Will Fulwider 0:00
Tom and Dane, we’re talking about bugs today, and before we start talking about bugs, I want to know what your favorite bugs are. Tom, you want to go first?

Tom Ripp 0:12
Yeah. So I picked three

Will Fulwider 0:17
He was not prompted at all for this.

Tom Ripp 0:19
There’s three of them, fireflies. One thing, yeah, and I had read somewhere that fireflies affect or they’ll feed on the slugs. It’s not so much the Firefly itself. It’s the Firefly larvae. So, and I always thought fireflies are neat, you know,

Will Fulwider 0:39
I’ve always called them lightning bugs.

Tom Ripp 0:41
Well, that’s a lame term. [Laughter] No, no not lame. That’s just another term for them. That’s not what I meant.

Another version of it, I guess, lightning bug, Firefly. Yeah. So, yeah. So that was one bug that I always you know, if you see a lot of fireflies. You hope that they’re, you know, you have a lot of larvae feeding on the slugs. And millipedes, like I said, that millipedes will, they help break down the residue. So I like millipedes too. I don’t really like them crawling around on the House floor.

Dane Elmquist 1:23
Stay in the field, yeah.

Tom Ripp 1:25
And ground beetles, because they feed on the slugs.

Will Fulwider 1:29
These are three great bugs, yeah, I’m still thinking over here.

Tom Ripp 1:32
You know? And honestly, it takes an army of bugs, or it takes an army to do what you want it to do. One bugcan’t do it alone. So that’s kind of how I look at it. You need a combination of all of them.

Will Fulwider 1:46
Well, I think you just made Dane’s day. [Laughter]

Dane Elmquist 1:47
Yeah, that’s a great answer. I like, yeah, you make a really good point too. It’s like, it’s not just a single species, it’s really this idea of a community, kind of working together. [Intro Music]

Will Fulwider 2:08
Welcome to Field Notes. Today we’re talking all about bugs, but we’re also focusing on seed treatments, talking with Tom ripp here and Dane Elmquist and the way that seed treatments have an effect on larger entomological aka bug world on farms. And Dane is a conservation cropping system specialist. That right? all right, long title with UW Madison extension and Tom is Tom Ripp a grain farmer just outside of Black Earth. And, like, really, just like, right on the edge of Black Earth. Dane and Tom, good to have you all on today. Can you take a minute and we’ll start with Tom and introduce yourself and your farm, slash, what you do around here?

Tom Ripp 2:52
Hey, Will. So yeah, Tom Ripp, cash grain, corn, beans, wheat and yeah, just been conservation farming for a long time. My dad, he started some no-till practices probably 40 years ago, and I’m just carrying on that and I guess we got more involved in cover crops and so forth like that, and we just realized that was the route to go.

Will Fulwider 3:21
How many acres do you farm, Tom?

Tom Ripp 3:23
It’s about 360

Will Fulwider 3:26
and corn, soy and wheat, right?

Tom Ripp 3:28
Yep, corn, soy and wheat.

Will Fulwider 3:30
Is it split third, third, third, or is it a little bit less wheat?

Tom Ripp 3:32
No, it’s I usually plant about 30 to 40 acres of wheat, and that gets kind of rotated around. Some fields don’t ever see the wheat, because it’s lower. If the field is not well drained, I guess we’ll put, you know, say, you don’t want to put wheat in there, so.

Will Fulwider 3:49
Right, sitting in that early spring water.

Tom Ripp 3:52
Yeah, so the fields that are getting the wheat, they’re constantly in rotation. So there’s always a cover crop, you know, whether, say if it’s corn then after that, it’s getting a rye for a cover crop. Then the next season, it’s getting soybeans. After the beans then the wheat is going in there. After the wheats off, then a multi-species cover crops going on there. So that field is never sitting idle.

Will Fulwider 4:16
Right. Great. Awesome. Dane, who are you?

Dane Elmquist 4:20
I am a Conservation Cropping Outreach Specialist for UW-Madison Extension. I’ve got a background in entomology, so I’m very interested in, you know, really thinking about how these conservation cropping systems affect the insect pests and the beneficials on farms that are using these practices. And a lot of the practices like Tom described: cover cropping, extending rotations by adding a small grain, and no-till have really significant impacts on insect communities. But we tend to not know as much about those impacts, and so I think it’s a really critical piece of the puzzle to be exploring and thinking about, especially as we’re approaching these conservation practices from a really, wide lens, a system-wide perspective. So, yeah, I guess I bring in the bug angle to that story.

Will Fulwider 5:11
And a specific type of bug is what you focus on, right?

Dane Elmquist 5:15
Yeah, I mean, the soil Arthropods are kind of the main one.

Will Fulwider 5:22
I didn’t feed him that at all…[Laughter]

Dane Elmquist 5:23
The main one I like to concentrate on, because, again, like a lot of the growers, like Tom mentioned, are implementing these practices for soil health, right? And then soil biology is one of these, you know, pillars of soil health, along with the chemical and physical properties. And so these soil Arthropods are just a big piece of the picture. When we’re thinking about biology, it’s not just earthworms and microbes and so, yeah, another critical piece of the puzzle to be thinking about when using these conservation systems.

Will Fulwider 5:54
Totally. Great. And so Tom, you’ve been doing these soil health conservation practices for a while. Your dad was doing them as well, started them at least. And so I’ve been, I’m curious what you’ve seen as you’ve integrated more of them on more of your acres. How have they influenced bug populations that you’ve seen through your personal experience, both pests and beneficials?

Tom Ripp 6:17
Well, I don’t, I don’t think I really noticed any noticeable activity, I guess until I started using cover crops. I mean, when you’re no-tilling, you don’t really, you don’t really think about it, you know, you’re just like, Well, okay, there’s crop residue, you’re no-tilling into it, and you just kind of go with it. But once you start seeing maybe it’s because I just wasn’t really focused on it, say, 20 years ago. But then as time went on, it’s like, oh, you start paying attention to it. And, you know, you read more and you hear more, and it’s like, you know, I’m gonna start looking at that. And then once you start, like, with the cover crop rotations, that’s where you start noticing things really start coming to life.

Will Fulwider 6:56
What specifically did you start seeing more of?

Tom Ripp 6:59
I think it’s just the the condition of the soil. That was a big thing. It’s like, you know, it’s just how mellow it was to plant into, you know. And it just the soil was in, just in better condition. And, you know, that’s the first thing I noticed, is like, well, you know, why would you plow a field when you got this kind of soil on top, you know, the conditions were right. But then you start noticing other things, like the residue disappearing, and it’s like, well, it’s after a while, and you pay attention to the earthworms, and you look at the earthworm holes and how far in the ground are going, and stuff like that. And it’s just just so many different things you really start paying attention to. And it’s, I don’t know, it’s just kind of neat, you know, and, but it’s, but if you’re just truly no-tilling and your corn-bean rotation, I don’t know if you would really see that, that activity in the soil, like that. I think there would, you know, they always said, cover crops makes a difference, in rotations. You know, that’s where the wheat comes in there. You get that rotation, and you get the cover crops in there. I think it helps to have something always living in that soil. You’re, you’re feeding, you’re feeding your organisms in the soil, you know. And if you don’t well, then, you know, even if you’re no tilling, it’s still basically dormant land, right? You know, for a while.

Will Fulwider 8:25
Not much for them to feed on.

Tom Ripp 8:26
Right.

Dane Elmquist 8:27
You’re spot on. You’re building that, building that habitat, right? Yeah, that that really promotes all these, these beneficial arthropods that you want to see in your field. Like the, no-till right? Like you mentioned, you know, you’re not going out there plowing up the field. You’ve got a nice, stable micro-environment with lots of residue on top. That’s really, really good for, again, our soil arthropods, like those carabid beetles that are some of your your favorite, those ground beetles, as well as some of the springtails that are really active in making that residue disappear from the soil surface, so that, no-till, really, you know, allows for that stable environment. And then, as you say, adding that cover crop on top, that’s just that extra layer of complexity that can be really positive in, you know, again, just kind of creating that habitat, you know, having more crop residue on the surface, as you mentioned, like not having that field kind of be bare, more or less, even if you’re having that residue on there, you’re really like, building this habitat bridge more or less in between seasons that really allows these, these beneficials, to thrive, and especially when you’re thinking about, like, predatory natural enemies, you really want them kind of active in your fields when those crops are at vulnerable stages, like the early kind of early season, vegetative stages, right? Having that cover crop in there gives them, the natural enemies, that habitat, allowing them to kind of move in, do their job in a really efficient manner in the cash crop, where you really are looking for some of those pest control benefits. So, yeah, building that habitat is crucial. And I think, like you mentioned too you’re really feeding, you’re not only feeding the soil, right, but you’re feeding those, those other beneficial bugs that we’re talking about today. And I think one way that that cover crops and no-till is especially good at doing that is when we’re thinking about, like, from a natural enemy or predator perspective, the pests that they’re, you know, we want them to be eating are not around all the time, right? And so we want to keep those predators in the field so that, well, when the pests are around, they’re they’re ready to go. And so having that like kind of no-till habitat, and supporting what we think of in the kind of entomological world as alternative prey, or non-pest prey, basically allows those predators to, you know, feed on something that keeps them alive, keeps them healthy and happy in the field, so that they’re around when those pests kind of can come into play, and they need to be basically targeted by these natural enemies. So having that alternative prey in the mix is a really important factor for keeping predators healthy and happy, and that’s one thing that the cover crops and no till certainly do.

Tom Ripp 11:02
Right. Well, then the cover crops, it gives refuge for your beneficial bugs too.

Dane Elmquist 11:09
They like complexity. That’s that’s kind of one thing that we know from a lot of ecological studies on some of these natural enemies, is they really prefer and are best at doing what they need to do in complex habitats. And so that’s exactly what you’re giving them out there with your no-till, maintaining that crop residue, and then adding cover crops into the mix, just stacking that complexity is really beneficial for the for the natural enemies.

Will Fulwider 11:34
I’ve never thought about that alternative prey. I mean, that makes total sense. They’re not just going to hang out eating nothing for like, months waiting for the next flight of pests to come in. So you learn something new every day. That’s why I do this, to learn from all of you. But Tom one of the reasons why I want to chat with you. One, you’re a great person. And two, you plant naked seed for your soybeans. You don’t put any seed treatment on that, and not many people do that, and there are reasons why that we’ll get into a little bit, but I’m curious about kind of what prompted that shift. Because you used to apply seed treatments in the past, and why you decided to take those off. And have you seen anything change as a result over the years?

Tom Ripp 12:17
Yeah, so I think this is probably my fifth season, I think somewhere around there that I haven’t had treated seed. And I guess what triggered my thought on it years ago was I started having a lot of slug feeding. And somewhere along the line, I read something about ground beetles and all Dane’s bugs and stuff like that.

Will Fulwider 12:39
Dane’s bugs. [Laughter]

Tom Ripp 12:41
That seed treatment had an effect on them. And it’s like, well, that’s also when I started seeing more slug activity. And looking back, you kind of think back in the timeline, it’s like, okay, I started using seed treatments. And, well, it probably takes a little time for that really to and after a few years of it, it’s like there’s, there’s something to this. And, you know what? I’m just going to try it. So one year, I took one field and I put untreated seed on it, and I just had seed in the bag, paper, 50 pound bag, poured them in the planter and, and I thought, okay, I’m going to do a yield test. And those beans didn’t yield any worse than any of the other beans, or, they did just as well. Let’s put it that way. So there was no yield difference between the treated beans and the untreated. And I thought myself, well, why the hell am I treating my beans? And it’s just, and years ago, I look at when I was young and when I first started working for my dad when I was in my 20s. It’s like, well, you get soybean seed. It was always in a paper bag, you know. It was like, you took it out of the, you know, it’s clean seed, you put it in the planter or the grain drill, and you mixed in your inoculant and that was all you did, yeah. And we were getting 70-80 bushel beans then, and it’s like, now, all of a sudden, we put all this treatment on them, you know, we’re struggling to get 60, yeah, you know? So I thought, well, I just didn’t think it was necessary. And after learning that it has a negative effect on my predator bugs, against the slugs. And slugs, to me, is my biggest pest. And I thought, you know what, I’m just, so I quit doing it, you know? And so I quit treating them, and I still inoculate them, and my bean yields are just as good as they were before. So it’s like, I know some guys say, well, they don’t want to, they wouldn’t get away with that planting early. Well, generally, I’m not planting my beans real early, like some people, because my soils aren’t fit for it either. You know, that’s, that’s something people have to consider too. Your land has to be fit to be ready to plant.

Will Fulwider 14:50
You’re not pushing mid April for your planting.

Tom Ripp 14:52
No, I mean, I’ll go at the end of April. But even then, sometimes they can be too early. Depends on your soil conditions, well, and what the weather is going to do. You know, I, a few years ago, I planted some beans, and it was right at the end of April, I think it was like the 25th, 26th, 27th, whatever, somewhere around there. Well, then it was really, was really nice out. We had really nice stretch weather and good conditions. Oh, okay, I’ll go plant some beans. It was all ready to go. The week after that, it got cold and wet and we had and you know, those beans didn’t do so well, but there again, they weren’t treated either. I don’t know, but I don’t know, and from what I’ve been learning lately, some of those seed treatments may not really do you any good, anyhow, sometimes. I don’t know, but I just feel, for me, I don’t need to spend the money on it.

Will Fulwider 15:44
Totally.

Dane Elmquist 15:45
It’s nice to, like, just listen to you, kind of describe your thought process, right? And going through that because, like, whether you mean to or not, you’re really kind of describing integrated pest management, right, which is really kind of this idea that you can use a variety of different strategies to tackle pest problems in your field. And typically, the chemical control aspect is, is something that you kind of turn to when the other maybe strategies that you’ve relied on have failed. So it’s kind of a last resort. And so you’re scrutinizing your use of this insecticide, right? Is it really, is it really necessary for the situation that I’m in? And I think that’s just a really great example of thinking in that integrated pest management framework, which, you know, as you mentioned, to like, you know, when you’re in these no-till cropping systems, all of a sudden these, these slugs start to, these pesky mollusks become more of a more of an issue, and they’re not insects. And so the insecticides that we’re using are not going to be effective in managing these slugs, so we have to, again, rely on, you know, more of the natural enemies, this biological control. So just, yeah, listening to you talk about how you kind of thought through that problem was really interesting. And I think is just a good reminder of how to kind of use this integrated pest management framework for decision making, especially when we’re thinking about like the preventative pest management approach. And I want to just give a shout out to the John Tooker’s lab at Penn State, who’s done a lot of this initial work thinking about how seed treatments impact the natural enemies of slugs. I’m sure that’s some of the work you probably came across out there from his group. So yeah, it’s just a nice example of this way of thinking about pest management that I think you’ve exemplified really nicely.

Will Fulwider 17:33
So I’m curious Tom, when you started putting, or taking off rather, the seed treatment on your soybeans, did you see a change in slug pressure?

Tom Ripp 17:44
I think it took a little time. It wasn’t like the first year

Dane Elmquist 17:47
That makes sense. It takes a while for these, these predator populations to build back up.

Tom Ripp 17:51
Yeah. And but now I think all the fields that are on that good rotation, I think the row crop rotation has a big point, you know, part of it too, really, but I am seeing a lot less slug pressure. I would say that. I mean, the the year that slugs introduced themselves to me, it was crazy. I always say slugs are in wet soils and that, well this was 2012 on a hilltop. It was kind of light soil, 2012 you know, dry, and really light soil on a hilltop, and I had patches of beans that were gone. And I’m like, What the hell’s, you know, I didn’t know what was going on. So an agronomist looked at it, well, we replant some beans. We replanted them. Chewing them off again. And then those, the patches kept getting bigger. And I started looking at and I see this, like silver sheen on the soil during the day. And I’m like, and then I talked to someone else, and they said something. And they said, Well, do you see that silver on the is this soil shiny? I said, Well, yeah. So, well, that’s slugs. Was, what the hell is that? You know? I didn’t know. So, yeah, that was when I got introduced to slugs, in the spring of 2012.

Will Fulwider 19:10
And the opposite conditions

Tom Ripp 19:11
And that was the year, it was so dry.

Will Fulwider 19:16
Huh.

Tom Ripp 19:16
And I suppose they were, you know, however they got there, and then, you know, because there was no moisture, well, anything that was green and growing, that’s what they latched on to that. But the year before that, I had planted radishes into that field. And I think there’s a correlation to radishes and slugs that, you know, it’s because they call it a garden slug for a reason. [Laughter]

Dane Elmquist 19:42
There is some anecdotal evidence, and even a little past that, that kind of, you know, implicates brassicas as being something that slugs can be attracted to. So, that’s something to think about when you’re thinking of cover crops, right?

Tom Ripp 19:55
So that’s why I shied away from radishes. Actually, I use sunflowers now as my deep tillers. Yeah, they’re pretty and they got nice roots. [Laughter]

Will Fulwider 20:07
I’m going to remember that one. Sunflowers, they’re pretty, they’ve got nice roots. What about this year? This year would have been the year for the slug. I know Dane was fielding calls left and right this spring. About slugs everywhere.

Dane Elmquist 20:20
In 2024

Will Fulwider 20:21
Yeah

Tom Ripp 20:22
I did have some slug activity, but yeah, from what I had heard, it was all over. And I think it was because, now here is because it was so wet. And I did have some corn, and usually corn gets ahead of it, but it was so wet, and I had some fields that just were not well drained, I guess you could say in spots, and residue was probably a little heavier, and with all the heavy rain, I think it moved the residue. That’s the thing I found with slugs. If you have like residue pockets or piles or something, they kind of that’s where they sit, but if your residue is spread evenly across the field, it’s not as big a problem.

Will Fulwider 21:04
Oh, interesting. So the rain moved it around and it piled up.

Tom Ripp 21:07
Right, and kind of created, kind of created like, you know, just little berms or whatever. Well, that’s just a perfect habitat for a slug. Corn struggling in that and, you know, they can’t get ahead of it. So, so the slugs are, but if you, have a nice, evenly distributed field, as far as residue, or, you know, whatever chaff, it’s not as bad, I’d say it’s, you know, you create it even across the whole field.

Dane Elmquist 21:35
And I would bet too, just given the kind of longer term history of some of your use of these conservation practices, the you know, incorporation of the wheat into rotation. These are all things that, again, are kind of building up these natural enemy communities over time, so that when you do have, say, a really bad like outbreak year, like many people experienced in 2024 it’s not that bad on your farm, because you’ve all ultimately, kind of created this system to where you can, you know, more or less, like, absorb that shock, right? So I think that’s, that’s a good anecdote again, that you know your practices working in action.

Will Fulwider 22:13
Dane, you mentioned that slugs are not an insect, which, like, yes, but also, intuitively, no. [Laughter]

Dane Elmquist 22:21
They’re more related to octopi

Will Fulwider 22:24
pesky mollusk, as you said. Can you dive a little bit more into the details of what’s happening with these insecticide seed treatments and slugs, and it’s not affecting them, and it’s actually hurting some of our beneficials, and kind of that cycle as to why are then the slugs so dominant in some of these areas where maybe they’ve been more exposed to some of these.

Dane Elmquist 22:46
Sure, yeah, we can dive into that a little bit. So when we’re thinking about, like, specifically with the slugs, right? So slugs are not insects, and they’re going to be feeding on a soybean plant that’s been treated with a neonicotinoid seed treatment. So they’re actually not going to be impacted by that that poison at all. They are going to instead, you know, basically, take that into their into their body. It’s going to be in their in their tissues, in their mucus, so that when a natural enemy comes around, like a ground beetle and attacks a slug, well, in that case, it’s going to eat that slug, you know, get a mouthful of tissue or mucus, and then that toxin actually goes into the ground beetle and has a negative effect, sometimes killing the ground beetle outright. More oftentimes, it kind of has what we think of as like a sub-lethal effect. So it doesn’t actually kill it, but it makes it really bad at doing its job as a ground beetle, which is, you know, typically eating other bugs. And so it’s actually kind of transfers up through the food chain in the case of of the slug. So that’s how those ground beetles can be impacted by some of these interactions between the slugs and the seed treatments. Other things that we kind of like think about when we’re thinking of non-target effects of these seed treatments is, again, the impact on on some of these soil arthropods we touched on the predators with the ground beetles there, when we’re thinking about like decomposition, there’s been some work out there that’s actually shown how soils and plants that have had neonicotinoid seed treatments used actually slows down the ability of good bugs like the springtails and the millipedes that we’ve mentioned so far to actually break down that residue and return those nutrients to the soil. So for example, one study out there showed that in plots that were treated with either a broadcast insecticide or a seed treatment, they saw a 10% slower decomposition rate when these these insecticides were used compared to a field where there was no insecticide used, and again, this was tied back to direct reductions in the springtail and the millipede populations. So again, there’s a non-target impact on these beneficial bugs coming from the use of some of these seed treatments and other insecticides generally, kind of, in some ways, working against us in terms of what we want to be seeing out of some of these conservation cropping systems. So yeah, I’d say those are two examples specific to the predators and the decomposers that we’re talking about.

Tom Ripp 25:14
So you mentioned something about residue breaking down. It’s triggered my thought, one thing I always noticed, and other people have made the comment too, like, if you have smart stack corn or triple stack, you know, it’s got all the traits in it.

Will Fulwider 25:27
The bells and whistles.

Tom Ripp 25:27
That corn doesn’t seem to break down as fast, and has that got something to do with because it does that have a negative effect on the ground beetles and in, you know, your decomposer bugs?

Dane Elmquist 25:42
Yeah, that’s interesting. Not, not that I’m aware of. I have not heard anything specifically, or I’m not aware of any research that’s looked at like the traits that are included in some of these varietals. But we know, certainly the the seed treatments that do accompany some of those kind of higher level genetics, for lack of a better term, you know, as we just described, will have, will have some type of an impact. Yeah, it’s a good question, I’m not sure.

Tom Ripp 26:08
Yeah that was something that, I don’t plant any smart stack corn anymore. It’s, it’s because I don’t really have any corn on corn, so I have no reason to do that. But I know there was times that I did use some and it did seem like those stalks took a little bit more to break down. But other farmers have made the comment about that too.It’s like, well, they’re using smart stack corn, and some of them are actually even having to go back to using insecticide because it’s the root worm is so bad, right? It’s like, Well, that can’t be any good for your beneficial bugs at all.

Dane Elmquist 26:44
Yeah some of the kind of preventative plans or broadcast, calendar based sprays, however you want to put it, yeah. Those are certainly, you know, things that similar to the seed treatments have unintended consequences.

Will Fulwider 26:57
Yeah. And then I will say that there are some cases where, you know it does pay to put some sort of seed treatment on and Tom, you’re not doing this. You’re not planting that early. But Shawn Conley, the soybean specialist at the University, has shown that if you’re planting earlier, pushing that kind of mid April dates. Dane, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the fungicide treatment is kind of important for maintaining that seed. Otherwise that you’re going to see its going to pay for itself in that way. Insecticide, not as much.

Dane Elmquist 27:27
Yeah, I think you’re, you’re spot on there. I think there’s a lot more strong evidence out there showing that there’s a ROI on using these fungicidal seed treatments, especially given, you know, certain scenarios, as Will mentioned the early early planting being one of them. There are definitely, you know, specific kind of use case scenarios where it really does make a lot of sense to have a seed treatment, an insecticidal seed treatment on your seed like, for example, if you’re going to be planting into a CRP or pasture land. Those are situations that you know, tend to have populations of some of these soil dwelling pests that build up over time, like wireworm and white grub, where, yeah, you’re going to want, you’re going to want your seed protected if you’re going to be planting into those scenarios. Other things that we might be thinking about would be like, if you’re going to be double cropping soybean following wheat, for example. You know, those are, again, specific, really targeted scenarios where you would want to have this kind of preventative pest management approach, and that would still fit in kind of with an integrated pest management framework as well. You know, if you know you have problems with with things like wireworm or seed corn maggot, if you know that these pests are in your field, then having a seed treatment is a really good idea to protect your investments there. I think what, what we’re kind of discussing here is like getting away from the kind of insurance based mindset, the preventative pest management approach, where you don’t really know if you’ve got the pest that the seed treatment is supposed to be targeting. So, yeah, certainly useful scenarios where you do want to have the seed treatment, but it’s not, it’s probably not the way that we’re kind of using them right now.

Will Fulwider 29:14
One thing I think we’ll wrap up with Tom is, you know, talked about planting naked seed, neonics, seed treatments, etc. What is, what does the future look like for you and your bug populations? What are you excited with your favorite bugs, the millipedes and all those what do you what are you looking forward to doing out there to kind of continue to support these good bug populations?

Tom Ripp 29:38
Well, just keep on the path I’m on, I guess. One thing I did thought about a little bit too, is that the last few years, so I got a bunch of grass waterways that run through my valley, and they’re shallow, so you can mow them. Years ago I used to mow them so they were nice and trimmed up, like you’re lawn around your house, you know. The last few years I quit doing that. I thought, you know, gotta have a refuge for a lot of that stuff, because there’s a lot of clover in there, and I see a lot of bees go in there and stuff like that. So I’ll mow around the edge of it, the perimeter of it, where it butts up against the fields. So I don’t get the growth into the field, you know, the grass and whatever. But I keep the center of it, and I don’t mow that off until early fall or whatever, you know, and just it gets mowed once, and that’s it. So I kind of in other areas around the farm, I’m kind of where I used to mow a lot and keep things trimmed up. I’m kind of trying to leave more of a refuge for things.

Dane Elmquist 30:33
Wow, that’s awesome.

Tom Ripp 30:34
And I see more of the milkweed. You know, milkweed is a big thing for the butterflies.

Dane Elmquist 30:38
Will’s butterflies.

Tom Ripp 30:38
I’m trying to save your butterflies.

Will Fulwider 30:41
Thank you, Tom.

Tom Ripp 30:42
So, you know, I’m kind of paying attention to some of that, unless it’s some noxious weeds, you know, ragweed or something. You know, if that stuff’s growing, you mow that off. But if it’s just, you know, I get a lot of clover and and back behind the buildings, I got hairy vetch growing up in the hills, something my dad planted years ago for erosion control on the steep hills and stuff parts of the old pasture, whatever. And you let that stuff grow and bloom, and, you know, you don’t need to mow it off.

Dane Elmquist 31:14
Yeah, that’s, that’s really awesome to kind of see your thinking, you know, and what you’re doing in terms of, like, habitat manipulation or lack thereof, and outside of the farm field, because whether you’re intending to or not, you’re doing a lot of these really great practices, you know, for boosting beneficial insect populations. You’re thinking in this kind of integrated pest management mindset. And really kind of like, then the next level to go to is kind of what you just described. You know, thinking about these, non-field habitats, a lot of these grass waterways are really excellent, refuges, as you mentioned, for things like your ground beetles. So, you know, paying attention to what you’re doing or not doing to those areas is really like the next step that you’re already taking. And, making sure that your farm is a hospitable place for these good bugs that are helping keep the bad bugs in check. So it’s really, really fun to hear you kind of talk about your operation like that.

Will Fulwider 32:12
Excellent. Dane, finish this off with some resources that we should look at. Have you got any on the top of your mind?

Dane Elmquist 32:19
Definitely, well, a big one, given that seed treatments have come up a lot in this discussion today is a great publication from UW-Extension called “What’s on Your Seed”. A lot of times, folks don’t know what is on their seed, for lack of a better term. So this publication takes you through all sorts of seed treatments for corn, soybean and wheat, I believe, breaks them down into number of active ingredients, specifically, what those active ingredients are, and whether they’re a fungicide, insecticide, nematicide or, you know, along those lines. So really a great resource for folks who, might start thinking about a little bit more, what exactly am I doing with with these seed treatments? So that’s an excellent resource out there. In terms of other things that extension is doing. We’re going to be doing some some on farm research here with the Dane Demo Farms, which Tom is a part of here, starting to just tease apart like, what type of practices are helpful in terms of boosting some of these beneficial ground beetle natural enemies. So specifically, going to be looking at some natural enemy monitoring in the different cover crop termination timing treatments that the demo farms have set up. So we’ll get a little bit more of a sense of how some of the management decisions within the conservation cropping systems can be, how those impact the number of good bugs that we’re going to be seeing out there. So we’ll be conducting some of that research in the spring and summer, and hopefully can pull together a nice resource for for everyone, once we have those data come in. So some things to stay on the lookout for.

Will Fulwider 34:00
Yeah, stay tuned. Well, Tom and Dane, thanks for coming on today. We really appreciate it.

Tom Ripp 34:06
Thank you.

Dane Elmquist 34:06
Thanks for bugging out.

Will Fulwider 34:18
Thanks for listening. This has been Field Notes from UW Madison extension. My name is Will full wider regional crops educator for digging in Dodge counties. A big thank you to Joe Ryan for creating our theme music, and to Abby Wilkie maki for our logo. If you have any questions about anything you’ve heard today or about your farming practices in general, reach out to the extension agriculture educators serving your region.

What’s your favorite, Dane?

Dane Elmquist 34:41
My favorite? Well, Tom chose three, so I’m gonna go with three. Now that we’re talking bugs. So I really like wasps. And I guess, you know, you can think of wasps, they’re a pretty big group. The ones that we’re familiar with are maybe less desirable. They’re the ones that are, you know. Yeah. Building the nest up in your eaves and kind of annoying you and stinging you, but they’re actually really, you know, critical predators in the ecosystem as well, you know, feeding on a lot of the potential pests that we might have in our field. Another very exciting bug that I want to throw out there as another favorite are the parasitoid wasps. So these are wasps, but they’re very, very small. They’re not like the kind of big, showy, black and yellow stinging wasps that we’re most of us are familiar with. The parasitoid wasps are, again, really beneficial natural enemies that are actually going out and finding caterpillars or other things that are chewing on our plants. They’ll actually go up to it, and they’ll lay an egg, either on or inside of it, inside the caterpillar, and then that egg hatches, and it basically starts to eat the caterpillar from the inside out, and then eventually, you know, emerges from it in a very kind of sci fi, alien-esque manner. So those are those, yeah. I mean, they’re ones we want on our side, for sure. So wasps, parasitoid wasps, and some of our kind of classic stinging wasps. And then I’ll throw a third one out there, and that’ll be the springtails or the Collembola, which are really kind of small, soil dwelling arthropods, similar in function to the millipedes that Tom described in terms of, you know, chewing on residue, breaking down organic matter and really increasing the potential for microbes to cycle those nutrients effectively and return them back to the soil where plants can use them. Springtails and wasps.

Will Fulwider 36:33
Well, Dane, I was going to say that one, so now I have to think, because I was trying to win brownie points over here, butterflies my favorite, because they’re very beautiful. So there we go.