Kendall and Rebecca discuss Integrated Pest Management (IPM) with UNH Extension field specialist Liza DeGenring who explains that IPM is a holistic approach to managing pests, including insects, diseases, and weeds, by combining various strategies to minimize damage. She emphasizes the importance of education, sanitation, cultural practices, and physical/mechanical controls before resorting to chemical pesticides. The trio note the economic and environmental benefits of IPM and the importance of consumer education.
Show notes:
Women in Ag Newsletter signup - https://unh.how/women-in-ag
Kendall Kunelius – kendall.kunelius@unh.edu
Rebecca Dube – rebecca.dube@unh.edu
Show notes:
Integrated Pest Management Triangle:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-12/pyrhumananimals-900px.jpg
NH Vegetable IPM Reports: https://extension.unh.edu/resource/vegetable-ipm-reports
Over-Informed IPM podcast episodes: https://extension.unh.edu/blog/category/over-informed-ipm-podcast
New England Vegetable Management Guide: https://nevegetable.org/
Fruit and Vegetable page on Extension website: https://extension.unh.edu/agriculture-gardens/fruit-vegetable-crops
Liza DeGenring: liza.degenring@unh.edu
Women in Ag Newsletter signup - https://unhoutreach.tfaforms.net/217751?CID=701G0000001AiKCIA0
Kendall Kunelius – kendall.kunelius@unh.edu
Rebecca Dube – rebecca.dube@unh.edu
Transcript
Kendall Kunelius 0:09
Welcome to this episode of Shared Soil, a podcast dedicated to creating community, honoring challenges and encouraging personal and professional growth for all people in agriculture. My name is Kendall Kunelius, I'm a field specialist for agricultural business management, and I'm an Extension Assistant Professor for UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture,
Rebecca Dube 0:29
and I'm Rebecca Dube, providing technology support and administration for Extension.
Kendall Kunelius 0:34
So Rebecca, this episode is going to be one that I feel like it's a big topic that we haven't discussed yet. We've talked so much about growing things like gardening, livestock. We've talked about methods of growing like organic versus conventional farming, but one thing that we haven't talked about is bugs, pests, pest control. I'm obviously not as well read in about these types of things, but the good news is, is that we have a very special guest with us today who knows all things about IPM, integrated pest management, and insects and bugs. So with that, we're going to ask Liza to introduce herself.
Rebecca Dube 1:13
Liza, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at UNH Extension?
Liza DeGenring 1:20
Yes, I'm happy to be here. My name is Liza DeGenring, and I am a relatively new member of the UNH Extension staff. I'm a field specialist for Hillsborough County, predominantly working with fruit and vegetable commercial growers. And my background is that I got my master's in PhD from the University of New Hampshire in agricultural science, but my main focus of research was plant pathology. So I love all things plant diseases, and that's really where pests come into play. So not just bugs, but all pests.
Rebecca Dube 2:01
Well, thank God for you, because it's not something that I want to focus on, so I'm glad that there's someone who is.
Kendall Kunelius 2:07
Yeah, which I guess leads us into this great question, Dr Liza DeGenring, about so you're a woman scientist and you're in this field. How did you come across this as a career path? What made you decide to get two levels of higher education, a master's and a doctorate degree in this field? What drew you to this program?
Liza DeGenring 2:27
I think what's really important is that it wasn't a straight line for me, you know. And I think that for everybody in the audience, that's kind of important to me is that it was never like, Oh, this is the moment that I knew I wanted to be an Extension agent or get a PhD. It was - and I didn't really have exposure to agriculture growing up. I didn't even know about 4H, I didn't have, - our parents didn't have a garden, you know, we went, like, apple picking once a year. But, like, I wasn't exposed to it in the way that a lot of others who end up in this field are. And I think where it happened was I always loved science and math, and I was always really good at it. And I had really amazing teachers that kept shifting me in different directions. When I was an undergrad at Boston College I had a professor, Dr Tara Basani Goreau, who taught agroecology, and sustainable ag. I took their class and that is probably the first time that I was like, oh, man, I love agriculture! Like, this is so cool. Sustainable agriculture especially, is all about the holistic approach, which really ties into our conversation today. I just pivoted every time an opportunity presented itself I went in that direction, and that's how I landed in my master's program under Dr. Anissa Kaliatowich who is a plant pathologist. I didn't know anything about plant pathology, and she just took me under her wing, taught me everything she knew, and I loved it. For my PhD, I had a committee of all women scientists, which is pretty rare to have five women on your dissertation committee, and they were just all amazing mentors and really guided me through this process, and really encouraged me to weigh and understood a lot of what I was going through as a woman in science. And so it really helped me to get to where I am today, which is amazing and not something that everybody gets.
Kendall Kunelius 4:25
So that's really interesting to hear about your journey, because obviously, getting a doctorate is no small task. What does that mean to you to be a woman in STEM, to be one of those people that eventually, someday, you may be advising someone doing a project like this?
Liza DeGenring 4:40
I think that that's actually one of the biggest drivers for why I got a PhD. I always thought I was going to end up being a professor, and for various reasons I kind of shifted that. But I think in any field in science, you have the opportunity to be a real mentor to younger scientists. I mentored many undergraduates while I was going through my PhD, and that was actually my favorite part of what I was doing. I love doing good science, but even more so I love mentoring others, and I think especially women and other minorities who have been taught as a byproduct of our society that they aren't enough, that their voices or opinions don't matter. It was so amazing to me to see like with the right support and nurturing them and their science and their creativity and their yearning for knowledge, that they became really great scientists and real assets to our lab, and that was probably the biggest fulfillment that I've gotten out of being in my role. And really that's what's the most important thing for me, is to continue to do things like that.
Rebecca Dube 5:56
Well, that's fantastic Liza. I'm so glad we have you here to talk with us today. And since we're talking about plants, let's get down to the dirt of it. Can you tell us what exactly is IPM? I know Kendall mentioned it earlier, and why does it matter to both the home gardener and the commercial producer?
Liza DeGenring 6:16
Okay, that's great question. All right, IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management, and basically it's a method for managing pests by combining different strategies to minimize damage. And so everyone's on the same page, the word pest encompasses insects, diseases and weeds that can negatively impact your crop, both in your home garden and on commercial farms. And oftentimes those pests overlap. It just depends on the management can be sometimes different based on a commercial or a home garden. IPM is supposed to promote both a healthier plant, protect the environment, and also really, and this is a key part that we can get into later, but helps prevent pesticide resistance. And so at its core, IPM is really a holistic approach to pest management. I think it's important to acknowledge that both home growers and farmers are already doing a lot of IPM work without realizing that it might be IPM, and it's just because they're just generally good practices to be doing.
Rebecca Dube 7:25
Sometimes that old Yankee know-how!
Kendall Kunelius 7:29
Yeah, I want to just take a second and follow up on something with this topic and something you had said before about mentoring others. This really seems to be the type of practices, or best practices, or the type of knowledge that you can impart and share with a whole variety of people. We had said home gardeners, all the way up to commercial producers. So thinking on gardening at different scales, or production on different scales. One question I have is, this seems like a technical subject. How do you take all of your expertise that you learned like that really technical jargon from your degree, and how do you translate that to something that everyone can understand so it's useful?
Liza DeGenring 8:09
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it kind of varies across the way that you're communicating. Verbally speaking, in this sense, is probably the hardest, because usually I'd have diagrams and pictures. But what I always fall back on, because I think it's so easy to visualize and it's such a good representation of IPM as a whole, is what we call the IPM Triangle. The triangle is divided into different parts, and the concept is that the bottom piece is where you start. You try to create a really solid base, and then you work your way up. And each step is building on the last one, and it's all part of that holistic strategy. For each one, there's really clear examples that you can give that, like I said, most people are already doing. And so it makes it a lot easier for it to communicate. It's not really based - it is based on science, but it's not complicated, jargony science that I think can get lost in communication. And I can go through the IPM triangulation with them.
Rebecca Dube 9:14
We would love that! I was just going to say, can you give us an example of that bottom layer or, you know, even an entry level version of using IPM?
Liza DeGenring 9:22
Yeah. So you can Google IPM triangle, and you'll get some different variations, and not all of them have this as a base that I think this is critical base, is having education at the base. So doing things for a home grower or a commercial grower, where you're just learning about what are the pests that you might be dealing with, listening to things like this, just getting educated on what you are growing and what could become a problem. So then you won't be totally confused if you see something happening in your garden. And this is really a critical, in my opinion, step, because it helps you to understand the rest of them. The next one would be something like sanitation practices. And this is where a lot of growers are already doing this, because it's just good practices. So removing plant debris at the end of the garden year, pruning out dead and diseased tissue, all of those types of things that you might not even realize are IPM strategies. And then you go into stuff like maintenance and cultural practices. And this could be as simple as making sure you're watering and fertilizing your plants correctly so they're as healthy as possible. This can really be great for helping plants be not as susceptible to things like disease or pest pressure. And then also things like picking a cultivar that's less susceptible to a disease or a pest. And then also, really, and again, this so many people are doing, thinking about where you're planting. Picking a spot that has good sunlight, good drainage, good airflow. Those are all things that are going to be really beneficial, both to your plant and growing the crop you want, but also for IPM. And then you get a little more complicated, the final steps. The next one is physical and mechanical control. And this could be considered hand weeding or hand removing pests from your plant. Or it could be things like literal barriers, so floating row covers or the mulching. But again, people are doing that already. And then the final step in IPM is what we consider the control measures. So it's whether you're using a biological control or you're using a chemical control, such as a pesticide. And this really is supposed to be the last measure. So you're supposed to be doing all these things to create a really strong base, and that's your final line of defense, is using those chemical controls. Biological controls are a good option, an example would be releasing a ladybug, ladybugs to eat aphids, but that's not always a real option for home growers. For home growers this could be something like surrounding your garden with plants that attract beneficial insects. So you could plant flowering crops around your garden, or inter cropping in your garden to attract beneficials to your plants that then will eat your pests or parasitize your pests in the garden. And also they're attracting pollinators. So it's a win-win, and they're pretty so, you know.
Rebecca Dube
My father always planted a line of marigolds around his garden to help keep other things out that didn't like the taste of marigolds, and I know daffodils are used around young trees sometimes to prevent pests from eating the young trees as well.
Liza DeGenring
Yeah, marigold is a great example, and actually, dill is another great example. But I actually didn't realize, if you let dill flower, it'll attract a lot of beneficials. And what I love about those is, like marigolds I love because then I feed them to my chickens, and they love it. And then dill, I just, even after flowers, I'll just cut the flower off and harvest the dill.
Kendall Kunelius 13:12
I'm glad you mentioned the chicken part, because as a livestock person, I think about IPM in terms of pest control around my animals too. So one great example I could give - back in my bachelor's degree. So my bachelor's degree is actually in equine industry and management. A lot of that is internal parasite management, and that goes hand in hand with pasture management. So I talk to farmers a lot about internal pest management, or internal parasite management by good pasture management, and that means raking your pastures or breaking up that manure so the UV light can get to the parasite eggs, and that's what actually kills them and breaks them down. I'm a big fan of using mechanical methods that benefit other things too, like good pasture management goes hand in hand with good pest management. Another great example you were saying, like, those really easy, low level things that we probably already do, we don't know about. Things like for your chickens, having access to dust baths, or access to ground, like, just soil, dirt, so that they can self-clean. They fluff the dirt, it gets in between their feathers. That's a method that they use to keep mites and lice in check. So thinking about those things, too, gets me to the question of, what's the most misunderstood part of IPM, and does this imply something organic versus conventional, versus mechanical methods versus spray methods? Can you give us a little insight into things that people do that are IPM, which we talked a little bit about, but like things that people think may not be IPM, but actually are.
Liza DeGenring 14:41
Yeah, and sorry to all of the livestock people listening! I am definitely a plant person, if you couldn't tell from my example, but they are all, it's all the same concept, like you said. You just have to apply it to the livestock and what pests you're talking about. When we were talking earlier, I think a lot of people who are new to IPM maybe think that this is only an organic option, or you can't use pesticides. And that's really not true. It is really supposed to be a holistic approach, and it's a way to help reduce the need for pesticides. And this is really critical for a lot of different reasons. For farmers, there's a high risk, and this can be true for home growers, but I'm just going to talk about farmers for one second, where if you are applying chemicals, there's a potential to cause pesticide resistance, which means that the pesticide will no longer be effective on the pest that you're trying to manage.
Kendall Kunelius 15:49
So I want to give a good example of that too, for our livestock people, because this is, this is actually really hot topic in the livestock industry, is resistance to dewormers and those types of pests. So that's the main reason why we manage manure. We manage parasite eggs so we don't have to give dewormers. So I just wanted to add a barometer in there too. Like, yeah, it's veggies, but it's definitely both livestock and vegetables. And I do want to clarify by holistic that's kind of what you mean, right? It's not just the pests themselves we're managing. It impacts your entire farm, how you go about managing this. So that's production methodologies. It actually shows up in your numbers, like as a business person, too. I feel like I have to mention if I could spend $5 worth of gas in my tractor or fuel in my tractor, and $10 worth of my time raking a pasture instead of $25 on a box of dewormer for my horse or my cows or my pigs, I think that there's a lot to be said about the cost trade offs as well.
Liza DeGenring 16:47
Spraying pesticides is expensive. It costs the product for farming, I've got fruit and vegetables, it costs the product, and it costs the labor, and it costs the fuel. All of these things I'm talking about have trade offs. There's always labor and time involved with all of this. But the thing that's important is for the holistic approach is really, like I said, for IPM it's trying to maintain as many tools in your toolbox as possible for managing that pest. And that is critical when we are losing pesticides that we can use in growing in the United States, both because of the increase in pesticide resistance and because products are so nasty that they're being removed from use, which is a good thing, but farmers may have one or two options for pesticides, and you only want to use those when it is like, you need those. So that's really - it's not that we're trying to be like, don't use pesticides. We're like, let's wait to use them until we know it's 100% necessary. And let's use all of our tools in our toolbox to manage these paths, both for the environment and for ourselves. And like you said, it can be a cost saving as well.
Rebecca Dube 18:03
And speaking of that, can you talk a little bit about the IPM testing program, or where you're keeping an eye out for pests and when they're coming so farmers can better know when to apply a small amount of pesticide to have the greatest effect?
Liza DeGenring 18:19
Yeah. So it's New Hampshire State Trapping Network that we run. It's me and Dr. Amber Vichesi-Vahl, who is the UNH State Entomologist and IPM Coordinator. In this service, we have both farms, mostly in Hillsborough County, where we're trapping and scouting for pests, and then we also have growers who are we're providing the traps, and they're scouting themselves, and then they're reporting the numbers to us. And so scouting and trapping is something that I haven't talked a lot about. It can be as complicated as what we're doing, where you have literal traps with lures that are tracking these pests. Or can be as simple as when you're drinking your coffee in the morning and going to admire your garden, you are looking to see what's going on in the garden. So looking for any diseases on your plants, or any pests or insects that could be and you're determining whether they're pests or they're fine to just be chilling on your plant. Those are all forms of scouting that can help you determine whether or not the pest is here in your garden or in the state, and to know that, okay, now I need to start making sure that I'm aware of this and taking action. So we, from all the data we're collecting from our commercial growers, do have services. So we have a weekly email that goes out, and we have a text service that you can all - anyone can sign up for either of those - that'll say, hey, we detected this pass in Hillsborough County. So just be aware. And a lot of states have these. And in fact, we monitor Massachusetts, what their seeing, because we know that as it's warming up, we'll probably get them next. So it's a great resource, and I use it for my own personal garden, because I have the exact same pest that the commercial growers are dealing with, and it's just I deal with them a little differently.
Kendall Kunelius 20:17
I think that's maybe one of the misnomers that I hear about IPM, is people think, oh, that's pesticide, that's for commercial growers. But I think what I'm hearing from you is that it doesn't it's kind of irrelevant. A pest doesn't care if it's on a commercially raised broccoli plant or if it's the broccoli plant in your backyard. This is really something that does apply to anyone and everyone. And with that, I'm gonna yield the floor back to you to get us back on track with the misnomer question.
Liza DeGenring 20:43
Yeah. And I think what's really important to note is that, while we as home gardeners may not have the same access to the types of pesticides that commercial growers do, we still have access to pesticides. And to be honest, the home gardener could be more of a wild card than a farmer in terms of [how] they're using it, because you don't need to have a license to spray pesticides on your own property. And so all commercial growers, all landscapers who are applying products on their farm or on other properties have to be licensed to be pesticide sprayers, and so they are educated on this. They know all the laws. And so there's products such as Roundup Ready. You know, any of the roundup products, that are really nasty products that you could just go buy from any store. The problem that I see with that is that there's not a lot of education on why that could be a problematic product, right? And so Roundup Ready, I think is a great example. I don't get any shade on Roundup Ready, but it's what's considered a broad spectrum product. And so it's not specifically targeting any weed. It's targeting all broad leaf weeds. So if you were to spray it, you know, say you're like, I don't. I have too many weeds in my garden, I just am going to spray that. You could kill the weeds, but you could also kill all your crops. You could kill all your beneficial plants. There's not really a discriminatory mechanism for how this product works. Where other pesticides and and this is, like, products that we try to use, can be very specific to the pests that you're trying to apply for. As much as it's oh, this could be just for commercial growers, I think IPM really is important for everyone to think about, even if you're not even growing crops, but you just have a house with property, you are doing IPM related things. It just looks different. All of it should be thought of as we are trying to keep chemicals out of the environment, out of our food, out of our bodies, because they are pretty - they can be pretty toxic to us. And how can we do that while still enjoying our lovely crops, getting food from farms? There's always these trade offs that we're just trying to get, figure out that balance.
Rebecca Dube 23:09
So then I can see why education is the largest part of that triangle, because it's so important to be informed on these methods, because then you can do them all better,
Liza DeGenring 23:19
Right. We as consumers have a lot of power, and unfortunately, it has become the mandate in agriculture that produce needs to be perfect. And to get that perfect produce, a lot of chemicals need to be sprayed on that crop. And again, I'm just speaking from plants. Maybe Kendall can talk about from the perspective of animals, but I look at this perfect example of what I think about. So we have this pest called, it's Spotted Wing Drosophila or SWG, that, impacts small fruit, so predominantly blueberries, but also can be raspberries, strawberries. It's late season, it's an invasive pest. It's a fruit fly, basically, it's an invasive fruit fly, and it pierces the skin of a blueberries, and it leaves with larva and the blueberries. So that, to a lot of people, would gross them out. We joke that the farmers should just market it as they're getting more protein in your blueberries. Most people would be like, "I don't want to eat blueberries with larva in them!" And I totally get it. But the trade off is growers have to then spray those blueberries. They're doing all the other stuff. They're trying to manage it best they can, but there will come a point where they can no longer take the economic loss from this pest. And that's very important, is that growers don't really want to be spraying, but they're pressured, because they need to be able to get an economic return from these crops. And so every farmer has their own - in their head -what threshold that they're willing to take before they really cannot tolerate it anymore. That's honestly what we call our spray threshold, if we're reporting on how many pests that we're seeing, and traps, the grower then looks at those numbers and has that number in mind that they're like, Okay, I can't it's going to take out my entire blueberries if I let this happen, go past this threshold. So maybe it's gross in that example, to have larva in your blueberries. You know, having less perfect fruit could mean putting less pesticides into the environment and into our bodies. And that is a power that we have as consumers, that if we can educate ourselves more on how crops grow, what pressures they're under, we can support growers to figure out the best balance as well, while still buying this produce.
Kendall Kunelius 25:59
We had a really interesting episode way early on in the podcast called Food Is Medicine, and we talked a lot about the joy of doing your own gardening, and getting that gratification of going from planting the plant, growing it up and then harvesting the fruit. And I think that there's a lot to be said about your backyard garden can produce really beautiful fruits and veggies for you. And I'm thinking about my chickens with my eggs, just like they're really gratifying, but the eggs that I get in my coop are definitely not the kind of eggs that I would expect to see in the supermarket. They're not uniform size. They're all different colors, but I find that to be beautiful. And similarly, with my garden, I love heirloom tomatoes. I love those like big, ugly, wrinkly tomatoes that are, I just think they're fascinating. I also have a thing for the ugly pumpkins. Do you know what I'm talking about? All the different varieties? There's literally a pumpkin variety called Red Warty Thing. I just think it's fascinating. There's also the French Peanut pumpkins, and those are the ones that they have all those warts on them, and the more warts they have, the more delicious they are, because the warts are caused by a virus that feeds on the amount of sugar in the pumpkin. So I guess where I'm going to say is I love that you're in support of this shift from a perfect fruit is the only fruit that tastes good or should be purchased. Because I actually think that there's so much more out there that we might consider, like, I say an air quotes like "ugly" off the bat, but actually it's just as delicious and just as nutritious, and perhaps even healthier for us, than something that is the archetype perfect apple.
Liza DeGenring 27:31
Our produce has been bred to be, quote, unquote "perfect", not to be nutritious or delicious. And so that's why those heirloom tomatoes are so amazing, because they're not what you're going to get at the grocery store, because they don't fit in that perfect mold that the grocery stores need in order to sell, right? And I totally agree with you. I have such a higher tolerance for things being bad in my garden compared to what I would if I was going to the grocery store down the street. And I think most people listening to this podcast are already starting to think about, obviously, supporting farms, and having more awareness of things don't have to be perfect. And I think the perfect example of this is I have this local farm that I love to go to for fruit, because I don't grow a lot of fruit here, and they do 50% off fallen peaches. Some of it's gross, right? Some of it they sell for reason, but a lot of it just because they're heavy and they're ripe and they fall. And then I was like, I was under peaches. And my family was like, What are you doing? I was like, they'll be perfect for jam for and sauces! And I was like, yeah, because we have this - it's gross, it's dirty, but I'm like, it really isn't. Again, that could be a whole other podcast, but I'm excited.
Kendall Kunelius 28:54
Totally, and that makes me think of the recent episode we just did with our food preservation person from the Ed Center, Sean O'Brien, and talking about how, you know, if you're gonna further process these things, a peach like that probably is just as, just as good, if not better, than a peach you would buy that looks perfect and beautiful in a display of peaches. I think it also is important to bring up, and again, I know this is a different podcast topic, and we're kind of like going off here, but it is important to say, the fruits and veggies that you purchase from a farmer may be a little bit more expensive, but aren't you supporting local agriculture? And you could actually ask that farmer, what IPM methods do you use? What ways do you control pests or disease? And it helps you feel a little bit more secure in knowing how that fruit was treated, and that may impact how you choose to consume that fruit or that vegetable or that egg or that piece of meat or something like that. I really am a big advocate of consumers being educated and knowledgeable about the products that they're consuming, and I think IPM is one of those missing links that we don't think to ask about when we're talking about that topic.
Liza DeGenring 30:01
Totally. And we were just in a meeting where we were talking about, should we have growers have little paper slips at checkout, asking questions about what's more important? So a great example of this is BT corn. It is GMO corn. And so people are like, "nope, not into it". No GMOs, which, again, another whole conversation to have. But BT corn allows growers not to spray their sweet corn with pesticides, for the most part. There's a lot of pests that attack sweet corn, and so there's a lot of sprays. And I think that's another thing that consumers don't always realize how much sprays are going into some of these products. And so the question would be, what's more important to you? Having non-GMO corn or having less pesticides on your corn? And that is the trade off, right? And growers will say, nope, all consumers don't want BT corn. But I think it is recognizing that that is the trade off. It's like, if you don't want GMOs, you're gonna get corn that has pesticides on it.
Rebecca Dube 31:11
And maybe our consumers need to be more informed of those things so that they can make those decisions. They're just not aware of that.
Liza DeGenring 31:18
Exactly. And I do want to plug that in New England it is great because a lot of commercial farms or small farms, there's a lot of large variety of what they're growing. They might have livestock and crops. A lot of them are doing what's considered organic practices or sustainable practices, or definitely IPM practices, but they might not be certified under there. There is a lot to being certified organic, and so I would encourage everybody to ask their farmer, what's going on, what's their IPM strategies? What are they doing to mitigate, pests? What are they spraying? And I think it would be a great conversation, because a lot of farms in new in New Hampshire especially, but all around New England, aren't just spraying like it doesn't matter. They're doing a lot of practices that would be considered organic. And to be quite honest, there are some crops, like apples, in New Hampshire that are very difficult to grow organic because of the pest and disease pressure. And so those are, again, it's all about education, knowing that that is if you're like, "Why can't you find an organic apple farm?" Well, that's why it's so hard, and it's much easier out west in Oregon and Washington. And it's just the climate. The climate is different. So just all things to think about, and really, when you're making decisions about what farms you're supporting, you know, everybody's doing the best that they can, I can promise you that! They're trying to make a living, which is not easy in farming in New Hampshire, while doing the best that they can for their crops and their consumers.
Rebecca Dube 33:01
That's wonderful. And if you want to know more about specific elements of IPM, we actually have another podcast, a UNH podcast, called Over-Informed on IPM. That was hosted by Anna Wallingford, and that gives you down into the details about different pests and different practices, and we'll put a link to that in our show notes. So if you want to continue down this path and get into more of the specifics of it, you can go check out this podcast as well.
Liza DeGenring 33:34
Yeah, and another great resource is the New England Vegetable management guide that's put together by all the different Extension and researchers around New England. And it's really cool. I use it a lot. All the vegetables are in there. You can look at how to grow it, and then also what pests and diseases it might get, and how to manage them. So it's a great resource for both home growers and commercial growers.
Rebecca Dube 33:59
We'll put that in the show notes as well.
Kendall Kunelius 34:02
Liza, thank you so much for all that awesome information. I really would encourage all of our listeners to go check out our fruit and veg page on our website, the UNH website. We can put a link to that in the show notes. If people in Hillsborough County want to get in touch with you, where are they going to find you? How do they know who you are?
Liza DeGenring 34:20
Yeah, well they can just Google my name and it'll pop up. It is just liza.degenring@unh.edu it's my email, and happy to talk to anybody.
Kendall Kunelius 34:31
Awesome, great. You can also connect with us on our newsletter. So the Women in Ag newsletter is produced by Rebecca. It's amazing. I highly recommend you go check it out. We offer all kinds of interesting, relevant information, timely topics, and also updates on events that we have coming up. And we also encourage you to give us a follow or a like or a review on our podcast. We really love when people let us know how we're doing, and we always want to hear if you have a topic in mind that you'd love us to talk about, or a person you'd love us to interview.
Rebecca Dube 35:06
And we'll be talking to you again on our next episode of Shared Soil.
Kendall Kunelius 35:17
Shared Soil is a production of University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, an equal opportunity educator and employer. Views expressed on this podcast are not necessarily those of the university, its trustees or its volunteers. Inclusion or exclusion of commercial products in this podcast does not imply endorsement the University of New Hampshire. US Department of Agriculture and New Hampshire counties cooperate to provide extension programming in the Granite State. Learn more at extension.unh.edu.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
