 I'm Norman Kilmer owner and operator of Morgan County Seeds. Some of this equipment I'll be talking about today is actually backed by the arena on a trailer. So if you want to go look at it, you can. Since we don't have the overheads here, I'm just going to go through my slides here and let you follow on the sheet there. I know it's not colored, but I'll give you an idea of what it is anyway. Get my things situated here to where I can start flipping these around. My speech is mainly targeted to vegetable equipment and towards the last we'll get into high tunnels. So I just put this together within the last couple of weeks here over a matter of evenings. So on the first slide there you notice a BCS tiller. I know most of us are small growers here where you don't get into the large equipment like tillers where they go behind the tractors. That till may be 10 or 12 foot width. I know I don't out there on my farm. We have a 75-acre farm there. And at one time we grew six acres of vegetables. And we used the BCS tiller to till a lot of that after we repaired it with the bigger equipment and laid the plastic mulch. But there was green beans and that type of stuff that you just couldn't till properly without having a smaller tiller. So our tiller got into Marys of Use and we've owned the BCS tiller like this since 1981 I think was somewhere in that not 81 when I'm saying my daughter isn't that old. My oldest my youngest daughter when she was before she was born we got it and she's 25 now so 24 25 somewhere in that area. I can't even keep track of but we've had it all these years. There was a one time we was putting over 100 hours on this tiller a year. That's two sets of tines by the way. Any rear tine tiller will be handy. They don't have to be the BCS or righty. We just picked on that because my brother sells them and I had access to the pitchers quite easily. We used to prepare the soil when we was getting ready to plant like green beans or even anything that was put in row crops that was planted with a little earth way garden cedar or whatever. And when we've grown six acres of vegetables our children were smaller. We had we have four children so there's six of us total. We would put out and at every two week basis approximately and we're from 500 to 1,000 feet of green beans in that time period. The variety we picked we could pick about three or four pickings off of it until they started looking shabby. Then we'd till them under turn around and plant some more and that's where this tiller comes in handy or any rear tine tiller would work great for this. You go on a small plot like that till it up for the next crop. So that makes it quite handy that way. You also noticed on that sheet there that I have a high wheel cultivator. Now for you folks that like to go to the gym and get exercise let's save your money and do your own exercise in your garden or your produce patch. Not only will you save in gym fees but I think you end up getting the better work out than you would there plus you're helping your crop along. So that's one thing we can do there. We never used one of them because well it's a whole lot handier just grab the tiller and go do the tilling. So and I don't know if it's the first page of the second page. I have a precision earth way garden seat that I was talking about. This is a very handy tool. Now one of the questions we get asked all the time is does it work? I'll answer the question this way. If you're the type of person out there that puts a stake in each end of your plot and stretches a string or a rope and takes a hoe out there and you pull your fur or the plant your seeds in there and you're just as happy as a lark you're going to live the earth way garden seeder because it's going to open up the row plant the seed and mark the next row off and cover the first row for you all in one shot. However if you're out there with your rope making your rows here and you're cussing at the dirt clots or talking to them or whatever the case may be you're going to do the same thing with a garden seeder guaranteed. So that falls back to have a nice fine worked up soil and that's where a real time tiller really comes in handy in small areas like that. Now if you guys that are in bigger areas well there's they always make them go behind tractors so that's something very handy there. One of the other pages since I don't have a pages here in front of me we show a a mulch layer and this layer by the way is the blue one back on the trailer there. My oldest son builds this one and I'm going to show you several different ones in here I'm not going to pick on one particular manufacturer and we're going to go through the different ones here but before we go there what's the idea of a plastic mulch layer why use a plastic mulch layer? Number one thing if you're growing vegetables you always have problem with weeds I know I do maybe you guys are different. Another thing is moisture I want to conserve moisture so we can tell again there with a machine they call the plastic mulch laying machine make a ridge they also make flat layers but I recommend the ridge layer this particular one here makes a five inch bed some of the others will make bigger or snare beds it depends on the manufacturer who made it and everything else there's some adjustables but this particular one makes a five inch bed if you use three a four foot wide poly you look in a 30 inch top if you use the three foot it's 20 inch and most of the other manufacturers follow these same guidelines it will lay a plant a drip line down for you you can adjust them to where they lay above the soil or below the soil now if you're growing any crop besides sweet potatoes I recommend burying the drip line do not do that with sweet potatoes because they will grow around that drip line and they're a little bear cat to dig anyway but if you got to fight the drip line yet it's so much harder over top of this whole deal it lays a sheet of plastic and they were from one mil to mil and a quarter depends which bunch you use and it covers the edges all in one shot so now you got either 20 or 30 with 20 or 30 inch wide bed there that's covered with a place of plastic you have a drip line underneath for your moisture that you can also run your fertilizer through so you're all ready to go you're going to give them all weeds a hard time you can conserve your moisture and then you can either go back through there and plant them by hand or with a transplant or which we'll get into later the very next one shows a small rainflow model there this is their mini version they actually went the one with the tank in front of it might be the next sheet there is or wherever it's at on there rainflow by the way is a company that's noted their equipment is considered the Cadillac of the produce equipment they're a little more pricey than the rest of them I get some features the others don't have and I won't get into all that to make a sales field out of it but that's that's a smaller unit both of these units we have shown so far is for smaller tractors and for most of your smaller growers this is what you'd be looking at a little later on in the same I think it's in the same sheet or anything you'll notice a 2550 rainflow and this is a bigger unit it'll yeah I can do that let me get this if you can see them from back there now these are color and yours are black and white so yeah you found it there okay this unit here is adjustable now rainflow makes two models I just got to copy the 2550 and they got a 2600 those are the model numbers to them the 2550 makes from a I think they go all the way from about a three inch to a five inch bed or is it seven inch I'd have to look again the 2600 will go up to nine inches in height the 2550 is either three or four foot width plastic and your 2600 will also take a five foot plastic now one thing with the rainflow equipment is they have what they call an auto road track on it and all that means if you have that hooked up to your tractor and you're going out through the field and I don't know of anybody that can make a perfect straight line with a tractor you think you can but there's just a little crook in there or I do anyway maybe you're a guy's a difference but this machine automatically will correct itself to keep that row in straight so that's one of the features that rainflow has that adds to the cost uh actually one of the other photos here shows it used to be unused it might not be too clear on your copies there but if you guys want to look at these color photographs afterwards you're welcome to it so that's no problem there so but uh we'll continue to the next picture which shows actually rainflow's flat layer it's just a flat layer that's laid out on the sitting on the on the concrete the very next photo actually shows it being used what's the difference in between a flat layer and a ridge layer and they hold both of these up here so since I don't have the page numbers on here I don't know where they're at in yours so we're just going to wait a second page okay this shows how the machine looks before it's used and after it's being used the difference in between a flat layer and a ridge layer is the ridge layer will make a ridge and the manufacturer companies do anywhere from I think the shortest one I've seen with three inches all the way up to the California growers they'll go up to 12 inches so that's quite a deal they use that a lot of strawberries on your flat layer it does not make a ridge it's perfectly flat your two deals on the side actually go down and make like a little trench it stretches your drip line and your poly over that and then it fills the trench back in so your plastic is right even with the top of the soil which one works the best I personally want a ridge over the flat layer the reason for that is if you get in a wet situation your ridge is a rule stays drier in a cool season area where you're cool in the spring the ridge warms up quicker than your flat layer does because it's it mess it heats it up it's a little off the ground there and it just seems to heat up a little quicker but that's been our personal experience uh oh I forgot some of these others in here you got one showing there with a team of horse pulling a flat layer there and actually that gentleman there is the owner of notes produce supply his name is war note his wife's my first cousin to be honest with you and these these next few photos were taken actually in michigan at the horse progress days which just coming year in july would be held in arthur illinois area so I'd like to see if I can attend I've never been at them they say there's a lot of fun that actually the first one we showed there with the horses there with warren walking behind it excuse me there just don't get an idea or run because I'm lapla bark at you like an old beagle dog and take after you uh that one there with the first one that we showed there that one there that's actually designed to be pulled behind a tractor or you can take the drawbar off and use it as a three point model the other one that he shows where warren's actually sitting on the deal this one here uh that is a horse drawn one what he's doing what he's on there he's adjusting the two steel wheels on either side so they can make a straight row in other words he's basically the autostere on that thing on the next sheet we have a layer that's made actually in ahia by an amishman this one's got a fertilizer attachment to it so this gives you a little idea of the different types of layers that are out there get rid of this kafa but you feel a little better but that's the way it goes okay the next slide we show we have got what we call waterwheel transplanners these come in several different companies and I have just two different ones that show here I think it's just two different ones there might be three the first ones we show is the rain flow brand and it shows a pool tight one and a three point model now the pool tight one can be made in the three point and there's not a whole lot of difference in between the two the rain flow brand has a divided tag on it so the guy sitting on the tractor that's pulling this can watch whoever's sitting back there in the two seats doing the planning what a waterwheel transplanter does there's a wheel that attaches to with a set of spikes that punches the hole into the poly fills the hole with water and then it removes the spike the people sitting in the seat as that hole bypasses and reaches over and puts a plant into that hole it's all you need to do because when you put your plant in there you displace the water which in turn throws a little soil over top of it so you have good contact there one year we put out 5000 cantaloupe plants with one of these machines it was of course the homemade one but it worked great as before we were selling so much equipment I think out of the 5000 we might have lost maybe a hundred plants total so you know we thought it was pretty good and this is a machine that gets used quite a bit on smaller produce forms and the bigger ones actually the very next slide there shows the waterwheel transplanter being used behind the tractor later on we have a photo of a little better photo of the wheels here I didn't have one of these in stock right I brought a transplanter along for you to look at so but and then the following slide here again this is a Michigan pitcher from form progress days this is a transplanter that's built by an amishman from Ohio it's in steel wheels I don't know if he has rubber wheels available or not but for the Amish that works perfect and there you can actually see him sitting on their plant in the plants on that one there just show you a few more here the falling slide here is showing Warren Knowles standing alongside of one of his planners there with the two girls doing the plant and the photo right below it I don't know how good you can see it you know you might want to come up here later on the look at this slide here there's a wheel called the super wheel and that's what we're trying to show down there you have the ability for each one of these transplant wheels to have six different plant spacings how's that possible the spikes that are in that wheel you can take out and replace wherever you want them for different spacings you can have different sizes of spikes come in there they start from an A spike and go all the way to I think the last one's an F which is very small the A's are quite large and the reason for these different sizes of spikes is for your your pot that you grew your plant in to grow it you might use a four and a half inch or a four inch pot or maybe the three and a half so you'd be looking at like a number A spike because that makes a big hole if you're growing into like 105 cell or something that's a lot smaller you may be using an E or D spike or maybe even the F spike so it has a lot to do with your size of your plants your transplants for onion plants they use the E spike just to give you an idea we actually have a special wheel that's built that we get made by Rainflow that's got two rows of spikes on each wheel there's six there's six inches of paws diagonally otherwise you'll have a hole here and you have another one over here so there's six inches back and forth in between each row it's 12 inches so you can get a lot more onions on a roll of plastic like this and you can a single row we have people that show up there they want to buy two of these wheels put them a transplant at one time it's fine and dandy if you got a tractor with a super super super creeper because 12 inches apart for two rows doesn't sound that far apart but most tractors travel a little too fast for a person to keep up with trying to put the plants in there by themselves you put two of these wheels on you better have somebody that can plant awful fast or like I said a tractor was a super little creeper because it takes a lot of it takes a lot in coronation get them in there what most folks do in that situation where they're using double wheel they'll offset it a little bit and go one side down the plastic get the end of the row they turn around come back over the same sheet so the first time you come down you're laying your plant in your plants on over here the next time you're on this side so you end up with four rows on a sheet on a plastic you can get up to six rows on there you just got to readjust your wheels on there so that's in onions most of your other crops like tomatoes and peppers and that type of stuff are single rows there is people that go double row on peppers most of them go single row so now we've seen how the till the soil up we've got the plastic down in a drip line the machine that we can use to plant it what happens after that we're going to have weeds to control and other things called insects and diseases there is a way of controlling these two whether you're a chemical or organic the falling sheet shows a sprayer now this one didn't come out very good this is actually a crop crair sprayer it's a single boom sprayer it's high pressure there's other manufacturers that build these two i'm just picking on crop care because that's one of the companies that re-represent we also carry the pan creek brand of it there's they have a 25 foot boom on that's adjustable they can have roll out to your crop or it will elevate high enough to where you get over top of your sweet corn and with 280 to 300 pounds of pressure on there when that spray comes out of that nozzle it'll actually swirl down around the ground and swirl up underneath your leaves it's just amazing how it works one of the farm tours are in central Missouri produce auction james shirk had one that he built himself on that particular tour day he said he sprayer up with just water in it and he demonstrated how that really works and it's just amazing that sprayer was about three the boom was about three foot off the ground and he fired the tractor up kicked that pump in gear and opened the valves up that spray just come out of them nozzles and down and instantly curl around it was just like a big whirlwind there he was just going around and around and that was all done by that high pressure coming out of that nozzle is what does it and that's what you want in a produce situation because the insects and diseases are hiding not only the top of the leaves but underneath so you need to have a very good coverage now can anybody afford one of these sprayers well most likely not uh they uh 300 gallon one is going to run you anywhere from about 2000 if you get a manual full boom that's like the pens creek it's around three thousand dollars this one here that's actually showed up has got a hydraulic boom on it that one there I think is around six eight thousand dollars so it's a little higher price sprayer uh so it just depends what the person wants or you can do like I said james shirk did you can build your own uh they use a uh john sump's a pump company and it's a big diaphragm pump so you could build your own if you had to and they're also available on three point so there's various manufacturers out there that build them another thing that will come in handy since if you use in the plastic malls coach culture the other slide shows actually a shielded sprayer that you can go over top of your plastic with the shields that down along inside this is if you're want to put herbicides down whether it's a glycephate or whatever it might be I wouldn't recommend the 240 product or whether you're a certified organic grower and you're using your vinegar or your certified organic herbicides but you want to protect your plants so this particular sprayer has actually got a shield that runs alongside the plastic to keep that spray from getting over onto your crop now the guys down there around central Missouri produce auction where I'm from after they had their plastic laid they'll actually go in there and so wheat at the rate of about four bushels to an acre in between they're just broadcasted out there let it grow let it get up to about a foot at height and usually by this time they'll have a crop planted in there but not always and they'll come in there with the shielded sprayer sometime and kill that wheat in between there that will create a nice mat in between the row there so don't get muddy and as a rule that will last the biggest part of the summer towards the fall you might have some weeds coming up through but this is what they're doing by using wheat you can burn it down with a vinegar you can burn it down with like a post it's a grass so it's fairly easy to knock down some of the guys in the area they use a glycephate which I'm not too fond of lover of anyway glycephate by the name is trade name everybody knows it by his roundup so now suppose we are a smaller grower we only have a small plot and we don't have the funds to put everything out we want to but yet we like to control the next one shows a little amishman pushing a sprayer that's a 12 will battery operating this is another picture from horse progress days I think this one's made in Ohio but look at that thing over basically what they done is just took us pot sprout sprayer that you can pick up anywhere made a little chassis put under put a 12 will battery on there and build the boom and looks like a double wheel wheelbarrow underneath of it so that's something somebody can easy build if you can't find a source for them there I'm not sure on the pressure on this one here most of them little sure flow pump pressures do good if they put 75 80 pounds of pressure out it depends a lot on your on your nozzle spacing how many nozzles you have in which particular pump you have I know looking through the crop care catalog yesterday I was looking through there I think some of them they had 1.3 and 1.6 gallons a minute so I had to I think they was right in that 80 pounds of pressure if I remember right so that makes a difference how many nozzles you have when what size nozzles is how much water is going to take or your liquid is going to determine what your pressure is and what your output is so there's a lot of areas that come in place there so that's just something that we got to look into the falling deal here is a unique little deal here it's also crop care product there's other companies that build these it's called a picking at cyst and there's two photographs I think they're on top of one another there this machine is very handy if you're transplanting picking strawberries green beans or any low-grown crop like this and you want to take a nap while you're growing it and where you want to swim between because you lay it on your belly you get your hands hanging down in front of you as you pick your crop and writes directly in front of your hands there's a tray where you put your what are you picking into one of my employees there is said the only thing missing with this machine that he sees is there ought to be a bladder tank put up in the top somewhere and I have a tube down somewhere the nipple water on like the hogs do so when you pick it there and get a little bored you might want to put some beer or whiskey up in there so after a while you get your mind dead you just don't care what you do anymore that was one of my employees come up with that idea but I think water would be a better idea in there so but actually the young gentleman that's on there to demonstrate and I got the meat his dad in Michigan and when these photos were taken in a strawberry patch the strawberries were just about over now they put out a DVD with this audit that shows them actually how it works and we had two of these in the in stock last year we don't have any right now and they're pretty neat little machines there actually either foot powered I mean electrical powered when the guy laying down there on his let me see it be his left foot there is a button right behind his foot there that he can hit with his toe or his foot and make the machine go forward or backwards depending on which way he has his switch you might not be able to see it but the handle that actually pulls the machine you turn around backwards and that's your steering wheel for this thing so when you're down there picking your foot makes the machine go a little further and he gets out of steer you just reach over here and guide the thing as you're picking so I think Lincoln University and Jess City has actually one that was billed overseas that has a caterpillar tracks on I have not seen it yet I've heard Sange and talk about it already those are pretty expensive and taking the Missouri mud you might have to have a caterpillar tracks this rubber tire at one it's amazing what it does go through now we've got our crop laid we got a planet and we got it harvested and that's the end of the year we have to get rid of this plastic so the next photograph shows two mulch lifters there's actually one of these back on the trailer there like the one the top there's several different mulch lifters that's just flip on to the next one here that's if I remember right that's crop cares wrapper lifter what these machines do they go alongside of the the poly the plastic that you laid well first of all they split it right down the center with a collar they have a set of shears that come up underneath like ply shears that come up beneath the poly and there's a set of discs in the front that pulls the edge of the soil away that's laying on top of the plastic behind these plashiers there's a set of fingers like a potato digger used to have years ago that actually lifts the poly up and helps shake the rest of the debris off the dirt or whatever it might be now in the situation where you have like tomato plants and crops in there ready you might want to go in with a circle bar more or like I used to do I used to hook on to the more conditioner and go them all off right even with this with the top of the plastic and then this will lift it right up out of there and you're able to pick it up with the first ones that showed there you physically have to go in there and pick it up by hand yourself now I know a gentleman down in Pierce City that actually takes the lifter and there lifts it like that and then he takes a rake in there and puts in a windrows and comes in with a big round baler and rolls it up there's one advice he gave me if you want to do that there's one thing you will remember do not make your bales more than three inches diameter otherwise you won't pick them up they're heavy the crop caravan has got its own wrapper system built onto it it actually takes a person run of the tractor and a person standing on the platform back there what the platform guy does there is control the speed of the spools as it rolls the poly up and the drip line all in one deal also when that spool comes full you flip a little lever the spool collapse it and you pull it right off of there and it's be nice neat little tootsie roll there with a hole through the middle so now no one working around poly I know this has got a little bit of weight involved in there because let's face it a four foot wide four thousand foot long roll of poly that's a mil and a quarter thick you're looking at right at 100 pounds so plastic don't weigh much until you get it rolled up and then it's a different story there's various companies that make these some of the other companies that I know of is like a mechanical transplanter the Holland company Kenco there's quite a few in Ohio Amishmen that build different ones and they're built all over and there's people that build these machines by themselves too now let's switch gears you see a picture of a high tunnel one of the next pictures in there this particular tunnel is actually one that I helped put up this one's down in Cape Corrado, Missouri put up on a widow ladies farm it was a high tunnel workshop that we've done there for her uh if you guys ever worked around sand you know what I'm talking about I'm used to working around clay loam they had a skid there a skidder loader there for us to use I learned one thing very quick with sand you do not turn a skid steer loader around on a dime like you do on the on the clay because if you do you're going to stay sitting right there you're stuck that's one thing I learned very quickly high tunnels are very good deal to extend your season whether it's in the beginning of part of the season or the end I was just talking to a gentleman here today that was talking about he's still got tomatoes in his tunnels okay and there's another lady here that does so this is one way to extend your season whether you want to get it earlier or later and looking out through the crowd there's several in here I know it's got tunnels so you know what I'm talking about uh tunnels come in various different companies make them there's various weights of them actually actually the following photograph shows a tunnel inside with tomatoes in it uh this was actually taken at horse progress days in Michigan I just put this one in here to give you an idea what what it can look like and like I said I'll have these photographs up here that you look at them color later on there is two types of steels on the sides how you control your e-vendulation uh actually there's a it's a page with the four photographs of three photographs on them the top one is a tunnel that we have sold and I helped put up in Russellville Missouri the reason I put this one in here is to show you the drop curtains the one below is actually out of the uh farm tank magazine so it most likely didn't come very out very good but it's got the roll up sides what's the difference in between these two ventilation deals we have a drop curtain that opens in the top and opens towards the bottom I have a roll up that starts in the bottom and rolls liberally up to open it up they both have their the benefits and they both have their back draws if you grow in warm season crops tomatoes cucumbers peppers and etc you want the drop curtain and why because this starts opening up at about a five foot height or an eight foot depends what your sidewall is and opens down your cool air comes in that opening goes right through the tunnel now at the other side if your crop's not tall enough to where it hits this particular threshold there where the air is coming through your crop stays nice and warm and your venting late in the top of your tunnel of the tunnels that we sell this is before the most popular one now if you're growing cold season crops like your brassicas maybe petunias or if you're growing things on benches you want the roll up that opens from the bottom up because the cool season crop you want to cool the crop too because they don't like hot weather and I mean my brassicas we're talking about cabbage and broccoli and that type of stuff also your lettuces and your spinach is so then you want to cool them off can you grow them type of cool weather crops in a drop curtain yes you just might have to open it up further both of these systems can either be set up to where they're manual a drop curtain they have a winch in the inside that you crank it one way another they either open or close your curtain on the roll up sides you liberally have a crank that rolls the curtain up for you with a tube going down from one end of the tunnel to the other and it liberally rolls the poly up into that tube both of these setups can be automated it adds a little cost to the to the structure for folks that are not around a regular basis that want to grow in the tunnel and want that comfortability of a machine taking care of the tunnel where they're gone this is the way going it cost wise on a drop curtain to make it automatic you're looking to somewhere around fifteen hundred dollars give or take on a roll up that one's a little less that's most likely around a thousand there might be some other cheaper ones out there just to give you an idea now these prices I'm just pulling off the top of my head or remember the roll up I'd have to look definitely what it is but the drop curtain one I'm familiar with so see what else I've been now there's various different ventilation ways that they can use also besides just your side curtains the very next photograph shows a picture of the Lincoln University's high tunnel in Jefferson City this was actually the day that this photo here is it shows that we're putting the the covering on it the reason I put this in here this is a ridge vent what that works in the ridge vent is with your side openings whether it's a drop curtain or a roll up you can ventilate that hot air out of the top it can be either rolled up manually this is a roll up from the bottom of the of that ridge vent to the top it's usually about a three foot opening the various manufacturers have different ways to do it this is just the way the Zimmerman's do that I'm affiliated with I know Formtech had seen advertised one where they actually had a a piece in the roof that actually detached and here last year I didn't get to see it up at the Great Plains Grores conference there's a guy there from Pennsylvania that had come up with the ridge vent system that was a whole lot cheaper and it looked to me like the poly just rolled backward forward somehow I didn't get to see it I just seen a little brief expert on it so there's various ways you can wind it out of the top how much difference does this make if you can get the air the hot air out of the top it's amazing the difference it makes I know one of the years down there in the central Missouri produce auction farm tours we visited the lead brothers which they hit them about every year but this particular time they took us in through their gutter connect tunnels there's actually greenhouses the one of them did not have a ridge vented just had the side vents their bigger unit which was a nexus unit that's in 90 by 144 if I got my figures right it had the side vent and it had a ridge vent on and by the way that's an $80,000 unit they have there you did not need a thermometer to tell the difference when you was in the first one that only had the side vending it was comfortable in there a little on the hot side you walked out of that when I walked in the other one it felt like you walked into an air conditioned room that's the difference your top vending makes it's just amazing the difference it does make it adds cost to the structure and it's something that most companies you can put it on later if you don't buy with your original package so but it's something that's might be worthwhile looking into and in the course the very last photograph that we have on there this is another tunnel I helped put up this is actually where I trained our new crew that puts them up this one is down in Alton Missouri there's just a small tunnel that's got eight foot side walls and this is totally automatic the reason I put this photo in this photo has a shade cloths on the top that's a 47% woven shade material that's put on top there it's amazing the difference a shade cloths can make in a tunnel there's various colors you can get into it there's white there's black there's silver they all have their uses the cheapest one is a rolls of black one so that's the one we sell the most of and I think that's the most popular color there is I had seen Robin Hale just step in here and I think she disappeared on me down in Oceola, Missouri they have they did a little experiment with one of their tunnels and tomatoes part of it they cover it with a black shade cloth and the other with the white it was very interesting what showed up out of there the end that had the black covering on to penetrate the tomatoes produced a little heavier on that end and then then it did the end with the white covering on I don't know why this is but that's just the way it seemed to work at that time now maybe the other somebody else had done the same thing they might have had a totally opposite so experiments like that has to be represented over several times period before you actually get a true picture and then you got to take a lot of variants in what was your air temperature your wind speed and what type of year do you have so this is a lot of little variants go in there that's basically the end of the deal there I guess that some of this equipment is back to trailer feel free to go look at it if you want to look at these full color photographs you don't have a time here I'll have them at the Morgan County Seed booth feel free to look through them if there's any questions I'll try to answer them yes yes oh yeah well one thing you're looking at 300 pounds of pressure them nozzles are only putting out like anywhere from five to 15 gallons an acre so there's not that much water come out it comes out as a mist like a fog it's that under pressure there when it comes out there it creates a fog with the air behind it that creates your world so I think you can actually put your hand underneath one of these nozzles and you won't slightly wouldn't you could feel it was there but it wouldn't hurt you as far as I know those available through all companies yeah it's you just got to order them in you just when you order your ton your your kit your layer in you just got to tell them you want a double drip line on it and there'll be two tubes on it and your reel that holds your your drip line on will be double most of time to have a single pole with the with a roll on either side of the poles what they do so it's something that's done yes sir I'm not sure how far farm tax behind but I doing the Zimmerman's right now us ourselves are right about four weeks behind filling orders they had a little mess up over there that's cost them and Neil Zimmerman was not happy about it the way the steel company used him but he was at their mercy so they're playing catch up right now with us as far as how far farm tax behind I have no idea so yes sir and to the warm room actually we have over in our area there we have a couple that grows lettuce year around in one of these structures they're hydroponic they use the shade cloth they did say in the hot part of the summer it was a challenge they had a year specific lettuce varieties that were more heat tolerant and I don't know what varieties they that were but as jeans greens over in cold campuses we've got their name at home swaller I think it's the last name that does this so and if you want to talk to them just give the store a holler there Morgan County seeds we can get you their phone number and they had the plastic and shade cloth they just put the shade cloths over top of the plastic so that's what most of them do it anyway so yes okay oh yeah yeah any of these automatic controls can be added on later on they're really not that hard to add on to it so it's quite easy to add it to them on the drop curtain basically what it is is that usually we go in the center of the tunnel the end that the winches are on and usually right above the door so it's way above your head about eight foot up eight to nine foot up it just looks like a big winch on there that's electric and then the cables from your sides come in either way this particular machine has a stops on it to where can only go so far one way or so far the other way and then there is a controller that attaches to this machine that you can set at what various temperatures you want it to open and close and how long you want it to the run before it pauses and then how long it waits the reason for that is if you do that an auto controller is say for instance the sun got out as cloudy and all of a sudden the sun broke through the clouds well if you're in a tunnel you know how quick that temperature can change in there it can change very quickly so with his auto controller we usually like to set him up to where they only go down about six inches and then they pause the reason for that is if you let that thing go all the way down now the cloud comes in front of the sun again you know how quick the temperature goes up so this thing's got to crank it all the way up most time by the time I got up the top the sun come back out again so that thing's sitting there going up and down up and down up and down as if you put a pause in there where it's only runs so many seconds and then it's got to wait so many seconds as a rule you can get away from that so it may open up and stay at that position for quite a while and it might drop on down or aren't might close it depends what the temperature does in there so that's the reason you don't want the controllers to control the machine all the way open or all the way closed you want to pause in between there the drawback to that is if you run in a situation where you got a cold front coming in your temperature is dropping very drastically in a quick time it might not close it quick enough for you so most of them have a manual override if you're there you just a button you hit and you can override that all and close it up yourself and the machine does the rolling yes or a solar you can run them off solar but as a rule they run them off 110 I know down in Mountain Grove theirs is actually run off of solar so yes you can do solars as a gentleman here in Missouri I think he's from Westphalia Missouri if I'm not mistaken by name of Henry Rents he goes by Missouri alternative energy that has set up quite a few of these setups where they go in there and make a control now that controller they use there and the winch itself I think it's a little different unit because it's designed for solar but it works the same principle yes if you go solar you look and I'm not sure what the cost is but it's considerable higher but you know you don't have to run electric line yes we personally do not control the wax controlled openers and closers however there are some there at our facilities we're also the shipping the apartment for four season tools and they have them in stock there eventually that's supposed to be set up it hasn't happened yet to work we'll have access to there are small stuff to work and sell it to the customer we can do that already right now we just have to call into their office and get their pricing what are the pricing there so yes sir on the Knowles brand when you're looking at the smaller one like the 850 that's circular pull type there's some around 1800-1900 if you go with the bigger one now that one only has the ability to handle one wheel the bigger ones like the next size bigger up there 1500 or 150 series the 150 is the three-point the 1500 it's a pull type I think those come in somewhere around 21-2200 you look at the rain flow model you get close to three uh close to 25-26 on them so various companies have various prices so and that price usually includes only one transplant wheel so and then you buy the other one extra so super wheels run 140 the wheels and then your spikes run anywhere from I think it's five dollars to seven dollars a piece so the super wheel comes with rubber blocks to fill each plug each hole up and then you just pull the block out and put your put your spike in there so so yes sir we carry the paper mulch there that's biodegradable we also carry a plastic that's biodegradable and the plastic one is not certified organic wool so if you're an organic grower they're most likely won't allow you to use it the plastic has got the arm I mean not the plastic the paper has the armory label on it it's actually d widths products is what we carry the paper is a little more expensive I got a feeling that price hopefully will come down in a few years to come by more people using it there's more volumes out there usually cheaper the product becomes in price so yes now it'll go right through it no problem the only place it's going to make the hole is where your spikes at otherwise that wheel there on the top is about six inches wide and it's nice and smooth until the spike shows up so no it won't go through your plastic your paper number one thing your paper is considerable thicker than your plastic your plastic you're looking at one male to male no quarter which is very thin so yes on the paper that we carry I'm not exactly sure what the length is I imagine it would be gone before the end of the season is what I'm assuming I really don't know on the plastic biodegradable we have used that the last two years in a sweet potato patch and usually by the time you come around to dig the sweet potatoes the biggest part of it's gone already and once not gone you don't have to worry about it just go in with a disc and disc it up because this particular one here is it's we get it out of an outfit out of Canada the microbial life of the soil will break it down the sunlight does there's five different things that break this down and usually by the spring of year you can't find it anymore it's gone gone the following no there's not even pieces there it's just amazing so even if it's buried it disappears or that's the experience we've had with it now I know years ago on some of the plastic mulches that were biodegradable if the sunlight didn't get to it it didn't disappear so if you accidentally covered a piece with a disc or whatever it was they stayed underneath there until you uncovered it and let the sunlight do his work this particular one works five different ways can deteriorate that mulch so and I'd have to look what all five ways are no sunlight and microbial lives two of them so but there's various manufacturers out there that build that make that type of stuff also yes ma'am yeah yes it'll lay paper it will actually we have folks that actually buy the black ground cover that's a woven material we've had people buy that and lay it with it too that's a more long-term situation so drip tape yes the lead brothers I was talking about earlier when they go to lay plastic mulch they bury their drip line approximately six inches down that's awful deep and they've been doing it for years already and it works now the water pressure is at 10 to 15 psi and that's enough for pressure to open that line back up again and when you start to stop think of it that's not really that much pressure but if you really want to find out how much 10 psi is turn your water turn turn your drip line on and then go try to put a a deal in the end we usually what we recommend the people do is fold it over itself three times and then cross fold it well try to do that with your drip line turned on I don't care who you are there's nobody that's strong enough to hold that 10 pounds back and do that I've had some very strong guys try to ready they can't do it 10 pounds of pressure don't sound like much but it's there's a lot more than you realize there so yeah 10 or 15 pounds of pressure in a in a pressure counter give you an idea can blow that lid off the pressure counter often right through the ceiling so you know that don't seem like much but there's a lot behind it yes sir drip tape is available in various sizes I think you can get it as close as two inch spacing the closest we carry is four is four inches and you get it all the way up in the tape I think the feathers you can get it apart that I seen in the Jane irrigation catalog I want to say 24 inches and it's the emitters put out various amounts of water so you can basically order about whatever drip line you want providing you're able to use the quantities that they require again through Jane irrigation they recommend us to buy a pilot of shot which is anywhere from 12 to 16 rows so but if you can find a supplier that stocks your particular size you can get whatever you want in it so as far as the hard stuff the permanent stuff that you just talking about earlier we carry that in between 12 as 12 inch 18 inch 24 and 36 inch well we'd be carrying the 12 inches coming year that is permanent line like you use on your like you grapes your bambles or even these people putting out the elderberries that be we sold a lot of for that this particular tube is designed to be put in permanent to where it stays and it'll last for years one of the questions we have asked on both of them to the mice bother yes they do they would chew on both of them I don't know what for kick to get out of it and it's not only mice this summer it's a lady that comes from us to our place from over Lawrence Kansas area she could not figure out what was eating her drip line it's just making small holes in it and she finally figured out what it was and I never heard of them doing this before the blister beetles were chewing her drip line up to get to that little water that was in that tape so and as I could say that's the first time I heard them doing that so we've had rabbits out in our place chewing line reading to especially in our pumpkin squash patches they'll chew the line right plumbing to to get to the water so yes and a blood meal solution what I would do in that deal there if the blood meal is not ground worry fine I would make a tea out of it first put it like in an island stocking or something like that and let it soak for a while and get as much out of as you can the sprayers themselves have two sets of filters on it there's a main suction filter and then there's a filter behind the nozzles that's usually somewhere around a 50 50 mesh sometimes just a 20 mesh and whatever that mesh is is what will go through your tip there under them to run this amount of pressure I give blood meal I would guess it would blow it through there anyway because about that point it's going to be soft so I have never tried it through there but I think it would work well yes ma'am yes okay it's like it's inside our tunnel you have any kind of way for this winter you don't have plastic mulch or anything do you okay just a woven mesh so in other words your liquid will go through that in that particular place you can get by with the drip line at the top of the top of the it'll work fine for you drip line does not have to be buried the work drip line can also be used in my guys talking earlier about crone all the green beans we grew we would plant them green beans with her plant or earthquake garden cedar and then we would pull a drip line right over top of it and every so often we just take a handful of dirt and put it on top of the drip line to keep the wind from blowing it around and that drip line stayed on top of the ground now over the season tilling it there the tiller covered a little bit but it will work perfect fine laying right on top of the soil or in your case on top of the woven mesh it's actually it really isn't going to make any difference in your case there let's let's face it I'll admit it I'm a little on the lazy side I'll just lay it out and let it lay right there now you might have to get yourself like a Assad staple or a binge a piece of wire that I use shape every so often to hold it there so that's you know that's a good question and I really don't know how to answer that if it's like most crops you want to keep the soil moist Patrick Byers is here today he might be able to answer that question a little better than I do I work a lot with vegetables I know with vegetables we try to keep the moisture at a constant level the word doesn't fluctuate much that depends on the usage of your there's a lot of areas come in there what's the size of your plants what's your temperature and all that type of stuff and the condition of your soil when you plant it yes there will be days you most likely will order every day and there'll be times you might water once a week it has a lot to do with the size of the crop and the use that the crops using at time so you just got to keep an eye on it okay that's that'd be fine yeah that's what I would do I know I tell the folks and especially in tomato production you know you got the plastic mulch over the ground is not exposed how do you tell whether that thing needs moisture or not always tell them they can either reach around the plant in there or what we used to do is just take our knuckles and roll on top of the plastic just like this here if it feels like bread dough on there they're still on the soft side you're right if it feels like this tabletop hard then you know you've got a problem you need more moisture there uh and it shouldn't be at any time when you're kneeling you're taking your knuckles there you never should have it go when you then you got way too much water so but you want to keep it an even moisture rice crops will perform better in an even moisture than a fluctuating taken tomatoes for instance you can actually cause your tomatoes but cracking but drastically changing your moisture level now there's other things that go in effect there also but moisture is one of them that will do it heat will also do it but that's one thing you know if you have a plant a tomato plant that's producing tomatoes and it gets in the dry side and all of a sudden there's a slug of water tomatoes the hog of the vegetable world that plant is going to suck up all the moisture it can and it's going to stuff it in them fruits well since them skins in that fruit were formed over the time was a little dry period they don't have quite the elasticity that they should have so when that plant stuffs all that water in that fruit you're going to end up with a crack almost guaranteed now that crack can also be caused by uh getting in a nice hot day and the thunderstorm comes through and it cools it off real quick that will crack them too so there's various different things summer varieties are more prone to cracking than others and I know there's strawberries I end up with holla hard I know they have that I don't know I don't think strawberries crack like that not that makes many difference they're good anyway so so I'll this one of the tricks that we have learned there he was wanting to know what you do after you get your plastic mulch down your drip line underneath and you come back to transplant now you take it you're gonna be transplanting by hand okay one thing you do there turn your drip line on turn the water on it's a little harder to poke a hole in something around then when it's flat and that's the trick we use when we gross when we punch the holes for sweet potatoes we actually have a sharpen shovel handle is what we use an old D handle and it's pretty sharp turn the drip line on when you get to the drip line it just pushes it off the side and goes right in through there so that's one thing you use waterwheel transplanter then spikes on there is not that sharp the only time you're going to end up with a hole with a water wheel transplanter is if you have a rock right directly in between the planter deal and the drip line the drip lines in between the two then you wind up with a hole going back to that 5000 cantaloupe plants we planted now we've got some what we call gravelly soil there and we had a few holes that we had a patch here which is quite easy to do with drip line but we noticed each time where there was a hole like that where the spike make that hole there's always a little rock underneath there and the two come together well naturally it's going to give a hole because the weight of the wheel and everything else that just punches a hole so but we had very few holes that we had a patch and patch and drip line is quite simple in that case there you just cut the bad part out and put a coupler in there quite simple so I'll be back at my booth if just feel free to come by and ask questions like I said if you want to look at these photos I have them there for you