 My name is André da Silva. I'm the Extension Vegetable Specialist as part of the commercial heart cultural team. And today I want to be brief, but it's to pass important information about how to prepare for the fall vegetable season. How is it coming the next, how is going to be our next season? Can we grow vegetables in this coming fall? And what are the crop management practices that we're going to need to do or challenge that we may face? So just to start, I will start to be general across the entire state, and I will talk a little bit about the weather. So if we are going during the fall season, we need to keep in mind that we're going to have long growing seasons. You're going to have usually planted brassicas such as cabbage, broccoli, some pumpkins. So those are crops that relatively has a long season. You can also grow crops like squash, yellow squash, zucchini, that they are short seasons, but those are usually grown during the summer, not during the fall. Remember, during the fall we have temperatures dropping. So temperatures start high early season and they drop as crop development. So you need to look for a disease that like a dropping of temperature or cool temperature. Particularly this year we are in an El Nino year. We have, according to the IRI, we have a 90% chance of El Nino. So what does it mean? The good point of view is we probably will not have some big hurricanes or storms, because when we have El Nino years, the likelihood of a tropical system coming from Atlantic or through the Gulf is shorter than when we have La Nina years. So last year, actually the past three years, we had the La Nina year. So this year is going to be a little bit different, because El Nino come with some bad stuff as well, which I mean it's the possible increase in the disease pressure in our winter crop. So if you remember last year, pumpkin was a very nice season. We didn't have much disease. Yes, some powder here and there, but this year we're going to have a more pressure of disease. This is always likelihood. Like I said, it's 90% chance of El Nino yet. It can increase or may not even be El Nino, but so far that's what we have. So just to come on what Amanda just said on her presentation, doing a good spring program for your crops, it's going to be very important. Working on your integrated pest management will be very important this season, because the likelihood of we have a higher pressure of insect and disease, it's very high. So once you are prepared and selected your crop, we're going to need to think about plastic mulching. I strongly recommend the use of plastic mulching for vegetable crops. Everybody that goes through my talks or visit my fields, most of my trials or my research or even when I do my extension on farm trials, we try to do as using plastic mulching, because it's increased the soil temperature, short the cycle of the crop. So using plastic mulch as a second crop is a good approach for the fall season, because you're going to save costs related to plastic mulching and drip tape. It was already proven that it's work. You do have some slight reduction in yield, but if you do a proper management, you will not see the impact of the second crop, of the second season plastic on your crop. To do that, you need to understand a couple points. First, for early planting days, you will need to plan to painting your, if you have a black plastic, you're going to need to paint your plants white. To do that, you can buy any painting. Usually on those, you can find that or any other supply stores or egg stores or co-ops, you can find those paintings that you can plant the plastic. Why? Because you want to avoid that hot temperature of late summer on your crop. So if you don't paint it, you're going to have problems with high temperatures in your crop. You're going to need to make sure as well that you're going to have the ability or the capability to inject fertilizer. It's very important. Usually you do if you have plastic mulching, but if you are a grower that don't have that ability, you will need to do that. And other chemicals. Let's say if you have problems with nematodes, you're going to need to inject something for nematodes, because they're going to be up in the soil late summer. If you have a problem with some soil-borne disease, you're going to need to inject it something for those diseases, mainly in brassica crops, because you're going to have those problems. And to pick the crop to grow in a second plastic, I would say crops that are less sensible for soil compaction. Usually when you're growing in a second plastic, you have a lot of soil compaction. Not a lot, but you have some more compaction compared to the first plant. So selecting a crop that is optimum for fall, like I said before, broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards or pumpkins are very successful on a second plastic. So those would be my recommendations. And remember, this is always related to weather. So that's the reason why I came back to the weather, because if you don't have that very hot in summer, you might be safe from doing early planting days without the white plastic. Still, I would recommend you to plant in your plastic white, even if you don't have that, because the way how we are this year with El Nino, the likelihood of you have problems with disease is going to be higher than last year when we were at El Nino. So in that same topic, I would say that we fall within the white-fly population alert, because last year we do have some pressure. It was a good pressure, but we are probably going to have a hot and dry summer. While we got a lot of rain this last week and we are expecting this week, if we have a dry summer, white-fly population will pop up. And that's the biggest concern in South Alabama, because white flies move from Florida to South Alabama, and then they try to migrate to Central Alabama, and you don't see much impacting North of part of the state. But just for you to see these year populations in Florida, this photo here is from four days ago on South Florida. So the populations are very heavy there, and they're going to migrate to North parts of Southeastern U.S., which include Alabama, Georgia, and even North Florida. So we get that problem with vegetables, that they migrated from row crops to vegetable crops, and that's when we have our problems. So just for you guys to understand a little bit how they do it, they are starting right now here in South Florida. But as we get warmer and warmer, they're going to start to migrate to our locations, and that's where we have the regions where we have most of the damage from white flies. So if you are in one of these regions, growing vegetables, keep your eyes open for white flies, because you're probably going to have some virus problems, because the problem is not only the white fly, but how many virus they can transmit to our crops. So you can have virus related to cucurbit crops, like pumpkins, it can be a problem, but mostly yellow squash, zucchini, but also in tomatoes. So if you have any of those cucurbits, or solanaceous crops, like tomato, you will probably see virus symptoms. And there are some of those virus that were reported in Alabama, others that were not yet, but doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. So we need to keep our eyes open for that. So selecting a cultivar that is resistant to those virus, it's very important. The next point is what we just talked about the weather, planting dates. We need to select proper planting dates for the fall season. And when we talk about white flies, you don't want to have white fly pressure when your plants are to the end. So keep your mind, this is the disc graphic show data from 2021. We had some good populations there that increased during September. So that's basically August, September is the when we have a lot of pressure of these insects. So you need to keep it in mind, because as soon as you are planting your crop, they will be there. So in this video, you can see how much pressure we have in that year in Alabama. So planting early, before avoiding that August, September window of planting date, it's very important. So you're going to need to anticipate your planting or delay your planting. Some variety that has resistance to white fly that I like to say here, it's like yellow squash, ground price, gold price, and Linus and zucchini is the SV0914 paycheck and spineless beauty. Why do I say that? I said resistant, but that's not true, what they are, they are tolerant for some white flies and white flight transmitted virus. We don't have any resistant variety of yellow squash or zucchini, but we do for tomatoes. So this is a list of cultivars of tomatoes that are resistant to the tomato yellow leaf curl, which is the main virus that white fly transmitted to tomatoes. So just for you to keep in mind what you can select. Another approach that I like to talk and I collaborate a lot with Dr. A on this is the use of rope over. This is a strategy not only for white fly, but for most of insects, and can be used in the entire state of Alabama. If you use rope overs, they are temporary pest exclusion systems that will avoid insects to get in contact with your cash crop. So it's very useful if you are using rope overs at this size or in plants that require pollination, you're going to need to remove it on flowering, and this is the case when happening in yellow squash and zucchini for white flies, you need to remove the rope over. At that point, they don't give much damage to the plant, but it's still you're going to have some impact of the insect. And also the use of plastic, you can use white plastic or you can use silver plastic as well. Like I said, you can paint in white, but the silver you cannot paint. So installing silver plastic, it's very important. Partially, I was in a couple fields two weeks ago in North Alabama, and they had some silver plastic against trips and aphids. So that's a good way for you, a good integrated pest management for those insects, and the virus or disease transmitted by those insects. So silver plastic, yes, it is an option. Just for you to see what it's how important it is, just for rope overs, like this is on zucchini, how's rope over improves the yield due to the reduction in insect damage. You can see the difference in rope over versus no cover, and how it impact biomass accumulation. So you have a higher biomass accumulation when plants start to free. Consequently, you're going to have a higher yield. So that's going to be like the benefit that you have. You have a healthier plants. Healthier plants tend to yield more and be more resistant to the impact of insects or disease later in the season. So if you are spraying for white flies, I like to recommend some products. Those are the best options that we have in the market. X-Rule, Cervante, Prime, and Neck. Movento is also good. And Actara, Barron, and PQZ products as well as Vendon can work. Just keeping my white flies in these, they reproduce very fast. If you have a high pressure or a high population, you might need to spray it very often. Switching gears a little bit of what I would recommend for pumpkin growers because that's their season. That's where you're going to make more profit. So we did some variety trials, and I just would like to show that those are Jack Lantern pumpkins that we evaluated last year in central Alabama. And what I would recommend is the Orange Sunrise, Magical Lantern, and the Jack. As Jack, there is a number, but it was Jack O Lantern and champion who were our best varieties. So if you were selecting those, the likelihood of you have success, it's good. Remember, we talked about the Oninio and Lania early in this conversation today. So it might be a little bit different, depend on the disease pressure as well. Last year, we didn't have much disease pressure, and those crops performed the best. Thus, for you to have an idea, we talked about Magical Lantern. So our top is Orange Sunrise and Magical Lantern. So Magical Lantern here, this is our variety, and Orange Sunrise is this variety here. So just an overview of what we got. A new variety in the market that it's not new, but came back to the market is the Orange Bulldog. So you see it has a different shape or different color compared to the other ones. So I heard that the University of Georgia came back to sell those seeds. So if you are interested in a different pumpkin color, that's an option for you. So just the Jack O Lantern here. So you can see other different varieties that we had, and then champion, it's our fourth best variety that last year. So it's a little bit smaller pumpkin fruit. If you have a UP facility, you need to diversify as much as possible. So you want different types of pumpkins. So not only Jack Lantern pumpkins. So Acorn is an option. So those are the cultivars that we evaluated last year. In the next slide, you're going to see the yields of, I mean, the photos of those cultivars. So just for you to know what were the best one, Tate Bell and Mesh Potato was our top one, but it was not different than Table Treat and Autumn Delight. So for you guys to see what we are talking about, that's the Mesh Potato, is the white one. So Tate Bell, it's a green one. Celebration, it's very attractive for the public. They usually like, but if we come back one slide here, you're going to see their yields were not the best, but it's chill. You can sell it for a higher price because it's very attractive. It's a flat pumpkin, and it's very good for decoration. Some other cultivars that I would like to say of pumpkins are Cabocha cultivars that you can grow in the state. We have tested before. I don't want to go all about yields because they have different size, different shapes, and different number of plant plants. It's going to depend on what you are looking for. So those varieties, Amber Max, Chacha, Gaysha, Delica, Golden Buddha Ball, the Shoshik Green, Sunshine, Speckle Pump, Winter Sweet, and Sweet Mama are cultivars that we have tested and we had success in the state of Alabama. So it's there for you guys to use as well. Like I said, if you have a pumpkin patch, you want to diversify as much as possible to attract more costumer, and that's going to be something that you need to keep in mind. So just to end up my presentation, the take home message as yes, you can have two crops in a year. Fall season is a challenge it is, but if you take a group care of your crop, you're going to success. Plants are tough and they can perform well there. Proper crop management is fundamental for the success if the first step is select of a proper cultivar. So knowing your weather conditions, the challenge that you're going to have, and then selecting your proper cultivar, it's going to be the key for your success. Last year, as part of the commercial 14, Dr. A, Dr. Rodrigues, Dr. Sakura, our agents as well, Chief Dave Lawrence, Olive, and Jacob and I, we released the Alabama vegetable cultivar hand book. We tried to keep it most updated. So if you access the farming basic apps, it's linked to there, or if you access the ACES website, you can have access to our Alabama vegetable cultivar hand book, and you're going to see what was already tried here. We are trying to keep it as much updated as possible. So if you don't find something you're looking for there, feel free to contact me or any agent in your area. With that, I would like to say thank you, and I'm open for questions.