Now, this is Rodney with Zebra scape for creativity grows. I have Justin here from Yavapai College, and this guy is got tons of knowledge. I'm excited that he joined us here. I'm hoping he'll be our go to for info. So Justin, how many years of this you got going? Oh,

man, I've been, I would consider myself a horticulturalist since I was a kid. I've been in this area for 20 plus years, and so having lived across Arizona and studied across Arizona, I would say I have great knowledge about growing and all things agriculture, from food production to landscaping to nursery production. I'm kind of a horticulture go to guy, and I'm an educator, so I get to keep learning constantly. College. You're

dealing with all kinds. So what motivates you to continue this journey? I

like to learn, and I just have had a love of plants, and I have felt very fortunate and blessed to have a career that I enjoy passionately. I mean, think about growing food. It's it covers many aspects of your life. It's a hobby for me, it's also work experience and then teaching other people reinforces my knowledge about these subjects. So I kind of live horticulture all the time. I go home, I do it personally, with my family. I go to work, I do it. I study in my off time, I've I feel very fortunate to have found a career that I truly enjoy. It doesn't feel a lot like work, even though there is a lot of work involved. Yeah.

So you would say at home, is that like, uh, gardening or fruit trees, or is

the whole thing, I make so much trouble for myself in the way of horticulture. I have side business ideas, and I have a garden that's too big. I don't know if a lot of people say that, but I think about horticulture so much that I say, Oh, I'll plant myself a vineyard. Oh, I'll plant myself an apple orchard. It all takes work. And so I don't plant an apple tree. I plant like 100 apple trees, and now I have 400 apple trees, and it's and they're all small. These are like super dwarf and I have an idea of what this will turn into, but I'm easily distracted. I find something else I want to do, and my old projects to sit there needing work. So I feel like I need a team of people. I kind of am growing my own because my family helps me. My kids will help me. But it's getting to the point they're like, Dad, what are we doing?

Are they enjoying it? Are the kids wanting to do that? Yeah, we make a

ton of food. We make a lot of fun. And they have they do the animal thing. I'm kind of the plant thing, but obviously those worlds cross over. I'm doing small pastures and stuff. And as they get older, they're taking the lead and enjoying everything that that lifestyle you know affords us to do.

So you talk about food, I'm big in health, obviously, in Food and Chemical What's your thoughts on that the pesticide spray and everything? Are you as your personal standpoint, that's

good, and being an educator, I like to be able to I hope that I don't become so general that I'm trying to tell everybody whatever they want to hear. I have my own opinions, and like to balance those. But honestly, I do like an integrated approach, where I want to use the least toxicity and then also make decisions of known scientific information. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and I think people can easily get confused about hype and things, I mean, YouTube videos and whatever doesn't show the reality of you know what's happening behind the scenes. And I see a lot of that misinformation, but I take all approaches. If there is a specific weed in my yard that I will literally wreck my garden, I use whatever the next level of herbicide is to control it, and then I fall back on approaches that are more safe on the environment, but I usually do the path of least resistance. Sometimes with you know, insects and bugs, you can prune them out, you can squash them, you can throw a caterpillar to the chickens. People. A lot of people know about that, and obviously do that. It's common sense, but there's a lot of people who go straight for the harshest chemical, the worst spray and Newcomb approach. So even at the college, at Yavapai College, we use a very integrated approach where we do, can we mechanically control it? Can we physically control it? Can we use a biological control which might be an insect killing an insect, or a bacteria which is naturally occurring attacking an insect? And so in a controlled environment, you have a lot of you have a lot of ability to keep release an insect that attacks the target pest, and you keep it within the confines, some of that is appropriate for outdoors, but I know in my own garden, I'm constantly seeking what's the safest, easiest, best way, but at the end, I need results, and sometimes I have to use things that help facilitate those results. Yeah,

zebra scapes here we have clients that are totally anti chemical and all that. It's like, let's kill a weed with vinegar and salt. And it's like, that's just, there's other ways to do it.

And there's, you know, there's organic approaches, and so many new products are coming out on the market. But then at the same time, you know, when I'm educating people, just because it's organic does not mean it's not going to hurt you the properties of cayenne pepper spray. If it gets on your face, it's going to, like, tear you up, the same thing that it does to an insect. So organic just doesn't mean it's perfectly safe. Organic means it'll it's a naturally occurring compound, it'll break down. And there's a lot of innovation happening in that area. Yeah,

one thing, you know, I got some animals, cows and pigs that right now, and meat, because I like to stay away from that, all that stuff. But you did you build some grape vines for us years ago? Yeah, man, the difference of our graves compared to store grapes are unbelievable. That's why would that be such a big impact?

I feel like the number one reason. I mean, other than there's there's a million reasons, but the one is when you toil over something, and you watch it grow, and you struggle with it, and I'm sure with your grapes, you're like, oh, they made it past that last freeze that we had in May. That unexpected. Okay, cool, you're getting a crop. Okay, the birds didn't need them all. Okay, great, you're getting a crop. Okay, we didn't get the grape leaf skeletonizer killing the plants. Okay, we're gonna get a crop. We got the crop off before the freeze, whatever. Deer didn't need it. And then you taste that grape and you're like, I'm invested in this thing. It's really, really good. So there is that part. I mean, anybody who grows tomatoes in their garden is going to say, my tomatoes are better than anything else out there. The science behind the whole ripening and what they're doing, they're picking grapes forever away. We live in an economy where we get we go to the grocery store, we get grapes year round. They're like, this big because they're putting Jeb or garlic acids on them. And those are naturally occurring compounds, and that's not that bad, but you can do girdling of the grapes. You can force them into growing large. But there's, there's something sweet and amazing about the complexity of growing your own, whatever it is. So I I understand that. And then just, you know that you didn't put any weird chemicals on, you know, they weren't in a ship with that exposed ethylene gas ripening on some journey from a far away country. And that is, that is real. I mean, like when you think about a vine ripened tomato versus a tomato that has to have a really tough skin to deal with shipping and coming from some climate. I mean, right now, there's not tomatoes right now in in the US, short of greenhouse tomatoes, and so they're cheap. Tomatoes are being shipped from somewhere else, so, but that's part of why there's a lot of hydroponics and other things to to do with greenhouse growing. We get to, we get to explore that a lot at by college.

So tomatoes, points hydroponic, they just lose a lot, don't they lose a lot of flavor. I see people

saying that, if people say that, I probably should just do a taste test, because, because I grow so many hydroponic tomatoes with the students, I'm resistant to seeing that although I grow tomatoes, we grow tomatoes outside and outdoor culture. We grow tomatoes in all different systems. I think a lot of the hybridization that's occurred in tomatoes is about shelf life and stability. And like can, how long can it sit on the counter for? And so some of that's contrary to taste first. And when you have a tomato that tastes so good, if you just pick it in your garden, walk it right in and eat it, or just pick it and eat it. You you can have a tomato that's been developed for the taste only, or the quality of the growing of the plant, and not so many other factors that that influence the success, because if you get no tomatoes, yeah, then who cares? But I do think a vine ripping tomato is pretty amazing. Yeah,

that's interesting. The I just noticed that this seems like the store bought and ones are all hydroponic, or near as good as the never thought about the effort behind it.

I think they have to pick them, you know, a week before they're ready to get them to where they need to be, gotcha. And that decreases some of that ripening that the compounds within the tomato that are, the closer it is to fully ripe, the softer and more potential for bruising and damaging. We pick tomatoes in our greenhouse, and we still have to get them to a market, even though that may be a restaurant that's, you know, 10 miles away, or the eatery at the college, which is 15 miles away, we still have to have students picking them, training them which way, face up or face down, how to stack them in the tubs, even though the stop is like, there's no middleman in between. It's just us to the restaurant. That's like, true farm to table. But we we still have to pick them slightly before they're ripe, and then the end. Game has a couple of days to deal with those. So it is better. But I can't imagine picking green tomatoes and sending them, you know, in a shipping container for some great distance, and how good they would taste or not taste. So you just,

you mentioned about tomatoes being upside down, right, planted like I see that a lot. Yeah. Is there any pros and cons for that?

I think it's just a novelty. I really think it's just for fun. I have students ask, and we, we do it too. We put them in a hanging basket. They they'll hang down. They want to grow back up. And some of the little like, there's little dwarf Tom Thumb and little small cherry tomatoes that are conducive, yeah, to to hanging like that. But you better get your fruit off of there before it falls off the hanging basket and drops on the ground. But I do think the plants would do better growing up, right? But it's like any hanging basket. If you have ability to save space, or you want to grow a plant in a way where you can still get produce and you don't have garden space, it's awesome. Don't mean just do it, but it's probably not the ideal growing conditions for a tomato. And if you grow a tomato in your garden, you don't stake it up or cage it up in some way. It's gonna ramble and hang everywhere. It's just growing and trying to grow up, but the weight brings it back down again. So little cherry tomatoes and stuff are awesome for like, hanging but I think it's just for fun. Mostly, I think kids, kids ask about it a lot.

The other thing I just saw recently is people planting potatoes with those soil. They put like, the soil, and the roots come down and they grow. You seen that? Yeah.

What's your thoughts? I think, I think it's cool to think about new ways of doing things. A lot of times I laugh. I started to laugh because I see the picture of like, some upright thing and somebody's opening a door and potatoes are just falling out. And I think there's a lot of people that see those things, and they don't really understand how a potato is a tuber that's attached to a root system that it just doesn't suspend in midair. It has to have some media to grow in to support it, because a potato is heavy, and even if you add some media and do the upright thing, you still have to dig in there and get it out. So whatever you have in there, you've got to excavate it, doesn't you just don't put a Bucha and the potatoes fall in there. There's all kinds of new there's all kinds of new things going on. And I, I like to experiment, and I like to try things. I think the upright deal is a good deal, but a lot of people are doing it with tires and weird things to do upright. And now we just have to start thinking about, well, what's in the tire? Yeah, and what's that's what I was just thinking and in an environment where we have to water so much any of the transfer between the treated wood or the not treated wood or the products, it is something to think about. I like to not get overly freaked out about it, because there's no end to, you know, we look around us and we're like, the life we're living is kind of a lot of plastics and rubberized and weird chemicals, but when it comes to food that we're directly going to eat, it is good to double. Think you know how we're doing it. No,

I know in landscaping, lot of customers, they want to build a gardening let's just get some roto ties. It's like, Dude, I don't trust that, right? It's like, what can go wrong? It's like, I just don't want anything come back on me. Yeah? You know, like, you said tires, and then the stuff around, even the soil, you know, all that, I mean, is my right that goes through the roots and eventually goes to the fruit of it. It'll,

yeah, chance, obviously there, there is a chance for exposure. And I know there's no end to how much we can research it and be freaked out, yeah? And so there's, there's a lot of things I think we don't know. In 20 years from now, like, what we're saying right now, we'll be like, oh, man, how was I so dumb? I didn't think about these implications. We when we first built a new hydroponic system at the college many, many years ago, I grabbed the pond liner, filled a table, we put some boards on the edge of the table, and we're like, we're building a floating raft system. We started growing plants on it, and we did that for like, two or three years, and a student said, was that pond light or food grade? And I was like, right? And so it and so I'm like, wow, that's a great question. But then I'm I look at the guy who asked me that, he's like, drinking a can of soda. And I'm like, is that soda food grade? I mean, it's so it's a funny story, and it did make me think, but it's relative. We could be, like, failing in some incredible way, or just looking and poking holes in everybody else's little successes. But we did switch out those pond liners. Does your food grade? Some kind of food grade poly thing, and it's the same thing, like a plastic bucket that's food grade versus a plastic bucket that isn't, I don't know the science behind that. I'm just kind of a farmer guy that that would like to to know, but I'll, I'll rely if, if more students keep saying, is that food grade? Is that food grade? Well, I know I have to make some improvements. Bits,

yeah, I'm, uh, I was raised in Illinois, and corn and beans, and I remember when that GMO came out, and just that, like, no one ever thought about that. Like, also now you're in the food. They just had a the thing back in Illinois, where they had a GMO corn stalk, one with and without, and the squirrels, they doubt the GMO, wow,

yeah, I think. And that's a great place where I've tried to find a happy medium. There's incredible science going on with the genetic, modified approach. I actually went to everybody, here's Monsanto, and they go, Oh my gosh, it's so horrible. They are trying to do good by doing that, they just gets a bad public perception because they are dealing with chemicals and herbicides and a type of science that people don't understand. When you're taking genes from something else and adding them. For some reason, it could be both good and bad consequences. I'm not aware of any negative consequences, other than the fact that some of that, like you said, the farm, you you add, you know, a resistance to a pesticide or an herbicide, to the seed. You plant the seeds, then you can use pesticides and herbicides over the top that would normally affect that plant, that then don't affect that plant. And so it's you can see the good and bad. It helps a farmer to grow a crop, to manage it easier, to have less labor, to have better success. But then it's also the propriety of that those seeds become inherent to like you owe it to the person you have to keep buying from, as opposed to, like, an heirloom seed, where you grow a crop, you keep the seeds, you plant them again. And so there's been a huge switch to going back to, like, saving seeds from a specific area and doing what works well, you can share seeds. I could say, Hey, I got some corn, a special kind of corn. It grows right here. It's been growing here for a long time. You could plant it that isn't available when you start buying into genetically modified but I read some stuff too about, you know, certain crops, especially for world hunger issues, certain crops, like rice, that doesn't have certain certain properties, certain proteins, that could really help people who are starving. If you can add that into the seed so that when the plant grows, it has those properties or those missing compounds that people need, I would soften my stance on the whole like it's just a monopoly. It's trying to ruin the world. There's some real, true good that can happen from that. So it's interesting. I think we've gone crazy with the hybrid seed thing, and so this genetically modified it's hard to find those seeds. They're usually large scale or farmer and then heirlooms are coming back. You know, backing down a certain kind of variety, we grow the prescot heirloom tomato at the college, and it's a awesome plant that people should grow more of and people, a lot of people, just don't know about it. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of seed stuff going on. That's really cool, because

I talk about chemical. 30 years ago, my dad did lots of spraying and stuff and messed with chemical, and is, like, pretty new out. And now he's in a wheelchair. His nerves dying. The doctors just said, we think it goes back to chemical. There's no proof, yeah, and it's like, holy cow, is that? Like his nerves died in his legs, and they only can trace it back to, is that which? There's no you know facts, you can prove it right? But that was my eyes open. It comes to chemical, yeah, we just will not be careful. As beginning of it all, because years ago, I just had a client that the other day, Bought tomatoes in a store, just bought them potatoes, cut them up, and planted them, and nothing grew. And then he did research, and they won't grow like because they're not

they, they add a some of the conventional potatoes, they'll add like an anti sprouting agent, really. So the the new asexual because a potato is a clone the egg sexual sprouts won't come out of the eyes on the potato because they've sprayed them with a chemical that to keep them from resisting no sprouting out. There's also some timing stuff too. If you refrigerate a potato, then you bring it out into warmth, it thinks it's time to sprout. And so there's some issues there with timing that kind of you even we know too. We put potatoes in our refrigerator. We put potatoes in our pantry. Sometimes they sprout, sometimes they don't, but there is a product that they were using to keep them from sprouting. So if you are going to just buy potatoes at the store, just buy organic potatoes without sprouting stuff on it. And then seasonality wise, it's like march around here is a good time to plant potatoes out, because they'll start to grow and it's the soil warms. They'll break the soil surface, hopefully after the last freeze in the spring, and then you'll have a crop by the heat of summer, and you can dig them, or you can leave them, and then have a fall crop again. Yeah.

Yeah, I have no idea. I couldn't believe when that customer told me that. And I thought they never knew that at our house, in a pantry, they're always sprouting. Yeah,

you should break the sprouts off and use the potatoes. It is replenishing the value of the potato. So if you had a potato that you're breaking off all kinds of sprouts and you ate it, it's like half shriveled up. It's just losing its stored energy. So

Justin, I'm excited to join us here, and hopefully we have you back on about probably next would be fertilizer, how to get the fruits and everything going. Okay?

I look forward to talking about whatever we talk about. This went fast. Go

to Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and anything you'd think would be good to ask Justin or in the podcast, just leave some notes on it, and we'll go through those and see if we can get one launched about that, and we're excited to see where this journey takes us.