The Talk - part 2

 I had five minutes for Q&A.

"Did you or didn't you have a connection to The Black Lady?"

(She was my sister) 

"Randall, isn't it?"

He was there every time, I wasn't paying attention, normally I made sure I missed him. 

"Randall, I know you want to play this in person, but that doesn't mean what I say can't be right. Well, correct I mean. I know you fear and thus deny climate change, but that doesn't give you the right to try and get others to deny it, without having proper data. Next."

"How do we deal with pathogenic fungi?"

"Best way I know is to have them outcompeted by a diversity of other fungi, as only a small percentage of all fungi is pathogenic."

"Yes, but how do we deal with them?"

"Well, you need to see fungi in their mutuality with bacteria. Bacteria eat first. they eat the simple stuff in the ground. From sugars you add through rotten fruit, to exudates by the plants themselves. Fungi eat later, slower almost. So, you slow the bacteria, by creating an environment they don't like. As pure a water as possible, with as much hard to digest stuff, like lignin and hem-cellulose as you find applicable. Not in small pieces inside the soil, but as mulch on top."

"Mulch is by far the best idea, to cover soil, to stop evaporation while still allowing taking up the water from rain, and to feed the soil, much like forest deal with their soils."

"What do we do for IPM?"

"We provide food, shelter and water for organisms. If available, we put food in the soil, to boost soil life, if possible, we diversify the food that goes in. We put as much different flowers as possible. I don't know your local flowers, but take those, at the very least half of all, and if possible half of all edible, even if not very palatable. We grow lemna we take from ponds in buckets, to feed the lemna to the plants as mulch. To have predators of pest-insects land on the lemna to drink. As can bees and other pollinators, ensuring the continuation of the flowers."

"I get the idea, the lemna keeps the evaporation low, and keeps the mosquito larvae at bay."

"Remember to keep that mulch to the soil. Lemna used to be edible, but no lemna was spared in The Blast."

"That's it, you need to leave now".

I looked at them, showing this wasn't my idea of a lecture, gathered my notes and we left. Bus took me back in twnety minutes and without no time I was outside the City again.