Welcome, everyone, to the 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension on campus in Fargo, and I will be your host for today's webinar. Our upcoming webinars are featuring two of my colleagues, Barb Ingham from Wisconsin and Karen Blakesley from Kansas State. There are 10 webinars in all, and we certainly hope that you join us for the entire series. We are using a different feature this year. We are using Zoom webinar, so you all will be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. People watching this segment live will be able to ask questions in the chat box, so you see the chat box at the bottom of your screen most likely, and you can go ahead and type your questions in the chat, and after Don finishes his presentation today, I will pose those questions to Don. Next, I have a special request for all viewers of the live talk and any of the archives. To maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future, I ask that you take the very short survey that will land in your email box shortly after today's talk. We will have some random prize drawings, so you might receive a prize in the mail if you win. So please take the survey and the follow-up survey that asks you for your name and mailing address. I also have two acknowledgments today. First, to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our Field to Fork funding. This is our sixth year, by the way, of doing these webinars. And we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institutes of Food and Agriculture. We thank all of these entities for their support. And now what you've all been waiting for, it's time for our featured speaker. I'm very pleased to introduce Don Kinsler. Don is the NDSU Extension Horticulture agent for Cass County. Born and raised in Lisbon, North Dakota, Don is a lifelong gardener. He and his wife owned and operated a garden center in South Fargo for 25 years before Don joined Extension. He writes a weekly garden column and is also the host of WDAY's lawn and garden radio. Thank you, Don, for sharing your expertise today and take it away. Thank you, Julie, and greetings to each of you. And it's a pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to today for four months. Well, welcome to the garden center. We are going to take a field trip today. We are going to journey to garden centers and we're going to learn some tips at how we can get the most out of that experience. Now, the garden center is kind of a catch all term used to be known as a nursery. Now nurseries were generally for producing trees and shrubs or sometimes these businesses were called a greenhouse, which produced primarily flowering type plants. But the term garden center, that business kind of encompasses everything, trees, shrubs, flowering plants and the products that go along with them. Now, for me, this has been a trip down memory lane. My wife and I really enjoyed our years in the garden center business. And these photos were taken 37 years ago at the business that we had. You can see the greenhouses and our sales house, etc. And gosh, I've aged a bit since that photo from 37 years ago. Now, when we talk about garden centers, there are really two types. Now, there are garden centers that are attached to the national chain big box stores and there are independent locally owned garden centers. Now, the independent locally owned, those are the ones that we're going to focus on today. The field to fork series generally connects producers with customers, consumers. And so really the locally owned garden centers are the ones that usually produce a great share of the product that they sell rather than just, you know, trucking them in and reselling. So we're talking about the locally owned independent garden centers today. Now, in the locally owned garden centers, the experience is unique and especially for younger, maybe newer gardeners. If their experience has been at a garden center connected to a big box store. We should all make sure that the younger newer gardeners experience the locally owned garden center. It is absolutely awesome. The experience itself, just being in there, smelling the aroma of the earth, smelling the plants, viewing everything. In a locally owned garden center, you can really relish the experience in addition to buying plants, just that experience. And of course, the selection of plants in our greenhouse. I got a kick out of raising a hundred four different named varieties of petunias. I mean, not the customers needed that many different kinds, but it was just fun to say, well, we've got a hundred four different kinds of petunias and all the other things, too. So selection is wonderful and locally owned garden centers. And of course, the service that goes along with the products and very important, the knowledge of the plants that they sell to help the customers, the right plant in the right place and quality quality. Locally owned garden centers are able to raise the quality plants that they have control over the types of plants that they sell. So many of the plants are homegrown and that's kind of fun, too, to see the plants actually being grown in a greenhouse. Now, tips for customers and managers, really, they want the same things. They want the plants to thrive. You want your plants to thrive. Now, the managers and owners of the garden centers, they want your plants to thrive, too, so that your entire experience is positive. You know, the experience in a garden center, especially this time of year. Now, not all garden centers are open all year long. Some garden centers are seasonal, some open first part of April. Other garden centers are open all year long. The experience in that garden center when you walk in, whether it's in the wintertime or whether when they open in springtime, that experience is just wonderful. In fact, I'd almost be willing to pay an admission to get into a garden center just to smell the aroma and enjoy the humidity and the warmth. And so a wonderful, wonderful experience, even before you start buying any plants. So we're going to divide our field trip into a couple of different things. We're going to talk about some tips, things to do before you even go to the garden center. Then we're going to talk about some tips when you're in the garden center and then some ideas after you get home with your plants. So let's talk first about the things to the tips before you even go to the garden center. A good idea to make a list. Make a list of the plants that you need and intend to buy. Now, we've probably all had the experience of going to the garden center and gosh, those plants all look good. So you come home with more than you have space to plant. And of course, if you're like me, you think, well, gosh, I need to tear up a little more of this lawn so I can plant a whole another section landscape. Another idea is to before you go, line your trunk with plastic or some boxes or plastic totes or something so that when you bring your plants out of the garden center and open up your trunk so that you don't wish, gosh, I should have brought something to line that trunk with. So do that beforehand. Very important also before you go, write down some measurements. This really comes in handy at the garden center. For example, the diameter of your pots and planters. Otherwise, when you get to the garden center, you know, when the helpful salesperson is talking with you and you kind of hold your hands together and say, well, let's see, I've got a container kind of about this size. How many plants would you recommend putting in that? Same is true with landscape beds, an area that you want to plant shrubs in. If you have the exact measurements when you're at the garden center, you can better successfully choose how many shrubs go in. You know, otherwise, you kind of have to stand there and say, well, gosh, my planting area is kind of like from here to there. How many plants should I put in? Same with flower beds, much easier to measure them beforehand and write them down. There's some basic terminology that we all see at a garden center. Very basic. But of course, we need to know these things. Annual flowers, those are the types of things you put in your pots and planters and containers and fill in for flower beds. And then when fall frost comes, those are gone. Pranials, of course, we want them to come back each year. We'll talk more about pranials later. Trees are generally plants with one single trunk, large, usually large. Sometimes they have multiple trunks also, whereas shrubs are multi-trunked. Many branches coming from the base. Now, the best days to shop at a garden center are really Monday through Thursday, because once April, May and June hit, garden centers get really, really busy on the weekends of Saturdays and Sundays. Now, it's it's fun on a Saturday and Sunday when the garden center is packed with customers for the owners and managers and salespeople. You know, that that's a kind of a neat rush to have that many people in the days go by fast and it's fun for customers, too. You know, you kind of all get caught up together in the planting craze. But if you need some individual attention or have some individual questions, it's maybe better to go a Monday through Thursday.  Now, when can we start buying in the garden center? The main the main concept is don't be fooled by a false early spring. Now, every few years we'll get an April that is just beautiful. The entire month of April can be so nice and warm and spring fever hits. And we're all anxious to get going. But in April, there's there's almost always a 90 percent chance that we're going to have a killing frost yet in late April or into May. So it's it's fine and wonderful to shop at a garden center in April. Do some planning, trees and shrubs we can buy and plant. Many of those are dormant trees, shrubs, perennials. Those can be start being planted in April. Like I say, they're dormant, so frost isn't going to hurt leaves that that haven't formed yet. But for bedding plants or perennials or anything that is actively growing, there's there's a 10 day time period of planting year in and year out over the decades. The 10 day window for planting containers out in the flower bed, getting tomatoes out in the garden. A 10 day period window is May 15th to the 25th. And just if you follow that year in, year out, you're safe.  You can maybe buy things. We'll talk about what to do with plants when you buy them early. But do look at that for frost sensitive plants. Do look at that window, the wonderful window of opportunity. And it prevents the heartache of doing too much planting too soon in April. We used to have customers that would come in after we had a frost in early May. Sometimes people would say, well, I suppose that's good for the greenhouse business, you can sell twice. But actually, it's not, you know, greenhouse, we're all in it together. And no one wants people's plants to get frosted because you get downhearted. No one wants that. So we've arrived at the garden center. So when you arrive at the garden center, especially a new one that you haven't been there before, kind of get your radar out and kind of observe where the annual section is, where the perennials are, the trees, shrubs, oftentimes the shade type plants versus sun loving plants. Shade type plants will often be under a protective screen. If you look at the photo on the lower right, you'll see the area protected by a shade cloth. So it's kind of fun to see the different areas. And next, locate where the boxes or trays are that management wants you to collect your purchases in. And so a tip for managers, make sure that the boxes or whatever you want people to put the plants in, make sure those are very visible in a number of locations throughout the garden center and tip to customers, look for those.  And of course, look for the prices to see how the price structure is determined. The best garden center invention, I think of all times, well, maybe the plastic nursery pot, but next to that is the plant tag. That allows us to self shop. We can take a look and a key source of information. Now, a couple of things that plant tags sell tell. One is the mature height and width. Now, by studying that tag, we can avoid a couple of problems. You know, in the photo of the evergreens, you know, those evergreens looked so small and so cute when we bought them. You know, who would have known that they get that tall? Well, of course, by examining the plant tag, we'd know the size and also the shrub that needed to be cut off because people needed to drive in on the driveway. If if a person had looked at the width of that, the mature width of that shrub, we could have given it the footprint that it needed so that we could have spaced it without having to lop off about a third of it. Plant tags also tell the preferred light conditions, which is especially important, of course, for annuals and perennials, but also shrubbery. So on a plant tag, you'll see a couple of key words. Sometimes it'll say full sun. Now, that needs six hours or more of direct sunshine. Part sun can do four to six hours of sun, such as morning sunshine. And so what's the difference between part sun and part shade? Well, part shade, we start getting into the shadier realm two to four hours only of sun and full shade. You get less than a couple hours of sun or no direct sunshine at all. Tags tell the very important winter hardiness zone, which is vital for perennials, trees and shrubs. Now, in the upper Midwest, we're in the USDA hardiness zones three and four, which can be a little tricky. Zone three material is rock hardy all the way down to 40 below. But zone four, take a look at the map and notice that zone four covers a large area from north to south. And zone four, all these hardy zones are divided into a zone A and B. But most plant tags, I've noticed, do not say zone four A and zone four B. They just say zone four. So when we shop at a garden center for hardy materials, zone three is going to be fine. Zone three, two, one, perfect. Zone four material, we should do a little more investigating. Do a little more searching to see exactly how hardy or ask at the garden center. Because sometimes zone four plants can be a little borderline. Now, I've noticed some plant tags, instead of giving the hardiness zone, they will just say hardy to 20 below. Now, you might think, oh, 20 below, boy, that sounds sounds pretty good. But if you look at the temperature chart, 20 below is kind of zone four to five.  And all it takes is one time for that plant to be killed. So one winter in the course of a shrub that's a zone kind of zone four, zone five, one winter where it dropped to that temperature is enough to kill it. Tags should also tell the botanical name of the plant. Now, not that we all need to become plant scientists, but there are some good cases and hydrangea is my favorite case for describing the importance of botanical names. Now, there are two types of hydrangea species of hydrangea that are well adapted for the Northern Plains. Zones three and zone four, North Dakota, Northern Minnesota. They are hydrangea paniculata and hydrangea arborescens. OK, well, we probably won't remember that. But in a garden center, if you take a look at the different named varieties, for example, vanilla strawberry in I've highlighted in yellow, it says hydrangea paniculata. So I say, oh, well, that's a member of a well adapted species. I'll plant that. If we take a look at the blue one, that is the endless summer. Now, endless summer hydrangea, we look at the fine print on the label that I've highlighted in yellow and it says hydrangea macrophila. Well, macrophila is not one of the two best adapted. That's more related to the florist type hydrangea. So the endless summer hydrangeas are not as well adapted. So good case of where you can look at that. Should garden centers handle endless summer hydrangea? Yeah, they should. There are many reports of them doing fine if you give them certain care, but that's the key we kind of need to. But that could be a whole another program on hydrangeas. Good labeling and good signs are such an excellent sales person. So do make use of the wonderful signs that garden centers provide. Next, we're going to take a look at some tips for selecting specific types of plants. How to select the best annuals, the perennials, trees, shrubs, et cetera. So let's walk through some of those. Let's start with annual flowers. Annual flowers, things like petunias, marigolds, geraniums, things that we fill our pots and planters and flower beds with. So if you look at a an individually pot, an individually potted annual flower or a pack, they should be well branched from the base, you know, not leggy. And rich green foliage indicates that they've had good fertility and good nutrition along the way. Notice the geranium down in the lower right corner. Isn't that beautiful? Look at the the nice husky basal branching. You can just picture that going into your container outdoors that's going to do beautifully. Now, quite a number of you are going to cringe at what I'm about to say.  I take a scissors or shears and I cut off all the blossoms. That's the secret that my mom taught me. I started gardening with her when I was about five. And my mom always said, well, because the old greenhouse person taught her this and my mom always said, well, you take off the blossoms and buds because that allows the energy when you transplant it into the soil. That allows the energy to go into rooting and producing a good stocky plant that is capable of producing lots and lots of blossoms in the long run. Yes, you you do sacrifice, you know, a few days of bloom, but it'll bounce right back in.  Try try cutting off those blossoms when you plant an annual flower. And it does. It works very well. The energy will go into the rooting and the production of a really nice plant that in the long run for the entire summer, then you'll get many more blossoms. Now, the geranium on the lower right, geraniums, when they're growing the greenhouse are the first blossoms are usually pinched off a number of times to develop a good stocky plant. So when I'm buying a geranium like that, I would not remove all the blossoms but packs of annuals, I feel it. I feel it works well. Let's talk next about choosing perennials, perennial flowers. If they're well branched to the base is great and multiple shoots coming from the base, that'll mean it'll kind of produce a circular crown a little quicker with the, you know, eventual more blooms. One thing I should mention about perennials also. Now, most perennials require until about the third year from planting to really get going well. Some some take a little longer than others, such as peonies. But most perennials come into their glory in about the third season. So, you know, don't be afraid to have some patience and kind of wait. Now, blooms are optional on perennials. Actually, when you plant them, I think it's a good idea to remove that blossom again to let the energy go into rooting and developing a nice structured plant. Now, we should also understand the difference between a long lived perennial and a short lived perennial. Now, both types of perennials can be well adapted, but not all perennials have the same long lifespan. For example, peonies, iris, dailies, hosta, bleeding heart, those can be around for the next 100 years. There are many peonies that have been on homesteads that are 100 years old. So one category of perennials. And sometimes it takes a little, you know, either experience or investigating to find those long lived types. The other category are short lived perennials. Now, absolutely worth it planting, you know, don't give up on them. But some perennials will will get the enjoyment for maybe five years or so. Foxglove, lupins, delphinium, echinacea, several types like that. We enjoy them for a shorter lifespan, but don't don't give up on them just because they they aren't in the same category as a peony. But do be aware that there are the different categories. Next, let's move to the section of vegetables. Now, everybody likes tomato plants to buy at the garden center. Look at these. Doesn't that just make your mouth mouth water for not only fresh tomatoes, but just to be in a garden center, selecting these the uppermost photo, look at the fresh green of the leaves and generally stocky plants, they look quite nice. Those are those are good tomato plants. They photo to the right. Those plants are taller, but they're still a nice rich green.  You can just remove the lower leaves and plant those deeply into the garden right up to the uppermost leaves so that just the top is sticking out, then they won't get windwipped. And also tomatoes, plants will root from all along that stem, creating a much sturdier, more productive plant. The plants, the photo in the lower left hand are yellow. And so try to avoid those. That means they've been starved for nutrition.  But you know, it takes a little bit of time, a few weeks, you know, kind of for them to get the nutrition back. So we may as well start with something that's already good and green. Now, tomatoes are very important to study the plant tag because tomatoes fall into a few categories. If it says 50 to 65 days to maturity or harvest, those are an early group, you know, for the earliest tomatoes. But if you want main season tomatoes for lots of eating, canning, kind of a good main season, look for the varieties that are 65 to 78 days. If they're later than that, 80 to 110 days, those are quite late. So for example, if a gardener picks a tomato that is 100 days, they might come back to the garden center and say, well, gosh, my tomatoes didn't start ripening until September. Well, you know, maybe maybe they chose a variety that was later. It's kind of a nice idea to do when you're buying tomato plants, pick varieties from each of those categories. So you've got some early, some mid season and some later as well. And also that days to maturity, that is from the date and that's average. A lot depends on the temperature and growing conditions, but on the average. And that is the days from the time that they are transplanted out into the garden soil. That's not the number of days from seeding. So that is the days from transplanting. I once happened to be in a garden center and a customer was questioning those days and the employee kind of mistakenly said, well, that's the number of days from seeding. So don't don't be alarmed that it's 100 days because that that's from seeding and they've already been growing 45 days. But if you follow that way of thinking, OK, a 65 or a 60 day tomato. OK, if they're seeded April 1st, set out May 15th, that's already 45 days. So you should almost get you should get tomatoes in 15 days. You know, that doesn't happen. So anyway, it is from the time of transplanting into the garden. But the number of days gives a good determination of early, mid season and late. OK, let's move out to the shrub shrub area. So when choosing shrubs, look for those that are well branched from the base, healthy foliage and very important to look at the tag to see what the mature width is as well as the height, but determine what the footprint is of that. And that's important when you're planting a combination of shrubs together in a landscape bed, sometimes it will say space this far apart. Well, that that works if you're planting 10 spireas all the same, then you can space them if it says space two feet. OK, but if you're planting a big dogwood that's that's going to get six foot diameter next to a two foot spirea, you know, that spacing doesn't work.  Think of that as a footprint. So when you're planting these shrubs, give that dog a dogwood, give that it's six foot footprint. Then next to it, the spirea that's going to get two foot, give that one it's two foot footprint. So that really works well to decide these the spacing is think of it as a footprint. Shade ornamental trees look for straight trunks, of course, nicely branched. Here's a key point that has really changed over the years. And that is the depth of planting, depth of planting over the years. Trees have been planted too deeply out in our yards and boulevards. And they've suffered as a result. There have been many, many cases of tree death from being planted too deeply. We didn't realize this until things started having a lot of problems. So here's here's the key. Take a look, look for the blue arrow down at the base there, where it's pointing down in the pot. When you're at the garden center, look for that, that is called the root flare or the trunk flare. You can see the spot where the roots are going down into the potting soil. When you get that tree home to plant, make sure those uppermost flare roots are only an inch or so below your soil. If they were planted too deeply in the pot, where you can't see those, well, just scrape away a little of the top potting mix and plant it at the proper depth. So we used to plant our trees way too deeply in the pot. We didn't didn't know any better. That was the recommendation. We planted them really deeply so they wouldn't topple over in the wind in the pot so badly. And so anyway, do look for that very important in the garden center and very important when you're planting them at home. Choosing fruit trees, be certain to choose varieties that are well adapted to our climate and our zone. And that's so much easier in a locally owned garden center that is honed in on the area in which you plant. National chains struggle with this because they may be providing stock for a much wider geographic area. It's interesting also to note on fruit trees, the wider the branch angles, the stronger those branches are, less likely to break. So look for branches that are more horizontally out with a wider branch. They also have been known to bear quicker if the branches are more wide angled horizontally out instead of so tightly angled upright. Now, apples as a rule will bear in about five to seven years. Sometimes you'll get a couple apples on the third year, but fruit trees require patience. So do be patient, keep the sod away from the apples for a number of year, mulch them with a ring of mulch. Plums will usually bear earlier in about three to four years. Here's a special note on this type of display. Very common in garden centers, we see displays of these kind of dry or packaged bulbs and roots and rhizomes. And in that in that display, there are materials usually that are not winter hardy. They need to be dug and brought in and stored over winter. Such as gladiolus bulbs, dahlias, canas. But often in these displays, they also have material that is winter hardy and that can stay out in the flowerbed. Here I see there are some lilies. Let's see. Well, there's asparagus, but there's also lily of the valley. That's good and hardy. So one suggestion to a garden center manager would be to separate these and label them. So this group needs to be dug and brought in for the winter and stored and planted again the following. And this group are fully winter hardy. Let's talk about the jargon that is used for sizes of plants.  Now, they oftentimes aren't exact volumes. I don't think you could dump, you know, five gallons into that container and maybe come out with the same thing, but it gives a good relationship.  So sometimes if a garden center refers to something, oh, we have a four inch geranium sale, that doesn't usually that doesn't usually mention or talk about the height of the plant is talking about the size of the pot. Let's talk a little bit about garden center etiquette. Now, this is always fun. Now, I know we've all been cooped up all winter, so it goes without saying once you get into the garden center, you know, no pushing or shoving to get to the to get to the good plants. Now, gardeners aren't like that. But if you take a if you take a tag out of a container to read, make sure you put that tag back in the same container that it came out of, especially in born with something like tomatoes. You know, I've shopped for tomatoes and sometimes I'll find two tags in the same pack. And then I think, gosh, is this an early one or is it the later one because both tags are in it. So do put the tag back where you found them. And if you pick up a plant to examine it, you know, get it back where you found it and be gentle with with plants to and be patient. It is a busy place in the spring. So so be patient and monitor children. Greenhouses and garden centers are fun places for kids. Fun places for kids to roam around through the benches. But but for the safety of your children and in the safety of everyone else, you know, do keep children by you. You know, I know it's tempting to play hide and seek throughout the benches. Maybe even do a little bit of homework on some of the plants to beforehand. Here are some tips for some for new homeowners, because there's a lot to do. You've got furniture and you've got drapes and you got lots of stuff to do in a home. But maybe invest some money in putting trees in. Get the trees going since they take a while to so get them going. And then, of course, the landscape shrubs get them going. And then followed by perennials, you can always add those in later. And if you want some quick impact like the first years, well, everything else is getting developed and established. A plant, annual flowers, annual flowers give a quick reward for the first season while your other landscape items develop. Now, here are some tips for saving money. Not all material is sold in a variety of sizes, but if there are choices between a one gallon and a 15 gallon shrub, you know, maybe choose the lower, the lesser size. Also, perennials, if you look closely, many perennials in a pot can be divided into several. Now, that will probably delay the bloom time, but you can certainly divide also. Here's a word about plant guarantees. Now, what I'm going to say might shock you a little bit, but I'm I'm not really in favor of plant guarantees, not just because I had a garden center. We always offer to guarantee. But, you know, I actually I can't give you a one year guarantee that I'll be alive next year. And I don't really think we can expect plants to guarantee be guaranteed like that, because we just can't guarantee the unknowns of life. You know, some garden centers do provide guarantees and that's fine. But if a garden center doesn't provide a guarantee, I'm I'm OK with that, too. But I do want a garden center to provide a good, healthy, well named plants. Now, we've shopped at the garden center. When we get our plants home, here's here's some ideas. First of all, we used to be asked a lot because it's fun to shop early like late April, early May. It's fun to shop. We used to get the common question from customers that I'm not ready to plant these yet. I can't plant for a week or so yet. Is it OK if I leave these in the garage? And the answer is no. The plants from a garden center are used to being in the optimal light and optimal conditions of a greenhouse or garden center, and they're going to quickly languish if left inside our garages. So instead, move them, keep them outside in a well protected, wind protected spot, give the sunny plant sun, give the shade plant some shade, move them into the garage on chilly nights but outdoors during the day. And that also helps to harden off the plants. That helps get them accustomed to your conditions before you're actually ready to plant and again, remove flowers. I think on annual flowers, I like to remove the flowers. Save the tags and the receipts. Develop a journal, a three ring binder in which you can keep the tags and receipts. That's fun to know what it is that you planted. Here are a few miscellaneous tips for customers. Develop a relationship with your garden center. It's fun when they see you coming through the door or you can greet them. They'll greet you and that that makes for a nice experience. Don't be afraid to ask questions. The lowest prices at an establishment isn't always the best bargain, but I'm living proof of that. I bought some bargain at a big box store, bargain fruit tree. And I wished I would not have the one that I paid three times as much was well worth every penny of it. That's a program for a whole another day, too. Here's a few more customers tip. Make sure you read the tags, bloom cell, but don't be afraid to buy plants that are green, too. Now, here's a fun concept. Pranials are not always less work. I always chuckle it a little bit when a customer would come in and say, I want to plant perennials because I don't want to have quite so much work. Well, that's kind of the equivalent of saying the work is finished once the baby is born. So there there is work with perennials, too, but they're fun. There really aren't perennials that bloom all summer long. For example, the potted lilies that you see there are beautiful, but they they're not going to maintain that bloom all summer. Perennials are wonderful in that they have certain bloom time, some bloom early in spring, some mid season, some fall and all together, if you plant lots of types of perennials, you've got bloom all over. I want to mention a little bit about the expectations in a garden center. Now, garden centers are filled with all kinds of plants. Some plants will last a long, long time. You know, lilacs and rhubarb, they'll be here long before the rest of us are long after the rest of us are gone. Other types of plants in a garden center don't last that long, but that's that's OK. Delphiniums aren't going to last 100 years. The northern lights, Azalea, beautiful and adapted, but it's it's not going to probably last the same as a lilac wood. But those are all still worth planting. And a good garden center stocks all of these types of things that are adapted, even though they aren't all as long lived as others. So we need to make sure our expectations of our plants is adjusted. Here are a few tips for managers. It helps if the annuals and perennials are separated. Clearly mark the prices. Now, here's an interesting one. Now, I was guilty of this. OK, customers come up to the cash register with three boxes of plants. Well, and I also I was kind of doing well by consolidating them into like one box because then they'd have less to carry. But I would notice customers would oftentimes kind of grimace a little bit because I was kind of crowding those in. I was being careful. But now when I go to a garden center to shop and if the salesperson, the clerk kind of does the same thing, I kind of wince a little bit, too. Maybe instead of crowding them tightly into box, maybe maybe keep them spaced out a little bit as the customer maybe feels less like they're kind of being crowded too tightly. Plus, when you get the plants home, they're a little easier to take out of the box without breaking branches, too. And I really want to thank the independent garden centers just for being there and doing what you do and making life so wonderful for the rest of us. And my top tip for garden center shopping is just enjoy. What a wonderful place to simply be and enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. And if you ever need to get ahold of me for any follow up questions, we're going to leave my email address up. Don't hesitate to contact me. And now we're going to open it up to see Julie can indicate if there are any questions that we can answer right now. Sure. And thank you, Don. This was very interesting and inspirational on a minus 20 degree day. So you have a couple comments at the start. You talked about the wonderful aroma and a couple of our attendees agreed with that. And I think they're looking forward to that time. So Sarah has a question on mature plants and size on tags. And here's your comment. Plants don't just stop growing once they reach maximum size, right? Someone told me that once the maximum size on tags was 15 years of age. Is that right? No, I don't. Well, there there's maybe some truth to that, but some not truth to that. For example, an elm, an elm tree that is listed at a mature height of that. It's not going to. OK, if it's going to top off at a mature height, listen, at 65 feet, you know, it's it's not going to keep growing until it's 200 feet tall. There is a maximum capability. And for example, a spirea dwarf spirea that's listed at a mature height of two feet. It will top off at two feet. It won't keep going to become eight feet tall. But there are some when I say there is some truth to that. A plant doesn't stop growing. It might stop growing and increasing in height, but it keeps growing in that it keeps producing more branches, more leaves and etc. But there is there is a maximum height into which these fall, which which helps. We have a question. I'd be alarmed if my little dwarf spirea was going to get up to the eve of my house. OK, I have another question for you. When you were talking about zones three and four, Becky is wondering if we might be able to push it for a zone four if we protect the plant with straw or mulch. Yes, and you bring up the wonderful concept called microclimate microclimate. And by that we mean it's possible to have a more favorable little climate within the broader climate. Here's an example that northern lights, Azalea that we photographed with a nice pink blossoms, that does well in a microclimate such as, OK, in town in an established town where you have large shade trees and an in town yard where there's established plantings. A northern lights, Azalea does quite well, catches good snow cover versus a new housing development that's kind of out on the prairie with no established trees, windswept northern lights, Azalea would be much more difficult to grow there. So you also mentioned mulching. Some borderline plants can be improved with mulching. Now, remember, I mentioned the hydrangea, the endless summer hydrangea with the blue flowers mulching helps greatly to increase the survivability. It keeps it more moist, gives it some winter protection and absolutely. And that is some of the finesse that is fun to acquire with experience. You kind of learn how to locate certain things, zone four things that might be a little borderline, you learn how to develop those within your yard to within your yard to mulch or provide what's necessary. That's another good case for when you buy a new home to start the trees, start the trees and shrubs get going. If it's in an unplanned area, get those going so that you soon develop your own microclimate. All right, and you've got a kudo here from Beryl who says, thank you for the most enjoyable presentation. It was like being in a garden center without the smell. We do have another question. Do you prefer bear root or potted trees? And second, do you have any suggestions on trimming the roots of either for planting and to fit into a hole properly? All right, potted trees and shrubs versus bear root. Prior to the invention of the plastic nursery pod, most nursery stock trees, shrubs were sold bear root. They were kept in cool, humid storage areas. And the selling window was brief, April and kind of into May. Then in June, when temperatures start warming up, it was difficult to keep those unless you had refrigerated storage. It's difficult to keep bear root material. So with the with the invention of the nursery pot, it allowed garden centers to pot up, you know, to get in bear root material, pot them up and then that material will grow and stay in its pot and can be sold and planted all summer long. So that greatly increased the window of plantability. But now some garden centers, not all, some do still offer bear root as well as potted bear. Root works very, very nicely where it's offered. You can sometimes it's a little more economical. They plant well, they take off very well. So you can have good success with both bear root and potted. Now, the second part of your question is about the rooting. When you're the roots, what to do with the roots when you're planting.   Above all, do not circle the roots inside the planting hole. It would be much better to cut off. Circling roots will continue to grow in a circular fashion and eventually can strangle the tree, literally strangle the life out of that tree. So bear root, make sure the roots are outward instead of curling. We get potted. When a potted tree or shrub is taken out of the pot, slipped out of the pot, it's very common to note that the outside of the soil ball is totally circled with roots. We used to say, don't disturb those because it'll disturb the plant. Transplant them as is. And then decades later, research, thanks to research, showed that those trees were having a problem called stem-girdling roots. Those circling roots just kept going in circle. And eventually, like a boa constrictor, constricted the life out of the tree. So when you take a pot tree out of its pot, gently kind of feather out the roots or cut them even, you know, cut in a number of sections throughout, cut across the bottom, or tease the roots apart so that they are not circling around. Disturbing the tree a little bit is secondary. We need to get those roots aimed outward. And you have another question. I think you've kind of answered it already, but how aggressive can you be when untangling roots in a root-bound pot? As I mentioned, we kind of used to say, don't disturb those roots because it's going to disturb and set the tree back. But then, you know, suddenly we had lots of tree problems with girdling roots circling. OK, so how aggressive should you be? Sometimes cutting down with a knife doesn't always get those roots aimed outward that they should be. So here's a way to do it. Get the get the whole dug first, so that's all ready. OK, have everything ready to go. Then slip the pot off the tree and as quickly as you can either cut off some of the roots. You can even shave off an inch or so from the outer perimeter or tease them apart. And sometimes you have to be fairly aggressive, tease them apart. But do all this quickly. And then as soon as you do that, get the plant, get the tree into the planting hole, backfill with soil and immediately have water. Do this quickly. The quicker you do this, the less the less interrupting it will be for the tree there. Thank you. And Liz has a question about transporting trees. She says, what would be the least damaging method of transporting a six to eight foot tall tree in a pickup box? Stand it up or lay it down? I would lay it down, lay it down pointed, you know, kind of back with the top of the tree pointed backwards. The wind flows better through that. If you only had a couple of blocks, well, then maybe just drive really, really slow and set the tree upright. But they do tend to they do tend to go better if pointed backwards. Now, it does help, you know, buy a couple of bags of potting soil while you're there. And then when you lay the tree down on its side, wedge a bag of potting soil under that pot. So it kind of stays in place. But but much better to lay them down than then going up, especially if you've got a ways to go. And here's another tree question. Lots of tree questions with trees of any kind. Will a smaller tree catch up with a larger tree, which may cost a lot more? I love I love that question.  The six foot has a better root to trunk ratio and will usually establish itself and take off with growth and catch up with the taller tree. Absolutely. If you need a little kind of quicker gratification, well, then I guess the taller one maybe gives that. But absolutely, the smaller tree will normally catch up and surpass the the larger tree.  Is it worth it?  And are they worth it? Absolutely. So Renee says so it's recommended not to water a transplant directly into the hole. What could happen? Let's see, I'm not quite not quite understanding what. Once again, Julie. I'll read exactly what she wrote. So it's recommended not to water a transplant directly into the hole. What could happen? So are you supposed to water a plant in? I think that's the question. Yeah, immediately after a plant is planted, whether tree shrub, perennial or annual, immediately after planting, they should be thoroughly watered. That gets rid of air spaces and it brings the soil, your soil in contact with the roots. So put the soil and the plant, get it in there, and then water it. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. OK. Good, we did that right last summer at my house. Right, you have everything ready, get the plant out of its pot into the hole, backfill with soil, fill in with soil, and then immediately water and water thoroughly so that everything is thoroughly soaked and saturated. OK, well I think we are all out of questions and I just want to thank you, Don, for taking us on a trip into a nursery. I really enjoyed it, I needed it. And I hope that all of you will join us next week for our next session. And it will be the same Zoom link that you used this week. So if you had any problems getting in and you got the link a little later, save that link because we'll use it again. And I thoroughly enjoyed our visit, so thank you all for participating. Yes, thanks everyone, thanks Don. And please take the survey. So we will wrap up our webinar first one and great to have you all here.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I'm Paranjali Guha Thakurtha and we are going to discuss the state of democracy in India. We keep describing our country as the world's largest democracy, whereas others have described this country as a failed democracy, as an electoral autocracy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 15th of August, described India as the mother of democracies. So what is democracy in the Indian context? Its strengths, its limitations, its successes and failures. To discuss this subject, I'm very happy to welcome to the studio of NewsClick, Professor K. C. Suri. Dr. Suri retired recently from the University of Hyderabad, the Department of Political Science. He's been a teacher for 38 years and an ardent observer and analyst of India's democracy. Professor Suri, let me start by asking you a question about the report that was presented in March 2022 by this Swedish institute called Varieties of Democracy Institute, VDEM Institute. And the report had a year ago in 2021 described India as an electoral autocracy. They work out this kind of a index, a liberal democracy index and they have claimed that India's position has worsened and it is among the top 10 autocratizing nations. And the democratic slide is continuing in India and India falls into the category of countries like Brazil, Turkey and Hungary where there's been a downslide. And this particular report says that all this has happened largely after 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India and naturally the Government of India is not at all happy with such a report and says that these reports are by western organizations based on flawed methodologies. So this is my first, your observations on this particular report. I think there are several organizations for Anjai who are engaged in assessing democracies all over the world. There are four or five agencies which are well known throughout the world like Freedom House, then there is this institute called International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm. There is Economic Intelligence Unit based in London and there's varieties of democracy project that is called VEDEM project now. It is founded and led by a professor called Stefan Lindbergh. It is based in the university, basically, Gothenburg in Sweden. One difference between the VEDEM methodology and the methodologies that are followed by other organizations. I will tell you a couple of them to three of them so that we can appreciate what they are saying. There are two ways of measuring democracy. Democracy is understood as a system of government in which people are free to choose their governments in a free, fair and periodical election and in which opposition parties have a reasonable chance of coming to power and the choices are made in an environment where information is available to the citizens freely and from different alternative channels of information. So these are generally, this is a minimum, at the minimal level the democracy is understood by most of these agencies. So there is a minimalist, it's called a thinner perspective of democracy which is the Freedom House follows, that's where it stops. But then the VEDEM is on the other extreme of the continuum. It adds some more attributes. So two attributes which most organizations follow in assessing democracy in a world, in a particular country, they are political rights and civil rights. These are the two, which are the minimal criteria. Then there are others who added a few more and this VEDEM adds three more. These are basically the two important of them are the participatory and deliberative aspects of democracy. The participatory aspects are those that where citizens actually feel kind of some kind of efficacy in participating in politics, that they feel that they matter in the society. And this goes beyond voting. It goes beyond voting. So it's not just you exercise your franchise at the national level once in five years and at the state level or at the Punjab level. It's also not merely exercising certain freedoms of speech and expression but it also goes beyond equality aspects, rule of law, participation in politics, political awareness. And then there is the deliberative aspects. How far you are communicating with others, what kind of discussions you are having, whether you have discussions, whether you watch news, etc. So there are certain deliberative aspects. So VEDEM people have developed quite a complex methodology to assess democracies of the world and they regard it as a kind of a thicker view of democracy. That's how the distinctions are made. Let me take you up on one of the points that you mentioned and that's important in a democracy, the opposition, the role of the opposition in a democracy. And let me just draw your attention to a recent remark, a recent article that was published in print on the 27th of June by this writer by the name of Kapil Gommi Reddy and he is the author of a book called Malvolent Republic, A Short History of the New India. And he says, I quote him, democracies can survive authoritarianism. They cannot survive the absence of an energetic opposition. And he says that is the great paradox of Indian democracy that there are citizens uprising but the opposition is fragmented, divided. There is institutional decay even as their attempts at civic reclamation and the fury of citizens get dispersed. So one of the reasons what many attribute to the weakness of the working of institutions responsible for upholding and strengthening democracy in India is the fragmentation and the weakness of the opposition, your observations and comments. Yes, I think just before I come to this point, let me finish one more aspect related to your earlier question. Okay. That is, like all of these three institutions including Veedam, its reports and assessments of democracy in a country are based on what are known as expert surveys. So these are not public opinion surveys. So there are two ways of assessing democracy in a world through a cross-sectional public opinion surveys and through expert surveys. So all these institutions, whether it is Freedom House or EIU Intelligence Unit or International Idea or Veedam, they are primarily based on the perceptions of country experts. That's about Veedam. Now coming to your question on opposition, I think opposition is central to democracy. That's how democracies have evolved. The first democracies of the world, say Britain and France, the opposition evolved from the beginning itself. You know, you heard about the Vixen Tories in England and the very idea of democracy, I think rests on the belief that truth doesn't exist in one place and truth can be spoken by somebody else who is not in majority. So respecting minority for the good of the majority, not for the sake of minority itself, because if truth is known, everybody will benefit. So I think we should defend opposition to an idea or to a majority and not for the sake of minority alone. So the freedom of speech and expression of an individual is what supporting, not for that sake of that individual alone, but for the sake of larger society. And the second thing that there is always opposition in society, paranjay, there is no society in which people are not divided on a particular view or on a particular thing because people have different experiences, people come from different backgrounds and people have different perspectives of the reality. So there are always division of opinions and that society which tolerates a difference of opinion always prospers. That's interesting. This is a historical thing and I think in democracy that gets institutionalized, that's the only difference. It's very interesting that you say this about that a fundamental right of every Indian citizen. Article 19a of the Constitution of India, it's a fundamental right of every citizen. Article 192 which is more contentious talks about the reasonable restrictions and the debate goes on about what is reasonable, what is unreasonable, be that as it may. One of the factors that help strengthen democracy is a vibrant media. And unlike NewsClick, much of the media in India, a very substantial section of the media in India seems to have abdicated or I would say not seems has abdicated its role as holding truth to power, asking difficult questions of those who are in power and then seem to be more interested in bashing the opposition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the first prime minister of India who has never addressed an unscripted press conference or media conference where anybody can ask him anything. He has given interviews to selected individuals including an actor from a Canada citizen who is also one of India's or if not India's highest income taxpayer who asks some questions like how do you eat your mango? I'm saying right from the top till now it seems that freedom of expression and the freedom of India is under a huge threat and that is weakened democracy. What are your views? I think democracy rests on this fundamental condition that people should get information freely from different sources because the reality out there is not one, it's how you see it and only when people are allowed to tell others what they see the reality and that will allow citizens to form what we call more informed views. There are scholars who worked on democracy, they mentioned this as kind of one of the important criterion to assess a democracy whether there is a free media. But if the media as you are saying that if some people in the media have not stood up to that kind of an understanding of conveying what they think is truth to the people in a fearless manner that's not good for democracy. I think the purpose of the media is to tell people and report to them what is reality and give sufficient space to them to decide for themselves. I think if that happens democracy can be much more robust and vibrant. Okay, Professor Suri, 75 years of independence and we've seen large sections of the foreign media not the Indian media being very critical about the state of democracy in India. There's several articles which have appeared in well known publications like the New York Times, Time Magazine, Washington Post, I can go on and on and on where they have been very critical about the state of Indian democracy and I'll just give you one headline from the Associated Press which is a leading news agency an article written by Sheikh Salik on the 12th of August 2022. The headline reads at 75 India's democracy is under pressure like never before. Would you agree with that view? Yeah, when it comes to the perceptions of western scholars and western media about Indian democracy they have been skeptical about the survival of Indian democracy from the beginning. 1950s many of them said it's not right to introduce democracy in India at that point of time because they thought that it was premature because the preconditions for democracy were not there in India and India was a vast society with great heterogeneity and India was a poor country and it has a large population. These are three conditions because the scholars have established three conditions that country has to be small and homogeneous and it should be reasonably prosperous. In fact there were people who worked out a figure of what should be the average annual income of citizens for 462 years. When women were allowed to vote in India in 1951 and 1952 women of Switzerland were not allowed to vote. So there were fears because they said two things that India cannot be simply a democracy because it is as I said illiterate and then it is also diverse such a huge diverse country because illiteracy was about 12 percent and it was a poor country so much of the languages, religions etc and they were also even skeptical about the survival of India as our nation not male as a democracy. So what we have traveled so far in these 75 years? I will tell you that many democracy scholars in the West did not recognize India as a democracy till the late 1980s. They didn't include in their study of democracies all over the world they didn't include India and I know Robert Dahl who said that now India is a candidate for democracy that was in 1980s after emergency. So only recently they started in 1990s they started calling India a democracy earlier it was the freedom house was there it was called partly democracy. So I think in my view Paranjay Indian democracy has gained strength in over the last 75 years. And I'm interrupting you here how would you trace the trajectory of Indian democracy from 2014 onwards specifically the last eight and a half years of the Narendra Modi regime? I think there are certain positives and there are certain negatives in this period. The positives are first of all let me speak about the positives. The positives are now we have a situation where there is a party at the national level which is national in the sense that it is spread all over the country earlier it was not there there was there was the Congress and then there was the regional parties and there was Janatha experiment and the BJP is now the pole of the polity of course which the Congress was for several decades. So we have at least in 2014 I thought that here we have two big parties the Congress and the BJP which is good for the country in the sense that there will be Congress has become very weak or period it is in power on its own in two states in Rajasthan and that's the problem it's in power it only in as a coalition partner in Jharkhand. I think that's the problem I think that's your question again on the opposition unless you have a equally nation a party with the nationwide spread you cannot have a healthy democracy. So the regional part there are strong regional parties there but they are most of them are family forms. So how do we really at least in 2014 that was the situation as you rightly said Congress declined over the years and it's not able to look at the gap in 2014 between the Congress and the BJP that widened in 2019. Yeah and it widened in 2019 so that's the problem I think. So you would lay the blame more on the Indian National Congress for the current state of India's democracy. I don't blame I just look at the situation I'm not blaming anyone I'm saying that for whatever reasons maybe the leadership crisis or maybe Raul Gandhi is able to galvanize that kind of a nation or unable to galvanize. Yeah unable that's what I'm doing I don't say fail unable to galvanize that kind of a. We are waiting for the elections to happen in October. Yeah and on the second positive I see is that in any democracy Paranjay that parties which have which are more ideologically oriented whether they are on the right side or the left side it's good if they come to power communists came to power in Bengal communists came power into power in Canada. Communists are no longer in power but then all states other than Kerala but then they also get democratized. So are you trying to say that there is a link between the internal democracy within a party and democracy. What I'm saying is that you could say that the BJP internally is as undemocratic as the Congress. I'm not talking about that that is another aspect about party organization I'm thinking of party ideology. So ideologically extreme parties when they come this happened all over the world it's not only in India when they come to power they become mainstream parties and they get moderated. So that is one possibility I'm saying that in 2014 when this party came it happened in before 1998 and 1999 then 2014 but the hope that's that's where the problem the hope that this party would get moderated or this ideology gets moderated and becomes liberal is not happening because of the because of the problem within all parties that are based on extreme ideology face this problem whether to moderate or not to moderate. There is always this ambivalence because if you moderate the fringe groups will abandon this if you don't moderate the the majority of people won't accept you. Would you see this do you see that this happening now within the Bharti Janta party? I think it has it has it has tried to moderate itself but this is ambivalent. All right that's where the problem is that these are the positive sides and they're also negative sides because at any point of time in a democracy when a party which is based on kind of cultural nationalism. BJP wants a Hindu rastra. I mean people will call it majoritarian 15 percent of the population one out of seven Indians if they don't consider them I mean they will not officially we call second-class citizens but effectively yeah they are and that's the message going through yeah the RSS completes a hundred years in 2025. Correct so I think what you're saying like media opposition etc. I think as a ruling party in a ruling party in any democracy you should also recognize that a healthy opposition and the healthy media is good for democracy but do you think Mr Modi recognizes that he has personalized politics in India like a few others me versus Rahul Gandhi. Do you really mean he's repeatedly talked about a congress Mukt Bharat opposition Mukt Bharat. There are three there can be one can imagine three dimensions of this. I don't reduce a discussion on democracy only to to persons there are there are certain cultural aspects there are certain institutional aspects there are certain leadership aspects. I think democracy has its own logic you cannot reverse it so the leaders will will have to recognize this and that pressure has to come from people and from civil society. Okay so I'm sorry I'm interrupting you we've almost run out of time so this is my last question to you and I know it's difficult for a professor to give a short answer try and give a short answer you know we are described as the world's largest democracy the United States is sometimes described as the world's oldest democracy Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the 15th of August said India is the mother of democracy we can define it anyway how and I mean I'll give you another example writer Nantra Saigal I was reading something she wrote on the 13th of June 2022 in the wire where she questions is India really a democracy and the attacks on human rights individual freedoms makes a very skeptical she quotes Bob Dylan's line the answer my friend is blowing in the wind so if I can request you to give us your closing remarks on the current state of democracy or the health of democracy in India at present that's a good question I think India is a democracy and I am proud of it there are problems there are challenges that we should overcome and India has been facing these challenges both structural and cultural and institutional as well as in the domain of leadership so the whole problem with the medium report that we started talking about this classification is sometimes a problem when you say this person is good and this person is bad of course that results lot of tension in us but then there is something in between also that as you said health and quality it's not health is it's not that I get I'm I'm dead out suddenly or I am healthy suddenly it is a process so in this process you in a society encounters difficulties so one understanding of democracy Paranjay is instead of looking at democracy in terms of two categories either democracy or non-democracy I think that's the trap in which many people fall there is something in between that we are becoming democracy and this is a journey forever this is a journey for the individual how democratic I am in my life and how democratic the society or my group in their social life and how democratic my nation is in this line you know so look at 75 years the people's participation has increased their capacities to judge things have improved it's called water sophistication they are more sophisticated today and and I think in that sense democracy has gained but then there are challenges as as you rightly pointed out about the health of opposition about the media freedom and expression I think these are at the core of democracy and if these are not fostered nurtured and safeguarded you will not have a healthy democracy thank you so much professor suri for speaking to me and through me to the viewers of news click make up your mind do you agree with professor suri or not is indian democracy healthy or not he argues that we have to take a nuanced view but time alone will tell we have about a year and a half to go before the next general election thank you very much for being with us on news click keep watching this channel subscribe to this channel click on those buttons thank you very much for being with us


Thank you for turning up at nearly half five on the second day of the conference. We appreciate it. We are going to go through some of the SIG updates over the past six months in the last cubecon, as well as some feature highlights of improvement work that we have gone through. We will give a quick introduction to the SIG for those who are not familiar, the sub-projects that we are responsible for, what they do, the problems they cover, et cetera. We will cover the adoption of carpenter, one of the big things that's been happening over the past time since the last cubecon. Some updates on cluster auto scaler and also a quick update on VPA. Future work that the SIG would like to do, this is also your opportunity to get a vault in the SIG, and further areas where you can help them. In terms of the areas covered by the SIG, this is where SIG naming might get a bit confusing, because you might look at SIG autoscaling and then also SIG scalability and think what's the difference there. SIG autoscaling is primarily focused on scaling of clusters and nodes and workloads. We have a few different sub-projects that are intended to address these in different dimensions, different problem spaces. In terms of the scaling of clusters and nodes, that's primarily cluster autoscaler, has historically been the project that the SIG owns that covered this. We are also in the process of adopting carpenter. This is a project you might have heard mentioned if you were previously in the previous talk in this room. It's been talked about past cubecons as well. It's another project aiming to solve the problem of scaling clusters and nodes. In terms of scaling workloads, we've got horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, multi-dimensional scaling as well as a couple of other projects. The balancer and add-on resizer. I'll give you a quick overview of each of them. Cluster autoscaler, it's responsible for monitoring for unschedulable pods, provisions, nodes in response. I'll cover this in a bit more detail on how cluster autoscaler and carpenter differ when talking about the adoption of that. It also is responsible for removing underutilised nodes, respecting PDBs and constraints. Everyone's focused on making their clusters more sustainable, making their clusters cost less. That's how cluster autoscaler aims to help there. You have your workloads scaling down times a low traffic. Your nodes become underutilised and cluster autoscaler takes care of that for you. It performs scheduling simulations based on the declared unschedulable pod requests. It looks at all the unschedulable pods currently in cluster, figures out what resources all those pods will need to be satisfied, including constraints based on them, and then provisions the nodes to meet those requirements. Carpenter works quite similarly in some ways, different in others, but it also monitors for unschedulable pods, provisions, nodes in response. It's slightly different in the way it performs a scale down of underutilised nodes. It's also able to look at nodes where if it removed all the pods onto other, a different node that it brings up, it's able to do that. If it thinks, oh, I can replace this one big node with a smaller, cheaper node, it's capable of doing that. It supports standard scheduling constraints for node selection as well. In terms of workload scaling, horizontal pod autoscaler is generally the one people are most familiar with. It increases and decreases the desired replicas to achieve targets. You can see a sort of example on the side where we're saying the target utilisation of this service is lower than all the current pods. In this case, the HPA would scale up the desired number up. It can scale on a number of different dimensions, so it's resource metrics, CPU and memory. Currently, that default is summed across the pod, cover that in a bit more detail than we talked about future work we'd like to do. It can also look at custom metrics that you can expose through a number of different methods, so things like QPS going into pods. Finally, external metrics. These are things that are not per pod metrics. If you're looking at a workload consuming from a queue, for instance, in your cloud provider of choice, you can choose to scale on that. If you see the queue length increasing, you can increase the number of replicas. You can have configurable scaling behaviours as well. You can have fast scale up, slow scale down. You can configure that per workload. Vertical pod autoscaler. This is aiming to right-size your pods in terms of their CPU and memory requests. You're looking at the historical resource usage of a pod and saying that pod has always only used 25% of the CPU that it's got. I'm going to decrease the amount of CPU that that workload is requesting and then bring that down. It's based on resource data, so CPU usage, memory usage, and OOM events as well. If you've got one where you're looking, say, a Prometheus instance that you're having to scale up and down, it will also monitor for those OOM events and take that into account. It recommends those pod sizes to keep the real usage well within the request pod capacity. You're able to run it in an effect with a dry run mode so that you can look at those recommendations, what the VPA would suggest, and then evaluate whether you want to apply them. Multi-diameter pod autoscaler. This allows the combination of HPA and VPA scaling on a single workload. Historically, it was recommended against running the HPA and VPA looking at the same resource metrics. That could result in slightly odd edge cases where you ended up with a lot of very small replicas because the HPA would scale a workload out because you were using a lot of CPU, and then the VPA, once that CPU started falling, would start scaling the resources down on those pods. It's also designed from the ground up to be extensible, so it will allow users to insert their own recommender, so if you're wanting to encapsulate some business logic because you've got a private pricing plan or something like that, you will be able to do that.  You might have heard this when we were referred to during a talk yesterday talking about that project. Balancer. This is intended to solve the problem of how do you ensure that you're getting equal spreading of pods if you're running a cluster across three zones in a region? How do you ensure that those pods are equally spread and remain balanced as you start scaling up and down? Other business problems. If you're looking to, say, be cost effective in using preemptible or spot instances, but you still want some of your pods on non-preemptible instances in case that you start losing that capacity, how do you do that? And how do you consume node types where you've got a negotiated rate or discount first? And then also perform the other forms of autoscaling I've already mentioned and make the CA work well with them. Finally, add on resizers. This is the simplest project we have in the SIGBI quite some way. It's vertically scaling a singleton pod proportionally to the scale of the cluster, and it's useful for components where the resource needs scale linearly or exponentially, potentially, with the size of the cluster, so things like metric server, et cetera, and you can use nodes or containers that is the metric to drive this scaling. So, yeah, those are the projects we own. I mentioned that the SIG is now taking ownership of Carpenter. So the SIG has been discussing this with Carpenter maintainers for quite some time. So it's an alternative approach to cluster and node autoscaling from cluster autoscaler. It's been developed in the open from the beginning under AWS's stewardship to this point. It's deliberately vendor-neutral, however, so it's been designed from the start to be vendor-neutral, allowed provider implementations to be developed as required. Over the past year, we've been discussing, okay, how do we adopt this into the SIG without resulting in confusion for end-users? We don't want end-users turning up and going, oh, I don't understand which of these projects I would choose. Why do you have two different solutions to the same problem? And also to enable, principally, surprise, so where the two things have the same behaviours, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to configure it, and have it work the same across both. It currently has AWS, unsurprisingly, but also Azure implementations. This was announced on Monday, but the repo has been made public yesterday, so you can go and check out Azure's implementation of this as well. And we've agreed on the adoption now of the project. So this is the core repo. This is the library that then is consumed by these implementations by AWS as your other cloud providers potentially going forward. So that repo is in the process of being migrated over to Kubernetes infrastructure and then SIG government. The one thing to note here is it's not replacing cluster autoscaler. Both projects will continue to be managed by the SIG. It is an alternative approach to addressing the same problem. So there are some differences in their approaches, but there's also areas where the two projects have different methods and annotations to achieve the same name. So cluster autoscaler is node group focused. So when it's scaling things up and down, it's looking at a node group in its internal implementation and assuming that if it scales it up, it will get a new thing that looks like the existing things in that node group. The majority of cloud providers are also baked in. We've currently got 27 cloud provider implementations baked in, as well as an external GRPC cloud provider to allow outbound extension. There was a talk earlier today talking about how this had been used with Virtual Cubelet, but it also allows, again, that encapsulation of business logic if you were wanting to create a cloud provider implementation where you had some business logic around what nodes you wanted to prepare there. It also has highly configurable scaling behaviours via thresholds and scanned falls in the primary. Carpenter, however, creates specific nodes, so you create the custom resources that drive it, and then it uses that to decide what nodes to create within constraints that you provide it and creates specific nodes rather than manipulating a node group. As I said, the core is just released as a library to be consumed by cloud provider implementations, so this thing is not going to be publishing images of the carpenter core. It's just a library that we can then be consumed by those creating implementations. As I said, AWS and Azure already have those implementations there. It's also able to perform consolidation downscaling, so if you've got all of your pods currently on a large, expensive node, your workload has then scaled down or has, say, been terminated, and then those pods can be removed onto the spare capacity that is there on existing nodes in the cluster, but maybe there's still a few pods that wouldn't be able to be moved and it will evaluate going, okay, but I can place those all on a smaller, cheaper node. It will do that for you. It also has the concept of drift detection, so those of you who are responsible for managing clusters might have to, say, roll out AMI updates every month. Carpenter is able to perform drift detection, see that a new version of that AMI has been released. I can do, replace that in the background. It can also do this via TTL, so, say, for instance, you know that your nodes for whatever, you want to rotate them every 24 hours just in case, you can do that as well. The next steps for the adoption, however, we're working on adopting the existing carpenter processes under Kubernetes-to-governance processes, so carpenter for a long time has had public office hours, they've been run completely open, however, we need to migrate that into the existing sort of Kubernetes SIG setup to ensure that we're meeting all the requirements of the wider Kubernetes governance. And we've also got agreed work on continuing to standardise across the node-off to scaling project, so there's a link to a doc there that Jonathan from AWS has put together and agreed with the SIG. That is basically setting out the short, medium, and longer term work that we want to do with the carpenter community and single-off to scaling community to move that forward. Okay, thank you guys. So, as I said, Cluster Autoscaler is not going anywhere, and it is also developed in the meantime as we are adopting carpenter, and new features are coming there. For example, one of the long-standing problems of Cluster Autoscaler was the performance of node-raining. So, in Cluster, some of the nodes after at some time may be not that much utilized as they used to be before, and Cluster Autoscaler will try to compact them, meaning move existing pods to some other nodes and delete the just-empted nodes. However, for quite a long time, this was not a parallel process of Cluster Autoscaler was deleting one node at a time, and even if it tried hard to be as fast as possible, the limitation of a single thread was hitting larger clusters. However, in 126, we finally introduced parallel-drain process to accelerate it. Now Cluster Autoscaler will be able to delete multiple nodes at a time and do it quite quickly while maintaining graceful termination period for the pods and making sure that all the pods have a place to go. So far, it was an optional behavior, but with 128 it is going to be default. So this ring will hopefully close this long-standing gap in Cluster Autoscaler performance, and you will get your cluster ring quicker, saving you money. In 127, we also added multiple improvements to this process, so if you test it in 126, it should behave much more robust and quicker in the US releases. OK. Ongoing work is also handling a demon set properly. So while draining nodes, it is important that we remove pods in some reasonable order. On the node, there might be some demon sets running that provide you with log-pushing capability. It would be very bad if we deleted this demon set pods before deleting the actual nodes. In that case, the logs that were written in the very last moments of the pod lifecycle could be lost. However, we did some improvements there, and now it is running in 129, and we will be doing node draining based on the priority, so we will make sure that every single bit of logging that you put in your application while being shut down is correctly pushed, and you will not lose any data. One big endeavor that we started in seek autoscaling was provisioning requests. It is an API to ask Cluster Autoscaler, or actually any other autoscaling that might be in place, for example Carpenter, to ensure that there is space for some set of pods. Currently, Cluster Autoscaler as a Carpenter works with pending pods, so in order to trigger scale-up, you need to create the spots in the first place. That might be good for serving workloads that are okay with getting half of the needed pods on scale-up, but it is bad for things like machine learning, which require all pods to be present in order to start their computation. Having only a fraction of them will cause more harm than good. The workload will not start in that case, and you will be paying on your cloud provider for these half-provisioned resources, and it will raise your monthly bills. However, with provisioning requests, we are trying to address this issue, so we established an API for which you will tell us how many pods and in what shape you would like to provision. This thing will be done by provisioning requests. You create a provisioning request, you put a play, you put a count, and Cluster Autoscaler responsibility is to let you know when cloud provider gives a green light for the nodes needed for these pods will come. You create provisioning requests, you wait only when cloud provider says it is okay. I've got capacity, I will give you this 200 of the most expensive GPUs. When cloud provider says that, Cluster Autoscaler will change the status of provisioning requests and you will know that you could start your batch workload because the capacity will be there. There is a question, how and what we will be actually providing, and this is defined by a thing called provisioning class. Right now, there are three classes that are there or are shortly coming. The first one is to just ask Cluster Autoscaler whether it has currently the capacity for a particular set of pods. Cluster Autoscaler will say, yeah, I have it or no, I don't have it based on what is there without trying to scale the things up. Then we will have generic scale up that will do its best to give you some level of atomicity and cost control with the scale up. However, this type of provisioning is not integrated with any goodies that your cloud provider might have. For example, an ability to ask directly whether it could give you 100 nodes or not. So, why do we have this thing? Because we have, as Guy said, 27 cloud providers on board and it will take time for them to integrate with the provisioning request and modify their integration so that it is handled the best way possible. In the meantime, we will try to do our best to give you some level of atomicity, some level of control over provisioning. For Google Cloud, we already have this type of functionality where you can ask for resources and you will get them in atomic way. We are tryblazing a path with Google. However, we will be more than happy to accept contribution from any cloud we are integrated in so that the users of cluster auto scalers get the batch AIML friendly behaviour in their cluster auto scaling. Because now we have Carpenter on board, hopefully this functionality will also come there. Okay, and batch workloads are not the only use case there. It's not the only use case. It is also useful for making the scale up faster. If you know already that you will be creating 10,000 pods for whatever reason, you could issue provisioning requests and while creating pods, provisioning requests will let auto scaler know that these pods are coming in that quantity and cluster auto scaler can do a single scale up instead of doing like a step function which will take more time. Okay, so there are also a couple of minor improvements coming to cluster auto scaler. Cluster auto scaler will not do a partial scale up if calculating scale ups, helping out pods will take too long. Oftentimes cluster auto scaler is bombarded with huge amount of pods and all of the computation and evaluation of simulation take too long and cluster liveness probe fail and due to that cluster auto scaler crushes and is restarted and getting into some unpleasant loop. Now we have more control over execution and we limit how much competition is done so that we don't crush, we don't break under pressure. Maybe not the best decision will be made but we will move forward and cluster auto scaler will work with huge amounts of pods coming in. Okay, vertical pod auto scaler finally got its 1.0.0 release after a couple of years and new additional features are the control over how we enhance and expand memory requests after we notice out-of-memory exceptions happening and we also added their ability to specify that you would like to change CPU in integer increments so that you have integer number of CPUs only. By default, vertical pod auto scaler tries to give you the number that is as close to the actual usage. Sometimes it results in fractional numbers which are okay for most of the users but there are use cases where you would like to have integer number of CPUs. We have a couple of additional efforts in progress. One of them is to control VPA eviction behavior based on the scaling directions so for example, scale only up, not scale down always consume more and have less disruptions that didn't make to the <IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>.<IP_ADDRESS>. So it should get into very next release and the second thing that we have been dreaming about for quite a long is using the in-place pod upgrades. So previously, whenever we wanted to change the pod request we had to restart the pods which was okay for some of the workloads but some of the workloads could not tolerate it and it was very disruptive with it. So if the pod request support finally getting into Kubernetes we hope to have it implemented in vertical pod of the scalarsum. So okay, so future work. What we have there, so if you want to help us or if you are interested in what is coming close we should have container resource metrics, auto scaling, shortly move to GA we should finally have scaling up from zero in HPA based on external metrics. We hope to have this in-place update support in VPA and finally land a multi-dimensional pod autoscalar implementation so this is available for you to try. Okay, thanks. Are there any questions? And before we proceed to the questions we do have a weekly SIG meeting every Monday that's 8 a.m. Chicago time. Remember 6, 4 p.m. European time and you are more than welcome to come to this meeting. Let us know what about your problems with autoscaling, your ideas and we are there every week to help you with your autoscaling issues. Thank you. And we have a mic over there for questions. Hello. So I have a question about cross-out scale and carbon difference. I mean, like is there any clear difference in use cases between them? I mean like when to... How to know when to use which one? We are using cross-out scale country but should we move to carpenter or stick to the cross-out scale? How to know that? First of all, what cloud are you on? First question, what cloud are you on? GCP. GCP. Right now there is no implementation of carpenter for GCP so cluster autoscaler is your way to proceed. In future maybe there will be implementation of carpenter on GCP. Right now there is no carpenter as Skyset currently has two integration. AWS which has been there from the very beginning because the project was started by AWS and just announced Azure implementation. So if you are not on any of these clouds, cluster autoscaler is the way to go. If you are on any of these clouds then you have to consider how you manage your nodes. What functionality do you want to have? Do you want to have node groups and have this behavior that has been in Kubernetes for a while and you have groups and scale groups up? Or you want to have completely customized nodes and you want to have more control over what is being created and when? Then maybe carpenter is a choice. However, we are trying to make these projects converge to some extent so that it will be easy to switch between one to another assuming that they both provide the implementation for your cloud. So we are aligning the APIs, we are aligning annotations, we are aligning the namings like how do we call scale down or is it compaction, the fragmentation or whatever. So we are trying to make it easier for you to understand what are the differences and also easier for you to switch between those and more fit your needs at a given time. So eventually it's the choice of how you want to manage. It's hopefully not the choice of like that one is worse or better than the other. We have both of our new projects and the old one as well. So we will be developing both and it's for you to choose how you want to manage stuff and that's kind of like the main difference. In principle, the both projects do more or less the same. They create nodes for ending pods and delete nodes for delete nodes that are not used. Right, thanks. Welcome. So a common, so with the cluster auto-skiller and I think, I'm not sure, in order to determine how to scale up they need to run simulations of the coop scheduler. But that gets complicated when you are running a custom scheduler or you've extended the coop scheduler either with custom configuration or you've written custom plugins. Do you have recommendations on how to use cluster auto-skiller with and maybe carpenter with a custom scheduler? It depends on how custom your custom scheduler is. If it's doing completely different things then the regular scheduler then you have a problem because right now we cannot support a completely arbitrary logic and placement. We do simulations there to be sure that after we create a node the pods will go there. If you have completely custom logic then I'm not directly seeing how we could do it. We cannot talk to a custom scheduler because the API, first of all, would be complicated and we do so many simulations on scale-up and scale-downs that the communication between two processes running possibly on different nodes would kill the performance on bigger clusters. So unfortunately for now the answer is try to be as close as regular coop scheduler as possible. You can have different node-ranking functions but try to keep basic constraints when the pod can fit into node or not aligned with a coop scheduler. If you try to be as close as possible then probably it wouldn't matter that you have a custom scheduler running together with carpenter and cluster scheduler. If you stray too much then one thing will think differently than the other and you will get into various types of problems. Thank you both so much for the talk. In place vertical pod autoscaling is something we're very excited about. Can you talk a little bit more about the status of that project and maybe where support could be helpful? So we have a cap that defines what we'll be doing. We have some people working on it so it depends on where these people will finish. If you have strong interest then we will be more than welcome to come to seek and help us with implementing it. Thanks. Just to cover out from that, the wider work of the node signal, that work is progressing but that's not actually... Our work is to take advantage of it but I think it's still alpha is the last I heard. I'd like the actual node in place update so you would need a cluster that supports the behaviour to take advantage of the VPA implementation of it. Gotcha. Thank you. Big fan of your guys work first off but my question is kind of, I guess it's HPA and VPA but also falls in line with the multi-dimensional autoscaler. Do you guys have any use cases where people have used both of them on metrics like CPU and memory because I noticed on the GitHub page it said to not use VPA with HPA if you're going to be doing, scaling off of those resource metrics because right now we're in a stage where we want to optimise the resource usage. We don't want to over provision so would there be a case where you would put in dry run mode on VPA to get an idea of the resource metrics to use and leave HPA on or does HPA kind of skew on metrics VPA looks at? So the problem with running HPA and VPA on the same set of metrics is that by default HPA uses a percentage target. So you specify that you want your pods to be utilised up to let's say 50%. If it goes up you want to create more pods if it goes down you reduce the number of pods. VPA changes the size of pods. So now this 50% means slightly different thing. And if by any chance it grows it too much for example beyond the scalability limit of your pods then for example you may always be below 50%. Even though your pods are trying very very hard to process the request. What will happen if you are always below the target? Your deployment will shrink and it will shrink up to minimal size because it will always require fewer pods. So in order to have it supported you should use something that doesn't connect VPA and HPA that close together. If you want to use CPU you could try using absolute value. Then the absolute value will be kind of independent from the size of the pods because as long as the size of pods is bigger as of the absolute value it is okay. But you need to be very careful with that because there are a couple of edge cases there. We recommend using slightly different metrics for HPA for example number of incoming QPSs which has of course strong correlation with CPU usage however it is more kind of independent from it and then some strange interaction between HPA and VPA are less likely to happen. Thank you so much. Thank you for the work and thank you for the talk. I have a question from an end user perspective. How would they think about whether to use auto scaling versus some of the serverless offerings from the cloud like GKE autopilot or like Fargate? I cannot speak for Fargate. I can speak for GKE autopilot. GKE autopilot underneath uses cluster auto scaler. So it solves the problem of configuring cluster auto scaler for you. So if you want to have more control over your cluster then you use GKE classic if you want Google to handle your auto scaling for you then you can use autopilot. Eventually both GKE and autopilot will run more or less the same auto scaling code. Auto scaling will happen for you but with autopilot you have one problem less and with GKE classic you have one knob to control more. I think my personal experience of work is more 80s. Fargate, you're always giving up some control for those serverless offerings and certainly in our use case we need some of that control that we're giving up for most workloads. Fargate isn't suitable. There are certainly workloads and talk to other users of it that would be able to use those. There's always going to be trade-offs though. I think it's always just a matter of evaluating for your workloads whether you can tolerate what the limitations of said serverless offering are and actually whether it will definitely result in cost savings. Thank you. Looks like we don't have any more questions if you want to ask us more private questions. We will be hanging around for a moment. Otherwise, thank you for joining and hopefully you will have the great last day of QPCON tomorrow.