Today's lecture is about one large category of government intervention in the economy. Interventions that target vice. By vice I don't necessarily mean to judge any of the goods or activities I'm going to mention but they are widely regarded by many society as being undesirable and therefore labeled as vice. Things like drugs, alcohol, prostitution, gambling, guns, tobacco, under-saving, bad diets, and so on and so forth. Most societies employ a large range of policies, multiple policies, in attempt to reduce at least some of these vices if not all of these vices and much more. These policies include outright bans, prohibitions of the goods where they can't be legally bought and sold, in some cases milder policies such as regulation, minimum purchase ages or taxes or restrictions on time and place of use as occurs with alcohol in many instances. Sintaxes that is excessively high taxes on particular commodities is another common approach to dealing with vice. In other cases media campaigns, age restrictions and so on. So libertarians are opposed to all these policies that attempt to target to reduce so-called vice. We oppose them to varying degrees because they don't all do the same degree of harm but broadly speaking we believe that individuals should be choosing how much they want to consume or not consume something that other people might happen to label as vice. And a key theme is going to be that the evils of the vice, whatever they might be, whatever your view, are typically less than the evils of the policies that try to reduce those vices and so the best thing to do is to let people in society make their own decisions. So the structure of today's lecture will be the following. I'm going to focus mainly on drug prohibition because that's a very important example of such a policy. It's one of the most dramatic. It occurs around the world and it does very very large amounts of harm. So I'm going to start by talking about that in some detail. Then I'll take that general framework and talk about prohibitions of other vices which are fairly common although not as common. Alcohol has been banned at times for example but it's not currently banned in that many countries. Then we'll talk about other policies, milder policies such as age restrictions and syntaxes and so on and think about whether even though that might be less bad than prohibition, they are desirable in themselves either. Then I want to bring this analysis discussion of guns because many people would make a sharp distinction between much of what I have to say about vice prohibitions. These are the drugs or alcohol or prostitution or gambling and prohibitions of guns and I want to argue that exactly the same considerations come into play and so a logically consistent view is to oppose all prohibitions including those against guns. So focusing first on drug prohibition. What's the argument for drug prohibition? The standard claim is that drug use is bad for individuals. It's also bad for society in some ways not always well specified because drug use can harm your health, drug use can harm your productivity.  That's one argument. Broad brush drug use is bad. In addition, the people arguing for prohibition should be saying very explicitly that they believe prohibition reduces drug use. Both steps are necessary to even think about banning something even if you think something's bad. If the policy doesn't do anything to reduce the amount of that activity, then it's hard to see how it makes sense. So there are two main arguments drug use is bad and prohibition reduces drug use. So the consequentialist libertarian approach has sort of two categories of responses. First, the evidence suggests the prohibition is not great at reducing drug use. Now, it certainly seems to reduce it to some degree in some instances, although in many other cases, there's not much evidence that reduces it at all. This evidence consists of comparisons across states that have decriminalized marijuana comparisons across countries that might have decriminalized or legalized a some or all drugs. None of that evidence is a slam dunk. We don't have nice clean controlled experiments and economics to test the propositions we're interested in. But based on what we know, it doesn't seem that there's a major effect. Maybe there's a 10 or 20% effect, but there's not a dramatic effect from prohibition and reducing use in the first place. Still, there's probably some. And so it's interesting and important to ask, Well, is that reduction something society should want or not? Or is it something that we should in fact oppose because we're making people worse off by reducing their drug use? So the three different perspectives on policy and use that are that are useful to think about. One view says people are rational, they know what they're doing, they know what they want, they understand the consequences, they understand that drugs might be unhealthy, might affect their productivity, might be addictive and so on and so forth. But they understand all that and decided to assume the risks. Okay, so the rational economic man, and that scenario, of course, any government induced reduction in drug use is a mistake is bad, not good, because it's preventing people from doing something they get benefit or satisfaction from just as a ban on apples would be harming people who happen to like apples. Now, very few people think that everyone's behavior all the time conforms with a standard rational perspective. But not too many people think that no one's behavior ever conforms to the rational perspective. And so we should admit at least the possibility that some drug users are making themselves better off in the same way that people having a glass of wine that people are engaged in bungee jumping that people who are eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream that people who are engaged in all sorts of risky activities which sometimes do cause harm, nevertheless have made perfectly rational reason decisions and, you know, are taking risks in a reasonable way. Now, our turn into view is that they're at least substantial numbers of people who sometimes or tip or typically make irrational decisions about drug use, and that allegedly justifies policies to try to reduce drug use. That's a very unpersuasive perspective. First, once you start down the slippery slope that says government knows better than individuals about what's irrational and what's in the interest of particular people, you've opened the door for all manner of government interventions to mandate how much people save, what kind of health care they get, how much they eat, you know, more what education they can receive, what books they can read, and so on and forth, or it's a Pandora's box of undesirable government interventions, and many of those undesired things have occurred in lots of societies throughout history, all in the name of helping the people who are allegedly making bad decisions. So the irrational use perspective that's not persuasive at all, it raises many more questions than it answers. A different perspective is that drug use can sometimes generate negative effects on innocent third parties. Someone who is quite rationally making decision use drugs on his or her own might also drive under the influence and harm others might sort of operate heavy machinery in a business and cause accidents and things like that. The economist word for that is externalities, effects on innocent third parties, and that's also offered as a reason to try to reduce drug use. So come back to that in a moment. I first want to say whatever negatives there might be, from irrational use to individuals, from externalities to innocent third parties, those have to be weighed against whatever negatives prohibition might have. And so we need to think about that side, the second response to the prohibitions argument before we can give an overall sort of evaluation. So the simple point is that prohibition has huge cost. Prohibition generates lots of violence. Why? Because it drives the market underground. In underground markets people can't resolve their disputes with lawyers, with arbitration, with courts and so on. So they typically have resorted to violence, shooting each other's kneecaps and so on. And much of that violence spills over to innocent third parties. Much of that makes inner cities more dangerous. Much of that is harmful way beyond just the people who are involved in the drug trade. That's a very serious cost. And empirically, prohibition seems to explain a lot of the differences in violence across countries and within countries over time. Prohibition generates other types of crime because police are focused on enforcing drug laws, not on enforcing more standard laws against murder, theft, arson, so on and so forth. Prohibition generates corruption. In legal settings, when people disagree with government policy, they lobby their legislatures, they make campaign contributions, they take out public information campaigns or ads in the Wall Street Journal and so on. You can't do that with a cop who's arrested you or judges. You have to attempt corruption. Prohibition creates a huge incentive for corruption in the criminal justice system. Prohibition almost certainly harms the health of anybody who continues to use drugs, despite the fact that it's prohibited, which seems to be a substantial fraction of users, because in illegal market, you know what doses you're getting, you know that it's pure and not adulterated with all sorts of other chemicals, but you don't know that in illegal market. And typically, there is high uncertainty about product quality, about product purity and so on. And many people have accidental overdoses and poisonings because they're buying these impure versions of the drugs that would be safer if they were sold in a legal market. One very specific example along those lines is that the spread of HIV in many countries owes a lot to drug prohibition, not just to sexual activity, because prohibition makes drugs expensive, people have an incentive to want to inject them, because that gives you a big bang for the buck, it makes it effectively cheaper, then share dirty needles, exacerbated by the fact that prohibition encourages societies to ban the sale of clean syringes and pharmacies and things like that. So people share dirty needles, spread HIV, that's a direct result of prohibition. It would happen much less often, if at all, in a legal market where manufacturers, even for those people who did want to inject, would be selling amounts of heroin packaged with clean, disposable syringes. There would never be any particular incentive for people to use, to share needles and therefore risk HIV, hepatitis and so on. Prohibition restricts medical uses, doctors are worried they're going to get slammed by the DEA if they prescribe appropriate amounts of pain medication for their patients. And so they hold back, people suffer, and other uses such as marijuana can't be investigated properly by scientific trials, because current policy makes that impossible to do. Civil rights, race relations are a huge issue, all sorts of standard procedures that we think of as being valuable and enshrine the Constitution have been abridged mildly or enormously in the name of enforcing the drug wars. Drug laws are hard to enforce. You have willing participants to all the trades. You don't have a natural complainant the way you have for a crime of theft or murder or something like that. The people who bought and sold the drugs aren't going to go down to the police station and say, hey, that guy sold me drugs. Of course they're not going to do that, so you can only attempt to punish drug crime, to catch it with undercover bus buys with no warrants and things like that. And that inflames, infringes civil liberties. Imposing the frisk and stop and frisk and things like that differentially on people of particular races or ethnicities is going to inflame racial tension. It's certainly a big part of the violence we see police use in certain kinds of stops. So those are also cost negatives of prohibition. So the overall evaluation says some people may well be making mistakes in using drugs. And that's too bad. And there's no reason that private individuals, their friends, their family, their doctors, their coaches can't attempt to nudge them into changing their behavior when it when it's appropriate. And certainly some people accidentally harm others by misusing drugs, just as some people do that with alcohol. But it's very hard to imagine that since the reduction in use we get is pretty modest. And since there are much milder policies that could try to target these undesirable uses such as driving under the influence, like driving on the influence laws, the treatment of prohibition as a way to reduce drug use is way, way worse than the disease. If anything should be employed to reduce use, it should be something much milder prohibition generates tons and tons of serious cost compared to any plausible benefit. So let's now talk about other vices. The analysis is going to be essentially the same. And we've seen lots of examples that confirm exactly this analysis. So the US and a few other countries had serious alcohol prohibitions in their histories. All the types of negatives from prohibition I've mentioned were there to quite obviously in dramatic fashion during alcohol prohibitions, the violence, the crime, the corruption, and so on. The poisonings was quite common. One way that people got alcohol during prohibition was to take industrial alcohol and try to re-nature it. So it was consumable, but it didn't always happen correctly.  And lots of people were damaged by that. When we look at markets for prostitution, where those are legal, they are less violent, they don't lead to as much transmission of HIV and other things like that. When they're illegal, all the standard negatives of a prohibition that I discussed occur. Same for gambling. 80 years ago, gambling had all this violence. It was underground. It was in Las Vegas, where it was controlled by the mob. Now that gambling is run by lots of private entities and also by lots of state governments, there's no incentive to do it illegally and gambling is not associated with any of those negatives that we've seen before. So all vice prohibitions are basically impossible to justify from the consequences perspective, in addition to from any other perspectives, the set of harms they do is far worse than any benefits they could be providing. Now let's think about other policies that might be employed toward vice, subsidized treatment, harm reduction policies, sin taxes, public health campaigns, medicalization of marijuana, say decriminalization, legalizing some drugs only, such as marijuana, only age restrictions and so on. So there's two simple things to say about all those other policies. First, if we did those and only those instead of prohibition, we would almost certainly have a much better situation. We would have a legal market. Most of the standard protections that come from a legal market would be in place. And so if you could substitute current prohibition for some combination of these other much milder policies, that's almost certainly a step, a very useful step, big step in the right direction. Okay, but each of those things should have its own analysis, just because it's less bad than prohibition doesn't mean that any one of those is a good policy. Take sin taxation as an example. Sin taxation by raising the price of drugs or alcohol, okay, does disincentivize people to consume them. But it's going to do that to two groups. It's going to do that both to some people who might be misusing drugs or alcohol. So that's potentially desirable for society if it reduces people, prevents people from consuming alcohol and driving under the influence and harming others. But of course, it's also going to harm everybody who consumes alcohol and doesn't do any harm to others. So to know that you're on net getting a benefit, you'd have to know exactly how many people are in each group and so on and so forth. It's very hard to know that you're actually having any net benefit, even with something as relatively neutral as a syntax is relatively, you know, non-distorting. And of course, syntaxes don't always stay small.  So is it reasonable to consider these milder things such as a minimum legal drinking age, mild sin taxation and so on as something in addition to beyond as a deviation from pure laissez-faire, it's perfectly reasonable to consider them. But they should get careful analysis and should have to pass their own sort of consequentialist test. Now let's just talk briefly about guns. I had an experience about 20 years ago now where I had already been writing about drug prohibition and advocating for legalization pretty widely. And a friend told me he saw my article about this and he liked it and he agreed with me. But then he gave me this slightly sort of nervous look and said, now you're not one of those nuts who actually thinks that guns should be legal, are you? So at that point I actually hadn't thought much about it. I was sort of becoming more and more libertarian at that point or thinking more about libertarian issues at that point. But I thought for a second and said, well, I guess I am one of those nuts because every argument you can make against drug prohibition, you can make against gun prohibition.  If you have a black market for guns, you're going to divert the police from going after other sorts of issues. You're going to have quality control problems where the guns don't work properly and blow up in people's faces because they they miss function and things like that. So all the arguments for opposing drug prohibition apply with similar or the same force for gun prohibition. And that shows something crucial, which is the evil of prohibition is not the substance that it's prohibiting. The negatives created are those disincent those incentives created by the policy. So whether you outlaw blue jeans, ice cream, coffee, cocaine, whatever, you're going to get this huge range of negative effects. Now I'm not going to take a stand here. We'll get to it later in the course about mild gun controls, about a minimum purchase age of 18 or a three day waiting period or so on. What we've said here doesn't automatically say that such mild policies are necessarily undesirable. They will take their own analysis, which we'll get to. So to sum up today, governments expend huge effort attempting to reduce vice, all sorts of things that have gotten labeled as being bad that we shouldn't do and that's society or the government needs to prevent us from doing. Prohibition is the most extreme version of those policies. These efforts are not necessarily even well motivated. They don't take account of the fact that some people get benefits from these things, that some people that taking a view as to which of these things are good or bad leads government into incredibly uncomfortable and excessive positions. And it doesn't recognize that regardless of your view on say whether using drugs is a good thing or a bad thing to do or violates your religious norms or whatever, the treatment is almost certainly worse than the disease and so we should keep drugs legal, we should keep all these vices legal perhaps with mild other policies directed toward them because the evils come from the policy not from the vice per se. Thank you very much.


Hi everyone, Joe for jasperjasecasebrakes.com doing a quick little Mosaic football pack right here to give away the last six spots in that NT football break Which is sold out and coming up in a separate video. So look out for that Now as always we're gonna do the break itself first a very big. Thank you to everybody who got involved There's 32 teams right here And let's roll it. Let's randomize it six and a four ten times for names and teams different dice roll for the giveaway To that's from a different break Well, so eager to do this break. I didn't even set up the spreadsheet. All right, so there's Daniel down to Tom Daniel down to Tom after ten times Title of the spreadsheet set up. All right, and once again six and a four ten times for the teams And 10th and final time saints down to Cardinals Sixers up 20 cruising We're gonna even up the series All right, so here's the first half of the list or I'm not gonna read off all the team names right here I saved my voice for NT, but there's the first half of the list right here, and there's the second half of the list right there There you go Jason what's going on Let's just print and rip Get to that NT break as quickly as possible. So here's break 61 I marked the mark that pack right there and there's the NT we're gonna do half case of this fresh case And there's the final printout right there. Thanks everyone for making this happen. Then we'll re-randomize Everybody's names and see who's gonna win spots in that break which is coming up in a separate video it's Cameron Jordan and a White prism Jordan Hicks 25 Nice, that's a cool-looking parallel for Tom and the Cardinals All right now the important part. Let's flip back here. Let's grab everybody's names again from Tom all the way down to Matthew New Set up the new dice. There's some new dice. I was from a previous break new dice new list So it's gonna be the top six after seven Good luck One two three four five six and Seven and final time after seven now from seven on down very close Terry, but no cigar Sorry, but from seven on down sad times. I appreciate everybody trying though We'll get him next time. Happy times though for the top six. You're in that NT break coming up next Daniel Tom Daniel Andrew Daniel and Tom So congrats to the top six. Thank you for giving this a shot everybody. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break Bye-bye


Hi, Dr. Gundry here. I don't know about you, but I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. It seems like it was only yesterday that I was here in the Gundry MD kitchen, showing you how a heart surgeon carves a turkey. It's right here on my YouTube channel if you're curious. And now, Thanksgiving's right around the corner, again. So today, before you go too deep into planning, I want to talk about a few of the best and worst things on your Thanksgiving table. That way, you know what landmines to avoid and where to indulge. Of course, you could do a completely lectin-free Thanksgiving. There are recipes to help with that on my blog and right here on my YouTube channel. But what if you're traveling over the holidays or if you're not in charge of cooking? Let's start with the bad news. The Thanksgiving foods you need to avoid. It should come as no surprise that most of these are heavy, starchy dishes. First, and for a lot of people, this is the worst news. Stuffing. It's everybody's favorite side dish. But here's the truth about stuffing, even gluten-free cornbread stuffing. It's all bread, and it's designed to stuff you and make you fat. Plus, lots of stuffing has antibiotic-loaded sausage and sugary-dried fruits to make it even less healthy.  I'm right there with you. That's why I came up with the Millet Stuffing recipe featured right here on my YouTube channel. Second, mashed potatoes. They are poison on poison. Seriously. Potatoes are part of the nightshade family. And if that's not enough, you're drowning them in milk that has casein A1. Not good for your gut. But Dr. Gundry, I love potatoes, especially with gravy. That's another thing. Gravy isn't especially gut-friendly either, especially when it's made with box broth or artificial powdered mix and thickened with a whole lot of flour. Of course, that doesn't mean missing out entirely. Make yourself a big bowl of mashed cauliflower and thicken your gravy with tapioca starch or even a bit of heavy cream instead of flour. Third, pumpkin pie. Now, here's the frustrating thing about pumpkin pie. A lot of magazines and blogs and even some nutritionists claim pumpkin pie is the healthiest pie because it's only got a bottom crust and it's a little bit lower in calories. But pumpkin is one of those fruits, yes, fruit that's native to the New World, meaning your body doesn't quite know how to process it. And that can lead to a whole range of uncomfortable digestive issues. Now, if possible, I suggest skipping the desserts. But I understand it's hard to resist mom's apple pie. So if you've absolutely got to have a slice of something, go for a thin slice of sweet potato pie. Don't eat the crust. Not available?  It'll kick your sweet craving and leave you with the energy to wash the dishes. Last on the bad foods list, green bean casserole. But Dr. G, it's the only vegetable dish on our table. Well, it's time to change that. Seriously. With all the great vegetables in season right now, it amazes me that people still take canned green beans, dump in high sodium soup, top it with fried onions and cheese and serve that on a special occasion of all things. It's not just that beans have lectins, though that is problematic. It's the combination of beans, additives and preservatives, tons of salt and unhealthy fats. Not good. Instead, go with Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, roasted root vegetables, even a green salad. But if all that's bad, what's on the safe list? Well, sweet potatoes are safe as long as you scrape off any marshmallows or other sugary topping. If your family serves Brussels sprouts, those are also a pretty safe bet, especially if they're cooked pretty simply and not tossed in maple syrup or another sugary glaze. You know, veggie dishes like broccoli, spinach and roasted asparagus are also safe bets as are salads. And feel free to go for that turkey. Especially if it's a heritage bird or in a bind, a kosher bird. And just skip the gravy unless you know how it's been thickened. Now one other thing, possibly the most important thing, enjoy yourself. And if you do eat something or lots of things that aren't the best for you, don't see it as failure. Instead, make a plan to do something especially healthy the next day. Start your morning with a glass of vital reds. Be fast until lunchtime, especially if you overdid it. And do something physically active, like a game of football with a family or a long walk with the dogs. One bad meal doesn't have to ruin your day or your health. So happy Thanksgiving and thanks for being part of the Gundry MD family. I'm actually thankful that you're here. Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. Thanks for watching. Click the circular channel icon to subscribe and make sure you don't miss a single video. Click on the left to watch another great video and don't forget to visit my website for more of my best tips. Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.


Welcome. This is Melissa Arma with Stock Swoosh and I'm reviewing the second week of January, the week expiring January 14th, the results with a beginner risk of this second week. So this is all the options trades from the gap options newsletter. And if you took a beginner risk, which we're going to go over, 86% win ratio and beginner trade of profits of 11,890. So let's go over each of the trades. This is everything expiring this Friday the 14th. So there were 10 winners, zero break evens, two losers and 12 trades. The average beginner risk here I'm using, again, you can risk less, you can risk more is a thousand though for this average return and investment 121% and again 86% win ratio with profits of 11,890. I get this question all the time, you know, because again, I've been doing this a very long time now. You don't have to take an advanced risk. You can take a beginner risk. Again, I'm using a thousand dollars here to show people what a thousand dollars can do. If you want to risk that in the trades, it's an average, but you can risk more, you can risk less. I think a thousand is a good amount to get you some nice size and some of the things that are lower price expensive and then some things that end up costing slightly more, you will be able to still get, you know, it's a good range, I think. Actually, I think between a thousand and 1500 is actually a good range. So let's go over them. I don't have the charts in here, but I will flip back and forth to show you. This was an active week. This was called on January 5th, the QQQ's 394 puts that expired on the 14th. Again, we're usually doing the weeklies. So let's look at this. It was a put, it was a short. It costs $4.50. It was a little pricy for the QQQ's. Two contracts. Risk is 900 again, because you have to stay within the defined risk. Again, if you had taken three, that would have been okay too. It's isn't an exact science. You've got to stay close within the range. Like, you can't take 10 and risk 4500 if you're trying to risk a thousand. Do you know what I mean? Should a 22 profit of 3500, you would have made 389% return to investment. So let's look at that. I called this one 1030 in the morning, 394 QQ's. So let's pull it up. Line here tonight. So there you go. So I called this 1030. Oh no. No, here's 15. Here we go. 1030. And there we go. So again, we're doing momentum. A put is a short. You can see how this fell. And it was the 394's. So that trade worked. It was a nice move. Then we did the Facebook puts called this the same day, 330s. Again, this fell with the market. $5 was the cost to contracts risk 1000 sold at 14 profit 1800 return to investment 180%. Another nice trade. Again, sometimes I will call multiples. If I see we're going to get a market move, which I did here. Now let's pull up Facebook 15. Remember this week, but let's just look at it. Well, this is so crazy. Look at how well it goes. It was more than a month ago now because this was because this had the earnings and it's tanked on the earnings. But look at this was like 100 points above. Fifth. Wow, this is really taking forever. The fifth show here. So you can see again, 330s right there. Got the drop again. Boom. And this may even not even look like much, but it was it was a nice trade.  So again, I'm very good at reading the market. If I see the market direction is going to go up or down or reading the gap in the market either a bullish gap or a bearish gap.  That's what I did with this. That's what I did with this one too. So the two 80 Nivinias expire the 14th. It was puts this was a short this drop too. So this was a little pricey, but again, it's Nivinias $8 for one contract. So you can take one, sold a 22, 1400 profit, 175% return and investment. Again, beautiful sell off along with the market and everything else that dropped. Then the next day I called Netflix. You can pull that up. This was this again, looks nowhere near like this price because this had bad earnings, 550 puts, one six again, similar drop off. So you can do one that costs 1100. So the 22, 100% return investment, take it in, get out. Let's look at this one. This was one six. Again, this, this has had earnings, fell big on the earnings. So this, I mean, these price points, isn't it interesting how going back like, I didn't even think about this before because I didn't put the charts in here. Like even looking at this now, what has happened to some of these stocks since the first part of the year, since before all the earnings came out in these things. I mean, they've absolutely, they look kind of cataclysmic now. I mean, it's just been a catastrophe for these things. It's really something. This date is taking so long. My internet must be bogged down tonight. Oh yeah, I remember this day. So it was this gap here. Yeah. But actually we could have done that here. But anyways, I didn't call this one until here. So this was the five fifties and there's a drop. Then we did the QQQs that same day too. Again, sometimes I'll stack them. Then we do the three eighties. Beautiful. Five dollars for two, a thousand sold, 1100, 1200 profit, 120% return on investment. Again, so you see just, I'm just going to go back here. Like I had called the day before the 394s. This was the same expiration. Then I called the three eighties. Like I could see it was on the move. Anyways, nice drop, same drop. Just a nice, beautiful momentum to the downside. Then the 466 spies, which was the six, it was around 10 o'clock, 470 cost two contracts, 940, sold at 950, profit 960, 102% return on investment. Now let's look at the spy. So this was the six. Again, I saw the QQs were really going to go. This was January. So again, this is more than a month ago. Stuff like I've got to be my internet here. This is taking so long. It's really taking a long time. Anyway, six right there. Get the drop. Get the drop. So it was the 466s. And then a Friday called the Apple 172.50s. Again, you see how like I'm stacking these as we were going, going, going, cost 250, four contracts, risk a thousand, sold at 475, profit 900, return investment 90%. So again, all of these I called these things with the market. Then on Friday also called the 460 spies. Again, this was on the move. So remember the Thursday I called the 466s, 250, four contracts a thousand, sold at 550, profit 1200. You could have made 120% return investment. So whether you take $1,000 risk or a $5,000 risk or a $10,000 risk, it's, it has to do with the size of your account and your comfort level with risk, but you can, you could have taken one contract and was $250 and still made money. I made 300 bucks. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that actually. Then on Monday I called another strike and I called the 375s. It was just a beautiful move. This one did not work. So this was what happened with this one, 375. Well, I remember what happened with this one. This was up, but you would have had to scalp it to get out. And I don't normally trade them that way. Yeah. This was the Monday. Here's what it did. You see how that was up? So we opened, dropped, low was 369. I think some people did get out. I think some people did get out of that. I do remember this day. This was the Monday.  It opened at 370 42 dropped to 369 and change and then bounced. But my expectation was that it was going to continue. And we ended up continuing here. We did, but this expired on the 14th. But anyways, I do think some people did get out there, but I, you know, my expectation was that we were going to roll over and we did, we did, but it took into the following week. Then Netflix 530s again, Monday the 10th pre-market. I sent this out. This was all that same shebang 575 two contracts, 1150 sold at 11,050 profit. This was a nice drop off. This didn't follow through. Let's look at that Netflix. Again, this is all feels like so long ago because I mean, if you look at the price of this, this is, you know, to do something at 530, this was the 10th and this did go down into the drop here. This was, it was a nice move there. Again, you see broke 520 and that was the 530 puts. So even though the cues didn't do that right that week, this didn't, then a money, the spy 455s again, this did drop to just like the cues had the bounce. You could have got out of this with profit, but I really thought it would continue. It took into the following week. But anyways, this was a loss. If you held it, if you scoped it, you could have got out with money. Tesla, if you have a certain risk, you couldn't do the straight. Why? It costs $31, $31 per contract. So this was the 980s. Let me go find that one. Again, this is all on that day. Oh, this is going to take forever because this is just taking it. I'm going to take forever for this data on there. This was the 10th same. So anyways, you couldn't have done it, but you see this did the same thing as the cues here, but you have to be strict to your rules. So this would have been $3,100 for one. So you can't do it if your risk is a thousand. You know what I'm saying? But that flipped around just like that cue did that Monday cue. 458 spies, you could have made money in this. This did drop really fast, really big for the price of it. Again, this had a much, much, much, much, much, much larger move. Sometimes when you're doing things farther away, the benefit is you pay less, okay? You pay less for it. And if it moves really quick, really fast and it's far away, it does end up being a much bigger return on investment. Now it's not always that I call these like this on the same day or similar ones, but sometimes I do. We did that a couple of times with Netflix actually. So this was only 275. It was an 82% return on investment. Then the Amazon puts the 3150s. You could have done this way out of the price point of $56, but this did not work right, I don't think. Now I think this was a loser, so you saved yourself from this one. But one conjecture would have been $5,600. And that was my point. That one just didn't go right. Here's where it went. Here's where it, that's where it went there. This is where it went. Anyways, you wouldn't have done it with beginner risk. So long story short, win ratio, 86%, 10 winners, 0, break evens, 2 losers, and 12 trades because you couldn't have done a few of them that were out of the price point for beginner risk, which is whatever you decide. If you decide to risk $3,000 a trade, you could have done some $2,000, you have to decide. Again, how can you do something like Amazon if your risk is $1,000? You can't take one contract. It costs $5,600 that one. Beginner trader profits for this week if you adhere to your rules and the risk $11,890 with an average return investment 121%. That is adhering to the rules of the risk management, not doing the ones that were outside of it, staying within the parameters, and then also doing these trades. If you don't feel comfortable though, being in multiple things at one time like the day that I called, the day that I called the most, I think, I'll say the three or four, I think on the fifth. How many did I call on the fifth? One, two, three. It was three on the fifth when I saw that we were starting to fall off. If you don't want to do three at once, then you don't have to. You don't have to. But for example, in the case of the Facebook, say you do two Facebooks, you do two, you could get out of one Facebook, hold the rest. There's another idea. Or you could do Facebook and the Q's and NVIDIA and you don't, you could get out of one in full and hold two or something like that. Again, because this had the drop off and the momentum of the follow through. So I'm just giving you ideas here for what you could do. But sometimes I will call a few in one day, you have to determine your risk per trade and your risk per day, per day also. So if you want to sign up for the options newsletter, it is a 12 month subscription for $6,999. The trades are emailed to you. There are no trials at all. If you want to sign up, you must email me for sign up forms. If you want to do the six month subscription, the half annual subscription, it's $4,999. Trades are emailed to you. You can email me as well if you want to sign up. If you want to learn the strategy, then you have to sign up for the class. That is just a two day course that's online where you learn the system, how you rate the gaps. How do I know that something's going to occur? Like we saw here, back here to the, you know, in the market, I've really been reading this market well this year. You know, we've had good timing, which is very important with options and we've had the direction right with the exception of this flip around. But then we did get this again, that was a different week, which I'm just going over the week of the explorations of the 14th. But you know, the reality is to see that something's going to happen before it does it. This idea that I can predict the directional bias is all based on my gap 26 point rating system, which I teach in the golden gap course. So I'm not predicting that it's going to gap. I've seen the gap itself. Then I get up in the morning and I rate the gap, like there's stuff gaping tonight. I had Disney up here before I flipped over to this. You know, I'm not going to rate this right now because I'm tired, but I will rate it in the morning. I don't know if I'm going to do it because there's no point in rating it now until the morning. I will wait and rate it then. But I didn't know Disney was going to gap up. This is as close to 147.28 right now. It's up at 157. It's gapping up 10 bucks. So they're about it could have gap down. This could be at 125. So I'm not in this. I didn't do this. I didn't do this before this. This could have gap up or down. It's gapping up. But again, I predict where it's going to go after the gap based on the 26 point rating system. That is what I teach in the course. That is not the options newsletter, but I am calling trades based on that system. So it's allowed me the gap rating system that I do personally that I created and I teach the class has really allowed me to read the market so well. And I don't get it right all the time, but I get it right a lot more than anybody I have ever encountered or know or and I've met a lot of people being in television the last umpteen years. So it's it's it takes a lot of focus, particularly in a challenging time where you're just having all these people saying all these things and then you have another situation where they're saying all these other things. You know, we saw such a bullish year in 2021. This is the whole year. It's crazy what we did a million new highs kept going and the economic backdrop was so bad in 2021. I mean, everyone kept saying the unemployment was going down, but really was just jobs the same jobs recovered from before the pandemic. Now this year, the market has clearly reacted in the first part of the year, which which we got that drop off. We got the whole thing. It's it reacted to it's coming to reality. Now is it going to, is that it? Is it all over after that or are we back up? We're going to make new highs. I mean, it's very early in the year to predict, but I find that in reference to trading, it is so much easier to do things in a small minutia time frame. And even for options, the weeklies are small time frame. You can't do anything less than a week.  I don't, I don't do this in between ones, but the thing is that a week is a short time for an option, to be honest with you, it really is. Like I'm not doing something to month out or a year or whatever. And for day trades, I'm in and out fast, but it's so much easier to predict where somebody's going to go short in a short period of time that it is in a long period of time. Like if you, if I asked you, what are you going to eat for breakfast Saturday morning? You said, I have no idea, Melissa. If I said, what are you going to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning? You might already know. You might, you might already know. But if you got up at six AM and I asked you, what are you going to eat for breakfast at seven an hour from then, you would definitely know. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's a lot easier to determine shorter moves periods than it is the longer, longer out. Like no one could have predicted COVID in 2020. No one could have predicted what the market did. No one could have predicted any of that. And I think it would be hard for us to predict the sell off we had here actually at the beginning of this year. All right. Have a good night, everyone. And email me if you want to sign up. Lots of trades. Great success this year. Very excited. I will continue to try to show these beginner amounts for people who want to open up smaller accounts and want to get involved and want to do it. Call your broker, ask questions about opening up an options account. You can open up a cash options account. You do not need margin. If you have questions, email me. Call your broker and sign up for the newsletter if you want the trades. Have a great day.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com, coming at you with 2021 Bowman Sapphire Baseball. Pick your team number three from jaspyscasebreaks.com. We jumped around the break numbers a little bit, but we're working our way back to pick your team three. Thanks everybody for getting in. Appreciate it. Now, let's see what we have in these boxes. Sometimes we've seen two autographs in some of the boxes. I don't think that should be the, that's not the norm, but we have been a little lucky there. All card ship, of course, the Bowman firsts are definitely something to keep an eye out on and top prospects. See some, can either be yellow or gold, let's see, we're going to find out in a second. Adam what's going on? How are you? Right, right. You like that?  All right, let's go. Let's see what we got. We got a green drew Romo out of 125 for the Rockies. I could pull them. Not a Bowman's first, but there's Ace of Lacy and there's Jake Vogel. That's a Bowman first autograph for my Dodgers, Adam Cupperman, getting that Dodger, Joe Mojo. Third round pick, number 15 Dodgers, which is pretty good, Dodgers have a pretty good farm system. So if you're up there in the top 50, top 20, that is pretty good. Let's see, what is he about? Flash is elite wheels and athleticism, motors to top speed quickly with strong powerful strides, superior hand-eye coordination, ground covering the fielder and center. All right, I'll take that. He'll develop a little power, too. And we've got out of 50, Jordan Walker, 13 out of 50, that'll be for the X-Line and the Cardinals. All cards, of course, ship, and especially the Bowman first guys, a lot of these cards are worth looking up, because in previous years, now I know this is probably like the, what is this, like the second or third year, third year, that Sapphire edition has started to come out. But I know in the early years, every single card seemed to have, seemed to carry a lot of value. So it's all card ships, so it's probably worth looking up each one of these players. And listen, it's Bowman, so, you know, there's a lot of potential future value here. So even if they're not, even if their current value isn't very good, I mean, you'll just stick them in a box, put them in the back of your closet, write down 2021 Bowman Sapphire on it, and then check in on it a couple years later, two, three years later. All right, next box, like Austin Martin, that's one of his Bowman firsts right there, that's a big name. And we've got Oswald Paraza, 63 out of 75. Yankees, that's going to be for Adam Cupperman. And Austin Martin, Matthew Shearer with the Toronto Blue Jays. We do have some OGs in the chat today. We've got the X-Line. We've got Adam, it's Ray Rice. We've got Rex, TJ, Logan. Where's Adam Cupperman? He should check into the chat. John Samuelson. And then we've got a Jefferson Espinal, Diamondbacks autograph for PJ, last spot mojo. There's Adam, Adam Cupperman's here. Who else do we need? We need, yeah, we need Joe P, Arthur, and Rory, maybe Bulldog fan, Will Comstock, and then we would have flashed back at least like five years. Arthur checks in every once in a while, Rex. He always seemed to miss him. I feel like he checks in a couple of times a week and says hi. Yeah, where's Paul? Coach, we need, I think I saw Paul Nixon selling a lot of stuff on the Facebook group. I feel like he's been moving some stuff back and forth, maybe getting ready for another buying cycle. He's usually football. We usually see him around the football season, I feel like. The Tesla's retired, Logan, but the fake Tesla is retired. There's Colton Welker to 75, or to 50, that is. But yeah, someone backed into, I was backed into my parked vehicle and it destroyed the left taillight assembly, which was annoying. After some hassle, I got it all squared away. That other guy's insurance got it all squared away and got it fixed and picked up my car today. There you go. There's Pejewan, or G1 Bay, as you would say it. Anthony with the buckos, with that autograph. There's Bobby Whit Jr. I know this is not a Bowman first, but he's supposed to be a big future guy. Matthew F. Kevin Alcantara Bowman first. Is he supposed to be? I think he is. It's supposed to be a bigger name. This is all Bowman, so it's all future prospects, but we're all hoping everyone of these guys becomes big names. All right, two boxes to go. And remember, all cars ship. Yeah, Josh X-Line saying that Kevin Alcantara's pretty solid. It goes to Cupperman, Adam and the Yankees. Woe hockey if you're old school. Is there really, there's Rex saying he saw a story of people having issues with Tesla's charging port shutting in. Oh, I think I did hear that too. Something like that. As my dad would say, there's too many computers in cars now.  Now I got to plug something in and get a diagnostics check to all that nonsense. There's Taylor Tramble, said Alan. That's Taylor Tramble, 77 out of 125. And there's Aaron Sabato kit for the twins, also supposed to be a big name, Eric. Boy, I wish I had an Austin Martin, that is. And there's Kevin Alcantara autograph, Adam. Picking up the Yankees straight up and getting old Kevin here. Let's see, he's 6'6", 188, righty from the Dominican Republic. Yankee free agent back in 2018. Number 13 Yankee Prospect, according to MLB.com. Hit first pro long ball at Gulf Coast League on the back in 2019. Went four for five, finished the homershie of the cycle. Long lean team, exciting tool set, spring loaded cut, fields easy, all fields power with high exit velocities, strong arm defender. There you go. Wait, that's not full yet? We've got to get that done today. That's what it's on the back of the baseball card, PJ, 6'6". According to the back of the baseball card. Now that might be generous, listed heights and weights are always generous, right? 6'6", 188. Might be a little shorter and skinnier. 6'6", 188 is pretty skinny, isn't it? 6'6". Yeah, I was going to be like, wait, 188 at 6'6", seems real. So he can grow into that body too. I mean, I think he's only, when was he born? 2002. So he's still got room to grow into that frame. There's Adenso Reyes, 50 out of 125 for Adam and the Tigers. Yeah, I don't know where Jason Dominguez is playing right now, but he should be in a minor league system somewhere, right? Getting his ABs in. There he is, speaking of. And Jared Kelly, White Sox autograph for Matthew Shearer. Bowman first auto, second round pick. White Sox have a lot of great youngsters coming up the pipeline. Jared Kellnick, not his Bowman first all-cards ship though. And there you go, got Jeremy Dillerosa at the end. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give away a box. Remember, if you bought at least two teams, you get an entry. Four teams gets you two entries, six teams gets you three entries, so on and so forth. And we'll randomize that group of names and the name on top will get a chance to win. Let's flip back to the screen right here. Name on top will get a chance to win a sealed box of Bowman Sapphire baseball. So Adam got six teams. That's three entries. Anthony D with two teams, one entry. Anthony L with two teams, one entry. John with two teams and an entry. EA two teams, one entry. ES two teams, one entry. Jared two teams and an entry. Coppola two teams and an entry. The X-Line two teams, one entry. Matthew Shira two teams, one entry. And PJ two teams, one entry. Or maybe we force him to buy a lottery ticket X-Line and then share it with the rest of us with that kind of luck. All right, so there is Adam. Just want to double check these spots again. Anthony D, Anthony L, John, EA, ES, Matthew, PJ. All right, good. Let's grab all these names here. There's the dice. There's the list. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it. Two and a two. Hard four for the hard way. Name on top after four gets a sealed box. Bye, Mike. One, two, three. And fourth and final time after four. It goes to Eric S for the hard way. Eric's and Salah, congratulations. Thanks for getting into the action. I appreciate a sealed box going your way. I'm Joe for jaskiescasebreaks.com. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


Good afternoon team keep it clean. What's going on the same grave and hit with another video and in this video We are here to talk about The game that's going to be happening tomorrow between the Giants and the Buccaneers Now this game goes down in Tampa Bay the Giants are currently sitting at 0 and 3 and the Buccaneers are sitting at 1 and 1 appreciate you guys coming through. Thank you You guys please let me know whether you in here live right now or whether you let me know once you watch this as a post game video Are you guys getting notifications? If you're not please? Click that bell next to the subscribe button and turn notifications on because if you don't click it Then you'll get some notifications. You won't get everything. So when we go live Yeah, just make sure you have the notifications turned on because a lot of people aren't getting a lot of things a lot of YouTube has been messing up like it always did Steven Becker actually this one is one of them. This one is one of them because the other Beckham Jersey I got is one of those two-tone jerseys, but anyway, I appreciate that Jeremiah. Thank you Really quick. Let me introduce myself before we get into this game me. I'm engraving vids This is my YouTube channel engraving vids and I'm a Ravens fan And even though I'm a Ravens fan as you already know as you can already tell as you can already see We talk about each and every NFL team on this YouTube channel So if you're Ravens fan, you can subscribe if you're a Giants or Bucks fan You can subscribe or if you like any of the 29 other teams in the NFL This is the perfect place for you. Make sure you leave a like on the video if you haven't already and like I said Subscribe to the YouTube channel and turn the notifications on turn the notifications all the way on Really quick, Jeremiah said what game besides Ravens are you the most excited for? Hmm I Really I mean Mmm, that's a good question I'm not it's not that I'm not excited for those other games, but just the Ravens and Steelers tomorrow It has like all of my attention. It has all of my attention It's gonna be at that Washington and KC game is gonna be very interesting Oh, you're going to the game. Okay. Shout out to big Nick, man. He said he going to the Bucks game tomorrow So yeah, have fun man have fun for all of us now, oh Today say broke your hand. Oh, don't break your hand. Don't don't ever break your hand when you don't like a pick that I put put in don't do that. Please don't do that.  I'm sorry, man Yes, HP crew. It is a huge game tomorrow. What's going on amazement appreciate all y'all coming through man. Thank you now in this game We got again the Bucks taking on the Giants the Bucks versus the Gmen now the Giants have been in this sunken ship and they just Have been on a downward spiral. They've been getting closer. They get closer and closer every week every week They lose by a little bit less. Um, well, wait a minute in the first week. They lost by What do they lose by 15? 14 But then the second week they lost by 14 and then last week they only lost by a couple of points So they improve they're improving There's they're getting better offensively every single game. Okay, they lost by 16 a week one appreciate the number one ball So 16 week one 14 week two and then last week what was it one or two? I forgot how many points it was But either way they keep getting just closer and closer and closer In this game, I feel like that sunken ship that the Giants are on I'm sorry. I feel like it's gonna keep sinking I feel like I feel like it's gonna keep sinking. I think Buck and is take this one Jared Jermaine, no, but I don't really get into all that stuff. It's not my thing. Um, but I think I Think the the Bucks get this one This could go either way, but I think the Bucks get this one Oh big point right there HP crew said Giants O line and suspect you couldn't be more accurate than that Their offensive line gives up pressure like the weather This will be this may be a game where the Bucks they get their stats up on the defensive line I'm lying back is to if they send enough pressure if they said he said I'm unsuscribed But he's big Nick said Bucks pass rush suspects. We got a suspect O line a suspect pass rush Which one of those two would end up doing better. Oh Yeah, Bucks are missing some starters too. They missing a couple starters Hmm Hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Levante David court. Yeah. Ooh, good point Forgot that Bucks are missing those guys Um, and the Giants have been like I said, they've been slightly improving I forgot about those three starters at the Bucks are missing Hmm. Hmm. Hmm Oh, no TJ Ward either. Wow That's like half the team right there. What if what it sounds like? Hmm Forgot about that didn't even realize and then of course you got you got Odell Beckham Is he gonna be doing his dog thing and peeing on somebody again? We're Brandon Marshall actually wake up this game.  They still got Um, they still got what's it called all the Deshaun Jackson Mike Evans. We know Mike Evans We know about Mike Evans and that dude loves most of somebody Um, so I'm I'm still gonna go with the Buccaneers and the close one and the close one I feel like Giants are you gonna be right there? They're gonna be right there But it just won't be enough Now Oh number one ball said Jenkins gonna lock up Evans Engaged uh said Bucks 24 Giants 17 So Will the trend of the Giants losing continue? We'll see tomorrow Will the Giants trend of losing by less and less and less each week continue tomorrow? We'll see tomorrow because Uh, oh number one ball said Giants 27 bucks 17 Amazing to say we're gonna force Eli to make erratic throws. No running game is the difference Yeah, um They gotta take if they gotta take Odell Beckham out the game They have to take all the if they don't take Odell Beckham out if they let him take over Then the Giants could possibly take over Because you you already know what Odell Beckham can do. He is definitely one of the best Wide receivers in the game. It's not even a question. It's not an argument He is one of the best wide receivers in the game with all the dramatics and all his Um him just being a diva blah blah blah whatever. He is all of that stuff, but he's also one of the best uh wide receivers in the game and Definitely one of the top five and he has done his thing. Um, he's proven himself with his numbers He's just he makes some of the craziest catches. He'll have his drops now and then now too, but You have to to take Odell Beckham out out the game.  If you're the cornerback that's covering him You got to double him. Don't be afraid to double Don't put him one on one. Just you have to double him and if you're the cornerback that's covering Odell Don't just knock the ball out when he's trying to make the catch actually swatted down Swatted down and do stuff that really says a Odell Beckham today ain't your day today. It's your day You have to get in his head. You got to hit him Bump him at the line of scrimmage and then be physical with him If the ball's coming his way knock him out hit him Make him feel it make him get mad make him get upset Because the thing about Odell Beckham from what I've seen and please let me know if I'm longer if you feel otherwise But from what I've seen When Odell Beckham gets mad, it doesn't elevate his play. It just causes him to Just it it can frustrate him so much to where he he'll take himself out the game almost What's going on? Isaiah appreciate it.  I'm about to show them why I'm in real deal I'm about to show them why I'm one of the best in the business But Odell Beckham. I don't feel like he's there yet. He's he can be there But I don't I don't feel like he's there yet um, so with Odell Beckham he he has got to If if they can get in his head and they can take him out the game Then that'll that'll do wonders for their team. That'll do wonders for the team. Yeah, Anthony said he's too sensitive Uh, big Nick said top top wireless top five wide receivers Tonio Brown, Julio Jones, Odell Beckham, Junior, Mike Evans and AJ Green Uh, we're gonna we're gonna miss our linebackers and past Thursday night game I do Oh, yeah, they do play the pass on Thursday night football That should be a good number one baller who's a giant fan. He said I think the exact same thing That's what happened in the playoff game last year the game against Washington last year and the game in carolina two years ago Oh with the Beckham versus josh norman saga. That was a lot of fun to watch too. What's up, Justin?  I see you man. I see you Odell plays trash when he's mad brady plays like a guy when he is mad. Well, yeah, you're right about that, man Totally different scenarios. Totally different scenarios Um Oh, okay. I guess you want to eyes his friends. Why did I block him because he said something inappropriate? He knows exactly why he got blocked. It's not a question. It's not a surprise anything He knows why he got blocked.  He should be a good matchup.   Don't ever do that again I'm not unblocking you because you know what you were doing. I don't unblock people for stuff like that. So That's that Anyway, uh, how you feel about the bucks defense bucks defenses It's okay with the guys that they're missing that's gonna hurt a lot man That's gonna hurt a lot that is going to hurt a lot. Um So, oh, yeah, Grimes did make that Odell interception. That was on uh, I think it was on Calvin Johnson I believe it was on the lions. It was against the lions. I'm pretty sure it was against the lions And they threw it up and he caught it with one hand. It was nice, man. It was nice um The defense I feel like the defense is not super strong in it. I mean last week they They lost they lost to the Vikings. I thought that they would I thought they were gonna win that game for sure I did not see them losing to the Vikings. I didn't see that at all. I did not see them losing to the Vikings at all I'm like, man, I I picked them to beat the Vikings and case kingdom and they let case kingdom go off So if case kingdom can go off, I'm sure Eli Manning is I'm sure he's better than case kingdom He got better receivers than case kingdom. Um, but How could they let case kingdom go off? So Eli should get his in Eli should get his in this game. Um, but I'm still gonna go with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Anyway The ain't Doug Martin suspended Or is it? Yeah, ain't it Doug Martin that suspended? I don't know But anyway, appreciate y'all man. Thank you for coming through Thank you. Make sure y'all leave a like on the video if you haven't already subscribe to the youtube channel And i'm going man. Appreciate it. I'm out


Okay, let's get started and talk about container gardening. You know, with the use of containers, anybody, whether they have a backyard garden or not, can grow fresh produce all summer long. And here to share her expertise in this topic is Kala Edwards. Kala grew up in the nursery and greenhouse business and this instilled in her a love of gardening and later a degree in horticulture business at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kala serves as the extension agent in agriculture and natural resources for McLean County. Kala, welcome to the forums. All right, Tom, thank you for asking me to talk at the Spring Fever Garden Forums. I hope that we have a educational talk tonight and I'm looking forward to talking about container gardening. You know, one thing when I talk about gardening, the couple limitations that I hear from people are, hey, they don't have a space either. They don't have a location because there's too many trees in the area. They don't have enough, they have a small yard so they just don't have a place to do a garden. Sometimes I hear from people they have really poor soil or they've had disease issues in soil and so they don't want to plant a garden. The other topic I hear is people say that they can't garden. I know my grandma, she's almost 90 years old, she's always had a garden. She loves growing vegetables but with both of her knees replaced she can't bend down and take care of pulling weeds. She can't take care of a garden like she'd like to. And so simply she has some physical limitations that keep her from being able to garden. And so this container gardening, gardening in small spaces, offers a lot of opportunity for people who don't have a place to garden because of their yard. Maybe you live in an apartment or maybe physically you just don't have that ability to garden anymore like you used to or like you want to. So the first thing that I think about when I think about container gardening is the container itself. Containers can really be anything but the specifications on size are important. For most of our vegetables you're going to need a container that's a minimum of 6 to 8 inches deep. 6 to 8 inches works really well for our leafy vegetables. So spinach, lettuce, kale, things like that grow well in a shallower container. But when you're talking about things like corn, spinach, corn squash, tomatoes or peppers, you're going to need a bigger container. So for a majority of our larger plants you're going to need a minimum of 2 gallons. When you get above your leafy vegetables, when you get to things like a cherry tomato, if you're looking at a patio cherry tomato they need about a 2 gallon size pot. And if you're looking at your standard size tomato or your standard size pepper, you're looking at something that's roughly 4 to 5 gallons at the minimum size.  Like we see, you can see in this picture we have a variety of different types of containers. So your containers can be really anything that you want ultimately. It's size is going to be your limitation. Now when we think about those sizes, unless you go to say a nursery and you buy a 5 gallon pot, what exactly is the size you need? We're looking at your standard pot. If you want a minimum of 1 gallon, your pot needs to be at least 8 inches in diameter across the top. So for your smaller crops you need at least an 8 inch pot and then your depth. If you're looking at a 2 gallon pot or a 5 gallon pot, for 2 gallons your pot needs to be at least 10 inches across the top. For a 5 gallon container, it should be at least 14 inches across. Now those are guesstimates. If you have a shallow pot, you'll need wider. If you have a deeper pot, that will work and you can be a little narrower. Now one of the key things with our containers is they must have drainage holes. We don't like our feet wet, our vegetables or herbs or fruits don't like their feet wet either. So when we're talking about pots, we need to have drainage holes. Now in my top picture, you can see a couple of the pots have saucers underneath of them. And that is perfectly fine. But if we have a heavy rainstorm, just like any container you have outside, make sure you go out and dump that excess water out of those saucers so that your plants aren't drowning in water. But as we look in these pictures, you have some traditional containers in our top picture. When we look at the bottom, these people went with things that they had around their house. You can see some 5 gallon buckets. We have some old rubber made totes. Those all work well. So containers don't have to be something expensive or something that you have to go and buy. Now I really like the contrast in these two containers because on your left, you have someone who has taken a reusable grocery bag and they've put some holes in the bottom and they're growing lettuce out the top. That works great. It's kind of decorative. It makes your pot look cool and it's also reusing something that you already have. The people on the right have gone for a bigger container. They've bought some kiddie pools. You can see they've put holes in the bottom and it looks like they have some zucchini growing in these. They also have some tomatoes based on the steaks. They could also have cucumbers or pole beans, something like that. So your containers can really vary widely in what you're using. Now this next one, this is actually a container that I had made. Ironically, I loaned it to my dad for a talk on container gardening. Somehow, I never got it back. But in this particular container, I took an old Rubbermaid tote. As you can see, I cut the center out of the top. What you do is you put some supports in the bottom and you'll drill some holes in the top you cut out and you'll cut it down. You fill this up with soil. You have the white PVC pipe in the back. You can put water down that particular pipe. It goes into the reservoir below and it waters the soil and waters the plants from the bottom. This makes a very inexpensive self-watering pot. You can find the instructions for these fairly easily online. I've seen a wide variety of these options. But in the heat of the summer, these self-watering pots can cut down on the amount of water that you have to put on your plants. They can also cut down on the space they give you a really big container in order to plant your vegetables in. Now this particular container has lettuce planted in it in this picture. Once the lettuce crop was done, they then pulled the lettuce out and planted, I believe, a squash in it after the summer. So this size of pot you can do a variety of crops in. But self-watering containers work really well when you're in a hot climate, especially in our summer when we get into the 90s during the day. These can cut down on your watering and you don't have to give your plants as much care. Now I've seen these garden tower type of containers for a long time. A lot of people are very successful with them. This is a strawberry container. You can get them in a variety of sizes and these work really well if you are limited on space for your containers because you're growing vertically. Now this size obviously wouldn't work for a tomato. If you get one of the bigger versions of these, you can plant a tomato at the top along with different herbs, different leafy vegetables, and a variety of different things in the sides. So you can go as inexpensive or on this end, you can go as expensive as you want with your container gardens. Now as important as the container is, what is inside of the container is also extremely important. So we'll talk about our media. Now whatever media you use needs to be well drained. Like I mentioned, you have to have drainage in your pots. Your soils need to be able to drain as well so that our vegetables aren't staying too soggy. Especially early in the year when we have cooler temperatures, our plants are smaller, they're not growing as actively. Or if we have a really rainy spell, sometimes we get those really rainy weeks or months, so your soil needs to be well drained.  You're potentially bringing in diseases, you're potentially bringing in insects, weed seeds. If you had applied any chemicals to that area last year, you're potentially bringing in those chemicals to your vegetables. I see a lot of times where people have sprayed a garden and they have some residual and next year their vegetables aren't growing because they have that residual. Not to mention those other problems, straight garden soil in a pot has a tendency to turn into a rock. Our plant roots don't like to grow in that type of environment, so our plants are really going to struggle. I really recommend a soilless mix. Something with peat moss per light, vermiculite, something like that that's going to have good drainage, it's going to have decent water holding capacity, and it's also not going to, it's going to be a good environment for our plants to grow in. Now, you can make soil mixes, and in container groups that I've done in the past, I've had really good luck with an equal mix of peat moss or potting soil mixed with pasteurized soil, and then you can add vermiculite per light, really coarse grit or sand to that mixture and that provides the nutrition, that provides the drainage you need. Now, pasteurized soil is important because then you're avoiding getting those contaminants from your diseases, your insects, your weed seeds, and though this is a good mix for you depending on what your containers are and what you're trying to grow. Now, for really big containers, composted manure is an excellent fertilizer to add into that mix. It's going to provide some extra nutrients, it's going to give your plant something to grow with and grow into. Make sure your composted manure is fully composted. If it's not, sometimes you can get, your manure can be too hot as we call it and can burn your plants. And again, make sure you don't have any herbicide residue left over in those particular manures. Light is another key. Now, my parents move to a new location and they have a lot of shade trees in their yard. So light is going to be a problem with them when they're trying to grow these gardens. So your roots and your leafy crops, your cool season type crops can tolerate part shade conditions. They're going to be okay just getting four hours of sun a day, maybe six hours of sun max and maybe just morning sun from, say when the sun comes up till noon, they will tolerate that and they'll grow and they'll be okay. If you're getting into a fruiting variety, say a tomato, corn, squash, even some of your herbs, require full sunlight in order to grow, to produce and to be successful. So for those vegetables, we consider full sunlight a minimum of six hours of light a day. They prefer eight to ten and it's better if the light is also in the afternoon and not just morning sunlight. So light is going to be a problem. Now, when you are looking at where to put your containers, before you get your potting soil put in them, before you get your plants planted, make sure and keep, pay attention to where your light is. Because if you put potting soil in one of those big totes, you get it watered, you get a plant in there, that sucker is going to be heavy and it's going to be hard to move from where you put it. So before you put your container down and get everything situated, pay attention to where your light is going to be. So for me, if I'm planting container, I know I can put my container gardens right in front of my garage. They're going to get a lot of sunlight, it's going to be bright direct light, so my fruiting varieties will be happy there. My leafy vegetables I need to put next to my house because they will get the amount of light that they need. Now our miscellaneous, in the garden, our vegetables do okay without fertilizer. There's plenty of nutrients in the soil for them to take up. They can grow well, they don't need a whole lot of supplementation. But in a pot, even in those big, huge containers, you are going to have to fertilize those vegetables. When I plant my vegetables in pots, I typically put a slow release fertilizer in, like an osmocote specifically for vegetables. And that gives them a slow release, a little bit of nutrients every time I water. Now I do go through every couple of weeks and use a water soluble fertilizer on top of the osmocote. When you get to that really active growing season, say July and August, when our tomatoes are really starting to take off and produce, there's plenty more fertilizer than that osmocote will. So I would also add some fertilizer every other week or so. Now when you're fertilizing, especially in my area, we have a lot of dissolved salts and dissolved solids in my water. So once a week, I am going to water my containers really heavily. I'm going to water them until the water flows freely through and starts running out the bottom. And that's going to leach that excess fertilizer and excess salts out of our soil. Watering, in the heat of the summer, you're going to need to water at least once a day, if not twice, depending on the size of your container. If you get those bigger self-watering containers, once a day or every other day is probably all you're going to need. But when we get into that warm summer weather, you're really going to have to pay attention to your plants, the soil, and adjust your watering schedule based on what your plants need. Now one thing you can do, you can use mulch on the top of your pot. It can be leaf kippings, can be clippings of grass clippings. If you haven't applied any herbicide to your yard, can be straw. You can apply all of those to the top of your potting soil, and that's going to provide a mulch. Then you're not going to lose as much of your mulch air throughout the day. Now the question I get when I talk about container gardening is what can I grow? And you can grow about any herb, vegetable, and some of your fruits in a container. Your limitation is going to be your location, and the size of container you can grow. Now when you're looking at some of these, some of these different vegetables, lettuce, peppers, eggplant, none of those get incredibly big. But when you look at your tomatoes, you want to look for a bush type tomato, something that's determinate, that's only going to grow to a certain height. I'll show you some of those varieties here in a minute. Beans, cucumbers, broccoli, potatoes, you can grow squash, you can grow pumpkins in your containers. There's just a wide variety. You can grow about any vegetable in a container that you could grow on the ground. So these are a couple, these are some recommendations. I got these from Texas A&M. They recommend that broccoli be in a minimum of a two gallon pot. There are some different varieties listed for each one. Your carrots, your typical thumb is your pot needs to be at least two inches deeper than the carrot. So make a shorter size carrot and make sure your pot is deep enough to meet that. Green onions, any green onion, green beans, there's a variety, two gallons minimum. Or our lettuce, your tomatoes, all of these are very good varieties. Now, I will say this, keep an eye out for new varieties. Tomatoes, there's always new tomato varieties coming out that are designed, grown specifically to be in containers. This particular variety on this slide is one called Atlas. It's a variety that I've grown in my garden and it would do well in a container. Now this is a big container in part because this is a heavy plant. Those are very big tomatoes. So as much as it needs the root space, it also needs that weight on the pot to keep it from blowing over. So this is Atlas. I grew a pepper the last couple of years called confetti that would be beautiful on a pot. It's a variegated tomato, or it's a variegated pepper, I apologize. It produces two to four ounce fruits that are a variety of different colors. So it would be a great ornamental looking plant to have on a patio that also happens to be producing fruits and vegetables for you. Those are a variety. This year I'm going to trial a new pumpkin variety called Candy Corn. The bushes are only supposed to be 24 inches by 24 inches and they produce up to 12 different pumpkins. So there are a variety of different options of cultivars out there that you can use to grow in containers. Every year new ones come out. So there's a ton of options for you.  Look for a bush or a type variety. But otherwise have fun growing. Try different varieties. You can even grow corn in containers on your patio. And with that, if there are any questions, I am willing to answer some at this time. Okay, thank you, Kayla. Does anybody have any questions out there for her? Just put them right in the chat box. There's that purple tab on the lower right-hand corner. Click on that. And then we'll open up that box and then just type in your question. We did get someone who wanted to know what was the name of that pepper. And that was... Great. So our chat box is working. How about, Kayla, the principles that you talked about in containers, so they hold well pretty good for raised bed gardens? Yes, they do. Raised bed gardens, you might not need to fertilize quite as much, just because you have a larger soil area. But most of those principles do apply very well to your raised bed gardens. How about the way you use the soil year after year? Can you use the same soil every year, or do you have to recharge it with new soil in the pot? For me, that would be determined by a couple factors. If the plant had some disease or insect issues last year, I would definitely replace the soil and not reuse it, just because the disease could stay in the soil and you may have an issue the next year. I would be okay with reusing it for maybe one more year, but it would depend also on how much root mass is in that pot. If it's really dense, you probably need to replace it and not reuse it next year. Okay, how about, do you have a recommendation for vegetables that can tolerate some shade? Lettuce. Lettuce varieties would do well in shade. Your leaf crops, carrot, spinach, to an extent, beets, and radishes will do okay in partial shade. They do need at least four hours of sunlight a day. Would be my recommendation. Those root and leafy vegetables that you talked about. Good. Have you ever tried growing blueberries in a container? I have not. Well, I personally have not. I do know people that have. You are going to have to watch the acidity level of that soil because the water in North Dakota will naturally raise your pH level. So I would recommend using a, when you fertilize them, use a fertilizer that's going to be acidic in nature so that that soil stays to the pH that blueberries really need. It may be like a little bit heavier in peat moss and add some sulfur, perhaps. Kind of mantra at pH, right? And then I don't know how you overwinter that. It's kind of like a Mission Impossible episode, what I would say someday is having successful blueberries in North Dakota. Yeah. I've had success overwintering pots by burying them in the ground and covering them with mulch and leaf letter. That would be my recommendation to try and overwinter them. Or if you have a garage that stays, you know, between 25 and 30 degrees in the winter, if you can keep that temperature, they would overwinter okay in that type of condition. Okay. Kayla, is there a difference between potting mix and potting soil? It depends on what you're looking at. I have seen some things called potting soil that are a pasteurized garden dirt. Typically I think of potting. For me, a potting mix usually is your peat moss, your vermiculite, your perlite. But people also call that potting soil. I would read your label and read a bag and make sure you are getting a peat product and not a pasteurized soil product. I know our local garden center or local hardware store has sold some potting soil that's actually dirt, pasteurized soil. How about when you use a large container like a metal water or feed tub, do you need to amend those soils every year? Depends on what you had growing in them. I go back to my previous answer. If you had a disease issue, I wouldn't reuse the soil. I would say you could probably take part of your soil out and not replace the whole thing every year if you didn't have a disease issue. But if that's the case, I would definitely not plant, say you planted tomatoes in it last year. I wouldn't plant a tomato or a potato back in that container until I replace the soil. You just want to keep your disease issues at bay as much as possible. Okay. This gardener tried a tote self-watering planter last year, but the peppers and squash did not do well. They did not fertilize the plants. Could that have been the problem? I would guess that was the problem. Although I will say I know people who had issues with peppers and squash in container gardens last year where they just didn't do very well. But I would definitely fertilize because those plants are using a lot of nutrients and there's not a lot in that container. How could you tell if the plants hungry for fertilizer? A good way to do it is to look at the leaves.  And that's one way to look at it. Now I would rather not let my plants get to that point. So I prefer to fertilize on a regular schedule unless I start to see those signs. Kala, have you ever heard of a variety of corn that works well in containers? Yes, there is a patio corn that works well in containers. Actually my administrative assistant grew it in her patio a couple of years ago. It did produce ears. She said it wasn't as fruitful as she had hoped, but she also didn't have a good location light-wise for it to grow. It wasn't getting enough light. But there is a patio corn variety that you can grow. Did Burpee had a variety to come out a couple of years with? Yes, Burpee did. Called on-deck sweet corn. But maybe you can talk about what's be practical. I could see growing corn as an ornamental as an element to a garden. But when it doesn't make sense to go to the farmer's market and buy a...  I don't know. It really depends. I see both sides of it. So if you just want a few years of corn, go for it. Yeah, just the experience. Yes. It's fun to watch. Listen to the corn crack late night as it grows. Yes. In the summer heat. How about, can you put a cage in a container for trailing plants like Cukes and Squash to get them to grow vertical? Yes, you definitely can. Most of your tomato cages, I would say, in the size of pot you would need for those vegetables. A typical tomato cage would fit in the container. You will have to watch and make sure your container doesn't get too top heavy. We live in North Dakota and there's always wind. So top heavy is a concern. Another option would be to, if you have a fence, you could put those vining crops next to the fence and let them grow up your fence if that's a possibility. As long as your light is put in the next location. Sounds good. How about, do you ever add earthworms to your pots? I have not. I don't know if that would be a good idea or how, what to, I don't know that it would be a bad idea either. I personally have not added earthworms to my containers though. We tend to use them for fishing. Makes sense to me. How about you have any special tips about growing strawberries in containers? You know, strawberries will do really well in containers. The issue in North Dakota will be making sure that they overwinter well. Typically growing up, we looked at the roots start to be damaged when you get below 25, gets close to that 20 degrees mark. So you just have, you can grow them containers. They will do well in containers. Overwintering is going to be a concern and you may have to replace them periodically just to replenish the plants as they get older. Okay, this person has a strategy. It must be for a very deep container and they're a frugal gardener who doesn't want to spend all that money on potting mix. Can you put something like a filler, like let's say plastic bottles at the bottom of the container to fill it up, to take space, to take volume in the container? Yes, you can. As long as your containers are going to stay deep enough that, you know, at least a minimum of that eight inches. If you have a really, really big container, you definitely can put stuff in the bottom. Just recognize depending on what you put in the bottom, it might settle. So your soil level might drop throughout the year. But yes, you can do that in a really big container. But you know, the thing I always think about is for most containers, Red Cal, the lack of soil is an issue. So you'd only do that in a huge container, right? Putting in like wax or plastic bottles or Styrofoam peanuts, I sometimes hear. Yes, only in a huge, huge container. How about this person has issues with the wind damaging their container plants? What can we do about that? The wind. So to help with the wind in North Dakota, you may want to look at it. Yeah, North Dakota wind. Good luck. Something that I have, when my parents had a nursery and garden center, something they would do to protect their nursery stock, to keep it from blowing over to protect it from the wind. What Kansas has wind to is they would put, they built a side on the prevailing wind, so the south side, and they used a shade cloth that still lets wind through, but it reduces the force that the wind has. So that might be an option. As long as your plants are still getting enough sunlight, some type of barrier on the prevailing wind side would help keep your plants from being damaged. And like a shade cloth, something that has holes in it, that would be a possibility for that. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of a burlap that we do to protect evergreens in the winter from wind. Yes. A burlap shield on the side. Okay, that's interesting. How about, do you have any tips on where's a good place to buy quality soil? To buy what kind of soil? Good stuff, quality. Okay, your best bet is probably going to be your local greenhouse. I have found that my highest quality soil is going to come from my local greenhouse. For my pots, I typically use like a pro mix or a burlap alone. Those are both products that I have had really good success with. I haven't had disease or insect issues. I've used Miracle Grow. I've used other potting soils in the past and they work as well. But the two I listed first, those are my personal favorites. Okay, sounds good. How about when you use a plastic pot or container, especially plastic totes, do you have to worry about chemicals leaching out of the container into the plants? Like toxic chemicals? I don't believe so. I haven't read anything that says that's a concern. I've read quite a bit of information and publications on container gardening from across the country. I would look at the type of material that your pot is made out of, but most of your plastic containers, your totes, they're going to be safe to use and you shouldn't have issues with toxic chemicals. Now if you're getting a tote safe that's been used for another purpose, I would worry about residual left in those particular containers, but like a plastic tote that you purchase that's used for storage or your typical plastic pots, I don't have any concerns with chemical leaching out of those particular products. How about last question here about, can you talk about bringing a container garden inside in the fall? Like maybe even indoors in the like in a sunny area, the sunny living room or atrium? You can. Size is going to be a concern. I don't know that I would be able to move one of those really big, big containers inside, but if you have a location with adequate light or you have the ability to supplement with say a grow light or alternative light sources, you can definitely grow vegetables inside here around. The light will be probably your limiting factor. So then focus on those leafy crops or the roots or some maybe leafy herbs for the winter. Yes. Let us both do very well inside. Okay. We have one last question. He was reluctant Daniel. He wants to grow sweet potato. Can you grow sweet potato to extend the season? Grow it in a container and then maybe. Yes. You can grow potatoes in a container. You'll have to look at your varieties and make sure you get the right variety. I think I had a sweet potato variety on my handout potentially. It doesn't look like I do. But yes, you can grow sweet potatoes. You'll just need that big container. Kind of like a squash or your other potatoes. Right. And have very low expectations. That's what I always say first. Actually the leaves are very nutritious. You can eat the leaves if all else fails. That's what we do in Asia. Okay. And the brands as well. You suggested that was a Pro-Mix instead. Pro-Mix and Fertilome products. Fertilome. The ones that I've had. They're my personal favorites. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. I think that covered all the questions. Outstanding Cala. I really appreciate it. And we're going to take a five minute break everybody. And then we'll talk about grafting vegetables. So we'll see you then.


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