Welcome to the fifth session of our 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson. I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I will be your host for today's webinar. Our upcoming webinars are featuring our University of Minnesota colleague Randy Nelson and also Janet Knodl, NDSU Extension entomologist. We hope you are joining us for the entire series of 10 webinars. If you miss one, they are already being archived, so we hope you go and check those out. We are using the Zoom webinar function this year, and you will all be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. People watching this live will be able to ask questions in the chat box, so you can find that on the screen. Please go ahead and type your questions in the chat, and I will pose those questions to our speaker during and after this presentation today. Next, I have a very special request for all viewers, whether you watch this live or you're watching the archives. To maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future, I ask that you take a very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. To sweeten the deal, we will have random prize drawings, so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win. After submitting your survey, you will be redirected to a second survey where you can enter your name and mailing address. I also have two acknowledgments today. First to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our field of work funding, and we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and we thank all these entities for their support. And now, it's time for our featured speaker, and I'm very pleased to introduce Tom Kelb, who has done several field of work presentations in the past. Tom is an extension horticulturalist for North Dakota State University. Tom works with hundreds of gardeners and farmers across North Dakota every summer to evaluate vegetable varieties, and today he will be sharing some of the most reliable and promising varieties for us in North Dakota. So thanks for being with us today, Tom. Thanks, Julie, for the invitation, and it's really great to be here and hi to everybody out there. Let's talk about varieties. Why? Why is this an important topic? And because the first step to growing a great crop is to have great seeds. Seeds are powerful, and I've seen this in extension. I've worked in extension in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and here in the Midwest, and I have seen seeds change lives. You know, when we work together, we can find varieties that will increase, maybe double the yield that can reduce the need for pesticides, and we can find better tasting vegetables. Seeds are truly powerful. Another thing that's really powerful is winter in North Dakota. I'll tell you that, and luckily it's just about over. But I'll tell you the best thing about winter is going to the mailbox and getting seed catalogs. I love, I've loved seed catalogs since I was a kid. Some kids, some kids read comic books. I read seed catalogs. And my favorite one when I was a kid was the one from Burpee Seed Company. I would, before I go to bed, I go through that seed catalog and I just dream, see all these beautiful, colorful pictures and think about, wow, I'm going to have such a great garden this year. I just can't wait to grow these golden peppers, for example. But as I got older, I wanted to appreciate more than just pretty pictures. And my favorite seed catalog today is the one from Johnny's Selected Seeds. You know, let me just say that all the seed catalogs I mentioned today are available for free. You just got to go online and request a free seed catalog. And just because I mentioned these catalogs doesn't mean I'm endorsing them particularly or just because I omit one doesn't mean I'm discriminated against them. I just want to share with you some of my favorites. And Johnny's is my favorite. And that's because Johnny's is a great company. It's from Maine. It's a northern company. It has seeds that grow in the north. They have an aggressive breeding program that develops award-winning varieties. But the best thing about Johnny's, yeah, this isn't such a pretty catalog full of pictures, but it's full of great information. And especially like if you notice here on the left, under the peppers there, they have all kinds of interesting and important information that's helpful for you to be successful as a gardener or a farmer. I think Johnny's wants you to be successful. And when you're successful, you'll keep coming back for their seeds. But like, let's say for this peppers, they'll tell us what type of soil is best. They'll tell you when to sow the seeds. They'll tell you how to sow the seeds. They'll tell you how far to space apart the plants. They'll tell you, this is the diseases to look out for. Here's the insects to work out for. So all this information is so valuable. I always keep this catalog at my desk in the spring and even, you know, by my side when I plant my garden. So even if you don't want to order any seeds from Johnny's, I really recommend that you just get their catalog as a resource. Another one of my favorite catalogs, I love heirloom catalogs and they're because they're so full of interesting historic stories. And someday in my life, if I ever have a coffee table, this is the one I'm going to put on my coffee table. And that's the one from Baker Creek heirloom seeds. And the reason why is it's just so full of beautiful pictures and stories like for look at this page on radishes. They just don't have a normal red radish. They have like these beautiful watermelon radishes from China. The green radishes, they got radishes that look like rat tails. They got radishes as big as a basketball. So many cool things about it. And the one thing about heirlooms, it has to do with their history. And I think the arichora yellow dry bean is a good example of this. And this is a dry bean that Baker Creek offers another seed catalogs offer. It's the same exact bean that has been grown for centuries here in North Dakota by the arichora Native Americans. It's the exact same seed that they shared with Lewis and Clark. It was the exact same seed that Lewis and Clark shared with Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed at Monticello. So I can enjoy the same experiences as people for centuries. It's really wonderful. Another strong trend in gardening right now is organic gardening. And there is a whole new group of organic companies emerging or existing seed companies that are offering organic seeds. And in response to this, our gardeners have asked me if I would offer organic seeds in our trials. And we started offering organic trials last year. Here's another company, High Mowing Seeds. There's a lot of companies that are exclusively for organic. And so that's just another option out there for you. Another one of my favorite catalogs. But actually, I don't ever use it as the one from Pine Tree. And that's because you know the thing about you if you buy seeds from like Burby or Johnny's or a lot of these national seed companies, just trying to get a packet of seeds can cost like five bucks. And then you throw in shipping. Man, it's like $10 for a packet. So people, other gardeners have alerted me to Pine Tree. And the nice thing about this company is they offer, they offer seed packets that are very affordable.  And you get the seeds packets only about $1.50 or $2.00. So here's a seed catalog to get for a normal gardener. But I'm not normally buying my seeds by the pounds. And so I like to alert you to Jordan seeds in the Twin Cities. Jordan has a great selection of seeds and very affordable. So those are some of my favorite seed catalogs. One drawback about seed catalogs is they only tell you the good things about every variety, right? They never say, well, don't buy this Friday. It has too short of a season for you in North Dakota. No, everything's good in a catalog. So we have to find out for ourselves what works best. And that's one reason why we started the North Dakota Home Garden variety trial program. Because we think, kind of like our overall purpose is that we believe that the best way to identify the best varieties for gardeners in North Dakota is to test the varieties in the gardens of North Dakota under the management of gardeners in North Dakota. And so we set up a huge network of gardeners and growers across the state. I've worked at over 1,000 of them over the years to evaluate promising varieties. And here's our last year numbers. We had 369 growers last year submit results from their trials. And you can see all the way, we had 54 in Burley County, 44 in Cass County. And even the yellow boxes are one to three sites. So we have information from like 45, 46 counties every year. Plus our trials are spreading out to other states and provinces too. Even though we never publicize this program because it's overwhelming the response we have. So the comments I'm gonna give you today are not my comments. They're the comments of, let's say from last year, 369 people who submit a result from their trials. All their comments come together in a publication we call vegetable cultivars for North Dakota where we list the best cultivars or the cultivated varieties for our state. And this is a handout that's posted on the Field of Fork website for you. Also on the handout, I have a list of seed companies that you can request free seed catalogs. One other thing I have to say about this year is the COVID has caused problems this year in the shipment of seeds. Well, first of all, in the production of seeds was a problem last year. Some of the seed production got decreased because of COVID. And now the problem we have here is there's again a huge demand for seeds because people are more likely to stay at home and they want to garden more. But the biggest problem is just getting the seeds shipped because at the warehouses they all have to wear masks and they're all social distancing. Some seed companies are taking weeks to get your orders out. And I just noticed like a few seed companies wouldn't even take orders yet to gardeners.  When I look, and also I can throw in that if you want to join our seed program, our trials program, where everybody's well, we've opened that program up on Monday. And so we're expecting hundreds of more gardeners to participate. When I look for a variety, these are the traits I look for. It's got to mature early because we all know our growing season is too short in North Dakota. We want our varieties to taste great. We want our varieties to resist diseases so we don't have to be spraying fungicides. We want our varieties to be productive. And we want our varieties to be adapted to North Dakota which for compared to the rest nation means it's got to take cool temperatures and dry, dry conditions. Okay, I'm going to go over the best varieties or some of the promising varieties for North Dakota. We're going to start with the favorite vegetable of everybody, or almost everybody, tomatoes. I don't know for some reason, my kid Kevin just doesn't like tomatoes, so it's not his favorite, but I know this is the most popular one. So let's start with tomatoes. There's all kinds of tomato varieties out there with all kinds of fruits, all kinds of colors. But what I want to encourage you today is when you select a variety, also consider about the vine. There's two major types of tomato vines, determinate and indeterminate. A determinate vine is a compact vine.  The yields are early, which is so important in North Dakota, and the yields are concentrated, which is usually, we don't have a long tomato harvest season anyway in North Dakota because Jack Frost stops it. I'm a big fan of determinate varieties. There's also indeterminate varieties and indeterminate, they're tall, they never stop growing. Okay, they'll grow till frost. The determinates pretty much stop growing, the vines stop growing when they set their fruits. But an indeterminate type, you have to prune, you have to trellis. The fruits are usually larger and the fruits of indeterminate are usually more flavorful because there's always new leaves and new healthy leaves producing lots of sugars for the plant. So there's pros and cons for both types. Here's one way to trellis an indeterminate variety. And this works for determinate types too, if you want. This is a string weaving, what you pound a stake in between every two plants on the row and you use a trellis of string going across the row to support the plants. If you haven't ever tried string weaving, I invite you to look into it. Here are some of the most popular varieties for us in our state and they've done well in our trials. Early girl is often selected for its earlyness and I means indeterminate, D means determinate. Celebrity is, I think it's the most reliable variety. It resists a lot of diseases and it resists cracking. If you want a large tomato, big beef is a great quality tomato. Mountain fresh plus is becoming more and more known. It's a great quality mid-sized tomato. It's easy to grow. It tolerates cool conditions. The most popular, the most common cherry tomato is super sweet 100. And then for the canning types, the ones that have very meaty and full of flesh inside, it's the Roma and the San Marzano's. Also I can just throw in, like if you have a container tomato or you need a patio size, there's lots of varieties out there and I know that Bush Early Girl has done well in our tests. You know what the thing about tomatoes though, we all have our preferences and it's good to share those preferences with your friends because I've learned to love orange cherry tomatoes. Sun gold and sun sugar are, those types of tomatoes are my favorite. They're super sweet and they don't crack as much as the sweet 100s. Another tomato that I really like is Juliet. Juliet is a cross between a cherry tomato and a paste or Roma tomato. So it's a little bit bigger than a normal cherry but it's so meaty inside, really easy to grow. It doesn't crack, it's really great. Speaking of cracking, these are heirloom tomatoes. And heirloom tomatoes are very pop or trendy, should I say, but I'm not a big fan of heirlooms because I have to say in general, there's a reason why they became an heirloom, right? That's because we moved on, we've advanced. I didn't come to work today on a horse. I took a car, advancements. So heirloom tomatoes are not as productive, they're not as reliable, they're more susceptible to diseases. These are all general, there's always an exception but these are general qualities. They're harder to grow and they're more susceptible to cracking. Nevertheless, they have interesting colors and some have very special, special flavors. And so I see a strong trend now in the industry to develop modern varieties with heirloom fruit qualities. And this leads us to one category. It's the most award-winning category of tomatoes I've seen ever. It's a chef's choice. And the first one was the orange one that came out in 2014. And it seems like every year they release a new one. There's a black one, a green one, a red one. And now also there's a chef's choice by color that's out this year, that's right here. Again, it has that appearance of heirloom and great flavor but it's productive and resists diseases. Here's a new one that's out this year. It looks really promising, buffalo sun. It ripens early. It has the ribbing on the fruits that people like to see. And look at that flesh inside. It's got a marbled pink flesh inside. So look into that. We'll see if you can find that at your garden center or maybe order some seeds and plant that yourself, buffalo sun. These are all not, I haven't tried any of these. These are brand new varieties but they look promising. Red torch, looks like a Juliet but it has really interesting streaking. Flames are on it and very productive. This is a new grape tomato called Salano. And it won awards because the problem with grape tomatoes is the vines really get out of control. But Salano can be grown in a container. It has a tight bush to it form and is very dark red and sweet. So Salano looks promising. And the last one that's new this year that looks really great is early resilience. An absolutely terrible name. Has no catch to it or jazz at all. But this is a Roma tomato and I grow, I love Romans. I probably grow about 20 Roma plants every year in my garden. But the problem with the Romans is they're so susceptible to blossom and rot. Early resilience is more resistant to blossom and rot and has healthier vines. And otherwise it looks just like a Roman and has a compact vine like a Roma. So how about we just take a break and does anybody have any questions they wanna share or does anybody have a special tomato that they would like to share with the group? You have a comment here from Sarah. She says, thank you very much for this information on tomatoes. They aren't my favorite but we still grow them every year. And every year I'm surprised a new disease or bug that eats them and how few fruit I end up with. So any comments? We have a presentation, I have a presentation on how to grow tomatoes in North Dakota, Sarah may be helpful. But otherwise, I had to say one thing is that this is the joy of gardening. Every year there's a new challenge. There's always something that causes trouble and that really rises hope for next year. So just pick a early ripening variety, get the steak, the tomatoes, get them off the ground and send me some photos with the first sign of distress. Call your plant doctor, your local county agent or myself and we'll help you through the problems. So Becky has a question. Do you recommend starting seeds indoors? Oh yeah, yeah, of course, for tomatoes you have to start seeds and you should start to seed six to eight weeks before you set out the plants. So we're right around the time. We're pretty similar, you should be starting the seeds for tomatoes. And also, you have to do that for peppers. You have to do it for tomatoes. Our growing season is too short to direct sew them. They'll never make it. Or you'll get your first green tomato and then the frost will come. So yeah, you gotta, same with melons and watermelons. That's when also I'm learning, you gotta start, we have so many failed trials for that. We're starting to recommend starting them indoors too. Twyla has a question about acidity. Are any of the varieties low acid and can't be used for canning? Oh, you know what? I think, Julie, I think, are you the one to answer this question? I'll go for it. I would caution anyone who's listening and doing anything with tomatoes that you all acidify your tomatoes with citric acid or lemon juice. And we have all of the guidance on our website. It's also linked on the field of fork site. So we did a little trial a few years ago. I was working with another horticulture specialist and we did find differences in acidity of the same variety growing in different locations. So that piece is also on the field of fork website. But pretty much if you follow the acidification guidelines with these tomatoes, you're going to be okay. Yeah. What else we got? Okay. Considering romas are not very disease resistant, what would you recommend for a replacement for canning? Okay. The problem with Roma is blossom and rot. That's the key. And that's a disorder, not so much a disease. So try to manage blossom and rot just by trying to keep the soil moisture uniform and also don't damage the roots of the plant when you hole around the tomatoes because it's a calcium deficiency and we've got to help the plants get the calcium through their roots. So we could talk 10 minutes about blossom and rot. But the other thing, if this is a problem for you too, maybe you've learned this too, is that it's usually just on the first flush of fruits because then after that the plant has a better balance of foliage and fruits and the root system gets more able to get the calcium. So I always go out early in the year and on my green, my first flush of fruits, as soon as I see any brown bottoms they're coming off the vine. But then also if you want to know a variety, how about early resilience? This is what it won the All-America Award for, resisting blossom and rot and having healthier vines. So there you go. You just made my case right here. This is one definitely worth trying. I think this is the one of all those varieties I mentioned. This could be the game changer. Leanne reports that she likes burpees super sauce. So just a comment. And Myla says, my daughter-in-law gave seed from a chef grower company named Ro7. They have limited varieties but are very good. Great. Kathleen and I grow in containers, a heritage variety in Goldman's Italian American with seeds from Baker Creek. Large sauce, tomato, great taste. So we're all growing tomatoes this year. Yeah. And Glenn says, my go-to cherry tomato is yellow pear but I always discover how many fruits I've missed after the frost. Yellow pear started in Fargo. It's Fargo yellow pear and it is so mild. It is what, when I lived in Wisconsin, that's what the Amish families used to make their preserves was yellow pear and what a giant plant.  So I think this comment is for me. It's a question about vinegar used for acidifying. Most of our guidance does call for lemon juice or citric acid because it doesn't flavor the tomatoes but we do have some recipes for salsa that do use vinegar. Vinegar isn't as effective in acidifying as lemon juice and citric acid. So again, we have all this information is on our tomato canning guide. Twyla asks about blossom and rot and I think you covered that. Okay, do bell peppers get blossom rot? Yes, yep, they get it too. Sorry, they're relatives. Peppers and tomatoes are in the same family. They share the same problems. In fact, we have a publication called All in the Family. It's about all of those different. There you go, eggplant too. Yeah, eggplant and tomatoes and so on. We have a question from Grace Ann. What do you have that is the best approach without use of chemicals to combat slugs is what she's asking about? Okay, they're our organic products and you know what I have to, okay, what is that? Sorry man, you know, I haven't thought about slugs for six months. I can't remember what the heck it is. But like Escargo is one of the trade names but there are organic products, something phosphate. Sorry man, you caught me off guard here but there are organic products that are totally safe that you can use in your vegetable garden. You cannot use like Matteldehyde. I remember that one because that, I mean, I would not use it, it's too toxic but there are organic, some types of like iron phosphate and it's an iron product that can be used and you can find that the major snail repellents will do that.  So maybe you like to see that. And I don't think so. I think it's iron phosphate is that chemical but yeah, Escargo is a common trade name for that. So Glenn is asking about Epsom salt and Blossom and Rod, that helps. No, it's not gonna do the job for ya. And also there's, I talked to a soil scientist about this and they say it can make it worse. So that's a, that is not a scientific. There's no, that's not based on science. It has to do with a copper shortage or no, a calcium shortage getting to the plants. So again, the key Blossom and Rod keep the soil moisture consistent so the calcium can flow to the roots, allow the roots to grow. So don't go nuts with the whole. You know, mulch to keep the soil moisture consistent. There are calcium sprays. If you just can't live with it, you just can't tolerate it. If you can't, if it's driving you insane, there are calcium sprays you can spray when the fruits are the size of a dime that can help or sometimes people say it helps. Helen is asking about anthracnose. Is that how you pronounce it? That's a problem she's having. Are there any varieties that are resistant? Okay, anthracnose is not a common problem. So it could be, but anthracnose typically only affects the red ripening fruits. And it doesn't, it's not a problem on the foliage. If it is anthracnose, the best thing you can do is get the plants off the ground. So make sure you trowel them somehow. And the other thing, it gets better air movement too. And also don't do overhead watering. Keep the leaves and the fruits dry. And if you do get a fruit that's rotten with anthracnose, just don't throw it on the ground because that's a source for more inoculum. Get that rotten fruit, take your rotten tomatoes out of the garden. Okay, is this a tomato? Okay, we'll just take a couple more. Yeah, our ground cherries, tomatoes, they're really good. Oh my goodness, I don't know. Is that a tomatillo? I don't know. I think that's a tomatillo. You eat the fruits? I think it's a tomatillo. And that's in a tomato family, sure. All right, there's a lot of questions. So I'll have our, there's like 27 more. So you have lots of tomato fans.  And you can put your email in the chat box. That's a good answer. And actually we'll see if we have some time at the end. I'm gonna rock and roll though to get to those questions. There's one in a talk on tomatoes, this is on vegetables. I told you, we started on tomatoes for a reason. Okay, this is not a tomato, this is not a tomato. And does anybody know what it is? This is an asparagus berry, asparagus. And I can tell this is from a female plant because there's male asparagus plants and female plants. Females grow the spears, but they also spend a lot of their energy producing berries. Nobody wants asparagus berries. And the other problem is that the berries fall to the ground, they release their seeds, and all of a sudden our asparagus bed gets full of young plants and everything gets crowded. So we have poor spear production. So what we want, this is when men are superior, men asparagus, okay? We want male plants. And for years, we have been recommending the lines from New Jersey, Jersey Giant, Jersey Supreme, Jersey Knight. These are so-called all male lines, not really all male though, but a lot of males. The problem that we just recently learned is the nursery that makes these Jersey boys, I call them the Jersey boys, they're gonna stop making them. So we've got to find an alternative. And I want to alert you that we do have an alternative, a recommended variety. Here's the spears we're after. Here's the variety that we recommend now. Millennium. Millennium has, there's been testing done in Northern Minnesota for years. And they have found Millennium is even more productive than the Jersey boys. It's hardy for North Dakota. It also has, especially the productivity of these lines are more outstanding as the spears age. And it has more male plants to it. Another nice thing about Millennium is the spears emerge a little bit later in spring. They don't come out prematurely and so they're less subject to early frost injury. So this is the variety to consider planting if you're interested in asparagus. And that's Millennium. Lots of beans out there. I hope you all have tried purple beans, to have fun with your children or grandchildren. When you cook them, they turn green. It's so fun. Bush Blue Lake, the 274, is the dominant variety of green beans and it does good in North Dakota. It'll give you a good crop of quality beans throughout the summer. In our test, we found that Blue Lake, this is a good variety, but it doesn't knock your socks off. And when we test it against other varieties, we found other varieties are preferred. And for example, we tested Blue Lake against Annihilator last year and 69% of our gardeners preferred Annihilator. J2, Lewis, Antigua. These are all good varieties. They have usually darker green pods and a little bit more slender. I threw in Antigua. This is a new variety from last year. It's an organic variety. It does very well. It's a short 18-inch plant that could do well in a raised bed, for example. The bean variety that everybody gets charged up about is Crockett. It's a filet bean. It's skinny, straight and crisp. It's dark green. I give out thousands of packets of seeds every spring. And this is the one, and people plant the seeds and then they throw away the seed packets. And then in summer, they say, my God, this is the best bean I ever grew. And then they call me, see, Tom, what was that? And it's Crockett.  We do lots of tests on carrots.  The varieties of Chantanae that we recommend on the right is Coupar, which is an organic variety that does excellent in North Dakota on farms and in gardens. And Hercules has always been a good performer for us. Most gardeners grow the Nantes type. Goldfinger has always been a great performer in our trials for years. Navel is a new variety we tried last year. It was tremendous. You might want to give that, and it's organic variety. You might want to give that a try. Here's the Nantes, classic Nantes. How about a purple carrot? People look into that and the catwalks and there's, and oh, it's super nutritious, that's great. Full of antioxidants, that's great. The problem is, they're full of antioxidants, but also they're kind of bitter. They don't taste very good. And so that kind of defeats the purpose. Like, if you don't want to eat it, you're not going to get those nutrients. So I'm not a big fan of purple carrots. But this is the best one, purple haze, because it's the mildest one. And also it looks cool when you cut it. It's cool for displays.  Lots of sweet corn varieties out there now. And super sweets are dominating the market. 100 years ago when I was a kid, I used to grow sweet corn acres and every night, I'd go to the field and harvest the corn. And then I'd drive it down to the Minneapolis farmers market in the morning. And I knew I had to sell every year that day because it would be too starchy to sell the next day. But over time, their super sweets have arrived. And over the last, I don't know, 30 years, they get better and better every year. The biggest challenge for super sweets is the kernel is so small. There's a seed, it doesn't have good vigor. And so you have to wait a little while for the soil to get a little bit warmer. But actually they've made so many advancements, but look for a variety that can tolerate cool soil. So it germinates well. American Dream came out a few years ago and it's done very well in our trials in North Dakota. It's a good mid-season type. It's sturdy stalks and outstanding quality. I do recommend treated seed for corn. In our trials, we test so many, dozens and dozens of vegetables. Corn is the only one that we provide treated seeds for. I don't like using treated seed, but we've had so many failed corn trials that we recommend using seed treatments to reduce the rotting of the seeds. The best early variety for North Dakota in our trials consistently has been sweetness. Again, sturdy stalks, very reliable. It's super early and super delicious. Sweetness is a winner. Cucumbers, really, I think the days of the straight eight old cucumber, they're just past us. There's so many better burpless types out there. Burpless types are earlier, they resist diseases better, they're more productive and they have no bitterness. They're just perfect. And the top variety is summer dance. It's an amazing producer. You'll really love the quality of it. You can't pickle a burpless cucumber, though. That's its drawback. So homemade pickles is our best pickler. It wins our trials every year. It's so productive and it has crisp, perfectly shaped cucumbers for pickling. Homemade pickles. Here's a new variety out this year because there's a lot of interest in snack cucumbers.  And muncher is a great variety, but there's a new variety out there called green light we're testing in our trials. It's an award winner. It looks really promising. It doesn't need any pollination from bees. And you harvest it when they're just like three inches long, just small and they're seedless. So it's really worth a try. Lots of lettuce Fridays. And like the leaf types here is a leaf type that's really popular in our trials. New red fire, just blazing. So beautiful. It takes the heat. For lettuce, you gotta find a variety that can tolerate heat so we can extend the harvest into summer as long as possible. And new red fire is really good. There's lots of good leaf lettuce Fridays we recommend in that handout that you can download. Butter crunch is one of our all time favorites. It's been around forever. And every seed, seed rack in North Dakota has butter crunch lettuce and it tolerates heat. It's a great butterhead type. It's just an old time classic that does well. I would encourage you to try a crisp head or sometimes called it's a Batavia lettuce. These are the most heat tolerant types and they're very crisp and delicious. Mure is, it's the best one. It'll produce lettuce all summer long for you but there's lots of other good crisp head types out there in reds and spotted ones but look for that in your catalogs. Again, melons, I talked about how we're starting. It may have to start seeds indoors. We have so many field trials with melons are growing season so short. So you gotta find an early ripening one. Athena is the dominant one for the Midwest but Aphrodite is a week earlier and it has bigger, bigger cantaloupes. So that's a really good one. If you're up in the Northern part of the state and you're growing seasons really short, the best quality early one, super early is goddess. That's a great cantaloupe. I'm just gonna keep churning through these for you guys here. Just bear with me here. And as we go A to Z, asparagus to winter squash to W. Okay, if green flesh melons are difficult to grow, especially the honeydews, they're just take too long. Try a Galea melon. They're earlier than cantaloupes and they have a wonderful like tropical essence to them. These are super easy to grow and just these are things you can't buy at a grocery store. And these are the types of things that we can grow in our gardens. Aravah and passports are very early ripening. The best watermelon for North, the most reliable one I think that has some decent size to it is sweet Dakota Rose. We have a lot of our trials gardeners say this is the best watermelon they ever ate. And sweet Dakota Rose, she's from North Dakota, developed right here. And this is one that we hardly recommend. If you wanna try something different, a yellow watermelon, yellow watermelons ripen, they're the first ones to ripen. They're so easy to grow.  Again, you can't buy this at a grocery store. I remember growing these when I was a teenager and I sold them the grocery stores all throughout my town. It would help me get through college with yellow watermelons. They're so easy to grow and they're so fun and they're delicious. It's like a red one. The best pea, the best shell pea and I had to think of gardener just like in a forum like this. A gardener says, Tom, have you ever tried Lincoln Peets? I said, no, I never tried it because it's an heirloom and I'm not in the heirlooms. She said, you gotta try it. So we tried it in our trials and it's been our winner every year. Every year we try Lincoln against something else. Lincoln's the winner. It's very productive. It's easy to shell. It's a great freezer. Lincoln is the best shell pea for North Dakota. The best snap pea, sugar and. Again, it wins the trials every year. Super early, super productive, super sweet. Both these peas don't have to be trellised. They only get about 27, 28 inches tall. So you don't have to put the work of fencing to them. These are really winners, consistent. These are in our whole fame. Lots of potatoes out there. And like I see there, the big blue one in the middle. We tested blue ones that have blue insides and they're very nutritious but people just can't eat blue mashed potatoes. It just freaks them out. So just look for a variety that can tolerate scab disease. And I would say for a red one, a lot of people plant these red Pontiacs but as soon as they dig them up in the early fall they call me about scab disease. Red nor one's better. It resists the scab. Our most popular highly rated potato is one you've probably never grown but North Dakota State introduced this in like 1962. Purple Viking. Look how beautiful it is with that purple marbling and snow white inner flesh. That is beautiful and it's delicious. It tolerates drought, productive, great for mashed potatoes. Purple Viking is a winner. You gotta order it right away though. Those supplies go right away. That's no longer becoming a secret how great it is. Okay, here's a secret I can share with you and these are two of my lovely children here and they grew this neon pumpkin. Neon is the easiest to grow pumpkin in North Dakota and that's why my kids grow it because I don't wanna seem to cry and be a failure. So we're gonna grow the easiest one. Neon ripens two weeks before any other pumpkin. The pumpkins are orange in summer. In summer, so they're like orange balls that turn into orange balloons. So you can see the beauty all summer. It's not the biggest one. It's only about eight to 10 pounds but it's so early. It's the one especially for the North. Now our kids like that but I'll tell you what kids really like is a big pumpkin.  They're like can and they're all lopsided. And you know what, they require too much care.  They gotta have water all the time. You gotta feed them all the time. You can't let them get a sunburn because you gotta have the skin soft so it keeps enlarging. Put a blanket on it, forget it.  Big moves is a winner. Another winner are these two. This is early giant in the photo. These are like 30 to 40 pound types and these resist diseases. They're easy to grow. Large March we grew last year. She was amazing. This was a very popular pumpkin in our trials. The top spinach, the thing about spinach is it gotta tolerate heat because otherwise it's gonna go to seed as soon as the late spring early summer comes. Space is the best spinach for springtime, for a springtime sowing because it tolerate the heat the best. And our team of gardeners generally like smooth leaf types like this because they're easier to clean. Space is delicious, juicy and it produces the longest. Okay, zucchini. I know people always make jokes about zucchini about how nobody respects it. I just don't understand why nobody respects zucchini. We should be, just because it's too productive, we ridicule it. That is, we should honor this vegetable. And if you wanna have a good production of it, then you need to find a variety that can resist disease and keeps producing late into the summer, into the fall. Cash flow does that and green machine was a new variety last year that we tried, it was outstanding. It is truly a green machine that just pumps out the fruit's non-stop till frost. Very impressive. The prettiest vegetable is bright lights Swiss chard. It is beautiful. It belongs in every flower garden. It is so beautiful, you'll never wanna cut it. And actually, I never wanna cut it because I don't wanna eat it. I don't really like Swiss chard. It's kind of bitter. But if you harvest it young, then it's not so bitter. But just for looks, bright lights is, it is so eye-catching. It's a showstopper. Lastly, we'll talk about a couple of winter squashes. And one is the Buttercup Squash which originated from North Dakota. We introduced the Buttercup Squash to the world in the 1930s. And a lot of people across the world think it's the best tasting squash. Burgess, if you got a big garden and let the vine spread, Burgess is great because it's early and it's high yielding and high quality. If you got a small garden, you can grow Buttercup Squashes but it has to be a bush type like Bon Bon. Man, I wanna give that a try. And lastly, a trend that we found in our trials with our hundreds of gardeners is that we find that people like smaller squash, like they're butternut squash, our baby butternut trial is more popular than our standard butternut trial. And Butterscotch is an award-winning variety that does well here. It's a pumpkin, I'm sorry, it's a winter squash that you just cut in half and share with a friend. So there you go. I wanna thank all the credit to photographers and the seed catalogs for their photos in this presentation. I also want to invite you to join our team. We have hundreds of participants, hundreds and like 369 last year and I had a hundred more families join us in that fall doing observation trials. It's a fun project and you can order your seeds online right now. And actually, I'm still waiting for some seeds for my seed supplier. But you'll get the seeds out in April. Just give it a look if you're interested. It's a fun project for kids to teach you some of the basics of science. So I wish y'all a happy spring. And I don't know, I'm sure there's probably, I hope there are more questions. 27 more tomato questions. I'm gonna grab a couple that aren't about tomatoes right now. Could you comment on pole beans, which I prefer? Yes, yes, pole beans, great. Pole beans, here's what we've found and pole beans are not as popular so I didn't mention this talk. Sage shells came out a few years ago. It's super early. It's a week before the standard Kentucky Warner. Sage shells is a great variety. But for quality, Monte Cristo, it's super quality, super quality. If we compare it, it beats all the Kentucky wonders. Monte Cristo.  Monte Gusto is in many seed dogs just because it is so special. There you go. We have a question about safety from deer and rabbits. Are prickly plants like pumpkins and squash safe from deer and rabbits? It depends how hungry the deer and rabbits are. That's a thing. Actually, if the Native Americans here, when you design your garden, the women who did all the gardening, they would plant pumpkin and squash around their other plants, their corn, their beans, their sunflowers, and their other squash. So it was used as a repellent to repel deer and rabbits and men. But it all depends how hungry the critter is. So offense is the way, you gotta have a barrier. Offense is the way to go. And Grace is wondering about organic potato starters. Okay. Well, what I would do is I would go online, look for organic seeds. And I mentioned a couple. There was Harris there in the high mowing seeds and there's a lot of sustainable seeds. There's so many companies out there now. Just look for organic potatoes. Pick a variety or just go to Google organic potatoes. And you can find organic potato seed. That's what you wanna do. I would not use what you get at a grocery store that wasn't produced or that was not likely produced organically. Janine makes a comment. It's kind of for a nutrition person, I guess. Wish we could get all the foodies who write food columns and create recipes to convert to buttercup squash. She sees a lot of butternut, butternut, butternut. So anyway, if you go to our website, Janine and everyone, we certainly have a lot of buttercup recipes. So please check that out. We have over 1500 recipes, not all for squash, but there are some for squash. Don is wondering about recommendations for onions. Okay, you want a long day onion and then you want an Elsa Kreg. Well, you gotta make a decision. What do you want the onions for? Do you wanna win the county fair? Then Elsa Kreg is an exhibition style one. That's great. That's the one I grow. But there are storage onions too, but you have to, you're not gonna find them at a garden center. You gotta order those seeds and you gotta start them like yesterday. Cause really the onions are the first thing we start indoors and the key to a big onion is you gotta get those seedlings going as soon as possible. I think candy is a good variety for onions that has done well for me in the past. Elsa Kreg is my favorite cause it's the biggest one and that's what I want. I like a big onion. So Grace Ann wants to get in the garden. She says with our mild winter, do you think we can get in the garden quicker? I usually don't plant until the end of May. Okay, what do you think I am? I'm not like a pre-niocator, like okay, here we go. Coriander splatter, okay, go ahead. Plant your potatoes on St. Patrick's Day or Good Friday, whatever. You know what? Okay, not to make light of it. Generally speaking, it's dry in North Dakota. Dry soils will warm up faster. So of course this could all change the next week, I don't know. But generally speaking, you're likely be able, the ground will be warmer faster this year if the conditions stay the same. But again, you gotta worry about frost. That's unforgiving.  Doesn't matter how warm the soil is. So you can, so probably you can get in there earlier but hey man, the climate in North Dakota is so unpredictable and harsh. Did you give us a temperature of what the ground should be? Is there anything like that? It's different for every crop. It's different for every crop. And you know, if you want to, that's another great thing about Johnny's Cadillac. They have a graph for every crop. They tell you, this is the ideal germination. This is not the ideal. So okay, just throwing out some vegetables like spinach, you plant earlier. Spinach, beets, lettuce, you can plant early. Potatoes, you can get on the ground earlier. Onions, but stuff like, you know, there's anything like a melon or tomato or pepper. They're very frost sensitive. Beans are intermediate. If you have a specific question, I'll be happy to help you. Here's another question. Should you seeds versus seedlings? Which works better? One or the other? Well, you know, there's, it depends how about that for an answer. It depends on the crop. It depends on the crop. For example, like, and also how much time and money you want to devote to it. And like seedlings are generally better, but you got to pay for them. They're more expensive. So that's why, let's say for bean seeds. I wouldn't start my bean seeds indoors. You know, we want our seedlings. We go with seedlings because for those crops, it take a long time to mature and that demand the warmth. And so like melons, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, those are the ones that we, it makes sense to use seedlings for. Otherwise, I think it just doesn't, like it doesn't make sense to plant corn indoors ahead of time. And I think we're almost ready to let you go here, but I'm going to ask you one more question. Sure. Maybe you covered it already. When is the best time to plant tomato and cucumber seeds inside your house? Okay. They're two completely different answers. Okay. Tomatoes and peppers, we usually want to go about six to eight weeks before we anticipate planting them outdoors. So for a lot of us in, let's just say central North Dakota, we're going to be planting them outdoors about let's say May 15th to May 20th. So go six to eight weeks behind. Okay. So now we're talking about like, you know, March, March 20th about somewhere around there is an ideal time, but you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just sometime in late March is a good time for tomatoes and peppers and eggplant. Now for melons, they, you cannot grow them six to eight weeks indoors. They will get too leggy. So for those you go with a three week window, three weeks only. So if I'm going to plant that at the end of May, I'm going to start my cucumbers and melons at the beginning of May. Very good. Well, I'm going to thank you Tom for joining us and to our very energetic audience. I thank you for all your questions and your interest in this topic. And certainly check out, there's about 75 of these webinars archived over the last several years. And Tom has been our speaker before and we've had speakers about starting your seeds inside. And there's just a whole bunch of topics, including food preservation. So please check those out and join us again next week. We have five more sessions left and a big round of applause for Tom for sharing all this great information with us. We're all excited about that. I enjoyed it a lot. And also if anybody has a question, I'll be happy to help you. Just send me an email and I'll reply ASAP. My email is tom.callb, which is K-A-L-B, like boy, at n-d-s-u.edu. Okay, just send me an email and I'll be happy to work with you. Thank you everybody.


Normally I tell you to hype responsibly it is something I put on repeat keep your hype in check Don't let yourself get massively disappointed whether an event comes or not, but I'm fine This increasingly hard to do personally in heading into this week. Yes. We've had all the rumors Jeff grubb and others saying there It's probably a direct this week. I know Jeff grubb date 100% commit to it He just said what he heard but Nate the hate has now come out and committed to it He did a podcast a couple days ago where he said yeah, Nintendo direct announcements happening in the next few days Which meant early this upcoming week, but He went on spawncast last night and just came straight on said there's a Nintendo direct this week It's just happening right now. I know some of you guys don't feel like it's this week yet Sundays the beginning of my week for me for some of you guys at the end of the week I understand weekend Saturday and Sunday a part of the weekend. So it's the end of the week I get it. I know we all look at our calendars differently but for me Sundays always that turning point at least into that next week so for me the next week has already really begun and I'm having a hard time hyping responsibly And I want to talk about that because a dangerous thing happens when we overhype ourselves and that dangerous thing is an effect on our mental state I Think you know the anger and stuff like that that some people get I think is a bit overdone But there are some people that do get super excited for these events like they're the highlight of their week It's their gaming Christmas of the week and Nintendo direct. We only get two to three of them per year usually three Yeah, we get partner showcases up with these big directs We only usually get two to three of them every year So they are a big deal but a lot of this tie a lot of emotional value behind this stuff and I am Definitely one of them. I have three children and a fiancee and had a lovely weekend so far With with my family, but I just I want to Keep in perspective Everything that's headed into this week and why people like me are having such a hard time and probably people like you Maybe you watching this video having a hard time hyping responsibly We're Highly likely having an internet right this week. I think it'd be I mean at this point I'm just gonna say we're having a direct this week if we don't It's not my sources, but then everyone else is wrong. So we're having an internet or direct this week and That means that we are almost assuredly going to see tears of the kingdom and look you guys can could say maybe I'm I'm letting myself get too hyped for a game that has no promises beyond sky stuff and I get it But Breath of the Wild is my favorite game of all time Breath of the Wild Fundamentally changed my life in many aspects and it feels weird to say that because am I a different person today? Because the Breath of the Wild no, but things that did for me at that time of my life really mattered and heck Yulia is getting really deep in the Breath of the Wild right now herself my fiancee and it's making a change in her life She's becoming a much happier person to be around She is finding things to fill that time that she used to Spend you know maybe letting her mind wander into the dark spaces and instead enjoying the light that breath of the Wild is bringing into her life. So You know video games can have a profound impact on us and because of that tears of the kingdom coming out Isn't just another game to me like Fire Emblem, you know engage. I was excited for that game coming I was excited for sparks of hope last year. I even got a review copy and reviewed the game for you guys I know basically nobody watches the review because nobody watches my videos for Reviews right like that's that's just not the base I built up But you guys hear for the news and the discussion around the news and the hype and you know maybe some gameplay here and there but You guys are here to talk about games not necessarily here to hear my opinion on if a game is good or not but I find it to be fascinating looking at this tears of the kingdom situation because it is the game of Games for me. This is all that matters to me in 2023 when it comes to video games Look, we can get another Mario game like my audio Odyssey 2. That's great We can get f0 remastered that be great We can get Metro Prime 4 and I'll be really excited for that and look we're gonna cover all these games coming to switch It's not like we're just gonna only talk about tears of the kingdom all year, but Zelda holds a special place in my life. I don't know if it holds a special place in yours But without Zelda, I wouldn't be here talking to you guys through the camera lens here into this nice microphone Getting that audible stuff into your ears I'm that podcast that a lot of people love you know We had kitten Krista on and player essence and super mal dave and all the rest my goddess yanders restart Hoops and hip-hop mandy Lee plays etc etc like all these people that we've had on our show won't happen None of this would happen None of us would be here listening and watching this and enjoying this content together me making it you Ingesting it if it wasn't for Zelda ocarina of time got me into the Into the franchise hardcore was links awakening with my first ocarina of time is what led me into creating a fan website Which ultimately long haul led to this youtube channel and me taking this youtube thing seriously in 2017 I had no idea at the time that I would be a full-time youtuber. I kind of always in the back of my mind I hoped it would be a dream, but here I am fast forward You know from 2017 to 2023 and I'm now a full-time youtuber making content on my favorite video games and I find this to be Quite the journey that I owe directly to Zelda and the various ways its impact of my life And there's a reason the Zelda franchise has maintained as my Personal favorite franchise doesn't have all of my favorite games like yeah breath of the wilds my favorite game of all time Before that my favorite Zelda game was Zelda 2 but Zelda 2 wasn't my favorite game of all time So breath of the wild is you know that big of a gap from where my favorite Zelda game used to be And I know a lot of you guys cringe by me mentioning Zelda 2 the adventure link as my now second favorite Zelda game But still Zelda has always been my favorite franchise Even though I've ranked individual games higher than Zelda until breath of the wild So tears of the kingdom to me. This is just This is my gaming Christmas. This is you know everyone's like disappointed. Oh Nintendo won't be at E3 Zelda's coming out before E3 I'm so excited For this that I went ahead and got press badges for me and Eric for PAX East Just in case tears of the kingdom is playable at PAX East That's right making it a specific trip to a different part of the country to play the game early If it's possibly available there We don't even know yet But you know what to go you got a book and make the plans now where you're not going to be able to go right? So I got two press badges already Ready to go so I could set up a private demo and and wherever else I'm going to need to set up to play tears of the kingdom Early presuming that tears of the kingdom will have a presence there We don't know if it will be but tears of the kingdom does happen in March or sorry tears of the kingdom PAX East does happen in March which is before the game comes out So we're kind of hoping then we get an announcement that it's going to be present at PAX East But I'm just I'm a little flabbergasted, you know I've been waiting for this particular direct. I think since the game was announced We know when the game is coming out So this is the beginning of the marketing campaign and look we're gonna hear some other fantastic things right GameCube remasters You know we might hear about some of those advanced words one plus two reboot camp a lot of people excited about that Maybe a new Mario game. Maybe we see some more of the Mario movie I have no idea we could see a bunch of things in this director because I don't know if we're gonna get another one Until September but what I do know is that tears of the kingdom is Causing me to not be able to follow my own rule I'm not hyping responsibly. I'm scared that I'm not hyping responsibly. I'm scared about being disappointed. I Am scared About a lot of things with this direct and all of that fear comes from Me being hyped But you know what? For this direct, I'm just gonna let myself enjoy the hype I've decided as I get to the end of this video I'm taking off my hyper-sponsibly new clothing the sunglasses are being removed from my eyes from my brain And we're hyping it to the moon and back baby because you know what? It might be another five six years before we get our next console the Zelda game That's how long it might be So I'm gonna bask in this a little bit. I'm gonna enjoy it. I'm gonna ride this hype train I'm gonna hopefully absolutely love everything they show about this game at the Nintendo Direct be jumping out of my seat live Reacting with all of you guys getting super hyped and excited and and gonna be Hyping it to the moon this game baby if you're tired to hear about tears of the kingdom on my channel if you're tired of Talking Zelda you are at the wrong channel. I'm just gonna tell you right now Tears of the kingdom is gonna be getting covered Almost daily from the moment this direct happens until the game comes out and maybe even for multiple months after because the bottom line is This is my coup de gras this year This is What started my journey and is bringing my journey full circle here in 2023? I'm 36 years old, baby Been doing this gosh 24 years and it's happening with Zelda I'll take that baby. I'll take that you guys let me know how you're feeling about this direct Are you nervous? Are you excited? Are you trying to hypersponsibly?  Oh, man. It's just it's bubbled in there. I want to let it out So expect a very very happy Nate all week long and if the direct gets announced on Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever Just my video on that is going to be so high energy Because no matter how tired I might be that day the direct itself is gonna Fly me to the moon. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video


Hey, I've got a question for you. Do you know how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It's the same thing with writing. In today's episode of Code Club, I'm gonna show you my process for getting out a first rough draft. Hey folks, I'm Patch Loss and welcome to Code Club. In each episode, I try to show you how I apply principles of reproducible research to the analysis of an interesting biological question. Today's episode is gonna be a little bit different because it's not really going to be showing things that are explicitly about reproducible research. Instead, it's gonna be about communicating research. And I guess if I had to think about it a little bit harder, I would say that does have a lot to do with reproducibility because if I can't communicate what I have done in basic prose and basic text, then it's not gonna be reproducible no matter what, right? And so today, I'm gonna show you how, again, I eat that elephant one bite at a time. Now, in the last episode, I talked about forming an outline and how powerful an outline can be to quickly get ideas down on papers to help me to conceptualize the story. In today's episode, I'm gonna show you how I start to flesh out that outline to create a really solid first draft. Before we get going, I want to introduce you to an idea that really blew my mind. I heard about this for the first time a couple years ago, and it wasn't until in the last year when I actually listened to the audiobook version of the book, Houston, We Have a Narrative, that things really started to crystallize for me. It's the technique that was proposed by Randy Olson, and he is very quick to acknowledge that this is not him, but he popularized it. The idea is ABT and but therefore. And these three things are key to telling a good story. And yes, when we're talking about science, we have a story to tell. If we don't tell a story, it's gonna be boring. No one's gonna read it. People love to say, oh, but my data will speak for themselves. Like, no, they won't. Data, their digits, their numbers, their pictures. We need to put them into context for the reader so that the reader knows what we are trying to say. What do the data say? And so again, this ABT and but therefore structure really helps us to tell a story. So let me try to tell you a story. Okay. So once upon a time, there was this girl and the girl lived in Kansas and the girl lived with her aunt and uncle and they lived on a farm and everything was going really well. And one day there was a mean lady and she wasn't really nice and the girl hit her head and the girl had a dream and the girl met, you know, these various characters while she was having a dream and a bunch of other stuff happened and the girl woke up and her life was changed. So you may have heard me say the word and a bunch in there, right? And perhaps you recognize that story a little bit. If you grew up in the United States, I guess that story is fairly familiar. But let me tell you to it a little bit differently, right? So there was this girl and she grew up in Kansas and it was a really kind of like dust bowl type environment and she lived with her aunts and uncles and we don't really know why but, you know, she doesn't quite feel like she belongs there.   Therefore the girl tried to run away and the girl found this kind of carnival barker kind of guy who was selling snake oil and he didn't really have a lot of answers for her. So she decided to go back home to her aunt and uncle and there was a storm and she got hit on the head and instead of waking up on her own bed, instead she woke up in this magical land.  Go see the movie. It's The Wizard of Oz, right? So the first example where it's a bunch of ands and and and and is very boring and that's oftentimes how we write a lot of our papers. Grab a lot of abstracts off of PubMed and you'll see the written in this and and and and right. There's no tension. There's no conflict.  There's no motivation. If you can throw in those butts, those butts, and I don't you don't have to say but every time there's other words that you can use in place of but you build that conflict. You kind of drive the story and then how does that conflict get resolved with a therefore, right? And so if we think about this in terms of science, right, we could lay out our our literature in the introduction and we could say, you know, we know all these things and but there's this gap in knowledge. There's this thing. We just don't know yet. Therefore, I'm gonna propose to do this study, right? So in that first couple paragraphs of your introduction, you see an and but therefore, right? And then we move on to our results section and the results section can also tend to be very andy, right? Where each section is a different set of facts and they're all kind of clumped together, but that's kind of boring, right? Instead you might say, so the first thing we were interested in was this question. So therefore, we did this experiment and then the next paragraph, but you know, you could think about it this other way. Therefore, we did this other experiment and we saw this other result, right? And so you kind of have this and but therefore that very easily flows in our scientific writing. Again, if you read most of our papers, you don't see that. Now the flip side of that, but I don't think we were on the risk of but is on my mind, is kind of the and, but, but, but, but, but, but there's just way too much conflict going on and nothing ever gets resolved, right? So I don't know if you've seen this latest Pixar movie Soul, which was very sweet, but as I was watching it, I now can't help watch movies and think about this and but therefore structure and they just kept going but, but, but, but they just kept being new conflict that took you on to different tangents of the story. And eventually everything gets resolved, but it's like way too complex and way too hard for at least me to keep track of much less, you know, eight year old kids in my house. So there is a balance that we need between and and and and, but, but, but, but, but, but, or and therefore, therefore, therefore, right? And I think having this and but therefore structure, something I'll try to show you as I think about my own outlining of my manuscript. Okay. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to show you how we take the outline from the last episode and I'm going to flesh it out a little bit more to bring on this and but therefore structure. And of course I would strongly recommend that you go check out Randy Olson's book, Houston, We Have a Narrative. It's really good. He's got all sorts of worksheets in there and help you to think about how you tell your story. Okay. So what I'd like to do is take the outline that we generated in the last episode and I'm going to take this first section of the results section and show you how I take this rudimentary outline and begin to pull it apart, make it bigger and make it more substantial. And hopefully as you'll, you'll see as I kind of develop this and develop some of the other paragraphs that it's a, it's a fairly easy way. I don't want to say it's easy, but it's a more direct way perhaps of generating a solid first draft that you can then go on and revise and refine and get into better shape. This first section of the results section, we're looking at Amplicon sequence variants, looking at 16S sequences within each genome that are unique. And the story I want to tell is basically that copy number varies by taxonomy, that we have wide variation in the number of copies in our genomes. The more copies that a genome has, the more variants it tends to have per genome. Also, we see that full length sequences have more variants than subregions. And as more sequences are added to the species, we actually see more variants appear. Okay, so those are kind of the four things. And as I kind of said that in thinking about it, it's very easy for me to get into and mode, right? I'm not a very good storyteller by nature, I think. I guess if I worked on it, I could get better. And so what I like to do as I'm kind of outlining this and fleshing out this outline is I like to put in in parentheses, you know, is this an and point, a but point or there for point? So what I'm going to start out with is to say to investigate the variation in the number of copies of the 16S gene per genome, as well as the intro genomic variation. Among copies of the 16S RNA gene. So I'm setting up the setting up the story, right? What I do. So this is an and, right? I obtained 16S sequences from the R&DB. Okay, and so again, I'm trying not to worry about typos. I'm also not trying to worry about formatting like italization or getting my jargon right. You know, normally I wouldn't say 16S sequences. I'd say 16S RNA gene sequences and I'd spell that out. But right now I'm trying to get the information out. And as you know, I'm great at typos. And so I'm trying not to worry about those typos just yet. I'm also not going to try to worry about specifics like specific numbers or values, or I'm not going to try to go and grab a link, you know, for like the URL for the R&DB. Because those things take, tend to take me away and I become like a dog and it's like squirrel, right? Or I'm like really, you know, distracted easily. And so some of the things I tend to do, we'll kind of turn off the internet. Literally, I'll like pull the ethernet cord off or I'll turn off my Wi-Fi and type. And it's amazing how much more productive I can be if I don't have those other distractions. So I'm trying to remove distractions, right? So I'm setting the stage, right? So I'm interested in the variation in the number of copies of the 16S gene per genome, as well as the intergenomic variation among copies in the 16S gene. So I went out and I got 16S sequences from the R&DB, right? That's my first bullet point, fleshing out my outline. And another and. So each genome had between, I'm going to say one, I don't know what it is. Probably something like mycobacterium tuberculosis would be a good example. So maybe I'll say like EG that and some other. I think it was like 20 something. I don't know what it was, but I'm not going to worry about it. I know I'm going to show the range, right? And I can put in then that taxonomy, that taxonomic name for that organism, right? Copies of the 16S are an aging, okay? Great. I found, and so this is another and. I found that as the number of copies of the 16S RNA gene increased. Within a genome, the number of variants of the gene. Also increased, right? So this is my other and, right? So as I'm looking at my checklist of things, I wanted to be sure to cover, right? I'm seeing that I've kind of taken on this first issue. More copies, more variants per genome is there. And maybe, maybe this one will refer to a figure. Again, I'm not wrapping this around figures. I don't know what figures I want yet. I know the story I want, but, you know, just like I can read a book and not have any pictures, I personally feel like I should be able to read a paper without having any figures. Yeah, the figures add something to the story, but they're not the story, right? And so maybe now I'll go into a specific and I'll do another and. And I'll say the average number of variants per genome was 0.xx per genome per copy number. And that's probably like some really clumsy word. Was that for full length sequences? And it was 0.xx for v4 copy this for v3 v4 and then that for v4 v5, right? So this gives a good overview of that first statement where we got the data giving a summary of the variation in the copies. You know what? And perhaps we might think of this, this third bullet as a kind of a but, but I found that the number of copies increase, the number of variants increased with the number of copies. Hmm, right? What am I going to do with that? Right. For now, I'll leave this with an and and maybe we'll come back in wordsmith things later. So what I'll do now is I'll put in a but statement and a therefore statement to try to pull this paragraph together to move on to the next step of the analysis. So I'll do but although, so although is a but word, right? Although bacterial species tended to have a consistent number of RN copies, copies per genome, I found that as more genomes were sampled, the number of variants grew. Okay. So not only do we have multiple variants per genome of a species, but when we look across many genomes of the same species, we have even more variants. So it's not that all equal, I have the same five variants. But as we saw, they have like a thousand variants, right? All right. So now we're ready for our therefore statement, right? What are we going to do with that? And you know what? Before I do that very that, I think I'm going to throw in a couple of examples to help bring this home for people. So for example, mycobacterium has one copy of the RN. Operon in its genomes, but across all, however many genomes there are, so I'll say all mycobacterium genomes in the RNDB, there were XXX variants of the 16S gene. Similarly, E.coli has seven copies per genome and five distinct versions per genome. And about I'll say about, again, I don't want to be too specific with the numbers. We can go back into the databases and sure up these numbers. But we know the story well enough that we can, again, talk about it. And that's what we're trying to do or what I'm trying to do in this first draft per genome. And when we consider all, I think there are 900 or so genomes in the RNDB, there were I think over a thousand variants of the 16S gene. Okay. And yeah, I've got all sorts of typos in here, but I'm really just worried about getting the story out.  You're not lying. You're just not, you're not getting a fully polished story, and that's fine. So therefore, these observations highlight the risk of selecting a threshold that is too fine when defining and I'll say OTU unit of inference, not sure what I want to call it at this point, because there is a risk because we may split a single genome into multiple OTUs. This does not make biological sense. Okay. And so what do you think the next paragraph is going to be about? It's going to be about using a distance threshold to avoid splitting a genome into multiple bins. But the risk is if we use too wide to course of a definition that we're going to be lumping together different bacterial species. And so this is what I do when I'm writing paragraphs for like a grant proposal, for a paper, for abstracts.  Instead of saying I did this and I wondered what about this and therefore I did this right and that would probably tell a far more compelling story but I'm just not quick enough on my toes and maybe I'm too lazy to rework my talks when I when I when I give a talk to think about this ABT structure. So again, I like putting in my ands and butts and therefores so I know that I don't have too many ands in a row. I don't have too many butts in a row and that I kind of tie everything together with a therefore. So what I've done is I've gone through and I've done this for all of the paragraphs in this paper that I'm working on. And again, this is an observation formatted paper and it's not a full length really long paper. Let me show you what I wound up with which is very close to what I have for this first result section and I'll show you what we do next. Okay, so here is the manuscript with my full outline and so this is my introduction my results section. You'll see I have three paragraphs or three sections here in my results section and then I have a conclusion section where there's one or two paragraphs. The other thing I've done is I've inserted kind of my budget for the number of words. So observations in M sphere, which is my target, I think is 1200 words and two figures. And so I figure I want the meat to be in the results and so that's going to be out 700 words. And then my intro and my discussion I'll make about or conclusions about 250 words each. So a nice a nice paragraph and I think that will work well and you'll see again that this was that first paragraph that I worked with you all on and I've cleaned it up a little bit maybe reworded things a little bit differently. But you can see I've got and and and but therefore right. And you can see here that I've got perhaps another and statement. A method to avoid splitting a single genome into multiple units of inference is to cluster six sequences together that are similar. Right. That's kind of a statement of fact. But this risks lumping things together that perhaps we biologically don't think should be lumped together. Therefore I assess the impact of the threshold for lumping and splitting six sequences. Right. And you can kind of see as I go through this what things look like. I've also got my conclusions my and but therefore as well. And and so that all I think looks pretty good. OK. Hopefully I'm not giving you a headache scrolling all over part. So there's so much I could say about how I like to write introductions how I like to write results and how I like to write discussions. Maybe one thing I'll say about each for an introduction I think of the intro as a funnel where I like to start broad and then bring the reader in to my specific problem my specific question. Right. So sequencing is a very powerful technique for describing and comparing microbe communities. Right. That's it's pertinent to the question that I'm interested in. It's broad. And then I'm going to bring this in really tight to the goal of this study was to quantify the risk of splitting a single genome into multiple bins and the risk of lumping together different bacterial species in the same bin and then perhaps I could say depending on the threshold that I use to define an operational taxonomic unit. Right. So starting broad identifying problems and driving a narrative forward to a very specific problem that I'm going to address in my study. In the conclusion and again this conclusion section is much shorter than a normal paper but I think the idea is still there that we start with a overall synthesis of the story so far. You don't want to restate all the results but you restate the synthesis or for the first time that you synthesize the results the results of this analysis demonstrate that there's a significant risk to splitting single genomes into multiple bins if you find a threshold is applied to finding out to you and we have this ongoing problem of what is a meaningful taxonomic unit of inference. Right. And so you kind of synthesize what you've said so far and then try to put it in kind of the broader context of what's going on in the field. How does this result advance the science further and maybe in a normal paper you'd have three paragraphs of that and then you would close with maybe you'd also have a paragraph with some caveats of like well you know these are the kind of the pitfalls of our analysis and something that we should look at later that's again like another but right and then the therefore paragraph the last the last statement in the paper that you're going to leave the reader with of why this was so important right and and so here I have surprisingly three percent performs pretty well for the operational definition that limits splitting of bacterial genomes and avoiding the lumping of bacterial species right so all of this is in flux and if you look at this and you look at the initial raw rough outline I had you probably saw things changed a little bit here and there and that's fine right like we're not writing in stone tablets we're writing in electrons here and I can very easily copy and paste and move things around and so I don't want to get too wedded to whatever I'm writing as as I go about doing this I've also kind of done a rough outline for my materials and methods and I've started thinking about my acknowledgement section okay so some of these sections you could see very easily lending themselves to becoming a paragraph right and so you know depending on how well um and not no well is not the right word but how much I've I've put thought into the actual wording of a sentence versus just um spitting out text to kind of put ideas down on the screen I can begin to concatenate sentences together to become paragraphs for example let me take this first paragraph of the results section again that I can remove this hyphen to investigate the variation and the number of copies blah blah blah we obtained reference sickness sequences from the rndb um and then I can remove that and each genome had between one and blah copies of the operon I found that as the number of copies of the success gene increased the number of variants of the gene found within each genome also increased hmm intrigue and within an individual genome there are an average of however many variants per copy of the full length 16s RNA gene and an average of whatever whatever and whatever variants when considering the v4 v3 4 v4 v5 regions of the gene period although a species tended to have a consistent number of 16s RNA gene copies per genome the number of total variants increased with the number of genomes that were sampled okay um and I might think you know I get two figures so maybe I have figure one here in this first paragraph and this would be like figure 1a and this would be figure 1b and I can then come to my examples for example tuberculosis generally has one copy of the gene per genome but across these genomes that were in the database there are so many versions of the gene similarly an E. coli genome typically has seven copies with between so many and so many distinct full length sequences per genome across all the E. coli genomes that have been sequenced I'll put an E. coli genomes that have been sequenced there are blah blah blah different variants of the gene therefore these observations highlight the risk of selecting a threshold for defining units of inference that is too narrow because it is possible to split a single genome into both bins which does not make biological sense okay and as I'm writing this you can still see that I struggle with language what do I want to call these things do I want to call them ASVs, OTUs, units of inference I don't care right now I will have to care before I submit the PDF before I submit the paper but for right now I'm just trying to get a rough draft and bam I've got that right here and so you can see that I went from a very simple outline to flushing it out thinking about this and but therefore structure and then piecing it together and a single paragraph all right so you'll see that I now have an introduction so this is that that opening paragraph of my introduction it's telling me that I've got 308 words so it's a little bit long I'm okay with that again we'll do some more editing later actually when I look at other observation papers from mSphere that are online they're never under 1200 words and I think I found one that was about 2400 words anyway this is that paragraph that we were working with earlier and so you can see that this is this is looking like a paper right it's a short paper and I've got lots of practice doing this I've done this before but you'll see it comes together and it's right at about 1200 words if I highlight everything Adam down here in the bottom will tell me it's at 1264 words so I'm happy with that I've got a materials and methods section that I've put in my general approach to writing this is I'll write the results and then I'll write the discussion the intro and then I'll write write the methods and materials section and then later I'll do the abstract and important section and I think I'll save that for a future episode okay so this is my first draft of the paper is it perfect no would I submit this no would I want you to read this in detail no because there is going to be errors there's going to be things that as I write I think about and I want to come back and reassess there's also you know a lot of kind of generic language in here that I need to come back and I need to find the actual values for so actually in the next episode I'll show you how we can use our code to fill in these what I have is X's my placeholders with real numbers okay so I love writing and sharing what I'm doing I've been really excited to see the feedback and response I've gotten to the previous two episodes about how I write and thinking about reproducibility that clearly resonated with a lot of people so if you have a new year's resolution for being a better writer hopefully these helped one other tip that I would give you on top of disconnecting all your internet and everything and removing all your distractions would be just to set a timer and there's some Japanese term for this that's like the word for tomato but you know set your timer to 15 minutes and write and and try to remove all distractions sit down and write and you'll find that even if you're the busiest person that you can write in 15 minutes and you'll get to the end of 15 minutes and you'll be like wow I was really going I can do another 15 minutes to tell you the truth this was actually really hard for me because I started working on this fleshing out the outline and writing it on the Monday after New Year's when it's just like uh I just went through like a thousand emails I really don't want to write but I had my outline and I took it piece by piece 15 minutes by 15 minutes and here you go I've got a first rough draft so I'm really excited to be able to share that with you and share this process with you so thanks again for watching and I really appreciate that I know you're here because you're a smart person and you want to learn how to improve your confidence in applying these skills of writing reproducible research and and and becoming a better scientist so stay tuned for the next episode where we'll talk about how to use our code to insert specific values from our data into a manuscript this is one of the things that I think is just so cool about our markdown and really has changed how my lab writes its manuscripts so tell your friends about Code Club be sure that you've liked and subscribed this video and we'll see you next time


Hi everybody Coco here. I am going to humor us all with a legal breakdown, a little bit of an analysis of the David Taylor, the JMMI, Joshua Media Ministries International, the legal issues that are going on, what started it all, and what's going on with that church currently as far as I know of the 25th of February 2021. I did review the docket again today, but that's a little bit down this path that I've never done before, this type of analysis here on YouTube, so bear with me. So we'll start with the deposition that everybody knows, and if you haven't, you probably won't be here. So in 2014, David was a witness in a case, and crazily it was a divorce proceeding, and the husband was brought in action and said, essentially, I'm not paying my wife any more money, because she's giving it all to JMMI, this church, and I'm also, I want to limit her custody rights with our children because she's bringing him, she's bringing our kids to this church, and the husband, Richard, didn't agree with what was going on, what the kids were saying about this church, and all the money that Deborah, his ex-wife, was spending on this church. So David, in this infamous now video from 2014, is a witness in this case because essentially what the husband is trying to prove through this deposition is that JMMI and David Taylor are frauds, and that they're using the money that is raised through this church on personal uses for the ministers, and in this deposition, many, many frivolous, dare I say, items are outlined how ministry money is being used. Versace, Louis Vuitton, BMW, Rolls-Royce, it's outlandish, and I'm not saying that there aren't other ministers that also really use church funds to do the same kind of thing, but what bothered me my background is that David lied through the entire deposition. He is the president, the CEO of JMMI, but was unable to answer very basic things about an organization, a church that he started. He's preaching the word of God, and not only with my legal background, but with my faith, this really upset me. If you can't tell me who's on your board of directors as a president and the CEO of a multi-million dollar organization, you have no business acting in that capacity, period. He couldn't name board members. He couldn't, you've watched it, you've laughed at it. I've been offended by it. So he wasn't, that wasn't a criminal proceeding. The lady who kicked ass, by the way, that attorney, she is a litigator and props to her because she did not back down from the very start. Strong, wonderful, smart woman. So she's not a prosecutor. She is a civil attorney, a family attorney who is merely trying to show that all these funds that her client Richard is giving to his ex-wife are being used on Louis Vuitton, on making a stretch limousine. All these crazy things. And not only that, the things that David's saying, he's, you know, his visitations from God and how many times that he's seen the Lord in person. Those are why she's asking all these questions is to show that he, and God bless him. I do pray for him. I think he said some really mean things. I think that a lot of people that are currently in his church, which if you haven't heard that has changed. And we'll get into that once we get into the Lewis case. The people that are currently involved in his church are so drunk on the Kool-Aid. And I really do feel bad and so many of them don't even understand what's happening. And we're here if any of those people need help, but that's a whole different thing too. And if you need anything jam in my cult watch, Richard Bedsick Hobo, there are a lot of people out there that are non-judgmental, really centered and are more than happy to talk to you about that. But I'm not here for that. I'm more here from for the legal perspective to break down some of the questions that I continue to receive. And I'm happy to field, but hopefully that that kind of clears up what that deposition is. It had nothing. And even though his taxes were brought up and all of those things, they weren't being asked as her being able to charge him criminally. Those were just ways to show the judge, judge. This guy's batshit crazy. And I don't want my wife bringing my kids to any more services. And I'm not paying her another flip and dime because it's going to this guy. So there were multiple parts of that deposition. It started in November 2014. It went on into January 2015. It's a dumpster fire. But it's good, but it's funny. Fast forward. One of the things that you know about is the residential center. Now, the residential center was owned by a gentleman named, we'll just say the last names, Lewis. And David and Jam and my ultimately ended up walking away from the residential center. I'm not sure why they abandoned it or they, they ultimately were evicted from it because they weren't paying. It was a contract for deed. And generally you're doing a contract for deed if you don't have conventional financing and you can't generally get conventional financing. If you don't have the credit score or the credit history. So they're buying. So Jam and my and David Taylor are buying this residential center on a contract for deed from Lewis. They're not paying. He evicts them. And then he brings a lawsuit in civil court. It has nothing to do with the divorce proceeding. Totally separate parties. Excuse me.  You didn't not only you didn't pay for when you stayed there. You also said you're going to buy it and you didn't. So there are multiple causes of action in a civil lawsuit and that one. So this one primarily has to do with breach of contract. There are some fraud allegations. That one is pending in St. Louis County in Missouri. That case started in 2018, May 2018. And now stop and think about that. We're almost three years out from when Lewis started this case. Based on my experience, Lewis has spent way too much money trying to go after essentially it's David Taylor for all this money. We'll get we'll get into the end of what I what I foresee happening at the end of this case. But it started in May 2018. There was a lot of floundering. David was not. He wasn't appearing for depositions. He wasn't producing records just like if you remember in the in the first case from 2014, David wasn't producing all these documents. And in a civil case, you have to produce those. It's how you resolve a case when you don't produce those. Then the parties can go before the judge and say, judge, we have a right to these documents. You have to bring a motion to compel and the judge will look at your request and say, OK, that's reasonable. That has to do with this case or you're on a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with your claims. You're not entitled to that. Well, that's what was happening with JMI in this Lewis case that started three years ago. If I had to guess, I bet Lewis has spent easily 60 to 80,000 in attorney's fees. Right. So David's dodging subpoenas. He's not answering discovery. It's called discovery. You exchange information information to resolve the case through written questions back and forth. You have to produce documents. I have to produce documents. And when David and JMI when they weren't doing it and just to back up, the only two defendants in this case are JMI and David E. Taylor. Michelle is not a defendant. This is not a criminal case. Michelle is merely the agent of record, which means that she accepts service on behalf of David, which if you have questions about that. And there's intricacies here and there's all these little don't get hung up in that. Only David, only JMI are the defendants in this case. So as David dances around and isn't producing documents, ultimately they're ordered. You have to produce this stuff. You don't produce this stuff. You can be held in contempt. If you want to know about contempt proceedings, what can happen to people? I actually had somebody thrown into jail once in a civil case.  Tony Leung in St. Paul, Minnesota, because a defendant in a case wasn't producing documents for me. And not for me, but for a client. We were entitled to them. You can be found and contempt in a civil case. Civil anyway, contempt, it's real. So he was compelled to bring or he was compelled to produce all this stuff. That motion was just granted in December of 2020. Now that that happened. Plaintiff, who is Lewis, the residential center owner. I know this is complex, but for those of you who are keeping up, I love it. All right. Lewis, who owned the residential center, he brought a motion and from the docket, the Missouri docket, you can't tell what kind of motion it was at this point. And the judge looks at it and he essentially says, you're not getting a hearing date.  And he ordered. So this was the plaintiff requested Lewis requested a hearing date on the 24th of. So yesterday, the day before and the judge said, Nope, you're not getting a hearing date. I'm bringing all you suckers in.  So he's bringing everybody in. I believe it's March 10th or 12th. It doesn't really matter. But so that's what's going on currently with the civil case and the residential center. Now, Jam and my recently changed their name. I don't even freaking know what it is. I keep saying KFC. But regardless of what it is, they recently changed the name of the church.  That's why you create a company. Okay. So if you get sued or whatever, you can't come and take my personal house. You can go after my business assets, but you can't go after me personally. How that applies here is they folded Jam and my, which means a defendant in this case is now essentially gone. And so now Lewis, the residential center owner is going to have to go after David personally to recover this money. And remember, David's like, Oh, I don't make any money. I make $30,000, $33,000, whatever asinine amount he claims to make a year. And why it complicates this case for Lewis is what Lewis would have to do to actually recover money against Jam and my now is he would have to prove that this new church, I call it KFC, that KFC is merely a shadow of Jam and my and in order to do that, it's like discovery. All of that starts again. And it took three years to get even here. So he has to he has to prove to the judge. Jam and my didn't fold. They just changed their name. And you guys, it may seem like you just say that to the judge. It doesn't work like that. It is complicated and contorted and crazy. And I actually like that stuff. That's my kind of but it's a it's a waste of money and it's a waste of time. So my theory on part of the reason why he David shuttered Jam and my is to not only shed whatever is going on with Lewis, but also any other outstanding financial obligations that that church may have had. Ultimately, even if Lewis gets a judgment in this case, a judgment is like, let's say it goes to a jury and the jury's like, David, you got to pay Lewis $2 million. Great. You got a judgment. Now what, you know what, you guys, they have to start all over again. And it's a collections process. And you know what you have to do? You have to start financial discovery all over again. Can you believe it? So they start another action to try to find where all the money is when the judgment is entered. Yeah, it's not like once you get a judgment, he has to write out a check or start counting out once before he leaves the courthouse. You've got a piece of paper and then you have to go and force it. You have to find assets and then you have not only do you have to locate them, guys, then you have to move on them. You have to move on bank accounts. You have to move on vehicles. It is highly technical and it is, I mean, it's the Wild West. So my prediction, my prediction, unless Lewis has a lot of time to waste and even more money, he's going to drop the case because David, he doesn't play by the rules. And that's what pissed me off in the very beginning is that David doesn't respect the legal system. Not only that, he doesn't respect the Lord and he certainly doesn't respect other people. And that's how I got interested in these cases. And keep in mind, we all make mistakes.  Swearing on this video is one small but still pray for him. And you guys, I really hope everybody's doing good. We're almost through this pandemic. If you need anything, if you have any questions, shout out. But most importantly, stay safe, stay healthy. Be good. And I'll talk to you guys soon.