🌿 Join Our Weekly Plant Clinic LIVE! 🌺🌱 Ask Your Questions, Get Expert Advice!
Tune in every week to our interactive plant clinic, where you can ask your gardening questions live and receive research-backed answers and advice. We’re now streaming on both Facebook Live and YouTube Live for your convenience!
🌟 Ask The Experts! 🌟 This week join Dr. William Lester with Hernando County Extension, Colby Pitts with the Florida-Friendly Landscape Program in Hernando County and Master Gardener Volunteer Bernie.
📅 Mark Your Calendar: 🔗 For a full listing of all our upcoming educational classes, visit https://hernandoextension.com/ 🌐
🌱 Topics Covered:
• Plant Care Tips
• Landscaping Advice
• Gardening Challenges
• Interactive Q&A
🤔 Have a burning question? Ask live during the broadcast!
📌 Stay Connected: Follow us on social media for updates and gardening insights:
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HernandoExt
• Hernando County Government YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HernandoCountyGovernment
okay good morning everybody I think we’re live um welcome to this week’s virtual plant Clinic my name is Bill Lester I’m with University of Florida extension service here in Hernando County Florida and with me today is Colby pittz he is our Hernando County Florida friendly landscape coordinator and Bernie one of our Master Gardeners with years of experience who was under the weather this past week but still toughed it out to come in today to be on the clinic that’s why you’re here today right absolutely I’m I’m gonna go home when this is over yeah we may all go home and take a nap when this is over but we are all here today to answer all of your uh lawn and garden questions irrigation trees bushes flowers fruit trees everything to the best of our ability and we can’t figure it out we will track down an answer for you because we work with lots and lots of smart people at the University of Florida and before I forget it next week we will not be on here live because next week is going to be the 4th of July so everybody should be home either working in their Gardens or cooking hot dogs on the grill or both not at the same time but you know back to back so so no show next week butam good morning how are you I see that we have at least a few people on here watching this us this morning so hey if you have any questions just please go ahead and put them in the chat and we will do our very best to answer them and my phone my wristwatch is blowing up here with Facebook notifications and everything so guys how y’all doing this morning I had an interesting uh contact this morning a lady that uh decided to put in the flower bed and they needed a little fill and there’s there’s a pond in back of their property so they went back and and they took Phil out of the pond did a beautiful job got it all nice and leveled planted all their flowers and found out that as soon as that Phil dried n billion weed seeds popped up and now they’re in the the sad position of what do you do you you can’t just go in with any herbicide because anything you spray is going to take out your flowers and there are a tremendous amount of weed seeds you know if if if you take any of this soil that has been sitting around for years uh just sitting there waiting for little sunlight to to germinate those seeds you’re going to find out there are a lot of seeds that are stored you know in some cases I would assume that there’s probably uh half a million per square foot or per square yard it’s just unbelievable the number of seeds that can exist so uh but there is a little trick you can use um the little foam paint brushes uh use uh one of the little foam paint brushes and some round up and if if you carefully brush the uh plants you want to get rid of and and don’t get any of the Roundup on the plant you’re trying to save you can pretty well get rid of things that way takes you a little while but it it’s easier than than pulling and missing the the whole weed you know if you don’t get everything uh if there’s any little piece of root left so many of those things go ahead and regenerate so just something you you know keeping your your little Storehouse of of knowledge that uh those little foam paint brushes and round up uh sometimes those those are kind of a a save the day type product so just remember it and don’t don’t necessarily run out and do it every time but uh if you need it it’s there and yeah that’s something people need to remember that’s called your weed seed bank and it’s like an account at the bank so in your soil there’s weed seeds there and a lot of them sit underneath the soil half inch or an inch or a foot below the surface of the soil and they’re they are just waiting for that burst of light and some moisture to germinate so you don’t want to be adding to your weed seed bank and bringing in soil from you know sources that you’re not too familiar with you know whether it be a pond or somebody else’s yard I know that I’ve seen um with new home construction they use fi dirt a lot and that fi dirt can come from anywhere and a lot of times it brings in invasives it brings in Weeds it brings in seeds maybe a lot maybe a little you never know until you put that soil down and actually start in putting in a lawn of flower beds and everything else you find some really unusual things popping up so all you can do is be diligent pulling those weeds very important in your garden pull weeds before they grow to the point where they’re flowering and setting seeds cuz that only adds to your account balance in your weed seed bank so in your regular checking account it’s a good thing to add to your balance in the weed seed account it’s not a good thing to add to that balance you want to keep keep keep that balance as low as you can I I remember the little lady that that came in and and she had bought a new house uh and and she was an avid Gardener and she was having terrible problems gardening so you know you really need a soil test so she did the soil test and and she comes in with the results and what they had used for Phil in her backyard her entire backyard was 8.7 pH so you know basically you have no gra no no material to plant anything in there’s there’s nothing you can grow and she surprised the heck out of me she went from here to another Edition and bought another house on the way home and put her house up for sale immediately so wow she really wanted the garden she didn’t care about the money she just wanted a backyard that she could do something with but you’re right some of these things that they’re filling uh with you know 8.7 is is that’s the highest pH that I’ve had that that’s beyond just straight calcarius that’s that’s pretty much solid Limestone pretty much and I’ve seen that before also with new home construction and it’s it’s because of the FI dirt and it’s really sad when they build somebody’s house and put down a be lawn on soil with sky high pH like that because the lawn is never going to do well it’s going to look terrible it’s going to get thinner and thinner it made not completely die out and you know if nothing else you will get weeds that are going to grow on it there are plants that grow in very high PH soil but not all plants so now you’re limited with what you can grow and I I see it not really frequently but sometimes and hernand Beach their pH is all 8.5 because hernand Beach is built on dredge so it’s sand and really finally ground up seashells yeah just too many things to think about and and the the plain part about it is you know if if you live up north pretty much you just go out and throw a handful of seeds on the ground and boom you’ve got a garden and and it’s amazing what grows there and uh you do the same thing here and and not much of anything happen so uh it has to do with the the right plant in the right place if if you’re planting things that are uh wanting to be in Florida they do the same thing that that happens up north you you can go buy a a box of uh native plant flowers and and scatter them and and grow a pretty nice little field little Meadow of flowers but uh if if you try the same thing with Northern flowers they just unfortunately are never going to be happy here so no that’s F’s place the right plant right place that that is the number one backbone for the Florida friendly Landscaping yeah that’s kind of a Cornerstone if you follow that one you get most of the other ones uh covered just by by uh extension um oh you were talking earlier about you know applying that herbicide with a uh one of those sponge brushes it’s important to remember that um like on the label of your herbicide it’s going to have a recommended application temperature and outside of that temperature you have no guarantee of what um of what that herbicide may do so it’s really important to remember that hey if it’s 90 95 degrees outside and you put it down it may not be it probably won’t be safe for plants that it might claim that it’s safe for so you know just remember that um everyone’s heard me say it the labels the law just pay attention to it apply you know wait till it cools down do it at night if you have to um and the other thing uh real quick was that uh those seeds that um you know that are under the soil they can remain viable for years decades in some species of plants even centuries just waiting on the exact perfect condition to uh to germinate so um I don’t know just just remember that that these seeds are they’re really resilient um I saw in the news the other day at what was George Washington’s home Mount Vernon mhm they found in the basement they dug up canning jars of canned food canned fruits and within that there were a bunch of seeds so they have cherry seeds and they’re going to germinate them so they’ll be able to grow you know not many but hopefully at least one George Washington cherry tree from his time cuz see s are a lot of them are pretty amazing at how long they can survive super neat but Lori has a question about strawberry plants she got strawberry plants from a local Nursery in December should I try to keep them alive during the summer or can they take the Sun and humidity it depends to a large extent on what variety they are if it was a northern variety of strawberry it’s not going to survive one of our summers it’s going to have a it’s going to get overwhelmed with diseases insect pests and very very good chance that it will not survive the summer if it was a strawberry plant that’s bred to be grown in Florida it may survive the summer but commercial Growers don’t even do that they get the plants they put them in the ground in October so next year if you’re going to get more strawberry plants try to get them around October is and get them in the ground December’s a little late but you can still get a crop off of them it’s just you’re going to get more of a crop if you start earlier and um get them in the ground and they they get their crop they get their Harvest over from Thanksgiving is now up until very early spring then after that the plants start to take a nose dive and they get rid of them and cut their losses move on to Growing something else so strawberries can survive our summers oh no what would you say Bernie 50/50 less than 50-50 less than 5050 yeah and it’s a shame because you can go on Facebook and someone will ask this question and somebody pipes up with well I’ve mine survive every summer and they look great and everything and then a thousand other people try it 999 of them are not successful and they get discouraged if if you’re growing strawberries and Towers from Gainesville North I think you could probably uh have maybe a third to a half success rate doing that but I I think probably Gainesville is kind of the line on uh really being able to do it successfully yeah a problem with growing things like strawberries and a lot of other crops well outside of the best you know know ideal growing season is they start to have problems and now you’re tempted to go out there and spray for insects and spray with the fungus side for diseases and a lot of times you’re not going to win that battle so you end up spending a lot of money time effort putting a lot of chemicals out in the environment in kind of a losing battle because even though we say strawberries can survive there’s other things that people have their hearts set on growing all summer long and it’s like this just this isn’t going to work out lettuce in July and August it’s not going to work out guys unless you’re growing in hydroponically or you have a greenhouse chilling unit if you grow it in cold water the temperature of the roots is more important than the air temperature but if you’re just growing it out in your garden same thing with kale yeah it might survive but it’s going to look terrible it’s going to taste terrible so there’s not much point we don’t want to see people people out there fighting a losing battle and using a lot of products in the process of losing that battle yeah I I had a friend that planted tomatoes in a h Little Red Wagon and he would put the Little Red Wagon in an air conditioned garage at night pull it out um for Sun and and fun in in the daytime back inside at night and and he had tomatoes year round which you know it it can be done it’s it’s one of those things that there there’s always a way but is it worth it to you and and in his case he wanted fresh big Tomatoes he had fresh big Tomatoes year round and he had the ideal situation to do it I I was amazed at at how well those Tomatoes would hold up they would get really big and bushy and and I assume that he was swapping out one of the plants are still plants on the thing and and when they got so big that they really weren’t good on the wagon he would swap out one and start second so it it went year round but I thought it was just pretty neat any time of year you pull a little red wagon out and boom there’s your tomatoes so well that’s that’s pretty creative thinking and I know more advanced gardeners can experiment with different things but don’t have your heart on it being successful it’s all an experiment because I know um they grow lettuce in green houses but they use a water chiller so the water that they’re growing in hydroponically is cold water and obviously if you have a greenhouse you can control the temperature the humidity use shade cloth to reduce the amount of sun coming in it’s that’s not free though it’s going to cost you money so you have to weigh the pluses the minuses and how badly do you want those tomatoes and lettuce you can do it but if you’re just out there trying to grow lettuce and kale in your backyard garden like what I have June July and August is too hot I I like the way Disney does it you know that we we used to have this thing where the the Master Gardeners would go over during their uh whatever the their program is where they they would have the flowers and everything and and the Master Gardeners were were in this little building and out front are impatience in the sun full sun and they’re gorgeous and people would come in and they say how can they get by with with growing them like that well the answer is Disney had those things so that all they had to do was go out and pick up the pot the whole pot came up they put them on a rack they unloaded another rack and they took those off to a greenhouse to reinvigorate them and and you all night long you know swapping out plants trimming things to make sure it looks absolutely perfect um many years ago I dealt with a um uh Nursery That Grew flowering annuals and they were in Lake Mary and their main customer was Disney and Disney essentially bought 95% of what they grew you know if you’re growing the the correct impatience and what the kind of flowers that they want they’ll just buy they’ll buy them all because at Disney they’re going to work them in somewhere and if the flowers only last for a couple days couple weeks whatever that’s no problem they buy more they buy them by the truckload you go over to the land and and go through their Hydroponics they they have probably the the nicest Hydroponics demonstration garden uh in the state I mean it is beautiful what they’re growing zucchini that are 18 inches long and just Mammoth gorgeous plants But there again they they’ve got control of sunlight they’ve got control of the water temperature they’ve got control of all the nutrients they’ve got control of of what plants they’re using to start with and they have a very very sterile operation where there there’s no insect problems and they really keep the fungal problems way down so you know under those kind of situations you can grow anything that and it wouldn’t have made any difference whether it was in Florida or Alaska uh it it would have been the same same result so they have a big budget also money does help all the money that that makes a big difference so hey everybody if you have any questions comments anything please feel free to go ahead and put them in the chat box um if you ever want to contact Bernie Bernie is here on Thursdays when he’s well enough to be it’s very rare that he’s not here Thursday so he’s here most of the time um feel free to call the office they’ll patch you right through and and for anybody who lives in the area in or near Hernando County our Master Gardeners have a master Garden Nursery here is the address it’s located right behind the um Hernando County Fairgrounds on Oliver Street that’s the same street where Hernando County Animal Control is located and they are there Wednesday mornings and Saturday mornings from 8:30 in the morning until 11: right now very important it’s hot outside so they don’t want to be there till noon during the summer they cut out at 11:00 a.m. and it’s plenty hot by then anyway so come by bright and early in the morning Wednesday or Saturday they have a great selection of native and Florida friendly plants that are going to grow well right here in Hernando County in Central Florida and they can answer your questions also so you have questions about bugs and plants and what’s going to do well go ahead and plan on stopping by and speak with Master Gardeners and letting them help you out we have a lot of plants that uh do well during the growing season and then tend to get killed back to the ground so uh you know fire bush is a a real great example um they they tend to grow six feet tall during the growing season they’re hummingbird attractor bush like magnificent and yet every time there’s a freeze or Frost they get zapped to the ground and it’s real easy just go in cut them off level with the ground and and uh by the end of the summer they’re seven8 feet tall again and and they’ve been attracting uh things that you want to see butterflies and and birds and and hummingbirds and and I think that that’s Tri typical of so many of the uh native plants that if if you don’t mind the fact that uh maybe four or five months out of the year the the plant disappears there are some really nice landscaping plants and for the most part our Nur has them [Music] so something to think about yeah fire bush is a great choice because it has such a long flowering period from early spring up until that first um Frost or freeze this past winter at my house at least in Spring Hill mine didn’t freeze and the one here at the office didn’t freeze either which means it gets huge so one here at the office is going to need a little bit more trimming otherwise it’s going to be blocking the sidewalk the ones I have at home I mean I gave them plenty of room to grow they can get 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide and that’s just fine with me yeah that’s that’s the way it is at our place and this this year they’re exceptionally big and and because they didn’t have to waste a lot of energy putting in the initial plant the flowering is just spectacular so I I love the way the the hummingbirds do one guy will come along and decide that’s his Bush and he’ll start defending it from all the other hummingbirds so and then they start fighting out there I mean you could it’s definitely one of those PLS you can just pull up a chair sit in the shade and just watch everything going on everyone coming and going you just spend hours out there watching you get we got butterflies bees everything Hummy Birds everybody’s going to visit it so answering buddy here I have not heard anything more about the vanilla research project is it on my list here yeah that’s on my list here I’ll look into that I think that there is another a new researcher working on it and they’re still looking at varieties and field trialing all those varieties here in Florida to find out which grows the best which doesn’t grow well which tastes the best which ones don’t taste very good um variety trials can take a long time especially when almost none of the varieties are named they just assign him a number they they they keep it straight they’re organized but no I’ll go ahead and look into that and we’ll do something again on vanilla um I saw somebody on Facebook and I can’t remember what town they lived in but they grew vanilla and they grew it down a fence so they grew it up six feet and then down a fence and it got long enough where it was flowering so you can grow it uh up there in the Panhandle it’s going to be tough even here in Central Florida it’s tough if you get years where you don’t get a freeze or you know temperatures below a certain point that’s a real bonus when it comes to Growing those tropical things but no I’ll go ahead and look back into that and Shannon said that the master Garden Nursery is her happy place unfortunately this time of year it’s the hot place also just about everywhere outside is yeah yeah wife don’t you have something coming up tomorrow yes uh yes I do so tomorrow here at the utilities department we’re going to be hosting uh the first in like a speaker series where we’re talking about water conservation water conservation issues um uh this link Bill put up here if you visit there uh you can find a link to the Facebook event for it uh no registration is required we’re going to have um some refreshments uh I’m going to speak Bills going to speak got some pretty interesting topics lined up um and uh and really we’re trying to to you know Foster a community of people who care about these type of things here in Hernando County so that’s kind of the goal um I think it’ll be like I said I think it’ll be a uh educational interesting interesting event to go to um plan on doing these about every other month as of now but um if you’re interested please visit that link uh right there click on I think it’s the top one right now um okay and uh learn learn something are you guys going to have cookies I’m not in charge of the refreshments I can’t speak to that well hopefully you have to come and find out I’ll be there they’ve always had good Refreshments at those things I I have attended a lot of them over the years and uh I I’ve always come away satisfied so if if the program wasn’t that great the food always was but for the most part uh they they’ve had some really nice program so my wife will be there tomorrow okay finally question I can answer Amar asks is it too late to plant my seeds for seol pumpkin no right now is a very very good time to plant them even though you live way up in North Florida butting up against the edge of Georgia it’s not too late you still have enough time to grow them this year you could have put them in a bit earlier but you can still put them in now and seol pumpkin does really well during the summer here in Florida it is much more disease resistant than traditional Northern Jacko Lantern orange pumpkin pie kind of pumpkins they’re hard to grow here they get a lot of disease problems they’re a little disease magnets so seol pumpkin and calabasa and if anybody’s interested in growing calabasa we did a class on that and it is recorded and it is on Hernando County government’s YouTube channel so don’t kill yourself writing down this long link here just go to YouTube go to a little box up at the top with a little magnifying glass and type in Hernando County government and go to it if you go to their YouTube channel uh Florida friendly landscape has a um playlist and extension has a playlist if you look under the extension playlist we have a recorded class with Dr Maru with University of Florida on calabasa and he is doing research on different varieties of calabasa and once again it’s one of those where there’s not a whole lot of really specific names there’s you know Colby might have calabasa seeds this a variety he’s been growing for years and um Bernie has a variety he’s been growing for years and they look totally different one’s a lot more productive one gets much bigger squash so trying to figure out the um varieties strains everything else because they grow commercially here in Florida if you go to a grocery store uh especially if you go to a a um Hispanic grocery store and look in their produce department they have calabasa it’s also the common name is Cuban pumpkin so it’s a hard squash very tasty you can look online for recipes and grows really really well here in Central Florida and will not die quickly like pumpkins and butternut and hubard and all those Northern squashes do they are really really hard to grow here in seminol pumpkin is great is a great substitute for pumpkin pie it is a winter squash so you can use it for all those different winter squash um recipes and uses you know the the thing that kind of gives people a a wrong impression is we’re growing so many things in Florida that shouldn’t be grown here just because we can grow them out of season and get a lot of money for them so it’s like blueberries people look at all the blueberry patches and think oh there’s nothing to Growing blueberries everybody grows blueberries here well you know they don’t grow in the ground they they’re grown in a mulch you have to have multiple Vari ities they have a fairly short life uh they they have a lot of problems and the the the people that are growing them are using tricks like they go in and they defoliate the plants at a certain time so that all the plants are starting from the very same spot in time so that they’ll all produce berries at exactly the same time and all they care about is this I don’t know what 45 day period that they have blueberries that nobody else does and we’re selling blueberries at a profit and after that it’s you pick whatever these things are junk we don’t care anymore it it’s it’s amazing and and people get the wrong impression it it’s Florida grows so many tomatoes well Florida grows tomatoes in in South Florida because they can grow them out of season they aren’t necessarily very good Tomatoes uh but but they give us a product when nobody else has the product so uh just be sure that that the things that you want to grow uh are are actually good products you know Citrus was a wonderful thing you could grow an orange here and it would be a wonderful orange uh Citrus greenings kind of foued that up but but that was a good product Tomatoes not so much we we don’t grow the the Great Northern Tomatoes here and they the tomatoes we do grow have a lot of problems you know it I I I always tell these people if you get to where you can grow tomatoes successfully every year you’ve become a really great Gardener because that’s just not in the cards and U it’s it’s the same way with so many of these products uh they’re only grown here because they’re grown out of season so the trick is find a thing that grow the well here and and concentrate on them and and get the things from up North that really have a longer up north season that are much better than what you’re going to produce here you’re not going to produce heirloom tomatoes in Florida generally no it’s it’s really difficult takes a lot you’re not gonna grow bananas in in Illinois you’re not going to grow low plots in the uh New Jersey you know there there’s things that that that do well here uh that that you should really concentrate on and and just because you grew up when you were a kid up north that that’s not necessarily a good recommendation for wanting to grow it here yeah you’re probably not going to grow rhubarb in Central Florida no no sorry guys but you can go to the store and rhubarb isn’t all that expensive and you put it in a strawberry pie and we have some pretty good strawberries and makes it a really great meal the heck with the important food let’s just have strawberry pie with bar there are a lot of uh different root crops that many people might not be familiar with that you can grow here so Amar ask about purple sweet potato there’s a lot of different types of sweet potatoes and yams and then when you throw in the um South and Central America root crops things like cassava also known as Yuka there’s a lot of different ones um I think Yuka is great that’s um very important especially with Cuban Cuisine and a lot of other South and Central American if it’s cooked properly it’s very very good um but if you’re looking for a purple variety of sweet potato that’s purple on the outside and when you cut it open purple on the inside those are Japanese sweet potatoes so try look them up I thought Japanese sweet potatoes I thought they were the the the the they were like the MAA Murasaki and then they were white on the inside I thought the the Japanese or the purple yams were purple on the inside I could be wrong I’m pull I’m digging really deep here yeah to that I’m not sure because at the store just the other day I saw red yams but I’ve never seen the purple like I said there’s and there’s so much Variety in it that I’ve never seen all of them either live at the grocery store or looking them up um but I know that there are types of Japanese sweet potatoes that are purple on the outside purple on the inside um obviously red yams they’re red on the outside I didn’t cut one open so I’m not going to swear to what size what color was on the inside um they’re all good they can all be healthy for you uh for all of them if you look online you’ll find lots and lots of different recipe ideas and you know I like to give it a shot and either I like it or I don’t if I don’t like it probably not going to make it again if I really like it then I have a new favor I’m going to make again so they’re all good for you um H what I what I’ve determined there is that there are Murasaki Japanese sweet potatoes if it’s if it’s uh purple on the outside white on the inside those are they’re called Japanese sweet taals they’re from Louisiana um and then if you then there’s other types of Japanese sweet potatoes that have Japanese names um that are purple on the outside purple on the inside they’re really bright purple it’s actually kind of cool looking so I do your research if you’re looking for something specific I just looked I just Googled it and looked under all recipes and they have information here on different varieties there’s one that’s Stokes purple sweet potatoes they look purple on the outside and purple on the inside here’s okan and Mali sweet potatoes one’s purple inside the other one’s kind of purple and white inside there’s some from Hawaii there ones from okanawa it’s really one of those things where there’s just such a huge amount of variety that you would normally never think of most people you say sweet potatoes they say ah those orange things that I eat for Thanksgiving and that’s all they know about it and there’s like well no there’s you know dozens if not more varieties um now you guys are going to want want to make me order a whole bunch of them online and just grow like 20 different types next summer it seems like there’s 40 varieties of Japanese sweet potatoes a different kind and they’re all different colors and if they all take the heat as well as regular grocery store what’s the name board I think there’s a couple different varieties that you would normally get at the grocery store they take the heat that well then you can grow all of them here in Florida and keep growing them and trying them until you find one that you really like and then grow even more of it and then learn how to can it after you grow a whole bunch of them so see we’re trying to take take people all the way from what’s the name of that program that Lily told me about seed to supper I think I’m going to do a seed to supper program I didn’t think up that that title I’m swiping it sorry but um all the way from understanding where you live We Live in Central Florida and what’ll grow here and what you need to do to go all the way from planting to seed to Growing it to harvesting it to trying it to make sure that you like it to canning it freezing it preserving it and then doing it all again next year it I was wondering you know if uh how the climate right of Japan is especially if because you said oh if they handle the heat very well as Japan is like they not it’s not super big but I’m pretty sure you know latitude it’s a little bit higher than we are and it’s not a desert so I I I looked it up apparently they have four seasons which means it’s probably not as hot there as it is in uh as it is in Florida they have some subtropical areas I guess in the South because there’s all those chain chains of islands yeah interesting you know they’re about as far north of the equ as North Florida is and if if you start talking about the very Southern okes Islands where’s okanawa okay okanawa is quite far south okan is almost just tiny bit north of Taiwan and Taiwan is the equivalent of the Caribbean I know Taiwan they grow a lot of uh they grow 20 different varieties of dragon fruit there you can go to their open air markets and buy all con tropical stuff so not not to get off on a tangent or anything but if you that is getting off on a tangent the the world like the globe projections like you’ll look at something and think that it’s the same size as something else and it is just so far off but further away you get from the equator you know everything gets distorted so uh you have to like really look up the the links and distances of things to know cuz it’s it’s really hard looking at a map or Globe to know exactly how big or how far away anything is and you look at a map and well those two countries are really close together it’s only that much they’re only that fall apart okay guys looks like it’s that time to be putting in thinking about those final questions and tossing them in don’t wait till the very last minute here and if something occurs to you after we’re all done here there is my email if anybody wants to contact me and if you want to know about our upcoming classes uh we have a freestanding web page Pando extension all onew word.com that you can go to and normally all the classes that we schedule and put on Facebook will show up there Colby when you make an event in Facebook you need to shoot me an email so that I I know with Facebook I have to go all the way into your events now to see the little notification do you want to share this or you were invited to share it click here to do so before it would just show up in my notification so I would see it right away and click yes they and and you know in two weeks it’s probably going to change again Facebook changes so quickly with those things yeah we need to I need to make sure I’m uh I’m I’m I’m keeping you in the loop there like even more in the loop so just reminding you to do it on Facebook because I I mean after I put it up there I kind of don’t think about it unless someone ask me a question I forget too so I need to invite you to share all of mine haven’t had much schedule going on we will begin doing classes again very soon uh different vegetable Gard different edible classes with you know before you know it summer will be winding down we’ll be heading towards fall time to start getting prepared planning ordering digging out weeds stuff like that um you could just follow us on Facebook our short name is Hernando EXT Teresa does a fantastic job keeping that updated if it had been left just up to me I post on there but between the two of us we got it covered once again there’s our Master Garden Nursery that is their address and go by on Wednesday morning or Saturday morning to check out what they have if it’s going to pour rain they may be closed so that’s always depending on the weather and if you want to email Kobe directly there is his direct email see the problem is y’all’s emails are just so long I can never remember them I I really listen and this is the Alias this is the easy to remember one oh yeah yeah the other one is yeah. us.gov do I don’t know what and it’s important to remember with my email specifically if you ever email anyone at the county you know theirs is just first letter of their first name last letter their last name we have another important here to worked here before me who has a very similar name so um make sure you don’t forget that o or you will be sending an email to someone who cannot answer your question it’ll go into internet Wonderland who knows where it’s going to go and Alexandra says that oh she has a big problem with mey bugs help insecticidal soap yep everybody wants to use NE oil everybody thinks NE oil is like this magical Silver Bullet will control everything neem oil is sketchy some days it works really well other days it doesn’t work really well with it being really sunny and hot any kind of oil might damage your plants it might you know Scorch the heck out of them in the full sunlight go to the store or online you know you can just go on Amazon I guess I could plug Amazon go on Amazon and Order uh insecticidal soap and mix it according to the directions it works great on all those really tiny soft-bodied insects like mbgs and your plants can handle a certain number of mbgs there’s lots of other beneficial insects and parasitoids that are going to feed on them but if you have a plant that’s overwhelm with M bugs you may need to treat once or twice with insectile soap kind of knock that population down then let nature take care of the rest and then don’t be so OCD that every time you see one mbug you’re going to rush out there and spray your plants if they’re otherwise healthy they can handle a couple mbgs just not a million yeah the the thing to remember when you’re using insecticidal soap is that uh the bugs don’t have lungs like we do so they’re breathing through their skin and the Soapy water uh entering the little spores in their skin uh really affects their breathing what you’re doing is you end up suffocating them they the soap isn’t doesn’t actually like to squeeze their their little things off it it but it does some physiological effect that stops their breathing so you you have to remember that because this only works if you get it in their their little pores you have to be able to spray on the insect so if you have me bugs and and they’re on the stems and under the leaves and you go out and you spray the tops of the leaves you’re not going to get very much effectivity so um you know i’ I’ve had problems with melee bugs I always kept the the little spray bottle of insecticidal soap by the door if if I went out if I was having problem that I I would spray it maybe twice a day and and two or three days a week and by the end of the week it almost always was totally cleaned up and the other nice thing about it is because it’s soap when you get rain it gives you a little cleaning effect on the plant also but remember what you’re trying to do is block those little pores are those stamata and anyway the little little breathing appaz spiracles on an inside spir there we go I couldn’t remember andal soap is potassium salts of fatty acids I believe which is different from dish soap dish soap used on your dishes in your kitchen insecticidal soap used for insects out in your garden there are different things you don’t want to use intial soap to clean pots and pans no I’m wondering what would happen if you did that you don’t want to do that so let’s we’ll keep it at that and uh dishwashing liquid all depending on the brand the concentration how hot it is how sunny it is can be very damaging to your plants you don’t want to find that out the hard way and O neem oil this time of year if you spray it on plants that are out in the full sun you may fry the heck out of them it’s going to look like turn a flamethrower on the plants they will turn brown and crispy so be real careful with oils it’s getting sunny and hot out there right now yeah Cindy you are correct next Thursday is July 4th so we will not be here but hopefully everybody will be back the week after that and I will work really hard to make sure that somebody is here not sure it’s necessarily going to be me but we will have somebody here and Cindy you’re very welcome everybody else you’re very welcome and Amry green tea bush are you actually growing the chamelia that you would take tea drinkable edible tea from I know that you have looked at that Bernie did you ever seen anything about that you have looking at growing tea in Florida well they they had three research centers that were were doing work but I never saw the U final result they may not have the final result yet that may still be ongoing you know what I’m going to look up and try to figure out who’s working on that and have them give a class and I also I’ve done classes in the past on um Pest Control basically what you want to have in your toolbox control what kind of pest I’ll plan on doing that again this fall and a vanilla update here your uh your Chemistry fact of the day for everybody watching is that uh soap while you know it’s a lot a lot of you referring to like you know what you wash yourself with wash your dishes with it’s actually a classification of chemical compound there are all different manner of soaps most of which are not used for cleaning anything um and that’s a salt of a fatty acid and a metal that’s your normally it’s sodium or potassium so uh that’s your chemical fact of the day only because I I took I’ve taken organic chemistry in the last three years I understand chemistry but I know well enough that if I’m teaching on a topic that involves a lot of pH um mostly nutrients and soils is when this comes up I always have to ask are there any retired Chemists in the audience are you need to be careful how you um describe and present things otherwise they’re going to call you on it but I try to put it in terms that people can understand yeah so the chemist knows pH one way everybody else if they don’t know anything about it to explain it to them so it actually has some kind of benefit you need to explain it a little bit different so and they’re they’re going to call you out it’s like practically what does that mean nobody knows so I respect the chemist but it’s hard yall can be tough in the crowd um my fiance is taking not a stem major not a stem major at all is taking a a biology class to meet her science requirement and I and I and they’re in the the organic chemistry they touch on stuff in the beginning and I’m looking at this like oh my goodness this is really it’s really difficult what they’re asking her to learn uh for someone who’s a communication I was like man pulling my hair out over I was struggling a little bit well guys oh it looks like we’re coming up on pretty much just about that time so um let’s go ahead and wrap it up for the morning thank you so much everybody for tuning in I have my list of potential classes I need to start looking into here to give this fall so as always stay tuned follow us online keep coming back we’ll be here not next week though next week is 4th of July we won’t be here and uh thank you so much for tuning in if you guys didn’t keep coming back we probably wouldn’t be coming back either we’d be they’d be having us do all kinds of other stuff we’d be busy chasing bugs or writing reports or verifying charges or doing paperwork and this beats the heck out of paperwork as far as I’m concerned so um thanks again guys we will see you all again in two weeks after the 4th of July until then everybody have a great holiday everybody be safe everybody stay hydrated don’t spend too much time in the sun unless it’s in the pool which definitely helps and um we’ll see you again in two weeks so bye guys goodbye interesting question