 Welcome, everyone, to our second session of our 2021 Field to Fork 10 webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I'll be your host for today's webinar. Our upcoming webinars are featuring two of my colleagues, Karen Blakeslee from Kansas State University and Esther McGinnis from NDSU. And we certainly hope that you join us for the entire series of 10 webinars. If you miss one, they certainly will be archived, and we have probably 75 archived webinars from the last several years. Today we are using the Zoom webinar function. You will all be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. People watching this live will be able to ask questions in the chat, and Barb may ask you some questions today in advance of the end of this session, so listen to her instructions. And you can go ahead anytime and type your questions in the chat, and at the end I will pose all those questions to our speaker. 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 a very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. And to sweeten the deal, I have some random prize drawings, so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win the random drawing. Because after you submit your survey, you are directed to a second survey that's not attached to the first, and in that survey you can enter your name and mailing address. I also have two acknowledgments for today. First to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our Field to Fork funding. And I certainly hope that you take a look at all of the various resources that we have on our Field to Fork site. And we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. And we thank all of the entities for their support. And now it's time for our featured speaker. I am very pleased to introduce Dr. Barbara Ingham. Barb is a professor of food science and extension food safety specialist at the University of Wisconsin. Her current research is aimed at understanding the survival of pathogens on fresh cut produce and interventions that can be applied to help protect public health. Barb and her husband live in Madison, Wisconsin and have one daughter who is a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Barb enjoys gardening and bicycle touring in her spare time. And I know Barb because we're both on a regional food safety team together. So welcome, Barb. It's all yours. Great. Thank you so much, Julie. And what a wonderful topic to for a cold winter day, especially after the last week that we've had to think about growing safe produce. We're going to talk a little bit about distribution to food pantries because the University of Wisconsin has put together some information to help you if you're actually interested in doing this. But really, I like to think about this more broadly as this is really good gardening practices that will help to make sure whether you donate the produce or whether you grow it for your family and friends that you'll have safe produce to share. So a quick just shout out, I guess, if you will to the project. So safe produce for food pantries project. This was a grant funded project that was awarded to the University of Wisconsin from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and we had two partner campuses that helped us with this Michigan State University extension and the Ohio State University. So the three campuses worked together to develop materials and I'll talk a little bit about those. We have training materials for growers and gardeners if they're growing produce for food pantries to help make sure that they're doing that so they have safe items to donate. And then we have information also for food pantries so that once they receive those materials, those fruits and vegetables, they can keep them safe for distribution. There is a website for the project. It's listed here, the URL at the bottom of the slide, safeproduceforfoodpantries.org and I'll talk a little bit about that and refer to that a little bit later. So safe produce for food pantries, our ultimate goals for the project were to understand the importance of safe produce for food pantry guests. This is also the importance of safe produce for growing for ourselves and our families. And to highlight important food safety steps that we can take when we're actually growing the product. So these would be called good gardening practices and to highlight important food safety steps for food pantries and food banks that might distribute fresh produce that you have shared with them. So why are we even worried about fresh produce to start with? So first off, let's put this in the context a little bit of our those who are food insecure and those who need help finding adequate food. Food insecurity in the upper Midwest. So I looked at data ranging from the Dakotas over to Ohio and Indiana. So the range is pretty broad in some ways, the food insecurity, this was 2018 data. This probably changed a good bit over the last year with the pandemic, but the most recent data that we have from 2018 indicated that about 6.8% of individuals were food insecure in the upper Midwest in North Dakota. That was the low. So good for North Dakota and it ranged to Ohio, just under 14% in Ohio. So that's quite a range. The US average for food insecurity is 15%. So the upper Midwest is right in that right in that range. When we look specifically at children who are often more vulnerable and more at risk for food insecurity, not having enough to eat. We find that the the level of food insecurity again back in 2018 is higher. So just under 10% for North Dakota, again, the lowest state in the region, and then up to just under 20% in Ohio. Again also the highest level of food insecurity for children across the region. The US average is 15%. So we do see that children are very much at risk for food insecurity as is the general population and we have every reason to believe that those numbers have gone up in the last year with the current pandemic. We also know from plenty of information that we can find that fresh fruits and vegetables are some of the most prized food that individuals who visit a food pantry will find. This is really what they want. And so by sharing the resources that we have from our garden, certainly with family and friends, but also with those who are especially in need. It's really a wonderful gift that you may be sharing. The lack of really a secure food supply leads to some particular diseases that are more prevalent in food insecure populations. Again, this is data across the Midwest. So roughly one in nine households are food insecure to two and three adults are low income and also overweight and obese. And this is often linked to lack of the ability to specifically choose the foods that they want. They're they're at a food pantry. Maybe they don't have access to as many fresh fruits and vegetables. And this leads to that negative indicator of overweight and obesity. And then one in 10 adults are low income and diabetic. Again, an indication that the nutritional status of those who are food insecure is compromised. And this, again, is where fresh fruits and vegetables can be so important. I see a quick question from the chat. Is there data or are there data available from 2020? Not that I could find these data are coming from a feeding America, which is a national organization looking at helping to address issues of food insecurity. It generally takes a couple of years, if not one year to try to summarize that data. I would say if you're interested in that for your own state, maybe reaching out to your extension service or your Department of Agriculture to see if there's some information you could find that's more up to date, but certainly nothing published that I could find. That's a great question, though. So an indication that fresh produce is so important. This is an article from a newspaper article from the Chicago Tribune back in 2018, and the idea was supposedly simple, let load fresh fruits and vegetables into a refrigerator truck and drive it to a health clinic and then have a doctor write a prescription for food to improve the diets of low income people with diabetes and high blood pressure. And we can see that 10% or more of those individuals, this prescription could be really important. So US food pantries and the work that Wisconsin has done and other states have done as well through some of their outreach to these population. They're not only working to fight hunger, but they are looking at as all of us are and are the medical community is as well as food is medicine strategies. How can we look at food to help treat and prevent disease? And this is where, again, fresh fruits and vegetables come into play and why they're so important and looked on with such such eagerness when they find their way into food pantries and food banks. So that said, produce is amazing this time of year. So many of us think we can almost just create bliss for ourselves. We think about homegrown tomatoes when they're at the height of the season in July and August produce. However, has some say negative attributes, but things we need to be aware of that we're maybe not that we might not be. And so let's look at some data that we have available. We do know that foodborne illness strikes an estimated 48 million Americans each year get sick from something that they ate. And roughly the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 128,000 of these are hospitalized and 3,000 will die as a result. Those are generally preventable diseases or preventable illnesses and preventable deaths. So the most vulnerable in this group, most susceptible to these foodborne illnesses, most likely to come down with serious consequences are very young children, the elderly, pregnant women and those who have compromised immune systems. So this is something to be aware of. That's about one in six individuals every year coming down with the foodborne illness, again, largely preventable. So where does produce fit with that? So here's some data again, the most recent that we have presented from 2004 to 2013. So a little bit dated, but here along this axis here, we have number of outbreaks of illness and we have the scale ranges from zero to 800. And then across the bottom of our graph here, we have different commodities that are linked to foodborne illness and multi-ingredients foods that are non meat based produce, seafood, poultry and poultry dishes, beef, multi-ingredient items that might have meat. So a meat based casserole, perhaps, dairy, pork, breads and bakery, et cetera, down to eggs. So if we think about these data from 2013, that's pretty much a long time ago when we think about not only our memory banks, but also what we've seen in the news recently. So this doesn't account for any number of foodborne illnesses or outbreaks that we've seen on the far right hand side here. We do have actually number of illnesses. So we can see that ranges again from zero to 25,000 individuals impacted. I've put a highlight here around the produce column. And I don't know if any of you find that interesting and kind of surprising that if we look over this period of time, and I wouldn't going to argue that it's produce, if we could take it up to 2018, 2019 or 2020, the produce column would definitely have moved its way up. We can see that produce is one of the highest. And I'm going to argue if we had current data, it would be the highest. And then also not only are the number of outbreaks, which is the height of the column here, but the number of illnesses that we have. So that's this column here. So over this period, 2004 to 2013, we had over 20,000 individuals in the United States becoming ill and linked to these particular outbreaks. An outbreak is two or more individuals. So these are things generally we're hearing about in the news. This doesn't capture information where might just impact you and your family and you never go to the doctor's office. So that can be quite surprising. So produce is something that we've known over the last years that we do need to take care when we're growing so that those items can be safe for ourselves and our family. Here's another look at data again, only extends to 2008. So somewhat dated. But here we have produce types, leafy greens, sprouts, tomatoes and melons, what have you. And these are outbreaks, number of outbreaks over this period of time of 10 years and then outbreaks tied to particular particular organisms. So we here have pathogenic E. coli. We have norovirus, Salmonella. Probably many of us have heard from hepatitis might also be something that we've heard from. So different produce items here, different illnesses here. And so we are able to tie these. I'm sorry, different outbreaks here and we're able to track them. So a different way to look at the data that we have. I've put some of the data in in a red box where the numbers were just higher and contributing substantively to this 661 that we have here. You'll notice that a lot of those if we're looking at pathogenic E. coli norovirus or Salmonella. A lot of that is tied to leafy greens. And this is something that we've heard a last couple of thanksgivings about that time of year. We're seeing outbreaks that are linked to spinach or lettuce products. Sprouted seeds can be also problematic in tomatoes, especially if we think of Salmonella. When we think of virus norovirus in particular, we also can highlight things like fruits, vegetables, other vegetables, and then just a smattering of other products that maybe don't have a lot of highlights here. What these data don't include is something that we might remember if we think back far enough. In 2011, there was a farm in Colorado that was distributing cantaloupes and that those melons were distributed nationally. This one outbreak linked to cantaloupes were outbreak was linked to 147 illnesses in 28 states and 33 deaths. The organism here is Listeria monocytogenes. So not not one that we even saw on our graph here. But this is really where we began to, I think, as a scientific community, understand more fully the impact that produce can have when we look at contributing to foodborne illness. Don is asking a question about if there's been a study about commercially grown versus personally grown or hobby farms. That is a fabulous question. I would say we focus on what's commercially grown because there's so much of it. Because that produce is is distributed often over a wide geographical area, and that can mean to tracing illnesses over a large geographical distance. And so we might have illnesses popping up in a lot of places. A lot more people impacted just because of the volume of produce. Interestingly enough, there's no data that suggests it's inherently safer to grow things at home, versus growing things on a commercial scale. Certainly those who grow commercially, however, are up against the challenge of growing a lot of product that is handled. And so it's it's really more of a scale. A scaling effect versus anything inherently unsafe or not unsafe versus where it's grown. But we'll look at some things that home gardeners can do because this is where we have control, certainly. That's really important. So just to let you know, our Safe Produce for Food Pantries project was actually divided into two different sections. We have Make Your Donation Count. This is where we put emphasis on helping growers and gardeners think about growing safe produce that they might donate then to food pantries and food banks and those in need. So make your donation count so that you're not making someone who's very vulnerable, making them sick. The second part of our training materials were for food banks and food pantries, helping those individuals and people who volunteer at food banks and food pantries, making sure that that donation that you've worked so hard to share, making sure that it stays healthy and that it stays as fresh as possible so that those most at risk have the ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor as part of their meals as well. So this is where we're going to will concentrate our time today on Make Your Donation Count. How can we grow things? So let's think about if you can find the chat function, which is probably hopefully going to be at the bottom of your screen. Let's look at this first question. What do you enjoy about growing fruits and vegetables? I'm totally excited. I was telling Julie as we were getting set up today, my seed. I have my seeds. We've ordered them for the year. But what what do you like? What what what makes you looking forward to the gardening season? Maybe it's only the warm weather. Maybe it's something else. Oh, I love they taste so much better fresh. Is that absolutely true? I absolutely agree with that. Anything else that people can think? Providing your own food, spending time outside last year with covid. This was we garden in a community garden ourselves. It's a food garden that also grows for the food pantry. And it was so wonderful to have that excuse to be outside watching things grow, having fresh produce to eat the health benefits, not only of gardening, but of of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Right, having things convenient and available, watching things grow. Isn't that wonderful? Working with my hands, fruits of our label, those are all great. And I would think so many of us share those. My my husband, who is a very city boy, he grew up on the east coast in Rhode Island, has that gardening catalog dog geared just after Christmas and early in the new year, where he's choosing his seeds. Seeds for being outside and what we're going to plant. We always try some new things every year. So let me ask another question. If you donate fresh produce, what motivates you to do so? Why? Why might you think about if you've done this in the past? Share the fruits of your labor and specifically with those who are most in need, those are food insecure. Julie has rightly said helping those in need, that's great. All right. Oh, I love the suggestion in terms of growing for the food pantries. Someone was responding that it's because it's a way to help teach their children. Somebody, she was homeschooling and they were talking about, you know, this is a way to help help your children think about. So many zucchini, isn't that true? That's absolutely true. So many zucchini. What to do with those other than to share the fruits of your labor? Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas. So we might say, you know, we're pretty perhaps experienced gardeners or we're certainly dedicated and enthusiastic. So what what do we know about gardeners in general? So there was a national survey in 2012 of gardeners. And here's some of the results of that survey. Individual survey. What do you think about gardening, gardening practices? What have you? Gardeners that responded to the survey did not understand that their garden produce could be contaminated with harmful bacteria and viruses. So it's not just that that we hear about coming from California or Texas and from large scale farms. It's actually those that might be in our own gardens that we do want to be careful with as well. Chemical residues from pesticides were viewed as the biggest concerned by and large by gardeners who participated in the survey. There were 230 some responses. And actually from a from a food safety standpoint, we know that chemical residues, whether it's from a commercial grown produce or something, you might grow in your home garden. Commercially grown chemical residues aren't the concerned. It really is are the bacteria that we're viruses and other things that may be there. Gardeners didn't use best composting practices. So we're going to highlight a few of those today. So you know to do that if you're going to use composted waste materials of any kind, either animal or plant material waste. Gardeners thought that organically grown produce was safer than conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. There absolutely is no data to support that. And there are some to contradict that that organic agricultural practices. There those are some growing standards, but it's not a safety standard. So there's some huge organic farms that have some of the same challenges as large operations that are not organic. And gardeners did not consider water as a source of harmful bacteria. And oh, are we ever aware of these days that that's often where certainly these national outbreaks can be the source of contamination. So we want to be really careful about that. A question about need to worry about water in town from the hose. And I'm going to get to that. We are going to talk about water source. And I'll remember to do that. And there's a question about cleaning produce with the dilute bleach solution. We'll talk about that, too. Thanks for these great questions. So let's look at these best practices for donated produce. Again, this is this really is good gardening practices, whether you're donating produce or, you know, we we donate my husband and I do. But we also grow and eat from our own garden. So we want to make sure that it's safe for us as well. So we're going to look at a couple of just quick steps, grow safe, high quality produce and specifically looking at location, soil, water and animal control. We want to harvest to maintain quality and safety, especially if we're donating. But I'd like it to last for a little bit of my refrigerator as well. And then again, if you're donating these extra steps, transporting produce to ensure that it makes its way safely to the food bank or food pantry and storing for best quality. And that can be important at home as well. OK, so let's dive into a couple of these. These are general topics. I'll refer you back to safe produce for food pantries dot org. We have a lot of handouts there for some of this material today. And and I'm happy to answer questions. You'll have my contact information at the end. And I'm happy to direct you to specific resources if you have questions as well. But let's just think about again, because it's a great time of year to do that. Growing safe, high quality produce. The picture on the upper right there, a flooded field, it seems like in Wisconsin. This is early in the growing season for the last couple of June's in Wisconsin, early in the year after we've most of us have our garden planted and this was happened to be a field. I was biking by and taking a cell phone picture where there were heavy rains. And that can be problematic for organisms that are transported by water. So let's think about some things in terms of siding your garden, a sunny garden location with well drained soil. We don't want the water standing. That's for the health of the plants as well as the health of the produce. Locate your garden away from animals and manure piles. And this is more because water being a vector, water being able to transfer things from the compost pile, from the manure pile, move it downhill, perhaps to your garden at the bottom. Specifically, if the if the garden where you're gardening is reclaimed soil and a lot of times and most often this is in urban areas. We do recommend that you test the soil for nutrients is always a great thing because that helps you know know that you're that you're the plants that you're growing are going to get the the nutrients that they need. But if it's reclaimed soil, like you're in an urban, especially a city environment, maybe there used to be a factory there or something like that. We're looking for things like lead and cadmium. So that's particularly important if you live in a city and a very urban gardening environment. If you don't live in there, those contaminants generally are not seen as problematic, then you're looking at soil testing more for what is the do you need to add anything to the soil to make sure that you're going to have the best crop possible. Another area we're going to look at is keeping animals out of the garden. That can be highly problematic. We have deer in our area that are pretty, pretty clever. Anyway, let's look at healthy soil growing healthy produce. And that's very true. Right. If you've got a lot of lead or cadmium in the soil, plants will take those up. And then that means that the produce that you grow can be contaminated with those basically inorganics, which is these heavy metals. So healthy soil is rich in organic matter. You can certainly compost in their ways to help the soil become enriched in organic matter. And you want to do that. Many states have master gardener programs. And this is really some of their forte, at least in the state where I live in Wisconsin, master gardeners are great at helping gardeners make sure that they have good soil and composting techniques and what have you use properly. Composted plant or animal waste for your garden. And again, locate those compost bins downhill or slightly away from the garden site. And we do like to see barriers to prevent runoff into the garden, especially if it's animal waste. But really any composted waste can carry diseases either for plants or for humans into the garden. Properly or composted organic matter reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit for five days. I don't know if you've seen these composting thermometers, they're very long. We just generally put ours in our compost pile at our community garden. And again, it reaches the temperature necessary like that. OK, water. This was a question that we have here in the chat box, water for your garden. So it's our plants need water. And it's interesting how sometimes mother nature sends the water exactly when we need it. And in other years, we're having to work a lot harder. Acceptable city water sources or water sources can be certainly city water, which will be treated well water and rain water. So if if you're if you're home or your homestead is on a well, generally it's the general recommendation is you're testing well water to make sure that it's safe for your family to drink. And as long as it meets those drinking water standards for your personal well, city water will automatically meet those safe water standards. Rainwater is can be different than that, right? It's great to harvest rainwater where we garden. We garden at a church that has land that's made it available for our food pantry and then for individuals as well, that water is coming off the roof. So that rainwater is then collecting things from the roof. And with that, so when you use these sources that aren't city water and aren't moving through pipes that a city has laid down or where your water, maybe it's a different water than you use for different well water than you use for your family dishes. At this point, we begin to recommend you need to think about where that water is applied. So we want the safest water sources for produce that is harvested. So if you're going to rinse produce, say potatoes, is there dug from the ground or zucchini and other squashes that are that are growing on the ground? If you're going to use if that produce is basically ready to eat, that produce should see the safest water. So we'd like to see city water. That would be water potentially if you bring that produce home unrinsed, bring it into your kitchen and rinse it there. Maybe this is the water that you're using well water to feed your family. If you're using other sources, if you're using river water for for watering or irrigation or well water, but it's not the water that you normally use to drink from, then we suggest that that water not be used for ready to eat produce items. So it may be fine, especially if you're very careful to use that for irrigation. It's great for drip irrigation because you're putting it right at the at the at the roots of the plant. But be very careful when you use these untreated water sources later. If you think about the hose that you're using as well to to maybe perhaps transfer water into your garden, hoses are not food grade material. So again, water from a hose, we'd say that's fine, certainly for watering, even later in the season produce. But really those final rinses for that produce that's ready to drink or ready to eat should be water that is potable or drinkable that that we know is safe to drink. So that's a little bit about water, hand washing. This became even more important for those of us who are gardening in a community last year. But also, it's always been important to help prevent disease. Some of us can carry diseases on our hands. We can also carry diseases from maybe what we were doing before into the garden. So we always have recommended washing and that washing our hands after touching pets or farm animals or using the restroom. And we say scrub in and scrub out. One thing I'm going to mention here and we have one slide at the very end about covid. As you see, there's a this water system here included a bucket and there's a water. There's a pipe that's draining into the bucket here. At the bottom was a foot pump. This was one of two hand wash stations that we built at our garden, community garden last year. Now there's a number of people. There's this garden area here. And then there was another one at the top of the hill where we were gardening. Anyway, we recommended that people washed in and washed out of the garden. So here there's a little. I'm not sure if you can see a wire cage right here. There's a bar of soap. So you would pump with your foot. You would get some water running here. You take the bar of soap, you'd lather your hands, you'd rinse them off and then with the foot pump again. So this was an engineer. I was so impressed with how they did this. But we have these at the entrance to the garden. It's a great idea, regardless. This is a more maybe portable device here, a hand washing station with some soap here at the top. This happened to have paper towels. We didn't have paper towels in the garden where I was. We just it was a little bit drip dry and on the honor system. So how would you wash your hands appropriately? Wet your hands with clean water, apply soap, scrub well for 20 seconds, rinse with clean water and dry with a paper towel or drip dry. Even though it's not an altogether best practice, I'm one of those who says you have to work with what you have. And I do believe that hand sanitizer as long as your hands aren't filthy, like, don't, you know, go from a manure pile and expect and have handled manure with ungloved hands and then expect a hand sanitizer to clean those hands because it won't. But as long as you start off with hands that are relatively clean, they're visibly not dirty. A hand sanitizer will do enough. And for for many gardens last year, this was maybe an acceptable alternative for them. Questions about a rain barrel with algae growing on the barrel inside for watering plants. So that may be OK early in the season, that water. So it would be like river water or water that may have some contaminants in it that we don't want to see on late season ready to harvest produce. So we would not recommend using algae covered. You know, if you're not going to drink it, if you aren't going to stick your head in that rain barrel and drink out of it, which we hope you wouldn't, then it's probably it's not a good idea for the produce that is ready to harvest, that's going to basically go from from the garden into potentially someone's mouth. Let's look at how we might maintain cleanliness. We talked about our hands, but it can be also a good idea to maintain cleanliness of things like tools that we use or harvest totes where when we donate to the food pantry, we take these totes to the food pantry and the food bank. They're unloaded there. We bring the totes back, so we need to keep those clean. So certainly tools at the end of the season should also be kept clean. So here's how would we sanitize? So we need to remember that sanitizing, sanitizing removes germs that have been left after cleaning. And that's what it's designed to do. It's not designed to clean. It's designed to sanitize. So you clean first, you sanitize second. So whether it's your your buckets, whether it's your harvest totes, clean them with soap and water, you can do that. Rinse with clean water and then apply a dilute bleach solution. So here's a dilute bleach solution that will work. One tablespoon of regular bleach, something that looks like this bottle per gallon of water. Very dilute. It's not going to leave a residue. And within about 30 seconds is going to evaporate. So you can dunk things in. Let them let them have some contact time. 30 seconds would be good. Take them out or let things air dry. If you have to dry them, then use something like a disposable paper towel would be a great idea, but allow to air dry or wipe with paper towels. So that's a dilute bleach solution. You can also use it on produce that you're going to eat. Bro, bleach does not leave a residue. It will evaporate. That's why you can sometimes smell bleach is because it's evaporating and that's why we can smell it. OK, so we've got clean water and water sources and clean hands and clean tools, animal control. Easier said than done, right? So it's an inconvenience. These are like beats growing in my garden where something has had a chance to gnaw on those. Just standard things you can do. There's no foolproof way to prevent that. Fencing can help. Here's a deer feasting on some strawberries. Weeds and weed control or plants themselves. Some plants can provide a lot of coverage. So consider trellising, viney plants so that their plants are growing up on trellises versus out on the ground where they allow harbourage. Planting in an open, sunny location that's a little bit less agreeable and add barriers such as fencing. Again, sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't certainly do your best. OK, so once we've put all this work, how do we harvest to maintain quality and safety? So the first thing that we consider here is we have clean tools and harvest and to clean food safe containers. So these are these bins and those kind of things. Time the harvest to maximize quality. You want this for yourself as well as for items that you might donate. And that's I think what really distinguishes homegrown fruits and vegetables from those that we often see in the grocery store. Some groceries are doing a good job of trying to source local produce. But if they're having to move a distance, they're often harvested when they're not at that peak rightness that we can do when we're just going outside from our own garden. Sort produce by type. This is especially nice if you're again donating so that food banks and food pantries as they display items can can easily create attractive displays that will make it more likely that those in need will choose what you have prepared. And then plan ahead. Plan for delivery to the food pantry or for storage. So putting things available and then making sure that food pantries are open. I love the comment here in the chat that said that Donna had trellis cucumbers and squash for the first time last year. Amazing results and so much cleaner. I absolutely agree. One of the things that I've noticed with a food pantry guard or the garden where I garden, which is a community garden, is there's, you know, there's about a hundred different garden plots. They're small, but they're about a hundred different ways of doing things. And it's great. I have pictures from last year that I've kept a file of people doing things that I wanted to try myself this year. And a lot of trellising. We're going to trellis our tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Absolutely. Here's another question that's a really good one to drive manures, harbor disease. So that's a great question. I will say that if it simply dried without without monitoring temperature, yes. So something that's dry may carry disease. The key for manure or any kind of compost is it needs to get hot. So sometimes that heat will dry manure, but it needs to make sure that it's heated, that it composts and it will the microbes that are there and will naturally heat as they metabolize within the compost pile. But I guess the shorter answer is dry manures may harbor disease if that drying process wasn't controlled. One thing that we do know for those of us in the lab, one way that we share microorganisms between different research labs, if I would need to ship something to North Dakota, I could I could take those Salmonella strains and there's two ways for me to get them to North Dakota. So that at the other end, the North Dakota scientists can can grow those and have that same Salmonella for their research. One of that is freezing and the other is drying. Those are the two ways. And so drying does not kill. It might probably will some, but not completely. Well, here's a question from about does the city of Fargo check their temps on the compost they give out? That's probably a question for Julie. My guess would be they do. I know our parks division in with Madison does. I would imagine that they do could be a good question to ask. A few more harvest tips. A board harvesting after a heavy rain event. This is again, something that you would do for your family. And so you also want to do that for food pantries as well. It remove excess soil if produce is rents dry thoroughly sort. And again, this is just a picture that I could share with you here where this is this is actually in a commercial setting. But how nice this would be to walk in as a food pantry guest, someone who is food insecure and to see this beautiful display and to think about taking some of this home for your family and to share and how good that would make you feel individually if you were able to do that. So do that. We do want you to donate produce that isn't diseased. So don't think these individuals are don't have a lot and they'll take anything. Really, if you won't eat it yourself or your family, then please don't donate it. It's these those individuals, perhaps have less skills, fewer skills than we do at knowing how to sort through produce. So it's a great idea to to sort through with that. So just a quick and we're coming to the end here and I want to make sure we have time for questions. So there there is information here. I'm sure Master Gardeners have it as well in the states where you are. Just a reminder that produces can be kind of finicky and there's some produce that that really likes not being refrigerated. These are things very often tropical things that that that that do that don't like room that like room temperature. I'm sorry, certainly bananas. You'll notice they darken. They're chill injured if they're placed in the refrigerator that doesn't make them unsafe when they're chill injured. But it does mean that they don't look as good. Vegetables, onions and winter squash. These do fine at room temperature. And then there's some that like it cooler. Basal herbs, a lot of our cucurbit type plants, citrus and pineapple. And then there's some that that really do want it cold. They want a standard refrigerator temperature. And I do put a highlight here that any cut or peeled produce. This is the same for your family. Once you cut those melons, carrots, tomatoes or anything, we do like to see them stored in the refrigerator. And that's because those cut surfaces are great places for my allowing microorganisms to grow. So last component about making your donation really count. Food pantries are often overwhelmed and stopped staffed by volunteers. So we do recommend that you coordinate early in the season. This would be a great time to reach out to food pantries. What would they like you to grow? Is there anything in particular that you'd like to grow that they could particularly use? When are they open? And how can you coordinate some of those things now so that that it makes it easier all around later? All right. Just to let you know, the other part of the training, keep it fresh and healthy. We're understanding the importance of safe produce for food pantry guests. The six steps to produce safety in the food pantry and how to make sure that that produce stays safe. The URL is safeproduceforfoodpantries.org for this material. And one final slide, and then we'll open it up for questions. Gardening during COVID-19. Let me please remind all of us that there is absolutely no evidence that fruits and vegetables are in any way transmitting the coronavirus. There is no are there no documented illnesses where fresh produce that even if you have the illness that that you can transfer that illness, those germs, if you want to call it the virus to produce. And then someone else takes that produce and eats that produce and then gets sick. We absolutely have no evidence like that. So the practices that we're looking to for this year for the coronavirus to keep us safe for the same as last year, hand wash, hand washing. That's simply so we don't transfer the disease from human to human, especially for sharing tools like I do in a community garden, physical distancing, making sure that I'm not too close to someone. And again, no evidence that foods, including fruits and vegetables, transmit the coronavirus. And we did put some information together last year because we're in a community garden for growing safe produce and some information about this. And I just give you the URL here. I'm sure other states did as well because it was a prime topic of concern or questions. All right, I've I've come to the end. I'm going to look back at a couple of questions here. Julie's given some great ideas on salad, shelf life, some of those storage periods. So I shared with you some temperatures. Resources will often give you temperature as well as time. Some things can last for months. Other things, right, it is only a couple of days. So that's great to to think about as well. All right, looks like Donna in the chat has found information from Feeding America, maybe some more current data. Twenty twenty report. I must I didn't find that in my my search. Barb, did you cover the question about after a heavy rain and a flooded garden? Well, those are really important. So it's better if it happens in June. So we we certainly clearly say that a fruit hasn't set yet. The produce, there'll be enough time and enough sunlight which helps to degrade microorganisms that may be there that we can that we have time working on our side. So a June, June flood and most of that, unless it's something like peas. The other thing to think about with flooded gardens are and another great reason to trellis is things that are up above the ground. So we're more likely to be able to salvage even late in the season. Trellis trellis items, certainly apples and fruits that are way above the ground. So those are things, things that are growing and that are in water. Then we have to start thinking to ourselves, where did the water come from? If it's simply rainwater that might have rinsed through, then chances are there won't be bacterial contamination. It's not in the in the air around us so that you'll be fine. But but do have a good look or their farms nearby where that water may have transferred into your garden. So you might have to do a little bit of investigating early season. Generally, things are fine when it's in August. Then I would say at that time, certainly contact your extension office. I know we tend to have information that we share after the flood. What can you do? And it is timed for early season or late season. And so that's information you need really when you need it for that. So great questions with that. And Raquel is asking about a good reputable seed catalog. Well, we have Young's J-U-N-G is one of the ones. It's a company that's right here in Wisconsin. It's actually about an hour from Madison. So we tend to to use young seeds. Oh, there's just there's a wide variety. You know, I haven't heard, I would say use websites to sometimes people leave comments there about what they like. Your local extension program will often tell you which varieties work particularly well in your zone where you're living. And so that's a great place to look for that type of information as well. Alternatives to plastic bags. Yeah, so certainly for we're often even at the farmer's market. So I grow produce, I donate produce, but I'm also going to go to a farmer's market because I'm the I love it. Because I'm the I love to go to a farmer's market. I like to see what other people grow. So. Paper plastic is the standard. It's durable and it's heavy. It's also relatively inexpensive paper bags can also be used. I last year, there was a lot of things that we were doing differently. We weren't taking even reusable bags into the grocery store. I would say certainly if you're a farm market. Vendor, I would encourage people to bring their own bags. And I would say this year we can feel very comfortable that will be far enough through the coronavirus that we can package things into plastic. Plastic or into reusable bags that somebody might bring to a farm stand or either a farm stand or a farm market stand. But paper is probably about the best other alternative that we have for that. There is a point here and I do want to stress that right. Seeds can be hard to find. So if you think you're going to use seeds later, this would be a great time to get your seed order in order online. You might have different quantities than you want, but they they there is plenty of evidence that seeds are going to be scarce this year. So it's a great time to be thinking about this in February and placing that order. Yeah, with that. And Annie has several suggestions of sources for seeds. So I'll let all of you take a look at the chat. Right. And Sue is wanting a little bit more information about the rain barrels. Yeah. So we so our again, our our garden where we garden uses rainwater that's collected from, you know, from the roof of the church into rain barrels. And then we're able to grab that and and use that for watering our gardens by hand during the season. Sometimes it does run dry. So that type of water I have no trouble whatsoever with rinsing tools and rainwater and even using it for watering my plants, say tomatoes, when I'm out harvesting, if that's a week. But I do when I'm when I'm doing the final rinse of those produce items before that they're before they're going into a salad or as I bring them home into my kitchen. I do a final rinse with water that's from the sink water that's from the tap. That's water. I I'm going to use my fingers and I'm going to gently scrub whatever I can with berries and other gentle things. I'm going to run them in a colander and run water through them. This is just it's a good best practice to do that to make sure that the water that touches produce that's what's referred to as ready to eat is water that's also ready to drink. And Nola has a great suggestion. Nola is a local community gardener in Fargo area and I've helped make these t-shirt bags and they're they're pretty neat. They don't require any sewing. And so that's one way to use your old t-shirts and have a reusable bag. Right. I think there's many ways to be friendly to the earth. One of them is growing produce and other is thinking about all those resources that go in to what we're doing. And I was trying to find there is a note here about. Seed resources, I'm going to mention this one. I think it might have been Annie's here reputable seed sources. I just changed the chat. So if you're looking at the chat now, I navigated up in that a little bit so you can see these ones and heirloom varieties. I would say, you know, gardening is an adventure. And in order to keep it an adventure, it's really fun to try different things. I encourage you to do that. Not everything works, but that's part of the fun of gardening. Anyway, for that, I'll just let everyone know that we will have a couple of horticulture specialists joining us in upcoming weeks. And they'll have even more information available on where to get seeds and how to save seeds, too, probably. OK, someone says I recently read that less than perfect produce can be donated to zoos, but should they check ahead and see what they need? Yep, that's. And so this is an interesting thing. There are there are ugly. Some some businesses are marketing less than perfect. And that's that's a great idea, because there's a lot of food that's wasted that is perfectly good to eat. It just doesn't meet this perfect standard for it may have a little bit of a blemish it may have, but it isn't at all unsafe. And I would say certainly when you think about where you're going to donate, think about a variety of sources. You may find a zoo that may be interested in that. It may be your neighbors and those who are food insecure through food pantries and food banks. Those are probably the two that are most readily available to us. But then realize that there's also other agents, other groups that are also moving produce into food banks and food pantries. And it's a real dedicated effort. Second Harvest or Feeding America has putting a huge push on that so that it makes it so that they can see they can. They have fruits and vegetables available. Great. I think we've reached a stopping point. They asked you lots of questions, so that's great. Yeah, it's a great topic. I mean, what else to think about on a day like today? Exactly. Well, I want to thank all of you for attending and certainly Barb for a very interesting and useful webinar. And for those of you who have friends who missed today's webinars, know that we will get this archived very shortly. And you also will be receiving your survey. So please take a couple of minutes to complete your survey. So thank you very much and special thanks to Barb and all the people at NDSU who helped pull this together.