Ep. 216 Chemical Trespass in Illinois: How Herbicides Are Impacting Native Trees and Ecosystems | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing Podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Mac Omb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. What's wrong with my oaks? I've been getting that question for the last few years, and we might shine some light on what's happening in Illinois with some of our oaks and other trees out there. And, you know, I'm not doing this by myself.

I am happy to be joined this week by horticulture educator Emily Zweihardt in Milan, or as I like to say, Milan, Illinois. Emily, welcome to the show.

Hi, Chris. Good to see you. And yes, Milan, Milan, wherever. Happy to be here. This is a really interesting topic that our colleague brought to us.

I am really excited to be sitting in on this one. I think there's gonna be some moments, maybe, for some folks. I know at least reading through this article and having some of the pre discussions really opened my eyes to some some things we suspected, but maybe we'll have some more clarity on after this conversation. So looking forward to it.

As am I. This report that came out, it is 94 pages, and we will leave a link to that below in the show notes if folks want to dive into the data. It's a good long read, but we will have that available to you if you wanna dive into it. But we are going to bring on our special guest for today who is going to help us parse out some of this information in this report, horticulture educator, Ryan Pankow in Champaign, or as I like to say, Champagna, Illinois. Hi, Ryan.

Welcome to the show.

Hey. Thanks for having me on. I'm glad to hear that Champaign has a fancy name too. Yes. That's pretty cool.

It's I I try to just, you know, spread the love out everywhere. I when I went to Carbondale, champagne Urbana was always shampoo banana. It's just words are weird in my brain. So that's but yes, the the finest of champagnas. Ryan, thank you for being on the show today to discuss this report.

And it's yeah, it's gonna we're we're gonna do a dive on this. So I'm excited to do it.

Yeah. So let's just get into it because there is a lot to discuss, and we don't really want this to turn into a two hour discussion. We'll try to limit ourselves even though that'd be fun. First, let's I'm gonna just read the title of the article that or the study that you sent. So it's Understanding the Extent and Consequences of Chemical Trespass for Illinois Ecosystems.

So before we get into the study, I like to take an opportunity to look at the bigger picture before diving into some details. We know the ecosystems and the landscape is not interacting with us or with each other in silos. And so as we're talking about ecosystems in Illinois, Brian, could you give us kind of a high level view of what the Illinois landscape is, maybe how it's evolved since human interaction, especially, like, when it comes to the agrarian lifestyle that we we have been living in for, you know, a hundred years or so? Like, what is it what does Illinois look like?

Yeah. Sure. And, I mean, it has an interesting land use history if we look at it across the last several hundred years of, you know, real, know, European human settlement, where we wanna say, like, how the landscape has changed in just modern times, where, you know, pre settlement, if we wanna call it that, before kind of Europeans came across and, you know, occupied this entire continent. Really, Illinois' history was driven by glacial history. You guys probably know this, that we had, you know, periods of glaciers that really kinda scrubbed the surface of the state flat and clean.

And after those glaciers receded, then, you know, I'm kinda I'm really covering a lot of years with just a few sentences here, but, essentially, Prairie dominated our landscape because it was flat plains, because of some, you know, the there was some weather anomalies that caused grasses to get expanded to Illinois. So we're part of what's called the Prairie Peninsula that kind of extends into Illinois of Tallgrass Prairie. But, we what we saw was a mosaic though of forest and prairie with forest kind of in some of our drainage areas and in lower areas and most of the plains occupied by prairie vegetation. And that is what gave us just some of the best soils in the world in this state and across the Midwest in these prairie regions. Those prairie plants put a lot of organic matter down into the root, their root system, which roots die and decompose, and that added a lot of organic matter to the soil.

So we see, you know, soils like the Drummer Silty Clayloom, our state soil. Some of us looked at that at last hort team in service the field and in soil samples, but resulting in, you know, 19 inches of topsoil in, in that case, in a lot of places with Drummer, and that's just phenomenal crop growing soil. So for the last hundred years or so, this Illinois landscape has been dominated by agriculture. And, you know, in more modern times here, the last, you know, fifty plus years, it's been really intensive row crop agriculture. And we've seen, you know, the numbers are very numbers of original prairie are very low, like less than 1% of the original prairie remains.

And so we've replaced that area largely with agriculture. I think some of it's probably went to urban sprawl and human expansion, and I've always, you know, around Champaign Urbana, there's really great examples of that, of just some of this really awesome farmland being paved over with neighborhoods and spaces that, you know, we humans need to exist. So that that's happened too. So for a variety of reasons, we've went from the, you know, we're called the Prairie State, went from the Prairie State to the Crop State or the Agriculture State or whatever you want to call us nowadays. But I guess we still go by the Prairie State.

But that's kind of a summary. I don't know. Were there other aspects of land use history y'all were interested in discussing here?

Ryan, that was a good synopsis. Now I know your background is with forestry, with USDA, and I always thought it was amazing when a forester or even someone who knows a lot about prairie ecosystems when they can walk into a landscape and they can kind of read what has happened. So Illinois, I mean, we're the Prairie State, Southern Illinois, lots of forests. Then there was a lot of logging that occurred, correct, when Europeans first first came in to settle this area?

Yeah. And so there there's very little of Illinois that was not logged, you know, or cut over. And that was probably, you know, mid eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds is where it just that that's a really important thing to understand. Like, lots of our forces forests were cleared. Southern Illinois, which remains really hilly.

And if you haven't visited Southern Illinois ever, it's mind blowing. It is a different landscape. And that shows you the difference between the glaciated, you know, northern part of the state and central part of the state and the unglaciated south part of the state. You know, there's a big difference. There's still hills and hollers and trees and all that stuff.

But some of that early, you know, clearing of the forest to Southern Illinois was for agriculture. And what we found was compared in that and remember those those areas never were under prairie cover. So they don't have that 19 inches of topsoil and just all this great productivity. A forest soil has about two to four inches of topsoil. And when you clear off the trees and start plowing it to farm it, all that washes downhill.

And so what folks found is a lot of that farming didn't pan out in Southern Illinois, and we actually have some really eroded soils down there that were reforested. And, you know, the biggest effort in that reforestation that I think of happened around the time of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and that was, you know, following the depression, it was a way to get folks employed to the government to do these conservation projects. And one of those was tree planting across Southern Illinois. And you can see a lot of hilltop pine stands are some of the remnants of that. Hardwood trees were planted as well, but I feel like in my mind those pine stands were a big band aid for the most eroded spots, and pine trees can handle some of those harsh conditions.

And that's what was whether that's true or not, that's how I've always thought about it. That and so, now fast forward to today, the Shawnee National Forest is actually looking at getting rid of those pine stands. Those are some of the first things that they're trying to manage and get hardwoods back in because they're non native pines. Like we really we got one tiny little chunk, of some native, short leaf pine in Southern Illinois, but really that's about it. So, so yeah, a lot of our woodlands are have been harvested, have been, you know, I I would always say as a forester, not managed.

So, and by that, I mean, there wasn't a plan. We might have taken trees out and sold them for timber or firewood or whatever for whatever reason, but there wasn't this long term plan that a forester like me, that that was my job with USDA, was to help you as a landowner write a plan for sustainable harvest and diversity of trees and all the things that you try and manage for. And so that's what we see is just the majority of our forested areas are unmanaged, and have been so for the last several hundred years. But by unmanaged, I don't mean there wasn't human impacts in there. I just mean it wasn't planned with good forestry in mind.

Yes. I was gonna say basically the same thing Chris said, which is like that's a brilliant description, and it lays a foundation for us now to talk about those spaces because those unmanaged, not uninfluenced tracks of land are now a lot of the recreation spaces that we still, you know, are using as a public that are available to most folks and were the subject of this study. So, again, before we get into the details of the study, it talks about chemical trespass. We should probably define that for folks before we really get into the details. So do you mind giving another brilliant description?

No pressure. Yeah. Well, I mean What is chemical yeah. What is chemical trespass?

Without getting too brilliant, I mean, it's really pesticide drift is what we're talking about, or or in this case, specifically herbicide drift is most of what the damage is we're seeing. And so that's where in this, you know, ag dominated landscape, it is actually, I mean, just essential to spray pesticides on agricultural crops to get the production system in place and production level that we expect today. We can't produce, you know, we can't farm without these chemicals. And so over time, as more of those have been employed in this agricultural system, they're going other places than just the crop fields around them. And so I know some of my interest in this topic is just from all the folks that call me and have these type problems are presenting, you know, showing me plant problems that are similar to what we would see caused by herbicide damage.

So chemical trespass is kind of the other word for this, but that's essentially what we're talking about is pesticide drift in one form or another as a chemical that's trespassing across a property line. And, you know, in most all cases, it's absolutely unintended. It's not like there's no one out there that's doing this on purpose. But, the fact of the matter is this chemical is crossing a property line where it's not intended to be.

And it can cross this trespass can occur kind of in three different ways. Right? It can be wind carried just at the time of application. It can be carried, you know, with wind speeds that are able to transport those vapors. Can be volatized.

Right? It can actually leave the plant material and and turn into a gas, go from a liquid to a gas, or go from a a solid to a gas and and move that way, or it can be in the water. Right? It can it can migrate through the soil or through our waterways on the backs of h two o. So

Yeah. And those first two types that you were describing there are first particle drift, where it's the physical droplets versus vapour drift, which is an invisible gas, like you said, that kind of just evaporates off the plant for I'm sure that's not the scientific term for how it happens, turns to a gas, floats around, and contacts another plant and causes damage, so as a vapour.

So, Ryan, I reading through the study, I recognize several of these names in the in this report. So who did the research here? What organization are or organizations are we we talking about? And what what I know we were all having these observations of, you know, that question I asked at beginning of the show, what's wrong with my oak? But they're kind of looking at these ecosystems.

What what was their objective?

Well, so my take on this study is that it was a report to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and really the basis in my mind of this study is a report to the IDNR on the status of their nature preserves. So if, if you're not aware of this, there's a, a nature preserve system established in Illinois where, parcels of land can be designated a nature preserve. And they have to meet certain criteria for heuristic quality, other, I don't know all the criteria that goes into this. I help folks manage those nature preserves after they were designated at USDA. So I'm aware of this.

So it's basically an area of a lot of biological integrity, a high value site that we've designated a nature preserve. And we were seeing a lot of, you know, chemical trespass or pesticide damage in these nature preserves across the state. And so out of concern, I, I, the Illinois Natural History Survey are the folks that actually implemented this study and did it. And you can see kind of a list of the folks. That's probably who you're recognising, Chris, is different biologists at INHS that helped do the field data collection.

And there really was, I think they did a good job of having a small group of folks kind of do this huge study. Because I mean, looked at sites across the state. So let's see, they had 185 different sites across the state they looked at. And so about 83 of those sites were in the Illinois Nature Preserve Commission system. But about 102 of those were randomly sampled from the CTAP sites that the state set up.

So, gosh, CTAP is an acronym for kind of long term monitoring a different plant population. So they were established maybe in the nineties, and they've been looked at time and time again to look at trends and changes in plant population and other things. Those are on some public sites. Those are on some nature preserves, but they're they're kind of randomly scattered around the state and meant to be this representative sample, those CTAP sites are. So they took, you know, a randomly sampled group of those CTAP sites and coupled them with, nature preserve sites, and that's where we gathered this data.

So another interesting thing to understand about the Illinois nature preserve system is that it's not all just public land, it's also private land. So at USDA, I only help private landowners manage their property. And so any of those sites that I worked on was a nature preserve on private property. So, anyway, so that's where this, report came from. It's a report to IDNR who manages that nature preserve system and it's on, you know, how is this happening across the state and not just on nature preserves, but on other sites too.

So they really try to take a pretty holistic, pretty rigorous look at this problem around the state.

And reading through it, noticed, you know, they made sure to specify like, hey, these are as random as we can get. We are not targeting any sites that we have known know that that we have chemical trespass on. Like, we're trying we're trying to be as random as we can. Having that long term data is also so important, I think. It's so hard.

You know, we're all tree people here. Well, you two are definitely tree people. I pretend to be a tree person. Tree research is so hard because it takes so long. And you got to get published, and then you gotta write a grant for the next research project.

So it's this is, like, really critical data, long term data to have stuff like this. So Ryan, what were they sampling for in these sites? You know, what exactly was being collected? Were they just looking at specific species of trees? You know, were they going down to the forest floor?

What was being collected?

Sure. Well, they did a variety of different types, collected a variety of different types of data from just simply visual assessment of the damage and assigning a level of damage that they, from, you know, no damage to lots of damage. But they also sampled leaf tissue and they also took some soil samples. And those those samples were done pretty randomly, you know, that was the intent with the way they collected it. So there wasn't necessarily one species they keyed on or, you know, one particular type of plant, it was from all different types of plants.

And they did release kind of some lists of the most damaged species. So we know from that, I know you've mentioned Oaks quite a bit. Oaks were just one of the species hardest hit. And I mean, that's a group of species, you know, Quercus is kind of the genus they all fall in. So those Quercus species took the hardest hit of any in the study, but let's see, actually published or gave us kind of a list of what some of the other, what I'm looking at is a list of the species with the greatest injury where, you know, this is down to species.

So there's quite a few oaks up there at the top. So just kind of running down the top 10, it was shingle oak, blackjack oak, redbud, post oak, black oak, box elder, pin oak, bur oak, swamp white oak. So you see there's kind of a theme here. Hackberry comes in, persimmon and shagbark hickory. I went a little beyond the top 10, but those are some of the ones that come into this, you know, the most damaged species.

And you know, so where the, we saw like the most damage on oak species, they're also noting that redbud and boxelder were both very good indicator species, meaning they would be some of the first species to show signs. And I can say I've definitely observed that on both of those. They're pretty quick to show signs of inner damage. They're pretty sensitive.

So Ryan, the species that you just listed off, I wanna get to the results, but I wanna, like, hang out on those species for a few minutes because those are like, when you read that list, in my mind, I go to, like, keystone species. Like, these are native. They're prevalent. You know, the sites were selected. They made an effort to choose the site in every county.

I think they might have missed one or two, but they made a strong effort to to sample, you know, with a large geographic distribution throughout the state. So not just one area. They weren't like, Chris, you said, like, they weren't looking at the prevalence of reports of suspected damage. It was it was across the state, and those species are spread across the state. And these are species that show up in a lot of different landscapes, including our community landscapes.

Like, did that

Mhmm.

That just stood out to me, and it it helped take this study, which does look at wild spaces, natural spaces that not a lot of us are are privileged enough to manage, we enjoy, and it brought it into, like, my backyard. I have a number of those species in my own backyard. I'm sure listeners and and viewers do too. Like, any thoughts or comments just before we move on? I I I don't know.

It it was it was kinda heart wrenching to me when I heard that those species were some of the most susceptible or, you know

Yeah. A lot of common urban trees on that list. Right? A lot of things we see around our communities. I mean, not to, not to jump back off of that, but I mean, definitely those are sensitive species within every urban forest.

Let's face it in Illinois, a lot of our urban forests are close to areas of pesticide application. But I mean, going back to our kind of land use history and the significance in Illinois from a kind of a forest management standpoint, and I guess, this study also looked at grasslands and wetlands and other types of habitat types. So they were trying to be unbiased in their sampling, but I think we get most concerned with this long term perennial vegetation, you know, trees and shrubs and forest ecosystems and how they're maybe being impacted by this. And so Illinois forests are experiencing kind of a turnover right now. And by right now, I mean in current decades, you know, nothing happens fast in a forest, but what we're seeing is a shift towards more shade tolerant species.

And what I mean by that is basically sugar maple and beech are the big shade tolerant species, meaning they can grow in 100% shade in the understory, no problem. Where oaks need about 40% to 60% sunlight in that understory to be competitive and to grow into the next forest. There's lots of pressure on that understory right now from those shade tolerant native species I just mentioned like, maple and beech, but also from invasive species. You know, we've seen the widespread bush honeysuckle. It's probably the biggest threat to forest plant diversity in the state and it's a 100% shade tolerant.

It can grow in 100 shade. And so why does why what's changed in our forest long term? Well, we've removed fire from the landscape. So historically, either naturally caused fire or mostly human, you know, caused fire by Native Americans and others on the landscape in the past drove this kind of fire dependent ecosystem in Illinois in our forests. Also, oaks gain a bit of a competitive advantage in dry, rocky hilltops and drier sites, more harsh sites.

So when you look at Illinois, we don't have a ton of dry, rocky, harsh sites. We've got kind of a mosaic of it all. So that's where oaks have a hard time competing without something like fire, some type of disturbance in that forest ecosystem that keeps some sunlight coming in and breaks up that canopy. Smokey the bear, you know, is one of those famous conservation cartoon characters. You know, I've I've heard quotes where he that Smokey's more well known than Mickey Mouse worldwide and other things like that, led us to stop, like really eliminate fire.

And so, you know, bringing up to nowadays, we understand fire fire's a management tool, it's a necessary part of these ecosystems, but for many, many years, we've excluded it. We've also subdivided the landscape into smaller and smaller tracks. So we don't have like a large scale landscape level fire like you would have seen in the 1500s across this continent that can help, you know, promote oaks. So we have to manage for oaks if we want them in our ecosystems. And so to see them as the most impacted species, that's super scary.

And, you know, that's and that's a big focus of forest management right now is keeping oaks in the forest ecosystem in Illinois. And why do we care about that? Well, two reasons. One is economical. They're probably the highest value timbered species we can manage for in a woodland.

But secondly is an ecological reason, and that's the simple fact that an oak dominated ecosystem is the most diverse we can manage for. So it supports the most insects, the most plants, the most animals, the most of everything that we can manage for. So if we lose oak ecosystems in Illinois, we lose all that diversity that goes with them. And that's that's why we care about this, and that's why it is a big thing to hear that oaks are the most impacted species in this report.

Ryan, did you get a sense of where they were collecting these samples? I'm I'm just curious, like, were they at the interface of agriculture and natural areas? So all of us that are more interior from some of this chemical use are were okay? And there's no impact?

Well, no. I I think it's pretty they tried to break it up where they were sampling. It wasn't right at the edge of things because one of the statistics they reported is that proximity to soybeans predicted level of herbicide damage. So that tells me that their dataset, there's some points that are further and closer to a soybean field. But that was an interesting point, know, so that, you know, proximity to soybeans predicted level of herbicide damage.

And then I guess we need to dive into some of these things that they found. So they they had two kind of major sample collection periods. There was early season and sort of mid late season. So let's start early season. What was found, early on?

Sure. Like, with those early season results, what they were seeing was a lot more, herbicides. That, that, that's the big pick. That's the main story here. So early season, we're seeing a lot of herbicides.

Later in the year, we're seeing more fungicides, a lot more fungicides. And then they also noted an insecticide was part of that later season application. And that goes right along with agricultural production systems and what's being applied. So that kind of makes sense to see that trend. But, those, the early season chemicals they most reported were Atrazine and twenty four D.

So those are a couple of big, you know, agriculturally focused chemicals. Those are also things we see in the landscape, in lawn care and other things. We see a lot of twenty four D being applied for broad leaf control. So, I mean, while these, these points are all kind of out in rural areas and not really in the urban space, this report doesn't cover, you know, Emily, you mentioned kind of urban trees. It really doesn't cover a lot of the effects of urban trees or, you know, a lot of reports I get are from urban areas and, you know, this pestis, this chemical trespass or pesticide drift can also happen from other things that are going on in urban spaces, whether it's, you know, really intensely managed landscapes or just a lot of this intense turf grass management we see in places.

That's one of the culprits. Or, I mean, I've even seen instances of pesticide drift from invasive species control that other people are doing in and around parks and urban areas that is going off target. So, you know, while the finger gets kind of pointed at agriculture in this report, I think we have to note there's lots other ways that this chemical trespass is happening. This report is kind of focused on, you know, these type settings that aren't necessarily right in the middle of a city or town.

One of the findings that I found startling was that was so not just the discovery of the pesticides and the fungicides, but the the distribution of the findings. So what what it was correct me if I like, 74%, right, found of the samples found to have pesticides, like, throughout the state. Like, what was it? 97% of the sites, I think. It's what I wrote down.

Yeah.

That's a lot of sites. Go ahead.

That's a lot. It was 74% had at least one pesticide measured of all their samples, and 97% of their sites had a positive sample. So that's, you know, high statistical significance there. You know, and some of the other, you know, that that's based off of chemical analysis of leaf tissue and soil samples. So that was exact, you know, that is lab data where they also measured visual signs.

They had, and this is where it kind of, the fact that they've limited this study to a limited number of people that actually did it comes into play where they have, you know, visual assessments and levels. And I've done this kind of fieldwork in the past for other things, stream rating systems and other things where you have to all decide what a number five is, you know, and be consistent across sites. So so that was kind of some of the point of this visual assessment is having a kind of standardized way we're saying, hey, across the whole site where, you know, you've you've looked at the micro scale of a leaf tissue sample with what, you know, what you're citing, where then the visual assessment is a little bit bigger and a bigger assessment of the site as they kind of walked through it and assessed plants and took samples. And so with that, you know, they're saying 99% of their sites had some kind of visual damage associated with it where they could see signs of these, you know, telltale, you know, the signs of herbicide damage, so some of the symptoms. And they even, they laid, they gave it different levels of, of the damage.

So ninety nine percent had some signs of visual damage, but ninety two percent of those sites had moderate damage, and fifty four percent of those sites had severe damage they were seeing. So over half the sites measured had severe damage that they could visually assess and just see right when they walked up. One interesting point though that relates all this together and goes back to the kind of the leaf tissue sampling, is that leaves with greater visual damage did not necessarily have greater herbicide concentrations in the lab tests, which is interesting. So I'm not, that'd be something that would be really cool to talk with these researchers about what they think is going on there. To me that means that we can't rely on visual assessment to know what kind of herbicide level is in that leaf.

You know, it really does take a lab assessment to tell us good or bad, high or low, you know, what's going on there.

I'm glad you said that. That was surprising and it does cause me to step back and think, you know, like, visual assessments are only giving us a picture of what is happening. It doesn't seem that's counterintuitive, you know, to what I we were I would have suspected or I would have said, you know, if we were I was betting on it, would have said, Well, a visual assessment would give us a pretty good idea of what's going on. But I thought that was a really interesting point.

And I would guess there's probably some statistics they could run to test for this, and they maybe ruled it out. But we know that, certain species are more susceptible and show symptoms better. I'm sure they did some type of statistical test to kind of control for that, but that would be another thing this leads me to wonder about, you know, is it, are we seeing those, you know, just more susceptible species really show extreme effects really quick for small concentrations? And I don't know that that question was teased out in this report or that they mentioned it, but, it's kind of something else that factors into this, this individual species susceptibility.

Yeah. There's so many variables when you're doing a study statewide. You have to just be like, I can't look at all of it. I have to keep my focus narrow. That's so hard as as researchers to do because you wanna look at all of it, but it it it muddles too much the the data and everything.

So you have to stay focused. Yes.

Well, and and do long studies. You know, like, the study. This is one this is a snapshot. This is really interesting information, but it is from this year. So with this year's weather patterns, the singular year's crop rotation patterns.

You know, we traditionally do corn and soybean rotation. Ryan, you'd mentioned some of the prevalence with and the the association with having soybeans nearby versus corn. Well, like, does that flip? Does that change? I there's so much more to learn from this.

Yeah. Well, and this, you know, this was just a snap like, the data were actually collected in 2023. The report was issued in 2024, so last year. But it is a snapshot. And actually, Chris, I think you found a really good kind of recording of the researchers discussing this.

So I'm sure we'll get that in the show notes. Yep. But they do talk about on that this exact kind of thing where year to year, we would see differences in this data. And one of the cool things they showed in that, they talked about or discussed a little bit in that recording was, maps that show kind of the where the heavy damage was for different things or where they're, you know, kind of a distribution map across the state of where they found this thing. And that was kind of the context in which they discussed that was, you know, in a different year, we would expect to maybe see a different map of this density of damage or pesticide level.

So things would definitely change year to year. This is just a snapshot.

Yeah. You know what's interesting in that video recording that they discuss also their they're kind of surprised, but but also the the two chemicals that I see most often maligned on social media, dicamba and neonicotinoids, they said, we we really didn't find that much. They were kind of expecting to find more. They really didn't.

Yeah. And, I mean, that's I mean, a couple years ago, gosh, Dicamba was just in the news constantly. You guys both probably remember this. And because it does get some of that volatility in vapor drift where, again, that's not you know, your the sprayer drives by and some drift wafts over. That is, you know, a vapor, an invisible vapor, a gas kind of drifting around.

And Chris, you noted, like, some of that damage was on other adjacent crop fields and things the year that all this was just in the news. So I was surprised to see, not as much dicamba, but more 24 was really the big growth regulating hormones, you know, that we saw. And that's, what really is causing a lot of these ill effects on trees and shrubs and things, and deformities are those growth regulating hormones. So that was the big one they found and not necessarily dicamba.

Let me step back a little bit. You say about like leaf deformity. Just for the audience, could you just give a couple of examples of like what you mean when you say that? And so if folks aren't familiar, maybe haven't hopefully haven't seen some leaf abnormality.

Yeah. We can kind of characterize those signs of damage from a pesticide that are pretty commonly what we would see are kind of twisted, deformed leaves, that growth pattern's kind of weird and deformed, cupping of leaves. So that's, you know, kind of the leaf cups, curves up. In a red bud, you know, it's kind of cupped this way where I think I've seen, it's usually kind of cupped downward on most species that you see. It's really common that that new growth that comes out, like those little, as buds start, leaves start to emerge, they don't have a thick cuticle and as much development as other things, and they're a little more susceptible.

Get exposed a little harder. Seeing deformed new growth, you know, seeing, sign, just really kind of like on a lot of the oaks, they become like really skinny, long elongated leaves with the lobes, you know, the distribution of the lobes is weird. It's, there's times where on a white oak, couldn't even tell you that from a leaf it was a white oak. I'm looking at the trunk, you know, and there's some telltale signs in the bark that would tell you it's a white oak, or acorns around. But, I mean, that's extreme cases where it's not recognizable to species, but, I'm trying to think of some of the other things that I mean, those are the big ones, you know, and that's a low level exposure usually that's kind of causing that cupping and other things where, you know, with a lot of drift exposure, and this is probably, I would guess from particle drift is where I've kind of seen this happen.

I mean, it's killing leaves or there's dead spots on leaves, you know, and causing damage that way. But in the most, for the most part, a lot of this damage, we're just seeing kind of weird shaped leaves, deformed leaves, discoloration can also go along with that. They can be a bit discolored. But you know, as I describe all these things, I mean, what else does that look like? There's maybe the cupping is the one thing I don't see a lot of other times, but a lot of other plant stresses cause discolored leaves, cause leaves that are dying, you know, cut.

So that's where, gosh, as extension professionals and as for a lot of folks, it's just really hard to ever peg pesticide damage as the cause for these symptoms you see. So that's, and I think that's why this study was really enlightening to me. It's looking at it across the state and it's telling me like, gosh, a lot of these things I think I'm seeing could be or most likely could be herbicide damage when it's in close proximity to areas that we know pesticides are being applied. Be it an ag field, be it a golf course, be it another area that's managed for turf, you know, heavy turf management. So, I still think we need to be a little careful in not saying that just anything with weird looking leaves is pesticide damage.

I don't think that's where anybody that produced this report was intending to send folks. And I try to be really careful when talking with folks about this, but, just the number of reports I'm getting in our office and people I'm talking to. And I mean, this time of year on a weekly, daily basis, I'm getting reports. I mean, lot of this stuff is most likely pesticide damage. I don't know the other causes.

So, you know, one of the things you do when you're talking with someone like this is you start to kind of narrow down and eliminate what are some of the lookalikes? What are some of the things I can rule out? And you know, I think you all, we should talk about that a little bit. What are some of the big lookalikes to herbicide damage? Like what can you both kind of think of?

I kind of had jotted down a little bit of a list trying to scroll down to, but some lookalike things.

I definitely know that freeze damage, that late season freeze. As leaves emerge from their bud, they're very susceptible to injury of all kinds, whether it's a drifting herbicide or some other, you know, temperature stress or insect stress or disease stress. That's a it's it's that that moment in that leaf's life that it is most susceptible to some type of injury.

Yeah. And the timing too is sometimes especially with those early season symptoms, you know, that that first assessment that they did, like, that can be it can be confusing. You know, if we have a later later frost or a later cold spell, can really kinda throw us throw, you know, the public.

Yeah. I mean and and, you know, even just something as simple as drought stress, basic environmental stress can produce signs like this. You know, things like, I mean, as simple as soil come back. So there's there's a lot of environmental stresses we can say can cause this. And, you know, compared to a disease where, you know, one thing we can say with a lot of disease and usually a lot of insects is that it's pretty species specific.

We're going to see this one type of tree damaged by this one disease, but that's another part of this pattern. And the puzzle I'm piecing together is, in a lot of these cases, I'm seeing multiple species damaged at the same time by the same thing. Now that can be you know, frost is a good example of an environmental, you know, freeze damage is something that would happen the same way. It's indiscriminate. It's gonna cause same damage and the same things, but, I mean, let's face it.

In June, we're not having much freeze damage. You you know? So it's it is a complicated puzzle to sort this out without those lab tests. And that's what's really great about this study is it incorporated lab testing, but for your average homeowner or your average person like us looking at damage in the landscape, you know, those lab tests can sometimes be as much as a couple $100 a sample. I've seen them less than 100, but I've seen them over a couple $100.

And that's pretty expensive just to say like, you know, yes, I have herbicide damage. It's cheap. I piece it together, you know, and we can eliminate other things.

Yeah. And if you were to do that, like, then what do you do? Like, if your trees are impacted, like, the damage is done. Like, what because we get these calls. You know, we we advise people, you know, with a lot of this information, but then they wanna know what do we do.

They get concerned about the, you know, the welfare of their tree.

Yeah. And that's what is it's really tough. Because, I mean, it's not like that you can say, Oh, here's the antidote. Go apply this to your tree and it reverses all You're right. Damage has happened.

And going forward, I mean, there is not a lot we can do other than sit and watch and assess, other than just eliminating other environmental stresses. So don't let the things we talked about, soil compaction, drought stress, extreme wind exposure, if you can help limit that, don't let those things add additional stress to your tree or shrub. And also, I mean, not watch for disease and insects. This is a weakened plant and those are the kind of places where a lot of diseases or insects take hold. So gosh, for a lot of people, it's a wait and see thing.

It's some of the basics of just your basic tree care of, when it's really hot water this plant some, or, you know, like I'm sure both of you guys recommend this all the time, add some mulch over the root system to preserve moisture to

help

us A lot of mulch, a big mulch ring. We don't see that much.

Yeah, and so that you have this person though that's contacted you and has a severely damaged tree, and it's like, well, I I'm hope it's gonna be okay. I hope it's just foliar damage, your plant sustained. But could you put a big giant mulch ring around it? And and I've talked to people where it's like, that's a dilemma because it's like Yeah. My tree looks so bad.

I don't know if it's gonna live, which in most cases, I'm seeing these plants come turn around the next year. And so do I invest all the time and money of putting out a giant mulch ring for something that could not be alive? And, you know, my argument to that is, you know, hey, you already wanted a tree there. You already planted one. Let's say this one dies.

You've got the mulch ring for the next one. You know, it's established. Yeah.

Well, we talk about that decline spiral. Like you had mentioned, you know, kind of like mitigating what you can in terms of stress. And so if it has, you know, some stress from what we think could be a pesticide drift, then maybe don't prune as severely or at all, you know, the following year, water, like mulch, like you said, some of these things. But that decline spiral is something if folks are more interested in, we've got some resources, or just call up one of us to talk about it. But basically, it is the compounding effect of stressors, and so keep that in mind.

Yeah. I mean, just really baby that tree if it's been damaged. Don't park your truck under it. You know, that's soil compaction. I mean, even just, you know, soil compaction is so hard for people to wrap their mind around.

It's not a bulldozer driving across the surface or a It's even human foot traffic. If it's an area of high traffic, if you're mowing a lot under it, all those things are soil compaction compared to, you know, the forest floor in an undisturbed forest. What traffic does it have? You know, I mean, maybe a deer hoof from time to time or, know, but it's not, but there's nothing like what we humans do to that soil environment. So when you have the stress tree, stay off that root system as much as possible.

I mean, again, there's just like, there's not a ton of things we can tell folks to do, but that watching and monitoring is an important part of this. And I've had people be alarmed and call me back when their plant had some new growth in later in the year after some of this damage. And, you know, that's a happy story. That that is like, hey, Your plant had enough energy reserve to mount a response. It's responding, and it's it's putting out new leaves.

So, that's good. That's what we wanna see. What scares me is when we have zero plant response, and it just, if anything, its vigor goes downward, you know, for the rest of the year. That's, that's a sign of it going into decline, which to define that, you know, that's just that slow spiral towards death that we see so many trees. I mean, really that's how most trees die and it's not from one thing, it's from a combination of things that just slowly kind of let it fade away.

So monitoring your tree is a huge recommendation. And again, like that, that healthy new growth coming out, that's great. I mean, you know, that's actually going back to some of the indicators of herbicide damage. Healthy new growth and damaged old growth is a sign of, you know, damage from a chemical. Because when that, you know, when that older growth came out, it was damaged, the new growth wasn't there, new growth comes out, it's undamaged.

And, and you can see that on not only trees and shrubs, but other herbaceous plants will show that same kind of symptom too where it's another part of the stem is less damaged that's younger. So

One plug though, and I know you know this, Ryan, like this is just I I wanna drive this point home. You talk about babying trees when they have experienced stress. Like, if they're putting out new growth, still baby those trees. They they are that's a really good sign, but they're using stored energy reserves to put that second flush of growth out. And so continue to water through the fall, into the winter, you know, like make sure they go into winter hydrated.

All of the things we all talk about, like, ad nauseam. But I'm gonna do it again. So just a reminder to people.

No. That's a good reminder. And I mean, the I've seen some places recommend trying to prune the plant heavily to not have that herbicide translocate further. And I don't think I agree with that recommendation. And some of it has to do with managing that energy flow in the plant, you know, where all those pruning wounds that you open up heavily pruning this already stressed plant require a lot of energy to grow over as opposed to, you know, a leaf that you could leave on there that's kind of deformed, that's going to at least photosynthesize and return energy for the year.

And, you know, when you understand also or when you think about also, you know, what are these signs telling us? So we've got kind of deformed leaves on this plant, but for that herbicide to really kill the plant, it really needs to translocate into the tissues, you know, down to the roots, you know, and start to really kill things. For a lot of this exposure, that's not what we're getting though. And it's not and you know, I I'm speaking from experience as someone that sprayed herbicides on plants to try and kill them and you know, have seen it not work from time to time. And, and you can tell, you know, that plant really didn't get a full dose of this chemical in the way it was labeled and meant to be applied to a woody plant.

And so I, I think that's a little bit of consolation for some people when I'm discussing this with them. It's like, hey, you know, if this herbicide was applied directly to your plant as labeled to kill a woody plant, it would be translocating to the roots and really killing this plant. Where what we're seeing, you know, with cupped leaves and deformity is, like, not that full dose happening here. So, you know, the consolation there is, like, it got a lower dose than the lethal dose, and let's hope it can deal with that and grow out of it and we can baby it through. So something else to think about.

What a very common question I get when on this topic with a a client or a homeowner, landowner, what have you is, can I stop this? Is there a way to prevent chemical trespass from occurring? Is there a way for that I can protect my trees or garden, whatnot, from being exposed?

Yeah. It's a common question I get too, and I'm I'm in the central part of the state and you see lots of yards, you know, out in the rural countryside that are just right, you know, that, that plot of land where their yard is, is just right in the middle of a cornfield, you know. And so they're just, I mean, in really close proximity where, you know, one of the things that we've kind of talked about with this is a vegetative buffer of some kind to kind of limit that damage coming into your yard and the, more valuable plants. And really, you know, the way we've talked about these vegetative type buffers is in the form of a windbreak in in the past. And so I think that is a way that you can start to kind of put a barrier between your more valuable plants and where, you know, damage is coming in from.

But, you know, that takes up space. So that's a problem. If you don't have a very big yard, if you don't own the crop field adjacent to it, you can't really plant out into it to create a bigger buffer. But, so windbreaks can help with, you know, we've talked about a couple of different forms of drift, particle drift where it's direct drops and things, and then vapor drift. Windbreaks going to do a little bit more for particle drift, you know, that actual physical spray wafting in there than it is for vapor drift.

But, I think one of the biggest misconceptions, with designing and putting in a windbreak for this purpose, for drift reduction, is the density of that planting where if you're just all out blocking the wind, you want on the north side of your property from those cold winter winds or whatever, a windbreak, pretty a pretty dense windbreak is probably the best idea. It's going to stop as much wind as possible. Where in this case, we're trying to intercept particle drift. You actually want a little bit of space for air to get in. You want to slow down the wind speed as it enters the buffer, but then have some space that it can get through.

So you don't want as dense of a buffer planting so there can be some time for those particles to drop out and be absorbed by the plant in your plants in your buffer. So you have to realize your your windbreak buffer system is meant to be the plants that take up that that drift. So, where if if you do design a buffer that is just that super dense blockage, what it can do is take that particle drift and just force it up and over, and then it's gonna come down. And there's really good metrics for the kind of downwind side of that buffer and how tall the plants need to be for how much protection. But as soon as you get outside of that kind whatever you wanna call it, a wind shadow of the the windbreak, then those particles are dropping back out, and it's not as effective as if it was a little less dense and allowing air to come through.

Yeah. You see that with, like, snowfall patterns on some windbreaks Mhmm. You know, where the snow actually gets deposited on the opposite side. Sometimes you have these just drifts of snow on the, you know, on the opposite side of a windbreak. It's like, oh, so it just pushed it up and then pushed it back down.

Mhmm. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing you get where, you know, maybe if you're, if you're planning it specifically for, you know, drift reductions, herbicide drift reduction, you know, think about a little less dense of a planting. You know, a lot of the better plants to plant there are things with a lot of surface area. So thin needled plants.

I mean, I'm thinking of like white pine or some of our conifers, plants with lots of numerous small branches and lots of surface there. So really the most awesome windbreaks you can put in are multiple species and multiple rows where, you know, I picture it as large shade trees like your oaks, smaller things like maybe some conifers and shrubs. You know, there's any combination of those even going down to grasses where you would kind of step down, to a lower height on the windward side. You know, some other characteristics that are desirable are kind of large leaves that are covered in hairs. So I think we can all think of some plants like that.

That's, that hairy leaf surface is going to take up more, more things. Roughs, just rough foliage, you know, rough surfaces on leaves. So as you're looking at your plant selection, those are kind of some of the things to think about. And I don't know, I've also got the question about, how far is appropriate setback off the edge of the field? How far should I plant?

And I mean, I don't have a great answer for that either. You can, you can see absolute measurements that places recommend, whether it's 25 feet or 50 feet. There's other metrics you can look at where, you know, how high is the spray boom height versus how tall are the plants, you know, and how far away do you need to be? You know, if you have a buffer there, how tall should the plants be and then how far away should you be from that? So there there's some I don't think there's really a perfect cookie cutter recipe for this as to how far your setback should be.

And, you know, usually my answer is as far away as you can get from the field edge would the very center of your property would be the best. But this is all with respect to particle drift, the physical particles coming in. When we start to look at vapor drift, this invisible gas, I mean, you know, I'm telling you to plant a little more diffuse of a buffer, that's not going to help as much with vapor drift. It's obviously going to slow wind speed down and wind does carry those vapours into your property, but I don't know that it's going to it's not the same concept of your buffer kind of taking up that material. I would say that any of these buffers you can plant will help some with vapor drift.

I mean, there's additional plant material in front of your desirable plants that are taking it in. One thing I've never tested or used in the field, but I've heard folks talk about and I've heard some organic growers talk about doing this with some luck, is actually putting up a physical fence that is something pretty impermeable like what they described to me as pretty much essentially like landscape cloth that's hung up on a permanent fence that is then really a pretty strong barrier that with vapour drift, I guess, kind of pushing it up and over their and so I don't know, that takes a lot of time to construct and it's a permanent structure in it. But, I mean, that's so so it's really difficult to handle this with any one practice because it there's two ways it's kinda getting in the for for the most part. And which one of these do you wanna pick to handle it? You know, I don't know what's gonna be your best option.

Well, are good suggestions, at least. Like, it is each landscape is so nuanced. At least that gives folks a place to start. Now I've got, like, images of of a landscape fabric fence in my landscape, and I'm sure my husband will appreciate that. So

Well, it's not pretty. Yeah. I don't think that's a very nice looking attribute of the landscape. But, you know, just simply if plan a windbreak, I mean, if there's if you're looking to do something, plan a windbreak, it's it just helps your property out if you have the space. It it helps block some of that incoming wind.

It's it can be all native trees if you focus on that. It can have some ecological benefit. It can just diversify the landscape around your house. So, I mean, that's probably the basic the one basic step that you know, it's not without cost. Trees and shrubs are expensive wherever you get them.

But it's just the one thing that's maybe practical for a lot of folks to do as opposed to I don't know, how tall of a finch you would need as a barrier. But I guess it depends on the height of your planting and other things.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've been talking a lot about herbicide trespass. The study did have a few comments about fungicide that we haven't talked about. And I don't I don't think we need to spend a whole lot of time on it because this study is a little bit inconclusive, but I thought we should mention the findings.

So, Ryan, you wanna elaborate on what they what they found or didn't find?

Yeah. Well, like we talked about earlier, later in the season, it was more Mhmm. Fungicide damage they saw. And I mean, I guess for me, being pretty plant focused person, I was kind of like, well, you know, hey, fungicide, maybe we'd have a little less anthracnose on our trees or may, you know, maybe there'd be a little less, and I guess that happens early. The timing for anthracnose would be wrong because it happens earlier in the spring, but maybe it's limiting a little bit of foliar damage.

But it was interesting to me in this study, they talked about just some of the larger ecological effects potentially of that fungicide, which one of the things that rang, rang home to me was some of their future plans are to look at mycorrhizae in the soil. And so for anybody that doesn't know, doesn't remember what mycorrhizae are, they're, we believe symbiotic relationships with roots, which, you know, there's, you know, there's controversy around that, whether there's maybe, there may be more competitive and it's less just wonderful symbiosis that we thought in the past. But long story short is they help trees take up more moisture and nutrients when they infect a root. And so if a fungicide is in the tree, does it kill the mycorrhizae in the soil? I don't know the answer to that.

I don't know if we do know the answer to that. Another just interesting point was they, they were going to maybe look at decomposition rates in the soil. And how does that connect to all this? Well, you know, fungi are a major driver of decomposition of organic matter in the soil environment. And if a fungicide is impacting them, it might impact decomposition rates.

And why do we care about that? Well, that's the nutrient exchange in the forest is the turnover of those leaves and decomposition of those leaves. It could be a huge factor on the ecosystem scale, you know, if there's changes there. So pretty interesting findings.

Yeah. I had those same thoughts too, like how woodland or prairie like decomposition needs to happen in prairies. We're not always burning. We're not always you know, there's a lot of biomass have built up in those landscapes too and wetlands. Like, it's just another aspect of the landscape that we are influencing that we still have more to learn about.

So I'm glad thank you for elaborating on that. I I found that really interesting where it was know?

Yeah. And so I think another little point that came out this to me that I thought was interesting was that they noted, so again they didn't just study forested ecosystems. They had points in prairies and wetlands and other places, and they noted that there was more severe damage or more damage in the more open environments they sampled in such as a prairie or a wetland. And what does that tell me? Well, I mean, I think and also, you know, proximity to ag land and other things factor into this.

But, it makes me wonder if, you know, planting a windbreak as a buffer is maybe is maybe a little better of an idea with some of this because, it's a less open spot than when once you add that something breaking up that wind pattern, that wind flow. I don't know. So I don't know how to take that kind of result, but that was interesting too to hear that, I guess, those more open areas are just more open to the drift coming in, but, that was another kind of significant finding.

Yeah. With that, I thought also, you know, that the types of plant material that are in those spaces, woody versus herbaceous perennials, like the metabolic rates of those plants is different, and I didn't know if that had, you know, an effect on how plants were responding to these chemicals. So

Yeah. Good point. Good point. That could definitely be something at play there between, you know, your grass species and your tree species.

Yep. Okay. Did we miss anything? I want I'm gonna ask you guys to kinda, like, summarize your takeaways. We've done it a little bit, but we'll just put a nice bow on it here.

But did we miss anything? Or, Ryan, do you wanna add any, like, final comments before we do that?

No. I I think we've covered it pretty well top to bottom. And to me, just the biggest takeaway is, I mean, a lot of, a lot of this damage we're seeing around the landscape can be attributed to herbicides. You know, seeing it this widespread in this study, you know. And this, this was done in a repeatable scientific method, you know?

So others could repeat this and look at this and try to look at similar statistical significance and prove true or false, the findings of this study. So I feel like, I feel pretty confident in the results here being comparable around the state. And, but again, like we talked about, I think before we go and say herbicide damage for anything, you need to do an investigation. It's not as simple as just looking at leaf characteristics. They're you know, you've got to really look at that whole environment the plant's in and understand, you know, what else could be at play.

But those are my takeaways, at least. It makes me think I'm not crazy in in that I'm seeing herbicide damage all around Central Illinois. I mean, it, you know, could be the cause of a lot of this.

Yeah. I had a very similar reaction, which is I appreciate the scientific method being applied to to something that we have seen, we have, like, I think just suspected, you know, like the as people who are engaged with nature, who are out observing it from year to year, different ecosystems, just making observations, It's nice to have a systematic study done. But it it can be replicated, and I do believe the intention is to continue to, you know, to continue to study these spaces. They've they marked certain trees to go back to and watch the growth rates over time. I look forward to seeing, you know, how those trees respond, you know, either recover or, you know, are affected by repeat exposure.

But it is it is, like, validating. Like you said, like, we're not crazy for for thinking we see this all over. Not in, like, a I'm not excited about it being validated, but knowledge is power. And so then we can once we have a better understanding of what is going on, we can actually make landscape management decisions that hopefully help support the trees in our lives or the ecosystems in our lives.

And I think to me, I mean, again, though, not really excited about this, but I'm I'm glad to see some some progress or some real scientific investigation. And it sounds like to me they do continue to plan more more of this scientific investigation. Like you mentioned, there was, you know, 1,400 trees that were marked during the study or plants that they will follow-up long term and try and monitor as best they can. They were looking at doing some, lab and greenhouse experiments kind of look at how these, you know, pesticides or herbicides interact with plants. And really, you know, the biggest question, to answer is what is the long term implications of this?

Where on the short term, you and I we're all three of us are probably seeing this year to year. And there's even times where somebody that called me one summer, I talked to the next summer, or they could reach out again, and I I get to see a little bit of return on what happened to that plant. But I think that at least in my own personal life where I'm seeing this in nature preserves and areas around me, because I I live right in the middle of the rural, you know, Central Illinois landscape, it's repeated damage every year to the same plants, you know, because they're kind of in that position on the landscape where they're receiving the wind off a field or off of this adjacent impact. And so, to to think that somebody's starting to look at that, that's a big, big question where it's not killing that mature oak tree, but gosh, it sure isn't helping it out every year to have tiny leaves or distorted leaves. And what does that do after ten years, after twenty years?

I mean, what are we going to see thirty years from now in our forest stand composition? Is it gonna be changed, or do these can these trees weather the storm? I we don't know.

Well, I I guess I would add that I I yeah. You see the storm happening. You see the issues, the damage. You see issues, the damage. You see the problems in agriculture where we have fewer farmers and we have basically fewer eyes on more land.

And right now, we have to have a lot of human input, whether that is at planting time, whether that is applying a pesticide. A lot of that has to be contracted out, which means everyone is rushing. You know, we have labor costs. We're doing aerial applications. We're trying to cover our bases where maybe we're not scouting as good as we should be and finding what's going on.

And so it sounds bleak and terrible, but my hope is applying maybe some new technology for us in the future, incorporating things like artificial intelligence, drones, robotics, things where we can maybe reduce some of those labor inputs and have direct targeted pest action in our agricultural field. So I am hopeful in the future as we develop this new technology that we can employ to reduce maybe the blanket amount of spraying that we do across the Illinois landscape. So fingers crossed that day is coming.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of, like, hope in that area. And, I mean, we were all I think all three of us were at the last Farm Progress show at one day or another. And so I did. I I toured some of those exhibits, and there's just some really cool stuff going on.

And I don't think it was released on the market yet, but one of the sprayer examples had little cameras that would identify the weed and spray only when the weed was there. And so, I mean, we are like our man, our technology is really, you know, catching up with this and trying to get us more targeted and, you know, less chemical per acre going out. And so there's a lot of things moving in the right direction to help correct this. But, but anyway, so so yeah. Hope for there's hope for the future, I think, across the board on this.

And hopefully, can get maybe someday there'll be a bunch of drones that just fly out and just spray every weed individually. That that'd be the ideal thing. Right?

Yes. Well, that was a lot of great information about the issues of chemical trespass, what we're seeing in our forest ecosystems. Again, the study that we talked about and a presentation that is linked to YouTube will be down in the show notes below. Well, the good growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Hey, Ryan, a special thanks to you for being our guest today and diving into this 94 page report to to kind of come up we could keep talking, but we we better cut ourselves off here.

So thank you so much, Ryan, for, you know, pulling out some of those really important pieces of information for us.

Yeah, thanks. Great discussion today. It was fun talking about this with a good growing crew.

Well, thank you. And, Emily, thank you very much for joining me from Milan or as we should, we go back to Milan, Illinois. It was a pleasure having you here today.

Oh, it is my pleasure to be here. Ryan, this was a fantastic discussion about a really interesting study. So thank you for bringing it to our attention. Really, really appreciate it. Chris, thanks for letting me join you.

And I know Ken is away again next week. So why don't we do a Garden Bite and then we'll do it again the following week.

That's right. We will do this again next week the following week. It'll be a Garden Bite as Emily said, and the following week we'll, well, shoot. It's July 4. We'll figure something out.

So it it will be a fun, festive, explosive, good growing podcast. So but not maybe that last part, but it'll be fun. Alright. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.