Soil Life with Ali Zahorec

June 12, 2020

MSU Extension Cabin Fever Conversations featuring Soil Life with Ali Zahorec.

Cabin Fever Conversations help connect you to your garden and fellow gardeners, even when we are stuck inside during the long Michigan winters. Each weekly session featured a conversation to help get your mind outside and into the garden, highlighting the passion and wisdom of featured speakers.

More resources and recordings to other sessions are available on the Cabin Fever Conversations website.

Video Transcript

[Isabel] Today we have Ali Zahorec with us and Ali is a researcher in the entomology department at MSU. And like Abby said, today we are talking about soil and I kinda like to look at it as like "The Secret Life of Soil." So we're going to talk about some things that maybe you can't just see with your eyes. You might need some a microscope or a magnifying glass. But we're digging into soil to learn what it's all about. So Ali, we're really happy to have you with us here today. I want to start off by asking you how you got geeked out about soil. [Ali] Yeah. So first off, thank you so much for having me and yeah, so I really just started getting really interested in the soil and especially what's living in the soils only really recently. So I've always been a big outdoorsy person. I've always really loved nature and I am an entomologist, so I primarily study insects. But I've always, ingrowing up and earlier in my career, been much more aware of what's going on above the ground. So it wasn't really until I came to graduate school actually, that I started getting really interested in what's going on under our feet. And a lot of that has to do with the research that I am working on. So in the lab that I'm working on and in the entomology department that is Doug Landis' lab, we're really interested in looking at nutrient cycling, particularly with carbon, in the context of managed landscapes specifically, and bioenergy cropping system. So those that systems that are grown and cultivated specifically for growing plant biomass that will be converted into fuel. And looking and trying to see how the organisms that are living down in the ground in those systems can be interacting with or influencing how carbon is moving. So I at first with thinking that I was going to be kind of looking more at some of the organisms and arthropods are more traditionally insects. But I started doing some research and really seeing that there's so much more to life below the soil surface. And especially things that we really don't see are, don't get, don't get traditionally as much attention because for one they're so tiny, and they're so hard for us to study. So there's just, there's so much, we just don't know about a lot of these organisms. And from a research standpoint that really fascinated me or that there are so many questions that still need to be answered about what's going on down in the ground. So that's really what got me super, super jazzed about soil life. [Abby] We do some work in Lansing with urban soil health too. And so it's interesting to see, you know, we talked a lot about the like nitrogen and potassium and the typical fertilizer inputs. But the microscopic stuff that goes on that's such a smaller level than even that, I think you're right that we're really just at the beginning of understanding how soil interactions with our gardens are or even those microscopic interactions of how that plays out in our garden production. [Ali] Yeah, the interesting thing with soils to, like you mentioned, is we are really looking at things that are at different scales. So you know what is happening. If we looked at a garden in the context of kind of meter by meter basis is much different than if we're looking at the really tiny, really scale down interactions that are happening at the micro, the micro meter level. And there's just all this, all this stuff and all these interactions going on in this really 3D matrix. There's just so much work to be done and it's super fascinating. [Abby} Yeah, so when we say soil biota, What does that mean? You hope does a picture of what soil biota. [Ali] Yeah. So let me let me share my screen and I have a PowerPoint that we can get into to discuss some of that. [Isabel} Yeah, I'm particularly excited for the PowerPoint because again, I'm excited to see things that are hard to see with just your eyes. Yeah, like the life of soil. I feel like it's so tiny, it'll be fun to me, like I'm some visuals. [Ali] Let me shrink these boxes. So when we are thinking about the soil and what's going on below the surface, it's really easy to think that it's just what we are able to see with our eyes. So when we look down at the ground, we're really seeing mostly the mineral and organic substrate that is there. And that is indeed a huge part of what the soil is. But there's also this big living component. And most obviously part of that living component is the plant , so all of our plants that we grow both for food, for ornamentals, decorative, all of them really depend on the soil for being able to grow. So the plants are definitely a huge part of the living world of soils. But soil biota, or that living component that also encompasses so much more. So there's really this huge amount of diversity of microbes and animals and other organisms that really make up the bulk of this kind of biological component. Of of the soil. [Isabel} Hey Ali.... Could you I.D. some of the things on this slide? [Ali] Yeah, for sure. So here we have really a mix of us, all of the different kinds of life you can have. This is by no means all of them, but I tried to include a lot of the big groups that we talk about. So if you can see my mouse, one of the big components we have are the microbial portion. So these are things like our bacteria, like we have some pictures here our fungi. and they are really what are the most abundant and most numerous in the soil. So we're seeing tons and tons of microbial cells and species. Even though unless we have something like a mushroom, which is the fruiting body of a fungi. We're really not able to visually see all of this abundance and diversity. We also have other microbial or microscopic, I should say, organisms like our protozoans. So we have things like amoeba, diatoms, and algae. A lot of these are also, you know, you can't really see them without a microscope, but they're there in huge numbers. And then we have all kinds of different forms of animal life. So nearly every major group of animals on the planet are found in some way, shape, or form in the soils. And that's covering things from the more familiar earthworms that we'll see a lot of times, especially in gardens, our insects, our insect larvae. But also things that we may not be able to see is easily or really be as familiar with. So up here we have some micro arthropods, which they're not microscopic per se, but they're very hard to see with the naked eye alone. And those include things like our soil mites or and also spring tails, so our tiny, tiny or arthropods. Here we have a pseudo scorpion, which it has pincers and kind of looks like a scorpion, but is not in its very tiny, so less intimidating than a real scorpion. [Isabel] I was waiting to hear what that one was. [Abby} That one was my favorite too - there aren't many woolly mammoths or a manatee [Ali] So this here, this is a tardigrade and if if you think it's cute, you'll love the name. So it's also called a water bear. Because a lot of people, when you look at it under a microscope, it looks like this tiny little, little bear that's just kind of slowly hunkering around in the moss in and kinda wet substrates. So water bears are not only are they really fun to look at, but they're also incredibly resilient to heat to desiccation. So they've found dried out tardigrades in hundred-year old museum samples, and when you rehydrate them, they're still alive. Tardigrades have been sent out to space to see how they can handle low, low oxygen and all of that atmospheric pressure. So they're really these fascinating little creatures that are just crawling around in the moss. You'll find outside. [Abby] water the bears if you will. [Isabel] and so that's something you definitely need a microscope to see? [Ali] Yeah. Okay. I will say that there are you can if you're curious, there are definitely some cool videos of them on YouTube if you want to. Easier sight of them than when in action. Cool. So I've talked a little bit about, you know, we find all of these different organisms down in the soil and also that they're very tiny and that their super abundant. And I just want to kind of give a little bit of context to that about just how big these numbers are. So here we have just a spoonful, give or take, a couple of grams of soil. And just in that tiny little amount of soil, we can find well over a billion microbial cells alone. So that all of the different kinds of bacteria, all of the different kinds of archaea and fungi. If we stay the fungi here, you see not only with our, our mushrooms do we have these above-ground mushroom fruiting bodies. But really what makes up the bulk of the fungal biomass in these soils are all of these networks of fungal hyphae. And they can, in just a little bit of soil, you can unravel miles of miles of fungal hyphae. There's just that much packed into the soil. Same with the protozoa or protists, which are also some really tiny players in the soil. The protozoans, we consider them really a mixed bag. They're essentially any thing that is a eukaryote. So it's not a bacteria. it has a different cellular structure, but it's not a fungus and it's not a plant and it's not an animal. If it's not, if it doesn't check off any of those boxes and it's a protozoan or a protist. So here we have some of those like our cilia, which are covered in all of these fine hairs that help propel them through the water films and soil. We have things like amoeba like these little, they're called Vampirick amoeba, and flagella, which uses tail like structure to move around. They can reach the tens of thousands to up to a million just in this tiny spoon full of soil. And then when we're kind of moving up in size, we have to move up in scale for what we're talking about. But if you take a meter squared of soil, you can easily find tens to hundreds of thousands of different types of invertebrates. So things like our mites and our springtails, grasshoppers, beetles. So even just in the bit of soil under your feet or in a garden plot, you're finding just such an overwhelming amount of life that it's really amazing to think about how much is there. So I can talk a little bit about when we're talking about all of these different organisms, it can get a little crazy trying to keep them all straight. So soil ecologists, we tend to classify the life we're finding and soils and different ways. The smallest organisms that you see, the microbes, they're classified, or we consider those as microflora. And those include things like our bacteria, which if you see the picture there, that's a route, a plant root and all of those little circles that are nodules that are housing symbiotic bacteria that are helping the plant to fix nitrogen so that the plant can fulfill its nitrogen needs. We have archaea, which are also really small, tiny organisms that we find in the soil that it wasn't until only recently that we even were able to know that they were there. And now with better methods of being able to study what's in the soil through genetic, genetic research, we're able to see that there's just tons and tons of these archaea that we didn't even know were in soils originally. And then we have our fungi, which neither the microbes that you can see with your naked eye, especially those above-ground, reproductive structures that make our mushrooms that we like to eat As for the organismal or the, the, the faunal part of soil. So these include are protozoa and our animals. Because they're so diverse and there are so many different animal groups we tend to classify them by size rather than by any type of taxonomic group. So we start with our smallest of the small, which are our micro fauna. So these are things that you, you really cannot see with the naked eye. You need the help of a microscope. Getting a little bigger in size, we have things that if you're really focusing in, you can probably, maybe make them out in an example of that. For those of us who are listening in from the Midwest, which the snowy winters, that picture there that is of a spring tail known as a snow flea to. Sometimes you'll see the spring tails at the top of snow. They looked like almost like little bouncing pepper flakes on top of the snow. And then our larger, larger organisms are macro fauna and our megafauna. Yeah, the ones, the things that live in the soil that we can really quickly pick out an easily see. Okay, there are things like our insects and also the vertebrates that are living in the soil, like our little mole and voles. [Isabel] So oh, well, nevermind! [Abby] I have a quick question...and this is something that came in from the audience too. So in theory, a healthy soil is one that includes large populations of a lot of these kind of micro-organisms, right? Yes. Yeah. Somebody asked if like visible fungi in the lawn or visible fungi, if that's a sign of a healthy soil, or if that's a sign that there's a lot of biological activity going on. [Ali] Right. So see having a soil where you can, you can see a lot of fungi that can tell you, that can definitely tell you some things about the soil that you're looking at. So fungi and bacteria, they tend, they're the I'd say the major microbial players in soil. And they tend to have different preferences as to what types of soil they prefer. In bacteria you tend to see... or when there's more bacteria in a soil relative to fungi. Those are the soils that you tend to have a lot of a lot of nutrients. So they're very, they're very nitrogen-rich, they're very, very highly productive and fertile, and they're really not acidic. Whereas with fungi, they prefer more of the soils. A good, a good example would be like a forest soil, where, you know, there's, there's lots of organic matter and carbon, but maybe not as much easily accessible nitrogen. They tend to be more acidic. So a good balance between the two. A lot of times it, kind of depends on what you're what you're trying to promote. But generally, if you see if you see fungi, especially in a managed system like a garden or a farm, that's more of, that's definitely a good sign because you want fungi to be there, but it'll probably be more of the fungi that are interacting directly with the roots in those systems. You don't in farm and garden systems tend to see a ton of aboveground like mushrooms compared to like if you were walking through a forest. So I hope that answered the question. [Isabel] Yeah, I think that was great. So Ali we may well I guess we're kind also kinda curious of what else soil is made of. So if we see or we know that there's life in soil, what else is in soil? I know we're skipping ahead a little bit. [Ali] That's fine. I have a slide for that on the way. I'll just show some pictures we have real quick of some of our other fauna . So if the microfauna ah, so these are really tiny things. We see that they are really there, very small. We can't really see them felt the naked eye. But they're also really important for returning nitrogen and minerals back into the soil. So they make up what's part of what's called the microbial loop. They are feeding on a lot of the microbes and returning those nutrients back to the soil our mesofauna are larger organisms. These are really important for decomposition and shredding up organic matter. And then we have some of our bigger fauna, which are, they are called ecosystem engineers because they can actually manipulate the soil and change its structure. [Isabel] So I'm going to pop in because one of the questions we had previously was on the other slide where you had the megafauna. Somebody wanted to know what the megafauna was in that picture. And it's funny because yeah, that guy, it's funny when you put it into context because they said he looks huge or it looks huge spending to put it into context. Because it's like, you know, in real life that creature is probably like this big compared to the rest of the things in the soil? It is huge. [Ali] Yeah the kind of touching on that, like the scale of what we're thinking of this organism, I'm for going from things that are absolutely microscopic. The smallest life forms we have to, Yeah, relatively large mammals [Isabel] So I think that was a mole right? Yeah, Alright. Its hands look huge they said which relates to them manipulating the ecosystem like you said, right? [Ali] Yeah, for sure. For the other things that we have in soil. Here we have a pie chart. Kind of what you'd expect ideally is soil to be, and interestingly had like about 50% of your soil should be just water and air. So that's water that was good for the plants is also giving some of the smaller fauna that really rely on water films to be able to move around, they need that. And air is important to have in the soil because there's a lot of gas exchange that happens. But also having some open pore space for all these organisms to be able to kind of move around and tunnel. And then we have another big bulk of the soil, which is composed of mineral particles, clays, silt, sand that are coming from rocks being weathered and broken down into smaller pieces and deposition. But the smallest part and most soils, but the part that I think is most interesting of soils is the organic matter portion. So this is what really kind of feeding the soil and giving the nutrients. It's composed of a lot of different things. Dead plant material makes up a very good portion of the organic matter in soil. So that's if you've ever done composting, it's essentially dead plant materials being broken down and going back, those nutrients are going back in the soil. We also have things like animal wastes that makes up a good portion of organic manner. But also the animals that are producing that waste themselves when they pass on their going back into that soil organic matter pool. And this is also the case for microbes. So here we have a bacterial cell bursting. And all of those are those nutrients that we're composing the body of those cells , those are going back into the soil. So that's a big part of really what is, what is making the soils conducive for our plants to grow. [Abby] So I think you started to get into this, but what is the importance then of the average gardener in caring about and knowing about all of these microscopic interactions in the soil. Yeah, so one thing that is probably most relevant for people who are interested in gardening is that there's a lot of interactions between the soil biota and plants. And these are both positive and also some negative interactions. And we'll touch on just a few of the really important ones. Show we've talked a lot about how soil fauna and soil biota can have a role in cycling nutrients that are important for plants. So here we have soil and some leaf litter with just kind of microbial decomposers. And then on the right side we have both microbes and fauna. So they're breaking down this material, they're releasing those nutrients to get them back into the soil where they can be re-uptaken by plants. We had talked a little bit about poop earlier and we're going to talk about it a little bit more. It's also can be really good for helping making the soil more fertile, which I thought this was a really nice showing of guess how much that can influence plants. So this is some worm worm casing, composting. And we see that the more of those worm casings you add the the bigger plants can grow, which is good if you're trying to grow food in an organic way. And also there's some microbes that are involved in a symbiotic relationship with a lot of plants and are really important for helping the plant get nutrients that otherwise wouldn't be able to get on its own. So if anybody has any experience growing legumes, One of the really important mutualism that we think about is with legumes and rhizobium. So the legume have makes these little nodules around these bacteria that are able to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and then convert it into a form of nitrogen that is then available for the plants. So super, super important for plant health. You also see some fungal associations with plants, So mycorrhizal fungi in particular, they're associating with the plant roots and they're helping them to get nutrients also like phosphorus, but can also help make them more hardy and more resistant to drought. Like I said, these are not all positive interactions. If you see on the left, you have every gardeners nightmare, which is some crops that have just been ruined by nematode borne infections. So you have soil fauna that can damage plans either by eating them or parisitizing them or causing diseases. But you also have soil biota who are defenders for plant health. That picture on the top right, that's showing a root feeding caterpillar that can be quite damaging to a plant. And all those little white squiggles coming out of it. Those are called and entomopathogenic nematodes. So they act, those nematodes they actually target these herbivorous pest, insect species. And they invade their bodies and then they burst out. So they kill them and form this natural biological form of pest control. [Abby] I didn't notice all the way squiggle if he pointed them out. So that's a case where i likey sacrifice the carrot. But maybe the larger impact is alright. So can you sees you have, if you have a lot of the nematodes that are, you know, hair acidic, then you definitely don't want a lot of nematodes in your garden. But if you're having B, these beneficial on there definitely also helpful So I think when an audience, audience question that came in was asking about inoculating garden soil with four soil, which I think kind of relates to this very, wondering if that's good or bad. So that's an interesting question because that's also something that I have questioned myself and I I really don't have a good answer for I haven't been able to find a lot of resources that have looked at that I made. I'm sure you probably have to be aware of what your inoculating yourself, right? Because you could end up with those carrots. Yeah, there's there's disappointed. Yeah, there's a chance, you know, that you could put something in your garden that you don't want, but also a lot of, a lot of soil biota. They tend to be relatively finicky and terms of the soil characteristics and other properties. So it could be, you know, if you transfer the biota that wasn't an, a forest habitat to like the garden. They could just really not do very well there. But interesting, just that last picture that I have at the bottom, we see that also by the feeding on the roots down below ground, especially like the herbivorous species, like some nematodes. Another root feeder is they can actually impact the plant's immune system. So that chemical immune system that plants have. And so not only is that affecting the plant, but it can also affect things above ground that want to also feed on the plan. So above-ground herbivore is like aphids. So I think another question we have is, what can home gardeners due to increase the biota and their soil or have healthy garden soil? Yeah, for sure. So we, we we showed that, you know, soil fauna and soil biota at large, they have, they're really important for me in this biological component of the soil that's really important for promoting soil health. In addition to the physical and chemical components, which I'll say that soil biota can also have an influence on. So things like soil structure and water infiltration are ecosystem engineers can change that by, by, by burrowing and making tunnels in the soil. For the chemical side, we've talked a lot about how they can make nutrients more available. Things that you can, that gardeners can do to help or kind of boost these interactions? Are there ways that what, for one, soil organisms can be incorporated into gardens as a way of kind of organic or Biological gardening. So here are a couple products that I found on the market. One of them is shut is SOS beneficial and toma pathogenic and nematodes, you can actually order a bunch of living nematodes and then add them to your soil. Same thing with some of the microbes. So we also have a bag of micro stem, which includes some of those fungal root symbionts. So they'll promoting that kind of partnership between microbes and the plants. So Ali, I have a question. If you are adding like these beneficial nematodes to your soil or like that bag of beneficial microbes. Earlier you said that sometimes they might be finicky. So does it take like multiple applications or is it like sometimes they'll take and sometimes they won't or do you know the relationship between like adding those to just whatever garden soil you have? Yes. So the good thing with a lot of these products is that a lot of manufacturers have done a lot of that testing. So typically you'll be able to see on the bag or on the instructions it'll tell you it'll give you some information on kind of what soil types are Bass that where you'll see the best establishment and survival of these organisms that you're adding in. But yeah, you definitely, there's definitely it's a good idea to know what type of soil you have in your garden or in your farm so that you can, you can see if it's going to be a soil. That is, these organisms will be able to establish. And Gotcha. Thank you. So we've been talking a little bit more about kind of organic gardening practices. And another one that's really lends itself well to soil fauna are, is cover cropping. So I've anybody who's done cover cropping with legumes like crimson clover or P is you, you, you need those symbiotic microbes that are down in the soil to be there. Because if they're, if they're not, or if you don't have seeds that already have these microbes on them, on the seed coats, then the plant really can't a low, and it can't, it can't fix that nitrogen. So you need to know that they're there to be able to promote that. Let's say we have some resources with MSU Extension. I'm perfect crapping in protein, false faces because I know it's something people often think fe, like large-scale agriculture fray it. So we'll share those out in the follow-up email. Especially I've got a really lovely patch of Prim's and clever going right now, so pretty It's beautiful. So I guess the last thing that I'll touch on is how, like what specific things, more specific things that gardeners can do to kind of try to help promote a healthy soil biodiversity. One of the, one big way is to reduce the frequency and intensity of soil disturbance. So you do have organisms that are kind of moving in and out or spend part, only part of their life in the soil. But the greatest bulk of soil biota are spending their entire lives in the soil. And so anything that really influences are disturbed, well, that can have a big impact on them, tillage being one of the big ones. So that can, that can have some negative impacts on US soil biota. When a plot is tilde frequently it's such a hard balance to, because I really like that, like nice fluffy soil. But out what you were talking about earlier with the air and water, all of that tilling kind of just like breaks up all of that. So yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's definitely a balance. It's like a cost-benefit analysis. Yeah, another thing you can do is watch what's going into your soil. And by that I'm talking about a particularly chemical inputs like pesticides or herbicides or chemical fertilizers in particular. So those can, those can have some different effects on different groups of soil biota. And then lastly is to shelter and feed your garden soil dwellers. And what I mean by that is that make sure that they have enough organic material that they can either live in or that they're directly feeding on. So most of the soil fauna are going to be feeding on plant litter or dead plant material in some form or other. So when you seep field set have some, some green coverage on them compared to a lot of bare soil fauna tends to almost always prefer the, the, the green, the green covered fields. So that's giving them some habitat and shelter to Haydn, and also a food, a food source. So I think we're going to jump in to audience questions now. I will stop sharing my screen. Cool. And so one of the first ones was she's you add worms to garden soil to increase soil health. If so, what kind of worms? Or maybe you should just stick to worm castings. Your input on that, yes, so again, I think it kind of depends on your soil and especially with kind of what type of worms you have. So, or you're talking about so native worms. So worms that are They they're native to that particular area. They're very good because the plants have evolved with them. They're, they're used to them being there. But what we're seeing in a lot of places is that we actually have a lot of invasive earthworm problems here in the US, and they can be really detrimental. We see this especially in forest systems, just because it changes the soil and the soil physical properties in them. Because they're those ecosystem engineers so much that they can actually negatively impact them? So I think it kind of depends on what soil you're looking at, soil casing. So those are really good way to, if you're looking for adding in those soil nutrients, giving your plants a little boost of nitrogen, especially That's a good organic way to do it because those casings are really enriched by being processed by those both worms. Yeah, and they will say So with MSU Extension, We have some articles about earthworms, which Abbey and I will include in the follow-up email. So if you're curious about worms, you can read more about them. So there was another question about mass. What Moss indicates about soil quality, or whether, whether encouraging us to grow in your soil is a good practice. Yeah, so with moths in, in a garden space, it's, it's definitely natural. It's not bad to have. And it is it is, you know, part of that lake covering the ground rather than have a bare soil. So the moss is providing food and habitat. I don't know off hand if it's necessarily indicating health per se. But Moth does require water and also the nutrients to build and grow. So could be showing that you have a soil that doing good on that 50% water air mixture. Yeah. And then I guess there's also a question about raised beds that Kamen about kind of wet soil interactions are like and raised beds or how to maintain healthy soil biota and those kind of close systems. And I know some of the pictures you showed of cover crops, we're making sure there's constantly kind of green organic matter in there. Any other practices around improving soil embrace beds? Yeah. So so if the raised beds, it's like you are there, it's kind of changing the soil conditions for sure, as opposed to just having think put directly on the ground. So things that come to mind is wanting to make sure that one, there's not lots of soil compaction, which can happen when the soils manipulated a lot. One that's good for soil fauna, especially those little critters that are, that the mezzo fauna that are too small to be able to make their own tunnels or boroughs. So they need that kind of preexisting pore space. But then those macro fauna, they, you, you do have organisms like earthworms and others that are able to change the soil physical properties to kinda promote that. So also, like you had touched on with the raised beds, just kind of making sure that in those more enclosed system SAT there is enough kinda like food and keep the soils remaining moist. So anything that kind of tries to make it match more of the natural soil conditions as possible that would be good for the biota there. So I think just because of time, we're going to start to wrap things up. So ALI, What we usually do is ask all of our guests one final question. So what about soil? And soil biota is bringing you hope or joy right now. So part of what, one thing that comes to mind is just also, like I touched on, there just so many, there's so many quest research questions that we can ask. And there's so much left to learn about the soil that it's, it's really promising. Thinking about all of this future innovation and new things that we can learn through the study of soil and these different organisms. So like with my research in particular, but also some research has gained traction recently, is looking to see how these interactions in the soil are helping to soils better hold on to carbon and store it, which is promising for if we're trying to reduce greenhouse gases and how soils and promoting soil organisms can be part of this change to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. So stuff like that is into thinking about kind of what the future holds in terms of Soil Research. I think that is really, I'm excited to see what's going to come out in the next ten years. I always think it's humbling as a human to realize how much you just don't know and how much we have left to learn? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Well, thank you. Ali. I feel like I have a lot more questions and a lot more digging to do. I didn't even mean to make that plot. So we really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge. And I know a lot of the resources from your lab we'll share and a follow up email. So folks, can we really appreciate you all being with us. It feels kind of bittersweet to be closing this episode because it is our last of the series. We are going, we are hoping to bring Cabin Fever conversations back in the winter when the next round of cabin fever sets in. But hopefully it's getting nicer. Our folks are able to get out and get an occurred in March and have a little bit more interaction with real life humans. So we're really appreciative to all of you for who have been with us from the beginning, who maybe have hopped on as the first one and we are here if you have any questions. So we have that asked an expert hotline or we have asked an expert on MSU Extension. We have the gardening and Michigan hotline. I know a lot of those have been shared and lunch will share those in the follow-up email as well. So stay in touch, Take care. We're going to be sending out a survey sometime next week just so we can get some feedback on how you guys have been using the program, whether or not it's been useful to you and try and make some more informed decisions for our next, our next round of this. So thank ALI. Thank you so much, ALI. Thank you for having me and thanks to our behind the scenes support. Lori bracelet nano, ya'll haven't seen them, but they've been really just be, could not be doing this without them. So until next time will say bye for now.