MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

So welcome everyone to Michigan AG ideas to grow with you're specifically in the Water Management day. Starting off with two programs from Dr. Ehsan Ghane from Michigan State University Biosystems Ag Engineering on topics of drainage. Need to remember to remind everyone that Michigan State University is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer, and that we're open to all. Our statement is at the bottom of the flyer that you're probably looking at talking about water management Day or any of the programs that are being offered today as part of Michigan Ag Ideas to Grow With. So let's get started with Dr. Ehsan Ghane from Michigan State University Biosystems Ag Engineering, talking to us about how we can use drainage and drainage management practices to deal with heavy rainfall things. Thank you so much. Good Morning everyone. Welcome to this series. We're going to start talking about some, some water and drainage in the morning and irrigation in the afternoon. Let's get started. Okay, so we're going to be talking about, like I mentioned, the heavy rainfall, change in climate. And I'm gonna give you some background and then lead to some, some, some, some methods that you can adapt and improve water removal at the farm scale. So this, this is from Farm News. This is a climate disruption. I call climate disruption. Remember late February, early March. There was snow ground was saturated, heavy rainfall came and then it was disastrous. Back then I even remember on, on farms were flooded, campus was flooded the rows, it was really disastrous. This is the climate disruption that's caused by changing climate. And again, another photo that shows the disaster of what we were up against back then. These extreme abnormal heavy rainfalls that can cause lots of problems and you can see it's It was devastating back then. And so while this, one of the things we know is that this is our beautiful planet Earth. And most of it is covered with water. Almost 71% of the surface is water. And that water, more of it is going into the atmosphere because of the warming of our planet. And that's causing changes in our climate. We're seeing climate change scientist as a scientific fact, I'm showing that heavy rainfall and drought are becoming more frequent in our changing climate and it's causing those climate disruptions that I showed you some of the photos as an example. And so while in Michigan, one of the things that's happening here in Michigan, also in many parts of the Midwest, is that we're getting over time, we're getting increased precipitation. And we're even seeing it in our short-term data that we are analyzing and getting from all research. So over time, the annual precipitation is increasing. Of course there are some this is the climate trends over time. Generally, it's going up. And like I showed you in this slide, these heavy, some of it is coming as those heavy rainfall. So sometimes it's causing these prolonged periods of drought. So while there are limited things we can do when we get those heavy abnormal range of Biblical proportions, like I showed you in those photos. But there are some things that I can show you to do if you get a heavy rainfall, what can you do and what your system can do to actually remove some of that water quicker. So let's get into removing water more quickly. So I'm going to talk about some underperformance issues of the drainage system for you to be aware of. I'm going to talk about improving soil health. Then I'm going to talk about selection of the pipe material. I'm going to briefly talk about shallow drainage systems and then I'm going to explain it a bit about surface drainage that would be added to a subsurface tile drainage system. And then this is the next talk at 11 at 10:00, which we'll do that mole drainage. That would be very interesting. New topic number six. So let's get into the removing the water more quickly. So the first thing, when you want to have a system, you want to have a system when you get those abnormal heavy rainfalls and you want to remove water more quickly, first, you gotta be sure that you don't have any problems. You don't have any under-performance issues. I recommend you visit this link here. When you go to this link, there's a section on the conventional drainage and you can be directed to this topic where it says, why do subsurface systems underperform? That is, I want to just briefly talk a little bit about it, but it's a very long extended topic, but I invite you to read that and become familiar with what could be wrong can you do to make it better? So one of the things is that we get into details at our workshops are the workshops is the design section, e.g. with increasing heavy rainfalls, we're seeing a pattern of drainage systems that have, let's say just a simple example of a 40 foot spacing. They're splitting those spacings in half. What I mean by spacing is the distance between this lateral and this lateral, get the laser out. these two laterals. So that's one way, um, that you could be improving water removal and making it removed faster. And you can see here for the other designer have that in some cases, maybe the drain spacing's were too wide. Or that we have a drain spacing tool that was developed based on science, terrific research that you, that shows you the drain spacing that you will need to be close to that would maximize your profit. So it's based on crop production. That tool. That's a tool. I invite you to join our other talks or watch the videos to learn more about that. Another one that I have seen, unfortunately, is the diameter of the main pipe is too small to carry water away. So let me explain in this diagram here. So this is a lateral on your farm, you have a lateral drain tile pipe, which is this pipe here is typically 4 inches in some areas is 3 inches in the thumb of Michigan, you can find 3 inches. Typically it's four generally so you get these pipes, Lateral drainpipe that these, the purpose of these is to drain water. Water in the soil that you can see here, moves into that pipe. That's the purpose of the lateral drain. But then there's another pipe called The main collector pipe. The purpose of that is to convey water away, which is this one, the one in the middle moving into that one. So if if water enters this main, if water enters this lateral pipe, this one faster than the capacity of this main pipe to carry it away. Then you got an under performance issue. Let me show you another example because this is very important and I have seen this issue and I want to give an example for that. So let's look at this system. Remember the system, this is the main pipe. It carries water away, let's say it carries water away at three eighths of an inch, which is 0.375 inches a day. That's how fast in inches this much water in a day that this main pipe can handle. But the problem is that what is going to come Into from the soil into those laterals at 0.45 inches per day. So what is coming in faster? So in this case, this is a real-world example. It has happened. And unfortunately, it may happen. There may be systems out there that this the main is the bottleneck. It's just doesn't matter. You may be spending millions of dollars. You could be having the world's best, narrowest. You could have 5 ft spacing. But if this is not sized properly, you're practically having like a 30 ft spacing. So you could spend all the money in the world. But, if this is not done, then you have an underperformance. And you may think that, Oh, it's not, this is not probably the case, but you never know until you actually put the numbers and then test it. And that's why education is very important in this part of this underperformance. When we talk about we have education and training to show how to size the main. So we avoid those bottlenecks. We have a workshop coming up next week. It's called contemporary concepts to increase profit offered at the drainage workshop. We teach how to size those properly so that we avoid under performance, their registration is still open on Thursday. If you're interested in learning how to learning about conservation drainage, learning about drainage design with water quality and crop production in mind. So that's, that, that was a topic that I can't really don't have time to spend more details. So the details will come in the workshop. But let's get into some of the very quick other topics that could be happening. There's root and sediment clogging. And you can see this is the photo of the root clogging. Typically, drainage systems will not have any issues with root clogging. If you have your annual crops growing because the crops will actually be harvested and they die and the roots, some of the fine won't get into the pipe, but they wash away. So that's not a problem. The cases that we have heard is radishes that I've heard. Those were in 2019 where we had those preventive measures where it was so, rained so many days consecutively, planting was just not possible. And then some of these radishes went in earlier than the usual dates. And if those radishes going early on, they get you give them enough time to grow, then there's a potential for problem of clogging. But the typical planting dates of those radish cover crop late August or early September, and then your termination coming in fall. That would not cause a problem. It will not have enough time to grow to cause a problem. But other reasons could be because the system the pipes were not installed properly. There was a dip in the pipe that let the water sit in the pipe, so that could be causing some of these issues and also connections. And those kinds of things. We get into more details during the workshop, drainage workshop. This is another problem with clogging under  performance. So if you have these in the field, you may see wet spots that you didn't see before. You said okay, that part of the field rained properly. All of a sudden, I'm seeing it on the like the quarter inch, half inch rainfall. It's got water sitting there longer than its usual. So those are kind of signs, indications that there may be a problem. So this is a problem with the clogging. You gotta use the proper protective measures. So another important one is this compaction. This is here because I have received calls about this. So it's important. Let me show you these two photos. So, you know, when when there's water soil is wet, I mean, you know, moving, having field operations is going to compact the soil. We know that. And the consequences of that is that is going to reduce infiltration. So even if you have the world's best drainage system and you have a compaction, compacted layer, clay, compacted plow pan, then water can get in through the soil. It doesn't matter what the best world's best drainage system that you have, Water is just going to have hard time to get to the pipe to be removed. So that's something that you should keep in mind. I have heard a lot about compaction here in Michigan. That's something that I know it may, in some cases may be hard, the window opportunity may be too small, but that's something to just keep in mind. That's an under performance issue. Another one is soil dispersion. So basically the dispersion is where you got your soil structure at the surface of this. So just, just degrades. And then it's like an explosion is just the soils don't have the structure that they had originally and then they just disperse and then they cause sealing. You see, this is another underperformance on the right side. That's a real photo from Michigan. And that's sort of a sealing reduces infiltration. Again. It and that could be because of some reasons. One of them is the mineral imbalance. You may have high sodium or magnesium and magnesium. and adding calcium is one of those solutions to improve the soil physical property there. But I would also, before just doing this, I would consult a soil scientist to take a sample of the soil and analyze that to see if that's the issue. Another one, This one doesn't you don't need any analysis. This is raindrop impact. To know this, this is when the soil doesn't have any protection, raindrop impacts hits the ground. And then the next one talks about it that the force of the rain drop just disperses the soil, similar to what's happening with the mineral imbalance. So we want to avoid that. We want to protect the soil from the force of the water. So you've got to have a cover on that. It could be crop residue, mulch or cover crops. So those are benefits from having kind of vegetation that would protect the soil from that direct rainfall that could cause that. So these are underperformance issues. Some of them, like I mentioned, there's more in that publication is in the bulletin. Bulletin on the same website that you can find and read more. But let's say we checked everything and we don't have any of those issues. So now let's move on to soil health. Again. This is, I'm going to talk just very briefly about this, improving soil health. This is a long term project on the farm. So it's not if you start improving. soil health it's not going to show its effect immediately. It's going to take time, but it's an important part of the piece of the puzzle here. Regenerative agriculture is the soil health improvement, and there are three general categories to improve soil health. You heard about those, I'm sure. Minimum or no disturbance with a reduced tillage or no till, permanent cover crop. We talked about that even for the raindrop impact. And also diversified cropping rotation and cropping systems. These are the three general topics that I invite you to look at other talks, extension talks to, you know, to read, to learn more about these, these regenerative regnerative agriculture and improving soil health over the long term has many benefits. It helps build the soil organic matter over the long term. When you do that, research shows that it protects during those drought periods because the organic matter holds water longer than the soil with much less organic matter. That's important because remember, with the planet Earth that I was showing with the changing climate, we may get these extreme drought periods and having improved soil health that could hold more water longer, it's going to be beneficial. The one with the drainage that's related is the better soil structure. Because improving soil health is going to improve soil structure and that's going to lead to increase infiltration where the water raindrops on the surface and then infiltrates the surface of the soil. Then when you have a better soil structure, water reaches the drain tile pipe faster. So that's important, right? That's what we're trying to do. So that's part of the puzzle piece of the puzzle there. Improving soil health we talked about there's a selection of the pipe material. This comes in where you have an on drain farm or you have clay and you want to put in the new plastic pipe tile. And then you want to know what type of pipe you want to put it. And I know you're gonna, you may say that the drainage contractor, if you're farming, when you say, I want to hire it and then want to let them decide. But this is a new topic. The reason I'm explaining it is that you can actually have a say your recommendation that this is something that would be useful. So let's look at some of that. So what pipe properties or what, which pipes remove water more quickly? So let's take a look. Just so we are clear about terminology. This slide shows a little bit about terminology is like this is a regular perf pipe. The one, this one is a sand slot pipe. It used it's used in the soils with a drain sedimentation issue. We get into more details about how to identify. So you may say, do I have a drain sedimentation issue with the photo that I showed you with the sun coming in. We in the workshop get into  details about that, how to identify based on scientific research. Rows of perforation. When I say four rows, I mean a pipe like this. You see it's got, basically this, this is a, you're looking into the pipe in this graph here and you see there's four openings. If you notice every other valley they rotate. That's called staggered. This is a four row, the other one is an 8 row. This is what the 8 row looks like. So if you have a sedimentation issue, you have two options. You either use a sock wrapped pipe, which is this one on the left. You have geo-textile fabric covering the pipe, a  regular perf pipe. And then, or alternative is the sand slot pipe So in our experiments, just jumping into what we found is that we compared the flow of three-pipes, four row sand slot, eight row, sand slot, the sock wrapped pipe. And we found that the one with the sock wrapped pipe at about 29 percent higher flow than the one with the four row, the one in the farthest, slowest one. Under a condition, when you have 30 ft spacing and two-and-a-half feet  shallow drain depth. So this was by far the fastest. And then there's, the note here is that this was the fastest. The second fastest is also important is the eight row So just remember that the eight row here was much faster than the four row. That's something that's a message here as well. So the conclusions about this topic of selection of the pipe material, the number of rows is the most important property of this type. There are other properties like length and width that we get into. More talk, more details in the drainage workshop. Here, briefly speaking, would be eight row drains faster than four row at the same material costs. So remember, this is the very big message here that you don't have to pay more to remove water faster. Isn't that amazing? You can use the eight row to remove water faster. When not paying more compared to that four row? If you want to remove water faster. This is a choice of going with an eight row compared to a foru row in terms of the property of the pipe. So that's something I recommend. This is a new topic, relatively new topic. I've only been talking about this recently. So I would recommend if you're putting a system in, this is the choice to go. So if you have a drain  sedimentation issue where the sand and the fine sand and silt could get into the pipe. Then if you're looking over there faster draining pipe is the sock wrapped pipe is the fastest. Like I showed you in that experiment, results of that experiment. So that will be the fastest, but this comes at a higher price as well compared to the just the pipe itself because of the geotextile fabric and the cost and the economics really depends on the soil conditions, the crop yield, and all of the other stuff. Because the ones with the sock wrapped because if you remove water faster, we have research that shows that it increases yield modestly. It has a modest yield increase. So it really depends on the spacing and it's a complex analysis. But we also get into some of that during our workshop. Without if you don't have it in drain sedimentation issue, e.g. you have a clay loam soil, then you don't need the sock wrapped pipe. But in that case, if you don't have a sedimentation issue, you got to eight row regular perf pipe is gonna be fastest compared to the four row. And that's the same topic that I've mentioned in my first point here on this page, where the eight row is fast and for all, I'm emphasizing that many time that is very important. We talked about selection pipe, shallow drains. I won't talk about. In Michigan, we have generally shallow drains  are the norm. It's already been installed in the western parts of the Midwest and upper Midwest. Deeper drains are common. Shallow drains have a lot of benefits. They reduce nitrate, nitrate loss, that's the water quality. And also they have yield benefits as well because they help remove water faster. But shallow drains as as the drain is shallower, the spacing becomes narrower. For the sake of time, I'm going to skip that. I have an extension bulletin again on that same website if you want to read about that, but I'm happy to answer questions about shallow drains. Let's talk about a little bit about surface drainage that that would be beneficial. So remember going back recap of what I mentioned with the extreme heavy abnormal rainfall that we were getting with the changing climate and the climate disruption that is causing one of the things that we will have to do in the future, in my opinion that this would be useful is to have a surface drainage that would complement add to the subsurface tile drainage system. So let's talk a little bit about that. So surface drainage is basically you want to remove water from the surface, which is surface runoff. And you want to prevent that water ponding on that surface and also surface runoff without causing erosion. So we don't want to cause any erosion. This surface drainage system. So this basically this idea, surface drainage. The water that's excess water flows over the naturally or artificially sloping ground toward grass waterways or shallow ditches. So that's how water is removed. But in either case we don't want to cause erosion. So let's look at an example. In this example, this is one two types of these surface drainage systems where you have a shallow ditch in certain pattern on the farm. But this requires land leveling. So it would require costs of leveling the land. And you can see on the left the parallel data. We have these ditches, the ground. You can see the slope of the ground. You create these mounds or crowns, let's call them these crowns and very, very gentle slope. It's not very steep. And water moves into the shallow ditches and moves away on the right side again, another pattern that is out there, parallel ditch system with a continuous loop in one direction. In both of these, you're going to need a land leveling to take place. But the grass waterway, This is a surface, form of the surface drainage system because it takes care of the surface runoff without causing the erosion. And it's the preferred method. This is a photo of a grass waterway. And in these grass waterways, so their surface runoff, you can see with this arrow moves into that low spot on the farm. So this is basically created on those natural, basically those already existing waterways. Those are the low areas on the farm, on the field that actually water helps move waterway. In either two cases you need you may need the grass waterway. You may be seeing some of the surface runoff already happening. And if you don't attend it and deal with it, it may create gullies. Those are big, big erosion and deep cavities in the ground that's going to slowly move the precious topsoil away. We don't want that to happen. Another one is just that you don't have that erosion, but it's a potential of helping move that surface water way faster. Because this because there are some extreme events like I mentioned, that when it rains extremely with a heavy rainfall, water may or may not be able to infiltrate because it's the infiltration has a certain limit when it rains above that is just going to slowly around over the surface. So surface runoff in these grass waterways, grass waterways can help move surface runoff away. And also another benefit is that it could be a forage or a wildlife habitat in those areas in the middle. So I would suggest contact NRCS conservationists if your farm is suitable for these grass waterways, but that is another way you can help move water away. So let me show you an example in Michigan over grasslands. So this is an aerial imagery from Google Earth. You can see this is the farm and this is the grass waterway, so it travels through the low spots, like I mentioned, because of that. So you don't need to do much land leveling. You may need to maintain these areas, of course. But you can see water, these areas. And these this arrow shows that surface runoff is going to move into these areas and away. It is helpful moving water away. It's a complement to the subsurface drainage system that's existing in there. Let me show you another example. You can see aerial imagery. Again. You can see lots of these is a real image. I can show you with this blinking. So this is another one of those grass waterways helps water move water away from the surface. So it's a complement to that. Like we talked, we talked about many things. Let's not having under-performance issue. The choice of the pipe, the soul health is going to improve water infiltration. And it's going to help water getting into the pipe faster with a soil health. And we talked about here the, the surface drainage that's gonna be more important as we move into the future. But as I mentioned, many of these, some of these, many of these tips to move water away. What about water quality? What's going to happen to that? For that, I have one general topic summary. If we could deal with both of these, have I have deal with water quality issues and also at the same time maintain our crop productivity and also boost that, increase that. So to get to that, we need soil health. We need nutrient management. That's where you have the four Rs of  manure management, the four Rs of soil testing and applying as, as the need of the crop. That's the nutrient management. And then there is water management. Water management and example of that would be controlled drainage. We talked about, we have other videos on the web about controlled drainage. That's where you manage the water that leaves the farm. And during the time you don't need it, you have less water leaving the farm because you don't need  drainage during long growing season, e.g. like in January, February like today. So all of these three soil health, nutrient management, water management is what's going to help us move into and improve water quality and also increasing and boosting or yield. That would be just this quick photo of what the controlled drainage water management piece of that puzzle is. Is a system like this where you manage water that leaves the farm with a structure at the edge of the field. This has water quality benefits. It has potential for yield benefits, as you can see, water reducing water leaving the farm. So going back to this, I want to end with this slide with the water quality and crop productivity, having soil health, nutrient management and water management. I stop sharing and then we can take questions. Okay. So the first question, would you recommend Lyndon? I do not know. What is that? You're on mute. I'm as confused as you. Could maybe Woodchip mulch so let's assume it's some type of mulch. That's okay. Yeah. Would you recommend wood chip mulch to help retain water into the drought season? Spreading the word chip I assume on the surface of the soil. I mean, yeah. I mean mean, it really depends on your system, cropping system. Do you have wood chip mulch because mulching on our residential areas, that's also a way to keep the soil underneath with more moisture to reduce evaporation too. Maybe Lyndon would be a better person to answer. Is that something that could be done? We see that in blueberries. wood chip mulch, but it's more of surface sealing and a weed control option than it is soil moisture retention. But it definitely helps in over the long term, 8-10 years, it adds to that carbon water-holding capacity of the soil. How about the alfalfa clogging the drains? do you see alfalfa? No? If yes, how old is the? I mean I have not seen any alfalfa root clogging in the drains. I would say no. The roots the roots, like I mentioned some of these roots. Of course. I have not mentioned alfalfa clogging in there. I have not seen any of those, experienced any of those. I do not think that would be any problem with that. The rules as long as when the roots can into the pipe. Of course, some roots will always get into pipe, where I've seen video images of inside of the pipes. But there's no reason to be alarmed because those are fine. And they actually die off and get washed away with the system. Then the trick is that the system has to have a really good connections on the ground. Because if the roots are traveling in the water and you got a bad connection that's just creating an obstruction. Like this is a pipe. There's an obstruction and then it just hangs on. And then it starts to build like the one that we saw that I showed you. We we think probably was similar to those. It was a design issue that caused that rather than what's grown on the ground causing that. Okay. What about retaining? What about the question is, what about retaining extra water for later use during the dry spell in place using ground or surface water source. That's that's an excellent So it's, it's an excellent comment. That is another way that you, that you will be able to deal with the climate disaster of droughts. I would say disruption, climate disruption of drought. Because like you mentioned, I would expand a little bit on the question. The question was, what about holding the water and using it later with the ground or surface or in irrigation system. So those are, systems are in place in some phases where the drainage system flows into the near the outlet and from there it gets pumped into a reservoir or on-farm storage. And from there, that water is stored during the spring flow events. And then during the growing season, you would be able to use that water in a subirrigation system or in, or in a irrigation or a center pivot irrigation pressurized system. In both cases, you're going to need, is the system is pressurized with the water. So you're going to need power, but there are systems that could use that. And that's something that we'll talk a little bit slowly about more often because of the increase with the potential drought that may be coming with the changing climate. These systems that we call Drainage Water Recycling, we can hold water uses for irrigation later. They become, they may become very important in the future. That's a great comment. Thank you. Before you leave that one, the retention system sounds like a great a great response and a great way, but the other way would be to store it in place. And you've talked to us before about controlled drainage and retaining more water in the field by by not allowing the drainage to take it all. Can you explain that system? Yeah. So controlled drainage, like Lyndon mentioned, similar to what this question is, talking about retaining water, There's a very cheap, much cheaper than the one that we talked about, the water pumping system, but a cheaper one is controlled drainage. I briefly show the diagram about that where water at the edge of the field. I may think I have it on my screen. Yeah. So what are the edge of the field? At the edge of the field, there is a structure. The structure is a means of managing water. So during the times that you that drainage is not needed like the non-growing season, January, February, e.g. we raise the outlet elevation by putting the star blogs in the ground here. And with let me get the laser. And with that, water has to go up and over those and out. So this is another way of retaining extra water into the soil profile in the ground here. And you can see on the figure on the right side, this is the non-growing season. You can see it's crop residues on the ground. We manage it a little more aggressively than the growing season because there's not, there's nothing on that field is just crop residue. So that's another way of retaining that water too. Much cheaper than drainage where recycling. So there are different systems Ehsan during your drainage school, do you talk about controlled drainage? Absolutely. Controlled drainage is an important part of that training, workshop school. We actually talk about the water quality benefits, the crop yield benefits. We talk about how to design it. How to design a system that's compatible with the control unit system because not all systems. So a conventional design is may not be compatible with controlled drainage. So if you want, you don't want to controlled drainage today. You may want it in the future, but you want to maybe think about investing and having this system layout the compatible way. So in the future when you come back, you may have that option, so you don't want to limit that option in the future. So that's an important part of that workshop. The workshop, there's news articles. Maybe we can put in the chat. So to read more about that. Okay. So the next question, I have a small meadow and need to install a few drains myself. Where can I find the types of Yes. Where can I find the types of pipes? Question mark. Big-box retail only seems to have the short four slot ones. Oh, you're right. Lily, I have I have actually gone to stores, retail stores myself and I. The big retail stores only carry the four row ones that I've seen. Unfortunately this, I wonder if you could be getting that because Lily, remember, even if you, if you want to drain backyard, the four row is gonna be faster, I'm sorry, the 8 row is going to be faster than the four row. What I talked about was about the farm, large landscapes. But even in the residential area, the four is going to be, The 8 row is gonna be faster. So I don't know, maybe Lyndon, do you have an idea? So this is something that they get from the manufacturer, like the vendors, but it seems like in the stores they don't carry that. There are better supplies at the outlets that do custom drainage work for agriculture. Whether they want to, whether they'll take the time to do end roles and things, but a lot of times they have cutoffs and pieces. So you could look look for who's does they ag drainage in your area and give them a call and ask them, have some measurements in hand of what, how much you need. But a lot of times it's a shame, but those hundred foot pieces really don't, aren't very useful on the farm and are probably pretty useful for someone in your situation. Thank you so much, That's a great comment. That is true. They because they buy these big rolls. So in some cases there's some leftover so you could get in contact with a local contractor. Another depending on the soil, also the sock wrapped pipes with actually in the store, you can see some of them have those gravels. Not gravel there. Um, I think it's if I remember right, it's like Styrofoam material, but it's got an envelope around the pipe and then a fabric holding it in place. Those are also very good options for much faster, the fastest possible draining that you can imagine. Those are options there. Okay? So the question, since regenerative practices improve organic matter or space and then water-holding capacity. Okay. So how can, how can Numbers be put into this to quantify the benefits? Actually? So quantification of the benefit. I remember if you contact me, I have a I have an article from Minnesota Extension. They did a quantification simple calculation about increase, so much percentage increase in the organic matter they had. Based on some research that they had, they translated that into this amount of water or more water you can hold only do we have that? Any articles, any calculations on the web about this? I'd have to look. Sounds like a good article for Ehsan for this spring. Yeah. Well, there are already written ones. I know I read the one from Minnesota. If you contact me, I can find that in my email. Look for it. There's an extension education. Minnesota wrote that simple calculation based on some research that they had done and quantified the water-holding capacity of organic matter. What That's a very good question, but scientists have found that we can, I can send you that article. So the next one, can you put your e-mail in the chat or between, between the two programs? Let's put your e-mail in the chat or in the Questions so people can get back to you with these more detailed questions. Yeah, good idea. So let me. Mole drains. Can we improve the water-holding capacity, the retention, I should say? Yeah, we'll have to wait for the next talk is about the mole drains. It would be too much to talk. It would take too long. Okay. So let's let's hold that question. Maybe have it unanswered. Let's wait. But for the chatbox. So I'm going to type in my e-mail. Ehsan, I already put your e-mail in there, so you're good. You did. Okay. Thank you, Betsy. Thank you. And I'm gonna put in so if there are any additional questions about that workshop, I put in the I think maybe Betsy, if you could send it to the participants that link as well. I don't have that option. Okay. So the next question, would it be advisable or what concerns might there be to consider in spreading mulch? On sloping landscape? The mulch materials would be green mulch obtained from tree trimming companies. This would be part of a longer-term improvement or inactive farm land  and the idea is to minimize erosion of disturbed land when removing trees and under both an improve soil health at the same time. I do not see any issues with that. Applying mulch over the landscape to help. Lyndon mentioned the mulching is to suppress the weed, also, it keeps the soil moisture a little bit under the surface, slower. It slows down the evaporation from that surface of the soil. I do not see any problem with that because it does help reduce erosion. Any thoughts, Lyndon on that question? In my experience, it's a very long term composting. In other words, it's kind of posting in place over a very long term. And those what a lot of times there's wood chips visible 8-10 years later from those applications. But it's a source of carbon and in time it will break down. I think I deal mostly with sandy soils. Are sandy soils. I think it's hard to keep those wood chip particles wet enough that they decompose. That's a challenge. So the other option is to compost those things and break them down before you spread them. And we have whole industries that are doing that now, composting, leaves and trimmings and those types of things. So thanks everyone.