didn't expect, because this is a warm season crop we thought that the later planting would be beneficial. So that's something we learned. Okay, so keep in mind you know kind of the range here for number of Dahlia stems we're looking at maybe eight to eight to 14 on average. We compare this with our yields in the high tunnel. So a lot lot higher number of Dahlia stems per square meter in the high tunnel, you know 30 to 40. One thing I want you to notice is we had differences between 2016 and 2017. And I would say this is because there was a big learning curve with growing Dahlia. When Dahlia came in, it got infected with powdery mildew almost immediately. So we fought powdery mildew in both locations in 2016 and never really got a handle on it. And that was detrimental both out in the field and in the high tunnel. But I mean this this is something that happens when you start a new crop in 2017 we were prepared. We had, we made sure to have sulfur burners, sulfur is very good at preventing powdery mildew. And we're able to get a higher yield statistically significant higher yield in 2017. So, so that's just kind of good to know. Now we've got lots of other data I'm not going to bore you with it we collected data on stem caliper, because we don't want the stems to be to to flimsy and then we also collected data on stem height. Now with our Dahlia's, we got much better caliper and stem height in 2017, largely because the plants were healthier and not contending with powdery mildew. And with, we're going to talk about Lizzie anthis I'm not going to show you the data from Lizzie anthis, because it was kind of. It's not as clear cut. But the one thing we noticed with Lizzie and we noticed two things with Lizzie anthis. They really does not like warm temperatures. We had a number of plants that did not bloom because you know once the warm temperatures came they just kind of quit. But with Lizzie anthis growing them coolers better, you know, I would like to have done a trial where we started maybe, you know, some temperatures started growing these at 10 degrees Celsius or maybe even eight degrees Celsius, and to see how that worked. The other thing we noticed is that I don't think it's really possible to grow Lizzie anthis out in the field and have a quality product. And that's because with Lizzie anthis. If rain drops fall on it. It's going to leave a stain, the rain drops ruin the paddles by leaving, leaving a little droplet. Now in the high tunnel protected from the rain and we watered underneath so there were no water droplets. These things that you learn wasn't necessarily captured by statistics, but just looking at them we know that Lizzie anthis is going to produce a much higher quality product if we grow them in a protected environment and don't let rain or water droplets fall on them. All right, so let's talk about the potential for high tunnel crops for North Dakota. As I mentioned, you know most cut flowers are produced in Central and South America was really, really sad to hear that not a single major carnation producer is left in the United States. Now, I'm not necessarily a big fan of carnations but if you think about the number of carnations that have to be produced in other countries and then flown to the United States. I mean that's just huge. There's a huge amount of fuel that is consumed in doing that. So I'd like to see us bring back flower production to the United States. I think that would be a good thing and be able to produce locally. This can help diversify our high tunnel crops. We've discovered the hard way that if we grow tomatoes in high tunnel crops over and over again. We can cope with problems with viruses. There are a lot of different tomato viruses out there, and they persist from year to year in the soil, you know, on the debris, you know the root tissue that's left in the soil, and they take they take time to die out. So it's good for us if we can rotate different crops through the high tunnel. And I'm hoping that high tunnel cut flowers can be one of them. You know, potential markets could include our farmers markets. We're starting to see more CSAs or community supported agriculture subscriptions out there. I think people would be thrilled to get a weekly bouquet of flowers. And then of course it helps to, to make connections with wholesale florists and even retail florists in your area. I know that North Dakotans do like to sell local products they like they see that as a growing, see that as a great promotional thing. One thing we were not able to do is to do a market analysis. When we started the project, we had Glenn musky on board, and then he retired. Good for him bad for us though. We were not able to fill that position due to budget cuts. So we didn't do a market analysis of, you know, what the costs are and, and how, how competitive these crops could be. So I'd like to see that done in the future. And then we learned that the high tunnel is a great protected environment for protecting the flowers from wind and rain. So what are our recommendations. You know, considering we don't have a market analysis and that considering that research is just really in its infant stages here in the North country starts small. You know, whether you're doing this in the high tunnel or out in the field starts small don't invest too much the first year, because you're going to be learning how to grow these crops, they're harder than you realize. So learn and research the growing requirements for each genus that you plant. So there are different growing requirements, you know, cool season warm season crops. We've got others, you know, they have different, you know, different pruning requirements we have others that some of them are they are the flowers initiated under short day length or long day length or they day neutral, all good to know. And then test different cultivars of each genus on your property, so that you may discover and keep records, are there differences. And you might be surprised. Trial different planting dates using soil temperature as your guide, you know, see how early can you go. Now there's going to be variation between years I mean, you know, we have late springs and early springs and such, but keep records. Because I mean, this is something you're going to learn as we go forward, and then do the research on potential pests, you know, both diseases and insects. So, I talked about powdery mildew being a problem, I mean, it was a huge problem and cut into our yields. So, research that before you go into it so that you can be ready to treat. Same with insects and mites we had a problem with spider mites. And that was pretty problematic for the first year. And that's not something you probably wouldn't have spider mites in a field setting it tends to be more in a high tunnel when you've got hot temperatures and dry conditions that you see spider mites. We were better able to get a handle on that and use biological controls, biological controls are, I guess you would. I'm struggling to think if we can classify them as organic but they're definitely much more sustainable products. So with the biological controls. The important thing is you have to apply them at a very early stage they're not going to help you once you've got population explosions of, you know, spider mites and various insects and such. So with the biological controls, you have to really be monitoring and get on top of the problem before it blows up. And then the other thing to think about is drip irrigation drip irrigation. It's more important, you don't want you don't want to sprinkler system you don't want to be hand watering with the drip irrigation. It's more sustainable because you're only, you're not over irrigating, and also you're not getting water droplets on your flowers. Now I'm not a post harvest expert but just some simple tips for harvesting flowers, harvest in the morning with the cut flowers they are more hydrated in the morning hours. They're more irrigated and better quality versus in the afternoon. Now you can use a sharp knife. People in the trade like to use a knife, you can certainly use pruners but you're more likely to crush the stem with pruners unless they're very sharp. Make sure the cut is made at a 45 degree angle, and that facilitates the uptake of water, and then place them immediately in a clean bucket of water. The keyword here is clean that bucket should be so clean that you could drink out of it. If the bucket is dirty if it has bacteria and fungi that can clog up the vascular system of the flowers. You can, you can make sure to store the flowers in a cooler and then research, you know some of the floral preservatives and hydrating solutions. They're re hydrating solutions that will, you know, keep the vascular system clean, and their floral preservatives that have sugar in them to, to provide carbohydrates to the flowers since they're no longer connected to the plant. This all helps lengthen the life of the cut flowers. The other thing to think about is whether your flowers are sensitive to ethylene. So ethylene is a gas that you don't see it's an actual plant hormone. It's what causes your apples in your refrigerator to go bad it's it's an odorless colorless gas. That can, can cause a problem with flowers. Notably it causes a problem with snapdragon. So people that are in the commercial trade will use sts or mcp one. These are ethylene blockers sts is is is kind of frowned upon now because it uses, it does. It's a little bit more toxic because it has silver in it so it has a heavy metal in it. mcp one is more expensive but it's it's used more frequently now because it's more sustainable than sts. If you're looking for a good book. I'd recommend specialty cut flowers by Ellen Armitage and in Judy Lauchman. So I've got an old edition I don't know if it's been updated since then but it's still just a wealth of knowledge about each genus of flower. They're growing requirements or post harvest storage requirements and some of the cultivars that are out there. But also keep in mind that a lot a lot of information can be found online. You know like through through the through the various breeding the flower breeding companies like ball. If you're thinking about doing high tunnel production you don't have to buy a $10,000 high tunnel that's 30 feet wide and 96 feet long, you know maybe try dabbling a bit with with a smaller high tunnel. This happens to be the high tunnel at the 4h camp in Washburn North Dakota. Now they're growing vegetables in it and the plastic has been taken off because I took these pictures in summer. But this is like a $500 high tunnel and then they built a raised bed around it so you know you can you can think small if you wanted to start producing cut flowers in your backyard. Right so I want to leave you with this quote by Luther Burbank Burbank. You may know Burbank is actually the name of one of our cultivars of potatoes, but he said flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful. They are sunshine food and medicine for the soul. Alright so just want to acknowledge our team. The high value crops team, Jacob Clusa whose data I presented here, Kyla Splickle and Harleen Hatterman Valenti. Alright so I'll take questions. Alright, you have several questions. Good. Let me open up the chat box again. I'm seeing where can I get more information on high tunnels for growing vegetables or fruits. Is there still a government program that provides funding for the high tunnels. Okay so the first thing is information. If you Google NDSU high tunnels we do have a website that has several recordings on there regarding high tunnel production. So we do have an NDSU extension, you know website and it's just it's got an archive of recordings including you know how to construct a high tunnels, you know, variety trials but also we had experts from other states that were plant pathologists in the research that that spoke on that. The other thing is University of Minnesota does have a high tunnel manual. So Terry Nenich is a former extension educator with University of Minnesota and he wrote a fabulous fabulous manual on on growing vegetables in high tunnels so highly recommend that. And as far as funding I, I guess I haven't looked within the past year, but with historically there have been. Is it cost reimbursements for high tunnels. So the important thing is to contact USDA, your USDA NRCS station in your in your county or in your region, and they would have more information. So they do have loans available through FSA, trying to remember what FSA stands for but they they work very closely with NRCS federal service agency federal. Sorry I'm drawing a blank on it, but they do have loans available to and there might even be COVID loans. So good question. All right, next one, did you have issues with deer getting into the field or garden and if so, what would you recommend to guard against it. We did not have deer because this was particularly for our absuraka location we do have an eight foot fence around it. So this is part of our horticultural research farm where the Dale Herman arboretum is so it's very important for us to protect that we do have an eight foot fence around it. So that that is definitely helpful. Now we did also have a short electric fence around the high tunnel and the outdoor field planting to try and deter some of the rabbits and raccoons. I think it pretty much kept the rabbits out. We did have problems with a widely old raccoon that would get into the high tunnel, no matter what we did he, he figured out that electric fence or he I don't know I, he was able to get in or maybe it was a she I don't know. So yes there there are always problems but fencing is the best way I mean particularly if you've got a crop, you know there's definitely different ways of fencing that are more economical than doing a big eight foot fence, but if you're going to grow commercially you do have to protect the crop. I'll add one thing in the food safety modernization act there's a whole section on deterring wildlife. So if you go to the Cornell FSMA materials you can find a lot more. All right, you get several more questions how much earlier does the high tunnel soil warm up compared to field soil, and what was the average soil temperature difference during the spring thaw. Okay, we saw about three to four week difference in the warm up of it, and I don't remember the average soil temperature during the spring thaw. I'd have to go back to our data to see the differences. The difference there between the high tunnel in the field we did, we did collect that data I just haven't looked at it for a long period of time but yeah three to four week difference is what we saw. Question, did you apply any fertilizer or feed during the growing season to any of the plants. The fertilizer it was a granular fertilizer that was applied at the beginning of the season and incorporated into the soil. I think we might have done a little bit of fertigation through the irrigation line to. So we did both so fertigation is where you apply, you know liquid fertilizer through the irrigation, the irrigation system, but it was predominantly by the granular fertilizer. I don't remember. I don't remember which fertilizer we used and we did use one that had more calcium in it. And just so everybody knows if you're not following the chat box, the high tunnel publication link is in the chat. And the next question I struggled with aphids on my flowers in the high tunnel, are they more likely to come when ventilation is poor. I don't know about the ventilation but they do come in through, you know gaps in the high tunnel and when they're vented. We, we are seeing more and more high tunnel producers that are putting in a fine mesh or fine screen over the vents to prevent the aphids from coming in. That's particularly recommended because some of our aphids can come from, you know surrounding farmland in such. But yes, we do see problems with aphids and aphids can also vector, you know diseases and diseases and such. So very important to get on top of that. There are definitely there. There are some biological controls that can be used. So look up aphids and biological controls, or else I mean you might have to use a pesticide which is unfortunate. But it is a problem when you have the vents that are open, and they really do seem to like flowers is what we discovered. And we have another question, can you explain sulfur burners, and do you recommend a fungicide. Okay, sulfur burners. So with the sulfur burner it releases sulfur into the air, and we see this a lot with commercial greenhouse production. And I'm now you don't want to be going going in there when it does does this, but it does release some sulfur into the air, and the acidity of the the sulfur prevents powdery mildew. So it's it's quite effective. And it's also considered organic. So, sulfur is a good thing. fungicides. Now, you have to look at at the bottle to make sure that it's labeled for, you know ornamentals and whatnot but just, I'm trying to think off the top of my head chlorothalon is one we one that we recommend for a lot of different things, but you might also want to check out Michael butanol, which is a fungicide that may be better for powdery mildew but you know I hate to give fungicide recommendations you know without looking up you know the fungicide label and making sure that it's labeled for specific crops. Okay, and now we have one with a couple of acronyms and I'm not sure what they mean. Right now BC I assume that's British Columbia is having problems with enough workers to harvest daffodils since SA employees aren't able to get there. Do we have daffodil production fields here. And do you recommend the burning of stem ends for preservation. Okay, so I'm assuming you're talking about South African workers not being able to come to the United States because of the variant and I'm not aware of large scale daffodil production in North Dakota. It wouldn't surprise me because daffodils do wonderfully well for us here. I have to look up what the weather burning the stem and would help with daffodil. I don't remember off the top of my head whether that's a good thing. I do know you don't want to store daffodils with other flowers daffodils have a chemical that actually will will age the other flowers, if you store them with them. So I know that daffodils do need to be stored separately. And it's South America, we just had a clarification not South Africa so because I didn't know either. I mean I've seen I've seen both you know both in the both as being you know farm workers here in North Dakota. One of our attendees says that they have had success with name spray and dealing with powdery mildew just have to make sure you spray it at dusk or dawn so you don't get the the beneficials. Just a comment. Yep. That's a good one and Neem works for both both insects and and diseases so this is one that's derived from the Neem tree. I think that's all the questions that I see so I just want to thank you Esther was so great to see all these beautiful flowers and maybe someday again we will have flowers in North Dakota. I hope soon. Thank you very much for your presentation and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.