438-Essential Winter Tree Pruning Tips-Encore Presentation

Hi everybody, it's Joe. Today is the second of two on-core episodes with Basil Camus that I picked for you. This episode is timely and highly applicable to most of you, no matter what your winter weather is like, because even though this conversation is titled and mostly about winter tree care, the proactive part, what we can do between right now and early October and before the winter weather hits, well, that's a big part of why I wanted to replay this conversation today, while there's still some time to assess the trees under our watch and over our roof. I re-listened to this one before committing it as the on-core, and there's so much good tree care wisdom in this conversation. It doesn't matter if you live in a place that never gets cold. Suffice it to say, if you have trees, this will be a good one to listen to. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy. Hi everybody, this is Joe Lample, the Joe Behind Joe Gardener, and welcome to the Joe Gardener Show. Today, I am talking with one of my newer guests who we've had on the podcast in the past, Basil Camus. He is a co-founder of an incredible tree care company called Leaf & Lim. They're in the Raleigh area. He has a master certified arborist, an incredible book from Wasteland to Wonder. You'll hear more about that later in the podcast. Basil is such a wealth of knowledge and so giving with his information, and he's so articulate with how he communicates. I wanted to talk to him today with this time of year being winter and snow and ice and the risk of tree damage. It's also the best time to maintain a tree for structural pruning or care of the tree. So I wanted to go there with Basil on those two topics and see where it goes from there, and it did. It's a great conversation with lots of information. So that's what we have in store for you today. So let's get into it. And as we do, thanks to our sponsors for today's episode, Territorial Seed and the Ultimate Gardening Sheet. 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You can find it exclusively and learn more at joegardener.com slash UGS. That's joegardener.com slash UGS. My first conversation with you, which was just the last conversation that we've had, so this is only number two, it was fascinating. Your knowledge, your ability to articulate your thoughts so clearly and succinctly, I'm impressed and thank you for reaching out to have this conversation today. Well, the honor is definitely mine. I really appreciate you having me and thank you for your kind words. Your work as a master arborist, you know trees and you've been around a long time through all the seasons. So you know the good and the bad of the winter time for trees. And we have both. I mean, there's an opportunity here for structural pruning and when the trees are dormant and the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, you really get to see a lot of that structure that you can't see when it's fully leafed out. Yet, at the same time, when we get the ice and the snow loads, that creates its own problem. So what I'd love to maybe start with for you is to let's go in both of those directions. The reason why the winter time when the trees have lost their leaves can be a very good time for professionals such as yourself and your company, or if there's a DIY or out there that can safely do some of this maintenance themselves at this time of year, what are those tasks? So with that, I think you've got the picture of where I want to go with that. Let's turn your loose on it. Absolutely. And you raised such a great point about the ice. The ice is going to put, I mean, theoretically we're going to have some ice here soon and I'm sure many folks in the Northeast, this is a regular thing. So those trees are going to have a heavy load on them, which means branches need to be, a traditional tree will have a large trunk with smaller well-spaced branches. That's how you'd find these trees growing in the forest. But in the urban setting, often they're getting a lot of sunlight, probably more than would be natural in the forest. So they'll grow these very large limbs out to the side. Because those limbs might actually be as big as the trunk or even bigger. And when you have these large limbs and they're growing in ways they shouldn't, this is where a little bit of extra load could be a really bad thing. The limb might split, it might fall in a car or whatever, but worse yet, it's going to create this injury in the trunk. And it's going to be a big injury, one that the tree might not be able to recover from. So I think the idea of structural pruning is a way that we can give our trees extra life, but we can also protect our assets, our yard, our house, et cetera. The best time to do this sort of pruning is in the winter because it's a time when plants are not as active. So the flow of sap and nutrients, et cetera, is just a dull roar compared to the growing season. So in general, those pruning cuts that we would make induce just a bit less stress to the tree, which is a good thing. Yes. And Basil, can I just back up for one second because you said something that you don't give a second thought to, but people that just heard what you said might go, well, why is that? And what I'm referring to was you said in an urban setting oftentimes it's a sunnier situation, so the tree is putting out more side branches versus a, you know, a forested area where the tree is probably, the trunk is going taller and there's less outward growth. Can you explain why that happens that way? Yeah, absolutely. So the whole idea is that trees are light eaters. I mean, this is their food. So they grow towards their food source. So if there's a bunch of light pouring in from the side where there would have normally been other trees fighting for that light, well, the tree will react by putting out lots of new growth in that direction so that it can collect more food. Food is what it needs to thrive and be healthy and protect itself just like we humans. Versus if the tree is surrounded by other trees of equal height, they are all reaching for the light because they still need it, but they just have to go up to get it versus growing out. Exactly. Yeah, cool. Okay, so now we're back into the urban situation. We've got all these branches, some are over the roofs of our houses and our cars and it's winter time. So is that a big part of your business? So people proactively say, call in you guys and say, hey, I want to have my trees looked at now this time of year because I realize it's a good time? People in the know, probably much of your listener audience and people who are sort of gaining interest in their trees, this becomes a thing that they think about and invest in. I think there are a lot of people who just don't know that this is an important thing to care for your tree. So it is a big time for pruning in general. There's definitely more that could be done. I think probably one of the bummers we see is where money is invested in things like, I don't know, thinning your canopy, which is sort of this old pruning practice that for a mature large canopy tree, this is not necessarily a helpful thing. It would be better to do the structural pruning. You kind of get some thinning anyway because the truth is trees are light eaters. When you thin and you open up holes, it just fills the hole right back. You unnecessarily stress the tree. You've wasted money. It's just not the way to go. Good point. So we've established that this is a time of year where it's smart to do some corrective action and maybe just to bolster the structural integrity of the tree. And because in many cases, there's not as much requirement of the tree to do any work right now. So there's less stress when you're up there doing some work on it. Conversely, we're having snow and ice. And so somebody gets this heavy snowstorm or worse, an ice storm and they look out the window and their beloved trees are at 90 degrees, loaded with ice, and they're thinking they need to do something or they want to know what they can do or if they should do anything at all. How does one approach that site? You know, unfortunately, this is one of those things that if you haven't gotten to it ahead of time, there's not much you can do afterwards. And particularly if you have, say, a tree that's leaning, I would just, if there's now ice on it, you want to make sure that it doesn't start uplifting. You can always check that at the other side of the tree. So if it's leaning to the left, go to the right side of the trunk, look at the base, see if any roots are protruding. I suppose the one thing I would say is just if it's a high risk situation, make sure you don't get caught in a bad situation with the, with, you know, you're under the tree when it falls, you should just steer clear or stay out of that part of your house. But other than staying safe, there's nothing that can be done at that point. This is why it's good to think about tree pruning as sort of like mowing your lawn. It's a regimented practice that you do every, I don't know, in the case of a large mature tree, every two to three years should be sufficient. If you have the budget, do it every year, but every two to three years is a good rule of thumb. And what about the inclination that naturally might happen when somebody walks out to that tree because it is loaded with ice and they think they can shake it loose, knock it off with a broom or something, something. Is that generally a good practice or is that ill-advised? I think if the tree's small enough, you could certainly do that. Just don't get hurt. We, you know, industry publications, we get these accident briefs every month and it's always half professionals, but then there's half people inadvertently finding themselves in dangerous situations like working on a ladder. Don't put a ladder next to that icy tree and get up there and try to shake ice out. You want to be on the ground and make sure nothing can fall in your head and hurt you. Okay. Good advice. And I want to get into a little more of the DIY discussion and if one is inclined to be that person, what sort of precautions should they be taking such as equipment and so forth? But I don't want to get there quite yet. As far as seasonality, there are better times of the year to do pruning and cutting into trees and even shrubs, but talk about that as it relates to trees. Best time, worst time. Okay. Best time is winter, dormant season. Interestingly enough, worst time is spring. You might think summer, but it turns out spring is actually generally more harmful because rising sap. Summer does not necessarily a bad time. It can be if conditions are droughty and there's been a lack of water, but assuming reasonable rainfall, reasonable conditions, it can be a great time because trees have developed sort of tough leaves that can... Well, this is true in the South, of course. This is not universally true, but all this to say, summer can be a good time and then fall is also generally considered a reasonable time. And as far as the spring with the rising sap, explain why that creates a potential problem. Yeah. You think about something like a maple, which saps profusely. When you cut a branch off, the tree is still... I mean, you can just think about this pump pushing nutrients and water up into the canopy to help fuel all those leaves that are growing. It takes a lot of resources. So if you cut a branch off during that time, all of a sudden, it's spurting out those valuable resources. It's just not a great... It's just hard on the tree. Yeah. It's kind of like it's bleeding. Life support energy that it needs internally is escaping. I was just going to make sure... This is to do with trees. Shrubs are going to be a little different, of course, but we're talking about large canopy trees right now and that's generally a good rule of thumb. All right. Let's go into that DIYer out there. I mean, there's some very reasonable things that they can be doing to care for their trees. What would be sort of a scenario where you're very comfortable with someone going out and doing something where they're hopefully not going to hurt the tree or themselves? I love it when folks are interested in doing this with young and new trees. So maybe there's a tree you planted in your yard in the last year or a couple of years. Probably one that you could work on. And essentially what you would do is you would go to that tree and you'd attempt to find, okay, what appears to be my biggest and straightest trunk going basically from the base of the tree all the way to the tippy top of the canopy. And once you've evaluated what you think that main trunk probably is or probably should be, your second step is to say, okay, now what is competing for dominance with that main line that I've just identified? So maybe there's like a really obvious second trunk or maybe there's a less obvious side branch, but it's getting really tall and maybe surpassing the trunk with all of those. You would either fully remove the branch or competing trunk or perhaps reduce it in half back to a side branch. And what we're doing with that is we're telling the tree or encouraging the tree to develop this path that we've identified as the main trunk and subordinating these other branches and trunks that are attempting to compete. Where do you draw the line when that is probably a tree that's too large for a homeowner to make that determination and do that work? I think it just has to do maybe, I think I would draw the line at having to work on a ladder is like the safety line that I would not cross. But you could handle a tree with simple felcos and loppers up to say a 10 or 12 foot height. That could be a stopping point or for the homeowner who might want to go a bit longer, then you could invest in some pole tools and doing that up to say 20 or even 25 feet perhaps. At that point, I would definitely wear a hard hat and definitely wear eye protection because you just don't want a thing to fall and hit you right at the end of the branch and the side of your head. That could be bad. But at the point where you've got to now work off a ladder or anything other than a flat surface that is the ground, I just would not. It just requires professional training. I am a DIYer when it comes to my pruning and tree care. And I get up in the tree, I get on ladders too much and I get up in the trees too much and I know better. I'm pressing my luck, I realize that. In Basil, I'm not kidding when I say there have been times where I've been up in the tree and I think this may be the last time I'm... I may not make it down the way I want to go basically. And I realize that's very ill advised and I hope to heed my own advice. If you do do that, then I would recommend at least throwing a rope up in a branch and tying it around your waist and legs so that if you did fall, you'd have something to catch. Or throw a rope around the tree trick. Something just that if you fall, you've got some little backup plan. Very good. And I'm glad you mentioned the other simple precautions we can take safety-wise, such as the hard hat and the glasses. And I'll tell you what, as a pruner who is always reaching in on shrubs especially, and you're bending over and you're clipping down towards wherever it is near the ground, and when your body is moving in that direction so that you can get your pruners down low, oftentimes there's another branch or a stem or something sharp that I've been poked in the eye before. And it's not uncommon. I'm sure you have many stories like that. But I did a podcast recently with an ophthalmologist who reached out to me because she heard a podcast I did on garden safety mentioning that I got poked in the eye. And she told me about all the eye injuries she treats from gardeners and DIYers in that very same scenario with others that are even worse. So the safety glasses, she said, it's a must. It's a non-negotiable. Even when you don't think you're going to do a job in your mind, you don't think you need them, you should still wear them. And because of that conversation, I routinely have them on my eyes when I go out. Yeah. I mean, and the scenarios that we're talking about, I'm actually more worried about my eyes than my head. If I had to choose just one, I'm with you because those little eye pokes are really painful. That's a thing we're very careful about. Good. All right. Here's a question for you. And I think we touched on this in our prior conversation because it's a pet peeve of mine that's, I don't feel like we can talk enough about as far as the educational best practices of it from a professional point of view. And that is, tree topping is the term. And I'll bet, I don't know. I seem to recall you say you don't get that much of it in Raleigh anymore, but I wonder what the arborist does that realizes that's not the best thing for that tree's health when they're being asked to do it. And I know that's probably happened to you. And when it does, how do you address that with a homeowner who wants that to be done? And when I talk about tree topping, if you'll answer that in the context of just describing what I mean by that, as you get into the answer, that would help be helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Topping is where you, you know, that we're getting large canopy trees. We're talking about here, you just cut the top of a tree off or a very large, you know, maybe it has three trunks. One of the trunks, you cut the top off. It's very harmful to the tree. They struggle to recover. You also see sort of another form of topping, which, you know, imagine a big oak and it has all these large branches spreading out and then they go and they cut every single branch in half and it kind of looks like this, you know, they've attempted to make like an ornamental shrub or something. That would be another form of topping. And the tree, its only reaction is really just to sprout a bunch of new growth there if it can. Sometimes it dies outright and cannot recover. If you're lucky, it'll sprout. And if those sprouts grow and the tree's able to recover, then you end up with this situation where it is very dangerous because these sprouts are weakly attached. The larger they get, the larger they're likely to fall. So you're just creating this growing hazard. It really doesn't lead to any good outcome. It's a poor investment and it's going to kill the tree or best case scenario severely maim the tree. Yeah. I'd almost call it a waste of money. You said poor investment, which is a nicer way of saying it, but at least with an investment, you hope that you get some return on your money. That's true. This is an anti-investment. Actually, yeah, it's paying to harm your future self. There we go. I'm across the virtual screen there. Yes, agreed. Okay, good to hear from you on that point. We'll move on because I don't miss an opportunity to talk about that because I just feel like too many people don't realize the consequences. It's still a thing. You just wouldn't think it, but it is still a thing. A thing that you and I both have a love for is Arbor's wood chips. I feel like a kid in a candy store when I have a 10 or 20 cubic yards dumped by my street where I can go get my tractor and scoop it up and then spread it. I've got lots of places to spread it. I've been doing that a lot this year. I haven't in the past. I've always been a big fan, but talking to you about the virtues of Arbor's wood chips and the benefit that it has to improving the soil around the tree and all of the good that it does on top of the benefit that we typically can get that for free or maybe 20 bucks through a chip drop or something like that. Yeah. I love it. I'm like you. I'm just odd trees or a pile of good rotting leaves or wood chips makes me unnecessarily excited. Yep. But a wood chip pile especially is an amazing thing. I love wood chips because they are, especially if they're coming from branches, they're loaded with great nutrients. Branches are where you're going to find most of the good stuff. The perfect load of wood chips would actually be one that was just of pruning debris and not trunkwood, but even trunkwood is fine. It doesn't really matter. Once you get it on the ground and it starts rotting, it's building healthy soil, it doesn't become waterproof. There's this fancy term for that called hydrophobia. Your triple shredded and your double shredded mulch has often become hydrophobic. Again, we now have this thing we've paid for that's actually harming the thing we care about because the tree's not getting water. With arborist wood chips, you don't have to worry about the hydrophobia. They also get these nice fungal mats that develop and they hold the wood chips in place beautifully while also being porous. I find that wood chips, particularly the chipped branch ends have this incredible staying power, more so than almost any other product I've used. That's sort of like the short of that. They're free. Yeah. We'll have a separate podcast on that because I love talking about wood chips. When you mentioned hydrophobia and you refer to triple shredded, that's a purchased product and it's finely ground. Is that the reason why it becomes hydrophobic is because it's more tightly intertwined with the other pieces? Yeah. Different profile. Also, that tends to attract the artillery fungus. Sometimes also you'll see the birds nest. They look very similar and operate very similarly. That's not good either. I've seen it develop, I've seen it develop, but it's very rare, whereas it's very common on a triple shred. Those are those little black specs that shoot on your car and your house that nobody hates. Absolutely they are. Yes. One thing I feel compelled to just mention when we are talking about the subject, I often get people asking me about, well, when you're putting those arbor's wood chips on your soil, that's robbing the nitrogen from the plants around it. The fact of the matter is that it's not true when it's a mulch. When it's above the surface, it's breaking down and if it's depleting any nitrogen whatsoever in the soil, it's only the top 16th of an inch according to university studies. So it's a non-issue. It's a non-issue. Totally. Okay. If we were chatting with the tree on this podcast, I would venture to say the tree would tell you his three favorite foods are the arbor's wood chips and then leaves and then compost. These are the best ways to make your trees super healthy. I must have been a tree in a prior life. Those are my three favorite things. If you think about it, if you were walking in the forest 10 million years ago, there's nobody out there mulching the trees or tending to them. They were feeding themselves and it was from those fallen leaves and it was from the falling branches and the falling trees and then rots and it feeds the soil and the soil takes care of the tree. That's right. Okay. I have one more question for you though on the arbor's wood chips. If you're taking down a tree that's either diseased or it died because of insect pest issues and somebody's wondering if they can use that safely as arbor's wood chips around their other trees or garden, what would you say to that? Let's put invasive pests to the side for a second. For most normal naturally occurring diseases in our areas, it's just not going to be a problem because most diseases are in the air. A rust spore can float for many miles. Your best bet is to boost its immune system. Let's call it that. It doesn't really have one, but it's the same concept. If you can keep it really healthy with these leaves and wood chips, etc., it's going to be able to resist those pests. I just really don't worry about any possible harm that could come, I think, as far outweighed by the health that comes into the soil from these products. Let's talk about invasive pests for a second. If you, for example, I remember when Emerald Ash Borer first came to North Carolina, you were not allowed to transport any ash across county lines and all ash wood chips needed to be quarantined. There might be special bulletins in your area for certain pests. I would imagine most states have cooperative services, the extension agents, and those are the departments and the services that will be able to provide you with any invasive pest bulletins that might be around for your area. If you're taking, if you are as a professional company, if you're taking down a tree that's been killed by or is infected by an invasive insect pest, where do your wood chips go? In those early days, we actually had to take them specifically. Those had to go to a landfill. Now Emerald Ash Borer is so prevalent that there's no bands anymore. And if ash trees have been attacked at this point, it's a foregone conclusion, so we don't really worry about it anymore. I know, yeah, anyway, to answer your question in the early days, those wood chips had to go to the landfill. Again, these are mandates from the county and the state levels, but these are just generally not the norm. I think probably most states are dealing with one or two invasive pests or a real issue, and you probably know about them already. I want to add just a few ending ideas to the structural pruning and the soil. So one really easy framework for folks to think about this is structure is strength and soil is health. And if we're talking about just sort of this meta level tree care, I would say there's just those two and one other thing to consider, which is do not create damage in the root zone. So if you can provide your tree with ideal strength through structural pruning, ideal health by focusing on these things we've been talking about and avoid doing trenching through the root zone or excavating a section out to build an addition to your house. If you can do those three things, your tree is going to live for a very long time. Thank you for saying that. I think the root thing is one that we don't think enough about because there are jobs around our landscape a lot of times where the people come in and they're taking that trencher or whatever that is, they're just cutting across the property and there's no doubt that it's cutting right through some of the primary roots. And nobody thinks to say, hey, is there a way that we can kind of go wider or something? Yes, it's one of those heartbreaking situations that happens far too often, which is a client calls us about a tree they just absolutely love, but we are on the tail end of some project. Maybe there was a bit of kitchen added or they put some irrigation pipes down with a trencher and nothing can be done now. But if we could have just been there before construction to look at the plans, there's often very easy ways to avoid this, what becomes critical harm to the tree. Sometimes, you know, I'm thinking about this one job, we might have talked about this last time, but it was a job site where the neighbor had sidewalled a whole row of beautiful trees and lowered the grade so that they could build this retaining wall. Well, those trees had lost essentially off their root zone. This was very, very dangerous situation because the trees could actually fall at any given point in time. So we just want to be really delicate with the root zone and call a trained professional in advance. We do have at least an ISA, Certified Arborist Credential, but I mean, I'd love to see real world experience and maybe even additional credentials on top of that. I want to speak to both of those points. Second is the ISA credentials and why that's essential in my opinion for those of us who are seeking, quote, professional help to really hire a professional and not somebody with a pickup truck and a chainsaw that says they're that. Well, I guess I'm making this the first part of the conversation, but an ISA professional is going to have a true identification number that's going to be associated with their professional credentials, right? Right, yep. And you can verify it online. I will say though, an ISA Certified Arborist is not what it used to be. It is good, but I would recommend going beyond it if you can. Test them a little bit on their knowledge. The reason I say this is because the system's being gamed a little bit. People work real hard to get that credential, but they won't do any learning beyond that and then they'll just forget what they learned. So I would prod them a little bit and maybe read through the website. I actually, particularly with pruning, in my book, I give this page dedicated to ways that you can actually find a great professional in your area to prune your trees. I give the reader four or five things they should ask the representative. When your book is called from Wasteland to Wonder, how does somebody get that book? They can get a free e-book online or order the hard copy, which we're selling at cost. I do recommend the hard copy just because it's nice to be able to hold that in your hands, especially if you're working out. I have it. It's an amazing hard copy book to have in holding your hands and refer to. And then you have all these QR codes throughout the book that takes you deeper into all of those subject matters. You did a phenomenal job and the fact that you're giving that away for free other than the what, the cost of postage is very generous. So on behalf of everybody, thank you for your generosity there. And the book really is, you thought of everything. It's an amazing book. As an author of three, you did an amazing job with that. So good for you. On the issue with the certified arborist. As you said, they're kind of gaming the system now, but my impression was always that they weren't in the business to cut down your tree. They were in the business to save your tree or make some professional cuts on it, but taking it down was not the first option. Was that accurate? It was. It was the idea behind it for sure. Unfortunately, and I don't want us to go to, I'm happy to go deep in this if you want to, but the short of it is our industry is a tree removal industry. We earn most of our revenue from removals and this includes everybody, including the really big boys. And I know this from firsthand experience. I've been in this industry for a long time. Yeah. And back to that thing about the retaining wall and changing the grade next to those beautiful big trees. Yeah. I drive by three massive oak trees near the road of a property that they just built a house on and they decided to change the grade. So the part between the oak trees and the street, they took whatever it is that basically wipes out the grade and it was, Basil, it was within feet, just a few feet of the trunk of the tree. And then they just kind of made it look as though they didn't cut it all. They just filled it or grade it or whatever. But anyway, the bottom line is those roots that were supporting the tree and bringing in the water nutrients from that side of the tree have been completely severed and removed. And although it's wintertime now and the structures of the massive trees is beautiful, I'm watching it closely because I predict the demise of all three of those trees. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. This brings me to a little bit of nuance that your listeners might appreciate. So sort of as a rule of thumb, if you can, if not dig in the area under the branches, it's probably, that's a good rule of thumb. Your tree's probably going to be okay. Now if you do start digging or trenching or excavating in that area, you risk harming its health. If you get too close to the trunk though, you actually risk the structural stability, which is much scarier. And sort of a good rule of thumb we'll use for that is six times the diameter of the trunk. And the six times the diameter of the trunk is where you sort of cross over from harming its health to possibly undermining its ability to stand up straight. And when you talk about harming its health, from minimal harm to what's the worst case scenario under the category of harming its health? Yeah. Good question. Often we'll see a trenching line through this rooting zone where it does harm the health, but we're able to turn things around because we can improve the soil by aerating it with our air tools and incorporating great compost in. So we have a good wide range of being able to fix the health issue. There does come a point though where if you've cut too much and maybe conditions were real droughty or soil was very poor because it was, I don't know, like a neighborhood with red clay, you could just tip that scales enough so that you kill your tree. We see it all the time. And particularly here this last summer, we had 25 days with no rain. And I think there were 12 record setting heat days during that span. And I'll tell you, I've never seen so many mature oaks die in this area. Hypoxia and canker was out in force and it was just everywhere we were looking, oaks were dying. And this is exactly the scenario where if you've harmed the root zone, your tree just might succumb. And that happy note, well, there's an option for recovery. So we want to be careful there. Yeah. And of course, with all things, the best is to be proactive. So if you start feeding that soil now, all the ways we've talked about, I mean, by the time these sorts of things happen, your tree is going to have a lot more resilience to withstand that. And then same with structural pruning. When the time comes, a big storm hits, ice happens, your tree is going to be the strong one. Preventative maintenance, being proactive. There you go. Excellent, excellent information as always. Thank you, Basil, for this and for everything. Now just last question and I'm going to let you go. You have this nonprofit, which I love it. I wish it were, I mean, we can all participate inward and help you, which is great, but what you're doing is so great for your local community. Tell us about Project Pando. Yes. Our nonprofit is so much fun. We get to do all the things we really want to do where we don't have to answer to market demand. So we just do zany and weird things. This particular project, we work with the community to collect native seeds and then we grow those into young saplings that we give away. So we're generating, I don't know, 8,000 to 12,000 trees a year that we're giving to the community, all from seeds that are from trees here in this area. So it's almost a hyper-native tree. And one of the best parts about this is we've had so much community engagement. It's just such a cool gateway into this world. It's, maybe you get a chance to go collect seeds with your kids and the act of collecting those seeds draws you in to then helping raise the trees. And the next thing you know, you're planting trees in your front yard. So it's just really, it's fun to be a part of and it's fun to watch. And the other thing is, those saplings, though, when the community gets to come and take those and plant them, they respond quickly. They're not a lot of transplant shock and they are raring to go as far as growth. You talk about a whole nother hour long discussion. Saplings are so underrated. They're the basis for doing pocket forests and thickets. It's just, I get as excited about a sapling as I do about a pile of wood chips. It's just really one of my favorite things. Okay. All right. Good. So we'll offer two more podcast conversations with you. And we're, we're going next, Pandal, just mentioned it to you. We just got a big grant from the Giving Grove out of Kansas City. It's a great organization, but we got a big grant to begin planting community orchards. So we are next sort of our like project number two and we're not sure how to, like, I guess we've got to find some fancy names, but this will be sort of a food based situation where we're planting orchards in the community and engaging local community members to help raise the trees and care for them. It's going to be fun and people get excited about food too. We'll have a couple more conversations at least because you've named two, two more topics that we can spend some time with and I would love it. Well, that would be awesome because I always love chatting with you, Joe. I appreciate you having me. Well, as you heard, I think we have two more podcasts in the future with Basil on Thursday. We've gone some topics related to today's conversation that we would need more time to get into and they certainly are worthy of that. So we can look forward to that. In the meantime, if you'd like to go back and re-listen to this podcast again or check out the show notes that had been written specifically from the conversation along with related links to more information such as how to get his book, which I highly recommend that you do, especially at the great offer of just the paying for the postage for a hardback book that you will refer to many times. That alone is worth going to the show notes and getting that information. So you can do that on our website at JoeGardner.com. Look for the podcast tab. There you'll also find the links on where to keep up with us during the week. Mainly it's Instagram for me at Joe Gardner and YouTube for two channels. The first is Joe Gardner TV. And in addition to the traditional DIY and how-to episodes that we've posted there over the last few years, now we've added these podcast episodes, at least since the last six or so that we've done. We've been adding them into the lineup. So you can watch this episode if you'd like. We've been doing the Zoom conversations and capturing the video too. And finally, we've had a chance to get those edited so that you can watch them if you choose. That is becoming more and more popular, so we definitely wanted to be a part of that. So you can check that out as well on the YouTube channel Joe Gardner TV and the other YouTube channel that we have that a lot of people are enjoying is GGWTV. That's for Growing a Greener World, my television series on PBS, where over 12 seasons and over 200 episodes, we filmed organic gardening television series, TV quality all around the country, showcasing other people's stories about organic gardening and environmental stewardship. And we wanted to make those available to anybody, anywhere at any time. So they are ready for you when you are on our other YouTube channel, GGWTV. So that's going to do it for today. And as always, thanks to my team helping me every single week with these podcasts. Amy Prentice, Brendan O'Reilly, and Christine LaFond. And certainly thanks to all of you who have joined me today. I love that you do that week after week. My goal for every episode is to help you become a better, smarter, more confident gardener by helping you understand the why do behind the how to. I'll be back here again next Thursday for the next episode of The Joe Gardner Show. And I look forward to having you right back here to join me for that. Until then, have a great week, everybody. Take care, and I'll see you back here really soon.