(gentle upbeat music) We sometimes use insect traps.

We sometimes go up in small aircrafts.

Sometimes we use satellite imagery.

And we are excited about incorporating drones into our forest health monitoring work.

You can go to the big box store and get a walk behind push mower that's electric.

Or you can go the other way, and if you're a commercial landscaper and you can get a really nice high end all electric zero turn mower, it's this middle size nobody's really doing.

>>Production funding for "Virginia Home Grown" is made possible by the Mary Roper Davis and Robert Poore Roper Memorial Fund.

And by, (birds chirping) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music) Welcome to Virginia Home Grown!

Today we are highlighting innovations in green technology, the eco friendly products and services.

First up, we joined Dr. Robyn Puffenbarger at Lesesne State Forest to learn how the Virginia Department of Forestry is adopting electric drones to assist in many of their forest management tasks.

Let's take a look.

>>We have 36 drones in the Virginia Department of Forestry.

We have 21 pilots that are FAA 107 certified, and we use the drones for different projects.

They include fire management, forest management, forest health, conservation easements, and the water quality program.

This is our Alta X with the Ignis Drone Amplified platform.

Bill, take off.

(drone whirring) For our water quality management, we use them for our best management practices, so it saves our foresters and water quality engineers and technicians time and actually reduces the risk for them to be out on a 300-acre tract or so and allows them to monitor how well the logging operations are taking place.

For fires, Each of our drones have a thermal camera, and the thermal camera allows us to monitor any fire that escapes our fire control lines, or if we see the fire spreading in a certain direction based on the fire behavior and the terrain.

That reduces exposure and mitigates firefighters going in areas which are unsafe.

>>For prescribed fire, we use it mainly to get the interior of a tract.

We'll have our certified prescribed burn managers using drip torches to burn on the sides along a firebreak, and then we'll use the drone to get the interior of a tract.

We're able to use these Dragon Eggs.

When it's injected with antifreeze, it forms a combustion when that ball hits the ground.

>>So the Forest Health program at the Virginia Department of Forestry monitors the state of Virginia for forest health disturbances.

Those disturbances can be invasive insects, they can be tree diseases, non-native invasive plants, even abiotic disturbances, things like big storms that come through and take out a lot of our trees.

Those are all things that cause damage to our forests, and so it's our job to try to monitor the state for them.

>>So how would you actually find that kind of damage?

Are people just, you know, hiking and looking up like I would be and saying, "Oh wow, that looks odd, that tree, that oak tree should have leaves now and it doesn't"?

>>Yeah.

A lot of our data does just come from reports from landowners, like you said, just out hiking around and noticing these things.

Also our foresters.

We have foresters in every part of Virginia, and so they let us know what they're seeing out in the field.

And when we hear about damage, then we'll go out and we'll try to do a more comprehensive survey to really map out the extent of the damage.

And so that's something that we've actually used planes for in the past.

Our staff will go up in a small aircraft with a tablet and some special mapping software and actually try to map out the damage that they're seeing in the canopy of the forest.

>>Wow.

So other than the planes, is there some other technology y'all are beginning to use to monitor forest health?

>>Yes, we're very excited that we are starting to incorporate drones into our forest health monitoring work.

We're kind of just scratching the surface on what we could use drones for.

There's so much technology that we hope to incorporate into our program in the future.

But right now, even something as simple as sending the drone up into the sky to take a picture of the canopy, that can really help us better understand the damage that's happening to our trees and potentially what could be causing that damage.

>>Wow, and so do you just work in the state forests?

I only know of one in my local area.

Are there many more across the state?

>>Yeah, we have 26 state forests in Virginia and we certainly monitor our state forests, but really all parts of Virginia that have forest land.

We're interested in any big forest health disturbances that may cause significant damage.

>>Then you work with private landowners as well?

>>We do.

We work a lot with private landowners.

All the information that we collect, all the data that we collect, we try to make that available to private landowners so they know where these disturbance agents are, where damage is in Virginia, and how they can better manage their own land.

>>Are you still looking for hemlock woolly adelgid, or has that pest basically left the state?

Because that was many years ago when I was seeing the hemlocks dying in our forests.

>>There's a long list, unfortunately, of insects and diseases and invasive plants.

The hemlock woolly adelgid is still an issue that's threatening our hemlock trees.

That's a tiny little insect that causes hemlock trees to lose needles, branch dieback, and then eventually tree death.

There's also the emerald ash borer, and that's another beetle, an invasive insect that's attacking our ash trees.

>>And then spongy moth.

Are we still worried about that?

I thought that had kind of died out maybe 20 years ago, but maybe not.

>>No, we still have spongy moth.

It's kind of one of our oldest invasive insects.

It's been established in Virginia for quite a while, since I think we first started to see spongy moth damage in the 1980s.

And so we'll have periods of time where we hardly see any spongy moth activity, and then we'll have years where the population will increase and we'll actually have outbreaks of spongy moth and we'll have significant damage.

And spongy moth is a caterpillar, so it actually eats the leaves of trees.

And when that happens during outbreak years, we'll see hundreds of thousands of acres of damage due to the spongy moth.

And then a lot of people are familiar with the spotted lanternfly.

That's one of our newest invasive insects that's also threatening multiple plants in Virginia.

>>Wow.

I had no idea that spotted lanternfly would be after our forests.

We're hearing a lot about it in our gardens and the havoc it could potentially wreak on our viticulture.

What would it be doing in the forests?

>>Well, we're not quite sure if it's a true forest invader yet.

There's still a lot of research going on about that, and since it's a new invasive, we don't fully know if it will invade our forests.

But we do know that it prefers tree of heaven, which is an invasive plant.

And so as part of our treatment program, we're trying to identify and remove tree of heaven to prevent the spotted lanternfly from spreading.

>>So Lori, how would you look for something like tree of heaven in the forest?

Even from the air, it seems like you'd be looking for a needle in a haystack.

>>Yeah, so in the past we've actually gone up in a helicopter to look for and identify pockets of tree of heaven.

And we're able to do this in the winter when the female trees retain their seed pods, so we're able to clearly see individual tree of heavens as we're flying over them.

But we are excited to start using drones for survey work like this in the future.

>>Wow, that's just incredible.

I just am blown away by how much you can do.

Thank you so much for all this information.

I've learned so much about how technology impacts and helps monitor forest health in the state of Virginia.

>>My pleasure, thank you.

Virginias healthy and productive forests are the result of the forestry staff's willingness to embrace new technology to monitor and manage our state forests.

Next, Serome Hamlin shares a tip for adding pollinator habitat to your landscape with store bought houses or a do it yourself low tech option.

(upbeat rhythmic music) >>As I enjoy this beautiful day in the garden, I can't help but think about our native bees and insects.

The insect population is on the decline, and we all know that they play an important role in our ecosystem; that includes our gardens.

Yes, our gardens are manmade ecosystems and it's up to us to help.

So, the first thing I want to do on my list is to put up a mason bee habitat.

This is a purchased habitat for mason bees who like to find tubular structures to lay their eggs.

So I've chosen a spot where I can hang this.

You gotta think either south or east-facing.

So I'm choosing an east-facing direction.

I've already pre-drilled the holes, so this will make this easy and you don't need a lot of tools to do this.

Anybody can do this.

Our mason bees are actually very good pollinators.

In fact, they are more efficient pollinators than the European honeybee.

Now I've got a spot for when the mason bees are looking to lay their eggs.

Hopefully, somebody will find it and I will have a new crop of bees next season.

Now that I have this up, I'm gonna move on to another project.

And this project should not cost you anything.

Most gardeners have all the materials on hand.

In this section of the garden, I do not frequent very often.

So it would be a great area to put in a insect habitat.

Just walk around and you can gather branches.

And we're gonna just start laying them in, creating little pockets for different insects to maneuver around.

And you can also use leaves, stems from your cut perennials in your garden beds.

And we can just break this down and just stack this in.

Now, doing this, this will give not only shelter, but it also will provide food and places for these insects to lay their eggs to carry on their life cycles.

And with it being in a section of the garden that I don't do a lot of work in, it is great that these insects will have a spot that they're not disturbed.

So, simply just stack these areas.

(branches rustling) (birds chirping) And it's simple enough.

And I hope everyone will take advantage of a small area in their garden to provide a habitat for insects.

It doesn't have to take a lot of space, and you more than likely have the materials on hand.

So we can all do our part to help the insect population and just take up a little space in our garden and provide a habitat for them.

It's important to support our beneficial insects year round, especially our native pollinators.

And now I visited Jim Coate at the Electric Tractor Store in Waynesboro to view his collection of electric mowers.

And I learned that their use in lawn care goes back over 50 years.

Let's get going.

(engine humming) >>Oh my, hey, Jim, how you doing?

>>Hi, Peggy.

Doing good.

>>Wow, you've got a great new toy here.

It looks kind of old for a new toy, but it's so quiet.

>>Mm-hm.

Well, it actually is old.

It's from the 1970s, and it's quiet because it's all-electric.

>>I've never heard of an electric lawnmower before.

>>So at the time, with the backdrop of the oil crisis going on and the lines at the pumps and all, GE was in a way a little bit of a leader, and they took a risk, started up their outdoor power equipment department and started producing these all-electric garden tractors.

>>My.

>>And they ranged from a small ride-on mower only up to, this was their largest model, which could do the full garden tractor type stuff.

>>Interesting, how long will it last if I were to use this mowing my grass?

You know, how long could I use it before I had to recharge the battery?

>>You can get two or so acres out of it.

>>And how long does it take to recharge?

And being kind of old technology, does it take a long time to recharge the battery?

>>Guess that's all relative.

(Peggy laughs) With the charger that comes with it, if you were fully run down, you could plug it into a regular outlet overnight, and eight hours, 10 hours later, you were good to go.

If you're using it a lot during the day, when I used to live more out in the country, I would plug it in over lunch and give it a boost charge and go back to it after lunch and keep on going.

>>Well, I know they didn't have lithium batteries back then, so I guess these are lead-acid?

>>Right, lead-acid batteries, golf cart batteries of the time and actually still in use today in golf carts.

And they're much simpler.

You don't need all the computer control to use 'em safely like the lithium.

So it's what they had at the time, and in a garden tractor situation, unlike a car on the road, the extra weight of the lead is not such a penalty because if you're tilling or trying to plow or something, you want the weight to get traction.

>>You want some weight, yes.

Yeah, so it works out very well versus the lithiums are so light.

People don't realize that, yeah.

So, Jim, did any of the technology from yesteryear be used as a basis for what's being developed today?

>>A lot of it is totally different because these were DC motors.

Everything is AC motors now, lead-acid.

Everything's lithium now.

But the basics that you have a motor and a controller and batteries, that's been the same.

And yeah, I think that's helped lay the groundwork that somebody had to do that more basic stuff first to get us to where we are today.

>>Were any other companies involved with this, or is it just all GE?

>>GE was the main one, and maybe this gets to your other question too as to what came from their engineering.

It seemed that it possibly inspired a few other models to come out from some of the other companies at the time, ranging from John Deere had a little ride-on.

And I've heard that JC Penney also had one too, so it was coming out in different ways.

>>Oh, that's great.

Well, do you have any of those?

I'd love to see 'em.

>>I do have a couple others.

We could go take a look.

>>Okay, that sounds great.

Well, Jim, you had mentioned earlier that you used the Elec-Trak to mow this area.

So how does it handle on terrain?

>>Well, on this flat space, it does great, no problems, and it also has done well for me when I used to live more around the country and had property with a steep slope down to a little river and could mow going up and down there.

I could also put a trailer behind and bring a load of wood up with me.

>>So they're really versatile.

>>They sure are.

>>Wow, and also there's many different brands I'm seeing.

>>Right, in front here, we have one from Sears, which was the big company back then- >>Absolutely.

>>And their monster catalog.

So they briefly got into the electrics.

And like the yellow one we saw down there, General Electric had a separate line, which is basically the same thing painted industrial orange.

They marketed to factories, and you could get a forklift for it with a roll cage on top.

You could set it up to tow a bunch of carts behind it to move materials around within.

And the whole idea there is as an electric, it is no exhaust, no pollution.

>>Yes, that's very sustainable, very safe too.

And orange is for safety, so that makes sense.

>>Right.

>>Yeah.

And then this red one here from Wheel Horse?

>>Mm-hm, Wheel Horse took over the product line for the last few years, and initially they just put out the exact same thing, paint it in their color red, and then for a short while they took some of their gas models and made electric versions.

>>Let's compare electric versus gas.

How is the torque on these vehicles?

>>Oh, one of the neat thing about electric is it has full torque right when you first start going, which is great for the tractors.

It's also fun as an electric car driver that you step on, and it just starts going.

>>And it goes, yes.

(laughs) And it must be good for the attachments as well, which you had mentioned earlier that they had attachments.

>>Those big ones like the tiller on back or the snow-thrower on the front, all that torque of the motor, it can chew through a snowbank, or it can break up heavy ground.

>>Do you have some attachments here?

I'd love to see 'em.

>>Mm-hm, yeah.

(engine humming) (blade whirring) So, Peggy, they had quite a number of accessories.

I have some of them out here to show you.

>>Oh my, there's more than I thought.

>>I know.

(Peggy laughs) They go on and on.

The plow blade on the front, which was primarily marketed for snow pushing, but I've also done some small amount of dirt grading with it.

>>Right.

>>And on the back, they had a decent-sized tiller that had a lot of power to it.

>>Very ingenious, but that's what I was anticipating.

I was not anticipating everything else.

>>Mm-hm.

>>Yeah.

>>What they also did is at the time, they'd come out with a line of corded tools that you'd plug into a 110-volt outlet.

And what they did is they turned a lot of them into 36-volt versions that would run off of the tractor.

So instead of your corded drill, you, from your outlet, you would plug into the tractor.

>>Nice.

>>And you had a drill wherever you could drive your tractor.

You could also have a chainsaw that would come along with you.

And kind of a companion to that big tiller on the back was this small tiller to do just little spaces within your garden.

>>My kind of tool.

>>There you go.

>>Great little weeder, yes.

>>And this was before weed whackers were all the rage.

>>Oh, (laughs) look at that.

>>This was to trim your grass, or you could also turn it sideways and use it as an edger along your walkway.

>>Nice, very nice.

>>Also maintain your hedges with the hedge clippers.

>>How heavy are these, though?

Eh, they're made of metal.

They're a decent weight, yes.

>>Right.

These days, cordless everything is kind of taking the place, but it's pretty much the same technology, but with a battery built in versus a giant battery.

>>Exactly.

I think that's just wonderful, and you don't even have to have the tractor run.

It's all- >>Right, it's all silent.

And it was a little less common, they also had an inverter, which you could connect to it, and that would give you 120-volt power if you wanted to plug in something that wasn't specially made.

>>Oh wow, they really did think of everything.

And I'm really impressed, and I still don't know why this didn't catch on, you know, 'cause what a package.

>>Right, it's just is one of those things with the timing.

The oil crisis wound down, and I think they just maybe tried to do too much all at once.

>>Yes.

Jim, I notice you drive an electric car and also that you have a lot of hobbies dealing with electricity, so tell us about that.

>>Well, in a way, like GE, I was a little bit ahead of the curve and started getting into electric cars, first, electric bicycles, then electric cars, before they were commercially available.

And there was a little bit of an underground group of people who would talk on the internet, and we would do our own conversions.

So I had a converted electric pickup truck was the first electric on-road vehicle I had.

And then the garden tractor was the first electric that way.

>>You've managed to take all of this old technology and put it into a store, The Electric Tractor Store.

>>Well, I guess I've always liked all things electric, and specific to these tractors is there are a bunch of them out there still and would like to see them in use and not get hauled off to the landfill or the scrap yard.

So I wanna make people aware that they can bring these back and also just generally educate people that this electric technology is applicable to yard care on up to farm-size care.

>>Yeah, that is so pertinent to this day where we're all trying to be sustainable.

We're all trying to recycle what has been used in the past and how we can move forward with it.

So you are spot-on, and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

>>Sure, you're welcome.

>>I had no idea that you were just such an electric guy.

(Peggy and Jim laugh) Reuse and recycle, are key action steps.

And I applaud this group of landscape maintenance enthusiasts who have been doing just that for decades.

And now let's shift gears to something else we can recycle in the garden.

Shana Williams explains why chicken manure is a great soil additive and how to work with it in the garden safely.

(upbeat music) >>I have chickens and they produce two wonderful byproducts.

First of all, is their eggs, 'cause I enjoy eating eggs.

And their manure.

This manure is so rich, it adds so many great benefits back to the soil.

First of all, if you're working with manure, you wanna avoid E. coli, salmonella.

So use your gloves, make sure that you protect yourself from the raw manure if you're choosing to use it.

So I have three different stages of manure here.

This is my raw manure, which was just harvested.

You see the white in there?

That means that it has a high ammonia and urine content to it.

If I spread this around and I have plants here, it can burn my plants because it's high in ammonia, high in nitrogen.

The best thing to do is to compost it three months to a year.

It heats up to approximately 130 to 140 degrees for several days, and it'll kill the pathogens that's in your manure.

I have some manure here, also with some organic matter.

This is about three months old, I can mix this into my soil.

It is nice and tight, but one thing that I also wanna make sure that I do is water this in really good, because this has to break down.

I like to keep it in a separate black container, which has drainage holes, allow rainwater to wash away a lot of the ammonia that collects in here, and also the salt levels.

But I prefer to have more aged manure when I wanna put my veggies and plants in it.

I will take this manure, which is a over a year old, and it looks like mud, I will take this, mix it really well into my soil, and then once I do that, I'll take my planter containers and I'll fill it up with soil, and then I can plant directly into this container.

Now, when you're adding this manure to your soil, think about it, this is a recyclable, sustainable resource.

It builds your soil.

So if you know someone who has chickens, if you have chickens, add your chicken manure back into your soil.

Make sure that you compost it, give it that nice time that it needs, because all the other veggies and scraps that you're putting in your compost bin becomes that complete nutrient rich soil that your plants need to grow.

Try it, happy gardening.

(chicken clucking) Using fresh manure is in the garden.

Varies between animal species and as Shana shared, it's best to allow fresh chicken manure time to decompose before adding it to your soil.

We've seen many great sustainable practices today, from green technology to simple tools.

Still, the principles remain the same as we strive to adjust our ways to dive deeper into understanding how best to care for our environment.

I encourage you to think about the ways you can make a difference too!

See you soon, and until then, remember gardening is for everyone.

We are all growing and learning together.

>>Production funding for Virginia Home Grown is made possible by the Mary Roper Davis & Robert Poore Roper Memorial Fund.

And by.

(birds chirping) (mellow music) (mellow music continues) (mellow music continues) (pensive music)