 Great. Thank you. Thank you so much and thank you all for coming this afternoon. Again, sorry I couldn't have the video connected. I'm on my son's school computer and probably had its fair share of snacks and drinks filled within it at some point in time. But I am excited about this talk. It's about using insect habits for pest management. So let's go ahead and begin. So some of the things we're going to be talking about, we're going to walk through some of the methods for controlling pests naturally and even using their own behavior against them. So this is not going to be a this product works against this bug. It's more going to be geared towards what's going on inside the brain of an insect and how do we use that against them to help with our crops. That's kind of the whole idea. We did get approved and partnered with North Central SAIR for a research project. So we're also going to check in and talk about that. And like was mentioned, I'll have a couple of points where I'll stop and take some questions out of the chat too. And then of course at the end as well. So who are we? So Healthy Hills Farm is the name of my farm. It's a small urban and suburban homestead style farm in Cincinnati. Who day? We sell primarily at a local farmer's market and in the community. So some of the things that we have mixed crop veggies. We have dope melt soap. We raise pasture raised eggs. And then we also have Nigerian dwarf goats, which right now we're right in the midst of kidding season. It's just kind of kicked off for us. So lots going on on the farm right now. And what was our study? So we have a lot of pest pressure with pumpkins specifically on our farm. And we've tried just about everything I can think of. Gosh, like any squash that we plant. Squash vine borers are really bad. And we'll talk about what those are if you've never encountered them. Oh my goodness, you're so lucky. Squash bugs also pretty bad. And we were like, what can we do? We've tried a whole lot of things. And so we read about a research study and we'll talk about that in depth as well. And it's based on this theory that we'll get there. That's going to reduce pest damage kind of like tricking them is the whole idea. So we used pumpkins as our crop of choice. And then we were lucky enough to be able to partner with the sustainable agriculture research and education in the north central region for a one-year study. So what is the theory that I'm talking about? It's called the appropriate inappropriate landings theory. And so essentially what it is, it's based around kind of this. It's been shown that fewer insects are found on plants growing in a diverse ecosystem than on plants in bare soil or a monocrop system. But why is in debate? They're not too sure. There's lots of theories out there. This one in particular says that after the bugs receive a chemical cue to come into the area, they kind of just land indiscriminately on a green object. Not really any other color, like the brown soil. They're just, we'll go into the steps specifically here in just a second, but they get into the area, there's a green object, land on it. That's kind of the whole idea behind it. And so drilling down into it a little bit further, it says that the host plant selection needs three things to happen. So you've got an insect in the area because these volatile chemicals are released by the plant. That's step one. So the plant is releasing volatile chemicals as kind of their message system to other plants and insects in the area. Then step two is that they find the visual stimuli of a green object. So they've been brought in by the volatile chemicals, then they've gotten this visual stimuli of a green object, which could be just about anything. Host plant could be another plant, could be green paper, green plastic. One of the cool things that they were able to do, I'm probably getting my head on myself a little bit, but it's interesting. They were able to use plastic plants in the study and it seemed to work, so we'll kind of talk about that too. Just any green object. And then step three, the insect uses chemical receptors on its mouth parts to kind of confirm where it's landed. Is this the right plant? If it is, hey, it's egg laying time. That's kind of the whole idea. It's a three step process. So now, kind of talking about step one a little bit further, these volatile organic compounds, like you've probably heard of VOCs is like a of something I've heard about them in. I've heard about like volatile organic compounds in paint, but not the same thing. These volatile organic compounds, they're highly specific to each plant. So each plant kind of communicates in their own way. So they can communicate both above and below ground. They can attract pollinators. And in some cases, there might be a specific plant that attracts a specific pollinator, which is kind of cool. So they kind of have that relationship. They could also signal danger. I like to think about if a deer, because we in a suburban area have deer, of course. I like to think about it as if the deer in the area start to nibble, all the plants are like, guys, watch out, watch out. So they can do all kinds of things. I also think about rye, how it's got like alleopathy. It can kind of send signals to say, hey, we're here, you can't grow here, that kind of thing. So they can in a way, plants using these chemicals kind of communicate with each other, which is pretty sweet. And then step two, that visual stimuli. This study, the appropriate inappropriate landings theory, is a study by Finch and Collier. And I'll have a link for it as well, either in the notes that you guys receive or at the end of this slideshow. And probably throughout, honestly. Finch and Collier looked at where insects landed, right? And so they were kind of looking at it as any green surface. So they set up artificial plastic plants and green paper and some other actual plants too, but just wanted to see, like, is it really any green thing? And the green paper and the artificial plastic plants were just as effective as living plants. So when they had a specific crop that they were looking at, they knew an insect would go and attack it at some point or lay eggs on it, they would surround that plant with other plants and then plastic and paper too. And all of them were equally as effective. You hear sometimes we'll talk about this later as well, aromatic companion plants, so plants that have like really strong smells to them, like mint or dill or something like that. They weren't actually from this study any more effective than a plant that doesn't have a strong smell. The insects avoided what they wanted to avoid and landed on what they wanted to land. It wasn't any more or less effective. So that was kind of an interesting takeaway from it. The final step is the one that I think is pretty interesting. For the final step, insects use their feet and their mouth parts. Kind of like tasting through your feet, which is weird to think about. To see if the chemical contact stimuli is a match for their specific host plant. So when they get those chemical cues, they're in the area, they've got that visual stimuli, it's green, I'm coming to land. When they land on it, they're looking for a specific stimuli. If it doesn't have that specific host plant stimuli, then that's not their plant and that's going to end up being an inappropriate landing. So they land on it, they use their mouth parts, their feet. Is this the right plant? Well, if it's a match, it's called an appropriate landing. And if it's not, it's an inappropriate landing. Makes sense, right? So looking at this little diagram right here, it kind of shows you this, this short flight sequence that it's talking about in that slide right there. So if the insect makes an appropriate landing, it's like, it lands on the right plant, everything's going according to plan. Sweet, this is great. All of a sudden it's going to make short flights from leaf to leaf. And that's what this diagram is trying to show you is at the top left of that first plant is like a little fly or something. It's making a little hop to the other leaf down there. Then it goes around and again, it makes about four short flights on this diagram right here. So the important part that's interesting about this is that in order for them to have all the contact stimuli in order to lay eggs, all of those short flights have to be the right plant. Or in other words, all of the landings in a series of short flights, which is around three to five, in most cases, has to be the right plant. It has to be an appropriate landing in order to lay eggs. So if at any point in those three steps in those short flights, it's not the right plant, it almost like is a reset button that they have to do that whole process again. So if they land on, for instance, my pumpkin plants the first time, but not the second time, then all of that basically contact stimuli is going to tell them this isn't right, you need to fly away and try something else. So they could go to a plant nearby, try it again, if it gets messed up somewhere in that step, eventually they're going to fly away. And that's kind of the whole cool idea behind this. Yeah. So again, if they land on the host plant, the plants that you're trying to protect, they have to make these short flights. That's the biggest key, these short little flights are what's key. If at any point there's something interrupted like in that second picture you see right there, there's little clover kind of all over the place. If they accidentally land on that clover, they have to restart and do three to five. It's almost like filling up a bank of contact stimuli where it's like they have to get enough, but if they land on the wrong things, they lose all of their contact stimuli that they've been banking up. It's kind of how I like to think about it. And so that's pretty important to this whole idea and where we're going to take this to, how we can use it. But this kind of gets into their mind of, okay, this is how I have to go about laying eggs and to create the next generation. If we know that, we can kind of use that to our advantage. And so I know that's kind of, there's a lot of like steps and things and numbers going on in there. So I want to stop right here for just a second and see if there are any questions that you may have so far about that theory or anything that we've talked about. If you could type those into the chat, that would be great. Well, people maybe we'll give a couple of seconds to see if folks want to put them in the chat. There aren't any right now, but I will say there's been lots of Brandon great reactions. I see people like doing the like laughing smiley face at this. And Jesse put a funny comment in do not pasco, do not collect $200. Nice. So I guess I guess I'm doing an okay job explaining it, I guess. Yeah, I think it's landing with folks. All right, cool. Great, great, great. Then I'll keep going. I do have another spot at the end to ask questions too. So you don't get them in, no problem. So how can we use this? So now that we've kind of gotten into the mind of an insect, we now know that they have to have all these things go right in order for them to lay eggs. How can we use it? So if you're thinking about inter-planting, right? If you've got your host plants in there, a great strategy has always been before this study even, is to plant other things within it, have plenty of diversity in what you're planting. It's always a good idea. This is more trying to figure out why. Is it a good idea? And so practically then, plants in meat rows or in bear soil are easy for insects to land and re-land on. And that's why they're so successful, says this theory, right? They can land on a green thing. If it's only that plant, the next green thing they land on is of course going to be that plant. So it's definitely going to be a challenge in an uphill battle to keep those insects off. And if you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. If you were able to have like a bird's eye view and look straight down on a very neat, tidy monocrop system, you're going to be able to see the bright green foliage against the very dark bear soil. And that's going to be easy for, or if it's not a lot of dark bear soil and it's just a cluster of all the host plant, that's just as easy too. So surrounded by other plants, some insects land on a non-host plant and fly off without damage or egg production. And so that's kind of what we're trying to do here. This chart is just talking about difference insects and the percentage of eggs laid when the plants are in bear soil or when they're within clover. So it says the number of eggs laid by eight insects on cabbage plants growing in clover, expressed as a percentage of eggs laid on similar plants growing in bear soil. So in other words, the top bar is the plants in the bear soil. Compare that to the different insects landing on the plants in clover. And you can tell by this graph it goes way down, especially with the cabbage moth down there at the bottom. So that's a pretty good reduction. You've got all the way at the top, even the one that looks like, oh wow, that's pretty big still. It's a 40% reduction from the cabbage just by itself than the cabbage within clover. So it works. So if we're able to use this information to disrupt the egg cycle, we could lessen the damage from pests without using any chemicals or insecticides, which is great. Even organic pest controls, that would be ideal to not have to use any product at all and save you money, which would be a good thing in and of itself, but then to stay away from chemicals in any fashion is definitely a good thing. So they tested 24 plants in this study. They tested marigold, mint, onion, sage, thyme, all really fragrant and aromatic plants. They're not any more disruptive than the non-aromatic ones. So this opens the door to match more regionally and seasonally appropriate plants to your crop. And what that means is that you aren't limited by some of the examples I'm going to give here shortly. Like I know pumpkins, you can plant a blue-hubbard squash as a trap crop, and we'll talk about what that is soon too. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that. It could be other things too. So whatever grows well during the time of your cash crop, that could be a good thing. So there's lots more options now using this information. So speaking of trap cropping, what is that? So trap cropping, what that is, it's purposefully attracting pests away from one crop to something that they would prefer. So you're planting something knowing it's going to be a sacrifice more or less. And once the trap crop becomes infested with something, you're going to pull it up and destroy it. So you're purposefully, it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but you're purposefully bringing in insects to the area to kind of get rid of them by destroying it. So the important thing in that is if you do trap cropping, if nothing else, be sure to start the trap crop before the thing you're trying to save or the cash crop. And that's kind of what this picture shows too is you've got actually pumpkins. It's got four blue-hubbard squash. Blue-hubbard is a type of squash that is really susceptible to a lot of squash pests. So that's one you can take with you for some reason. They love it. It's pretty good, but it's really susceptible. And a lot of people will use this as a trap crop, and they'll plant it earlier. So this one says that they were transplanted into the end of each row at the end of May at the same time that the cash crop was direct seeded. So the trap crop has a lot more growth to it and looks a lot more appealing to the insects. So it's something they like more, and it just looks better for them. So you're going to, when you're ready, when you see the insects all over it, you're going to pull that up and destroy it. So blue-hubbard squash, like I said, is one that really attracts pests like squash vinebores, squash bugs. Those are going to get away from your main crop. But there's also other ones too. It doesn't have to be just on pumpkins. I've heard, well, actually by experience, I know this one, tomatoes with radishes. So if you have radishes nearby your tomatoes for some reason, beetles really love radishes. Just that green foliage. I will have lots of little holes in that green foliage and that's okay because they're not eating my tomatoes. So radishes are a good one as a trap crop and you can cut the tops off and destroy it like that. I've done that. Okra and sunflowers. This one, I have not had the same kind of luck, but this is just one that I've heard of. You've got okra and sunflowers both being highly attractive to stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs. I know my kids would especially tell you that they are not fans of stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs. Somehow, I have no idea how they get in your house, but they are. They're here to stay for a while and apparently okra and sunflowers. So give it a try. If you have success with it, let me know because I would be really interested in that. We have pretty good luck with sunflowers, but not so much with okra. So be interested to see if that works out. But there's some other ones too, right? So we've so far we've got our theory. We've got our trap cropping. Pheromone traps is kind of the most technologically savvy. If you want to think about it like that of the ones we're probably going to discuss here. Pheromone traps. So insects use pheromones to signal mates, to warn others and to find food. So just as the plants communicate, it's sort of the insects. Each pheromone is really specific to each insect, right? So it's almost like different languages for each insect. And so there's not going to be one catch-all pheromone trap that catches everything. They're really specific. So if you go and look for a pheromone trap, you're going to look for one specific to the pest that's giving you the most trouble. The other downside with this one is as you can tell by this picture, the traps need to be replaced often. They're affected by the weather. It's not my favorite technique, but it is one that you can look into and it might be successful for your situation. Especially if you're having trouble and it's a covered, like if you have like a tunnel or something like that, it might be more effective that way. But for me, a lot of what I grow is outdoors and may not have a tree limb to hang off of like this picture shows. But if you look into it, it could very well be good for you. Just remember that it's specific to the insect you're trying to catch. They need to be replaced often. They're affected by the weather. And the other downside I read about, I've not had this experience myself, is you could get the smell on you or your clothes and you might yourself attract the pests, which would be interesting to be like a walking pheromone trap. The other one, color-based trap. So this one I think is a little more common that you might see those sticky yellow cards. So insects can be attracted to specific colors. We kind of talked about that, right? The theory, the inappropriate appropriate landings theory is all kind of based on they're coming into an area and seeing something green. This is kind of the same idea is that insects, they like specific colors. Yellow is an attractive color for a lot of insects. And that's why you'll see a lot of these cards as yellow. I know I have a yellow tub drug. If you guys know what those are, there's like flexible tubs that you would pick up produce as you're harvesting and stuff like that. I have a yellow one and there's soldier beetles always in that thing during the summer. So they're attracted just to the yellow itself. And that was kind of another thing. I was like, hmm, maybe there is something to this theory with just the color because it certainly is not a plant. It's just a yellow tub drug, but they like it. So sticky yellow cards are a popular trap example. A yellow pan would probably be like another way to trap them if you didn't want to go through the expense of using sticky yellow cards. You could set up like a yellow pan or a bucket or my tub drug. You could put soapy and salty water in it. It works for like white flies and aphids, I would imagine. Get a lot of hits on that. Thrips, if you're familiar with those, are attracted to yellow and blue. And then I didn't know this one. Horseflies are attracted to shiny black. Interesting. So different insects attracted to different colors. Kind of interesting. So there might be more studies out there kind of based around that, specific to specific insects. But there's more. So there's more ways that we can pest control without using chemicals and kind of use their own behaviors against them. And that's insect predators. This one's really cool. That picture down there is of a tomato hornworm. So that's probably one of the more famous ones where a wasp will come and lay its eggs on this tomato hornworm. And you can see all those cocoons. There's lots of examples of wasps, especially laying eggs on or inside of an insect. And then the wasps kind of growing up and spewing out of there like the alien movie. Super cool, super cool stuff. So specific predatory insects can be brought in to consume targeted pests. But care should be made in the selection and quantity it purchased, right? And so you're not trying to, I've heard of examples of people bringing in tons and tons and tons of ladybugs, which is great in theory. But then they'll eat all of the target insects, which is also great. But then there's so many of them that they are out of balance now. You've kind of upset the ecosystem. So that's not good either. Especially if you release something that is non-native and it could either completely die out or opposite, completely take over and make that ecosystem out of balance. That's not good either. So just be careful about the number and the selection. If you do go that route, they are really cool though and something that I'm really interested in as well. So native beneficial insects, they can be lured in naturally too. There's lots of ways to do that. Plants, like we talked about, they communicate as well. They release these things called herbivore-induced plant volatiles. This is HIPV. I'll call it that from now on because herbivore-induced plant volatiles sounds like a mouthful. So these plants release these chemicals into the air and they tell other plants to put up their defenses and just that signal can bring in beneficial insects. So the plants can signal bad insects. Bad insects are like, oh, there's weak plants in the area, let's go. But it can also signal the predator insect to say, okay, something's happening with this plant, I bet it's our food. So a lot of communication is always happening. It's so cool. Habitat host plants. You can have specific plants. So this is something specific to plants that you can set up. When we were talking about the theory a little bit earlier, we were saying that it doesn't really have to be any specific plant to confuse the insect into flying away. That's different here. There are specific host plants that can attract predatory insects. Dill is one for parasitic wasps. I think fennel, too, might be another. And I know for sure that there's lots more. So what are some examples of these insects? You've got these wasps that can lay its eggs inside the tomato hornworm, which is what we just saw right there. That's always a cool one. And that's something that you can probably bring in naturally as well. Ladybugs. Ladybugs are awesome. If you've ever seen before they turn into the adult stage, when they're in their little alligator, I'll call it stage, they look like little scary like emo alligators. They're so cool. They're so cool. And that stage eats aphids as well. So both the adult and the juvenile stage will eat aphids. So ladybugs all around. Good stuff. Ground beetles. Ground beetles. We find them here on our farm underneath like like shavings or wood and things like that. But they're these shiny black beetles and they're in the soil as well. But that's where my kids find them. They love to feed them with the chickens that they pass in or on the soil, such as slugs and cutworms. Slugs can be an issue for some people as well. So ground beetles, maybe that'd be a route to go. There's also other ways too, but we're just talking about insects. Green lace wings. So the larva eats small soft body insects and the adult is actually a pollinator, so double duty. The other thing that I didn't specifically mention is companion planting. We kind of talked a little bit around it. But it can combine a lot of things. And so it can combine aspects of trap crapping. It can combine aspects of bringing in beneficial insects. All it is is companion planting is like a multi-species approach of planting. And it can be a way that you can both bring in and confuse good and bad insects. So it can have helpful aspects in the garden. It can also keep disease and plant stress down. So if you have a companion plant that can kind of help your cash crop nurse it a little bit, a stressed plant is going to be more susceptible to pest and disease pressure. So that's any number of things. So the healthier cash crop you have, the better it's going to be. And that sounds common sense, but there's a lot of things you can do to make sure that that's the case. So I'll stop here if there's any questions that have come up so far. And then if not, I'll keep going until the end. We do have a couple of questions in here. Cassie is wondering how far away from your main crop should you be planting a trap crop? If you're doing a trap crop, you would want it, I'll go back here to show you here. You want it far enough to where it's not touching at all. So this is different than a companion plant. Like if you are trying to plant, I'll stick with pumpkins. If you're trying to grow pumpkins and have a crop within it to get that appropriate inappropriate landing effect, you want it right there touching almost surrounded within it. And I'll show you pictures of that here soon. But if you're doing just trap cropping where it's, I'm going to plant this on purpose and I'm going to pull it out and destroy it. You want to make sure that it's probably a good, I would say at least a foot away, if not more. But you definitely do not want them touching because for some reason that they would get on the trap crop and then make a short hop to your cash crop just by coincidence, then it kind of takes away from that trap crop a plant, if that makes sense. I see some heads nodding. I think that answers the question really well. Jim was also wondering, is there a list of specific pests for which to utilize this appropriate inappropriate method? I don't know that there is a list. I would think it would be appropriate for just about any insect pest. I've not seen a specific list. I know the study itself looked at cabbage pests. And so I know a lot of our cash crops are related to cabbage right during that coal crop family. So I think this can be something that could be used for almost any insect pest that I can think of that would need your host plant to lay eggs on short of like a locust plague that may, you may not have any help with that. I think it would be something to try and see how it works because I would imagine it would work in just about every case. Great. Thank you, Brandon. John is wondering, can you plant squash into a clover bed? Do you have any experience with that? I do. What a great question. I do have experience with that. And so I will be talking about that quite a bit here in the next part because the next part is our actual study. And one of the treatments was with clover. And I'll give you the spoiler alert. It doesn't work so well with clover, but we'll talk about it. Okay, cool. We have two more questions if that's all right for now. Does the effectiveness of interplaneting differ between sprawling low-lying plants versus something with a more upright structure like a caged tomato? They're thinking the pest would get enough confirmation before reaching the lower quote-unquote trick plant. Yeah, so there is a little bit of a difference there. So if you have something that is taller, you're going to want something to interplant with it that's also tall. It doesn't have to be taller than, but for example, if you're thinking about tomatoes, something like clover that's real low-lying wouldn't be a good choice. But what it does open up is the idea that you could use something that's more appropriate for that time of the year that you have tomatoes. So it doesn't have to be just clover. It doesn't have to be just blue-hubbard squash. It can be just about anything that's green that comes up towards, I would say, at least halfway up what you're trying to do, I think would be a good way to put it. Thank you. I see a thumbs up and some heads nodding on that one. Great. It's one more question. Joe's wondering, so do you destroy the trap plants once you see the eggs laid on it? Yeah. So once it's infested pretty much, so if it's a bigger trap crop, like if you've got, when we were looking at that picture, the trap crop was, it had several leaves on it, may even have had a flower, it's going to be really well established. So you're not going to pull it out the very first time you see an insect on there. You're going to wait until it's got a good bit of eggs, some confirmation of maybe the insects too. But once your cash crop starts having its first true leaf, you're going to want to try to get your trap crop out of there because you don't want, for any reason, the pest to accidentally end up on what you're trying to grow. And there's a lot of good information about trap cropping, because that's been around for a little while. So if you look into that further, there's probably some good information you can find. It's a pretty good method. It's one that I don't use a ton because I always have that guilt of like, I planted you, now I'm going to pull you up. I'm so sorry. But it does work. You just want to make sure that it's got more than just like that first insect on there. Great. Thank you. Okay. So speaking of our project, I've got some pictures to take a look at here, so you can kind of get a visual of what we did and how we went about it. But with our study, we had this really, it was a really long strip that we have not really ever turned over or anything. It was just long, about 140 foot long, if that gives you kind of any perspective at all, and probably 25 to 40, I think about 40 feet, I don't have the number out of my head wide. So what we did is we turned over the whole thing, broke it from sod and lawn and grass, and had one really long row that we were going to plant into. And the reason for that is because we were going to, let's see if I can find a good, not yet, we were going to about every 10 feet have a different treatment and we were going to do it twice to, because you can see towards the end there, it starts to get shaded. So we didn't want there to be anything in terms of our research where it was like, well, maybe this site wasn't as good as the site down there. We had two varieties. We had a large variety and a little baby variety. If I remember right, the varieties specifically were baby bear and rival, if I remember right. And we did about five treatments. We did rye. We did clover. We did buckwheat. We did nasturtium. And we did plastic. We actually bought plastic foliage and control because the plastic foliage thing I just had to know. And then we did that again with the other variety. So we did those, let's see what is that one, two, three, six treatments. Did it twice. We did it with the large variety and the small. So the first two leaves, there they go. You can kind of see the cotyledons and then the first two leaves are going. But here, okay, here you can kind of see a little bit better on what's going on. So this is in mid-July. You can kind of see in these pictures on where things are. So on that right hand picture, you can kind of see that we've got, I believe that's rye, clover, and then definitely buckwheat. The buckwheat is the one with the white, tiny flowers and a little bit taller. This is when we began to see the pest damage. So going back to the clover question, you can kind of see why we began to see some pest damage is because the pumpkins, they were out competing the clover and were just much taller. So if an insect were to come into the area and land on something green, the pumpkins were the highest thing by far, and it wouldn't be too hard to land on it a few more times too. So the clover for us, spoiler alert, didn't work out so well, but it was cool to try. We ended up right in the middle of July getting squash vine bores on a lot of plants. They're the worst. You can kind of see them on that left hand picture. There's a little guy near my fingers in between my middle and ring finger right there, digging through. They're just the worst. The bottom right picture shows a healthy stem compared to one infected with a squash vine bore. The healthy stem is really dark green. Some of the side stems off of it aren't looking so hot. But that doesn't mean that the plant is unhealthy. It just kind of works out that way as the plant gets bigger. But the plant on the right, the stem, it's very pale. You can see and it's got that orangey frass, is what they call it. But it's basically squash vine bore poop right up against the soil. So that's where it's kind of burrowed in and is pushing all of its waste out to. So just the worst, I do not like them. And we have just such terrible problems with them, including during this study. There's some more pictures. And this one's a good one, I think, to give you an idea of some successes. So on that left picture right there, that's mixed in pumpkin and buckwheat. So you can kind of see the buckwheat is a little bit taller. It's not out competing the pumpkin at all. It's kind of working with it. And that was what we saw as our best treatment was the buckwheat. That seems to be the best one for our pumpkins. And we planted it at the same time as the pumpkins, too. So it worked out really well. Keep going here. In August, that's when we started to see the squash bugs show up. It seemed like we were holding them off really good. And then all of a sudden we weren't. So this is what the squash bugs look like. If you look underneath the leaves, that's the best way to spot them. So if we're thinking about trap-crapping them, look under the leaves for sure. And there will be a lot of action underneath and near the veins of the plant and things like that. That top right picture is them hatching out. So you now have an idea. They look like little spiders a little bit. That's the squash bugs. Their eggs are super cool-looking, though. I'm not going to lie. They're jewel-colored. Very cool-looking, but not good for my plants. And just some more pictures kind of showing our different inner crop options. This is getting towards the end of August. We've got pumpkins on the vine. But again, the squash vine board, they took out a lot of our plants. You can see in that top left one, the squash bugs on this particular treatment were really bad. So you can see in that picture the white bugs on the pumpkin itself. Those are the squash bugs in their juvenile stage. And then we're starting to get some damage on the leaves, pretty bad, too, in some of the treatments. The bottom picture, you can see that there's a black landscape. That was our control treatment, was just black landscape. Just everything gone, but the plant itself. So because the squash vine board, you can almost view our results in the two parts, really. So what we did was we scored each plant twice a week on a score of zero to three. And zero is good, right? There's no pest damage. Three is like, ooh, okay, that's really bad. So we scored each plant zero to three twice a week. And as you can see, through June, it's looking good. July starts. Okay, we've got a little bit of damage to be expected because we've got lots of different treatments here. And don't worry so much about which one is going in which direction. Because in July, they all go in the wrong direction because the squash vine bores. If the plant is dead, it definitely gets a three. So lots of plants all got really, really, really bad squash vine board damage. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And so that's what I mean by pre and post SVB was that there was a wave of squash vine bores that just destroyed so many plants. And I have some theories and I'll talk about that at the end on why that is. But right in the middle of July, lots of squash vine bores. So what happened was after we lost a lot of plants from squash vine bores, we also added in this other part. And so we were like, okay, what can we learn from this? We've got squash vine board damage, what can we learn? So when we started to notice squash bugs come in, which are different, squash bugs and squash vine bores are different. The squash vine bores are typically those little caterpillar looking guys in your stem and the squash bugs that kind of look like stink bugs. So we started to take note of their damage too, which would include how many leaves had eggs on it too. So this was something mid study, which research I'm sure is like, that's the worst thing you can do. But we didn't change anything in what we were doing. We just added an additional thing just to data curiosity. And so we started to also take note of how many leaves had eggs on them. And so as you can see in this, it's basically either threes or zeros. So a lot of the things like clover, not so great. If it's a three, that's not great. If it's a zero, that's good. So on August 7th, buckwheat, nasturtium and plastic on our baby bear pumpkins had no leaves with eggs. And this was a ton of work, but I was just so curious. So I looked at almost every leaf I could. And then on the rival, that's the name of the big pumpkin that we were using. It was not looking great. It was not looking great. So I was concerned. But then jumping ahead to another date where it had a lot of action, August 26th, we at that point, the squash vine borers were pretty much gone. It was just the squash bugs now. Looking at it, the buckwheat kind of stood out as something that like, okay, this might be something. The clover just wasn't looking great. Had a lot of eggs on a lot of plants, a lot of damage. And I think it's to that point where it's just very low lying. It's not confusing the insects as much as it should. The rye, also not great, but our rye was planted probably not during its most vegetative time. It just wasn't super tall yet. So that was something we were keeping an eye on, was that the buckwheat seemed to do pretty good in this case. And keeping the squash bugs, squash vine borers, we had no hope for it. But squash bugs? Okay, maybe. As you can see by September, lots of plants and lots of treatments were all dead. But that was okay, because that was about the time when our pumpkins were really just about ready. This was just kind of wrapping things up. We were at this point just counting our days until October, where it was really prime time pumpkin season. So our conclusions. In our trials, the squash vine borers, they were not deterred by the presence of other foliage and heavily damaged so many plants in July. However, we did notice that the buckwheat was way more effective than any other companion crop at keeping squash bug numbers down. And so that kind of had us think about more questions. So it was, why was the squash vine borer not deterred? And was it due to the foot traffic stomping down the foliage near the plant stem by us recording data? Because I thought about that. I was out there twice a week checking on all these plants. And so I kind of followed the same path to not step on the foliage. So it was squashing down some of the treatment around the stems of the plants. And so that led me to think, could this be an issue? Not sure. Not sure. But it is something to consider. Did buckwheat work well on squash buds because of its rapid growth in size? Why? Why did it work? And something I'm kind of curious about too. And then would rye and the plastic have done better if they covered the tops of the leaves better? So I told you we did put plastic foliage in there. And we set it up as when the plant was a certain size. But once it got bigger, the tops of the pumpkin foliage was way bigger than the rye and the plastic. So if they cover the tops of the leaves better, would that have worked better? I don't know. Something to think about. So that was kind of our questions on our end of year one. So there's a good chance we're going to go back and try this again, maybe in a more like, definitely not clover, but in a more, now that we've learned these lessons, what what are these questions can be answered? That's kind of our goal here. And that is the conclusion. So if you guys have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. Yeah, I would encourage folks to put any questions in the chat here. The one thing I will mention now is I'm also going to put an evaluation link in the chat. You probably heard that the first workshop and I said at the beginning, if you could please take one or two minutes to fill that out, super helpful to us. It's not too tedious at all. As far as questions, I think Jesse had a similar question to one of the ones you had on your last slide about the success of the buckwheat and was the high part of its success in disrupting the insects laying and laying on eggs. I'm just curious since he asked that question, you had it if you wanted to say anything else on that or maybe we've exhausted that. Yeah, just real quick. I think it was, but I can't definitively say it was. You know what I mean? Yeah, I like me looking at it. I think so, but I can't like back that up with statistics. It's just my observation. Great. Thank you for sharing that. We have a question. Were the companion plants destroyed or harvested? The companion plants, we just left them out there until the end of the season and then we're going to like till them in. But yeah, we just left them there throughout the whole growing season for the pumpkin. Great. I see a thumbs up in response to that. Great questions. Any other last minute questions? Oh, here we go. Have you looked at the efficacy of using this companion planting in conjunction with predator attraction? Wouldn't that be so cool, right? Like a two birds, one stone type of thing? I have not yet, but that's an interesting idea. If you can find something that can do both, why not? And I have to say that just the way that you present the content, like you can just hear the excitement and passion that I think it would be impossible for anybody on this call to not also be excited and passionate about this, see some happy and hearts in the chat. So I mean, just really excellent job. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I am. I'm so excited about so many possibilities that this could open up. And it's great to be able to talk to, I guess, talking through chat, like-minded individuals, too. So thank you guys so much for coming today.