Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast
Welcome to Lake Doctor: A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast, your go-to source for understanding and preserving the health of our local lakes. Join hosts Dr. Nate Bosch, an expert in limnology, and Suzie Light, a lifelong resident and passionate advocate for our aquatic environments, as they dive deep into the challenges facing Kosciusko County's lakes.
Dr. Nate Bosch grew up in Michigan and received his doctorate in 2007 from the University of Michigan in limnology. With 18 peer-reviewed publications spanning research from the Great Lakes to smaller inland lakes and streams, Nate has been awarded the prestigious Chandler Misner Award twice by the International Association of Great Lakes Research. At Grace College, Nate is a professor in the environmental science program, dean of the School of Science and Engineering, and leads the Lilly Center team, serving the local community with dedication and expertise.
Each episode tackles these critical issues head-on, featuring insightful interviews with our partners, engaging Q&A sessions, and fun segments for the science enthusiasts among us. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the impactful research and education efforts spearheaded by the Lilly Center and discover how we can all contribute to safeguarding our precious freshwater ecosystems.
Tune in bi-monthly starting June 2024, and join the conversation by leaving comments or emailing us at lakes@grace.eduwith your questions and ideas. Supported by the K21 Health Foundation, Rick and April Sasso, and DreamOn Studios, this podcast aims to inspire and inform the next generation of water-literate citizens and environmental stewards. Learn more about our work and how to support us at lakes.grace.edu.
Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast
Cultivating Healthy Lakes: The impact of agriculture on freshwater waterways
What if you could witness the seamless blend of agriculture and lake conservation? Join us on the Lake Doctor Podcast as we welcome Mindy Truex, president of Creighton Brothers. With nearly a century of family history, Mindy invites us into her world, where she navigates the storytelling challenges of agriculture and how the stewardship practices that are beneficial for agriculture are also good for our lakes. Discover how Creighton eggs journey from hen to consumer, untouched by human hands, and how Mindy champions agritourism through the charming
Creighton's Crazy Egg Cafe & Coffee Bar.
Explore the cutting-edge world of modern agriculture, where precision farming and stringent biosecurity measures reign supreme. We also turn our attention to lakefront property maintenance, discussing the role of native plants in curbing nutrient pollution and the critical importance of phosphorus-free fertilizers. This episode promises invaluable insights for those passionate about the confluence of farming and environmental stewardship.
Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, Susie Light, and I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, Dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you got your doctorate degree from University of Michigan.
Speaker 2:Is that correct? Study of freshwater aquatic systems. On this podcast, we're going to dive into lake science. We're going to meet folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like we are, and we're going to have a lot of fun together.
Speaker 1:You can learn more about the topics in this episode and support the Lilly Center's work by visiting our website, lakesgraceedu.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, we're excited for you to hear from Mindy Truex. She's the president of Creighton Brothers and we're going to talk about how agriculture interfaces with our lakes and streams.
Speaker 1:We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Welcome to the Lake Doctor podcast, mindy. I am so glad you are joining us today. Joining us is Mindy Creighton Truex. We've known each other since we were little little girls. I remember swimming in Crystal Lake with you long ago. So Creighton Brothers has been around almost 100 years. So Creighton Brothers has been around almost 100 years. And your original farm factory feeder lot area was actually right on the Tippie River and you still have property on Tippie A lot. Tell us about the one passion that you brought to Creighton Brothers your day egg cafe. Tell us about why.
Speaker 3:What that was important. It's kind of interesting because in some walks around the farm I take a lot of grief for it and in some I get a lot of. This is really fun, and it it's. It's a neat thing. When we go to meetings, people, people always ask me how's the cafe doing? We've been there, we love it, all this, but there's some of them that feel like it's too much of a separate thing from the farm and I'm like I'm working on that, trying to get back to the.
Speaker 3:It started out as a need for telling our story and the great things about animal agriculture what we do, why we do it, why it's a good thing. And then, in the world of the activist and the loud voice that they have and the very humble laid-back, the typical farmer out there that doesn't want to toot his own horn, doesn't want to talk about what they do. They just do it. They just go out there and they produce the food for everybody and it's just what they do. They don't think about the need to tell that story.
Speaker 3:And so, as activists were getting louder, corn and soybean people would put together meetings and say you know, they were supposed to help us with this problem, this opportunity to have to kind of beat down a little bit the misinformation. They would always say you all have great stories, you need to tell them. Thank you very much. You have a good day. You know, it was like how do we do that? Thank you very much. You have a good day. You know, it was like how do we do that? How do we do it?
Speaker 1:And your vision was agritourism. Right, Bring people to the farm. So when they go, they see pictures of you as a little girl sitting on an egg crate. They see pictures of your grandpa and your mom and dad.
Speaker 2:It is a fascinating, and there's a tractor there too. When you walk in, dad, it is a fascinating, and there's a tractor there too, when you walk in.
Speaker 3:Yes, a tractor that the farm bought new back in the 50s and Ron and his dad bought it. One of the probably the last projects his dad really did. As he got older he loved to restore tractors, and so they bought it, took great care of it, made it parade worthy for his dad, and I finally got him to let me put it in there. So now we have that one that actually started out at the farm.
Speaker 1:So telling your story about ag is really important to you. How else do you get the word out about the work that?
Speaker 3:Creighton Brothers does. That's not the easiest thing to do without having, without going on a Speakers Bureau tour and things which American Egg Board did have at one time. They had kind of a Speakers Bureau thing set up so that I went and did some Kiwanis Club things that weren't just here, you know went to other counties and communities and and talked to them a little bit and had it was more I guess you tailored their standard, you know kind of a set thing. You kind of tailored it with some of your own details and your own things. But yeah, my one challenge to that is that it's kind of I'm the one that needs to go do that, but I also am very much an introvert, but that kind of stuff just sucks the life out of me. I am exhausted.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought up the Kiwanis thing, because one of your employees is a member of our Warsaw Kiwanis Club and Brian shared information about eggs and Nate. Did you know that the first time you open up a Creighton egg case with your dozen? Eggs and you pick that egg up. You are the first human hands that touch that egg.
Speaker 2:Really. True story, so you go to the grocery store you open up the carton that's never been touched by a person before, never been touched by a person before. Wow, so all the process of the egg getting into From the time she lays it.
Speaker 3:The equipment is designed for it to roll to an egg belt. The egg belt gathers it from where the chicken is to the front of the house, transfers it a couple times to get onto another conveyor belt that takes it to the gathering room where it's automatically put onto the flats and those are put in the cooler at the farm without being touched. Then they get to the plant and the processing plant and then those, all those stacks of flats, are unloaded, put on the you know mechanically, then transferred to the processing machine. That goes from washing inspecting all the different, from washing inspecting all the different, now kind of electronic and camera and everything else. They're not candled like they used to be.
Speaker 1:So explain that.
Speaker 3:So in the olden days, candling was you used to have a light Well candling came from the fact that they held a candle up and looked at the egg to see inside of it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:To see if there was a baby, like back in the day, when everything was at home when there were roosters and things you wanted to see if there was a baby chick developing or something you wanted to, and so they could see whatever at the time yeah depending on what it was you were wanting to see, what you could see, and then that evolved to just putting a putting light underneath them, and the processing belt would come out of the washers and then go across this light and then they turn the whole time, so it's moving the inside of the egg along with it. There's different things that they look for inside there, as well as shell, if they can see, if there's any kind of cracks, deformities, anything that make them unsaleable.
Speaker 2:Did you know? My first job was working at a chicken farm.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't. I didn't know that You've withheld that all these years, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was probably 14 years old and I worked at an egg-laying farm. I drove my dirt bike through the blueberry fields of Michigan to get to work, and so we had several chicken houses and they would like conveyor belts, like you said, and then they would come through, and then our job was to make sure that the good eggs we'd pull some out or whatever would get put into these little kind of square sort of racks and then we'd put them, and then, uh, I don't know, somebody flats yeah flats and then somebody would take them and take them away and I think they would clean them and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, that was a really interesting job and now it's so all automated.
Speaker 1:Um you, you mentioned a phrase that I want our listeners and viewers to really pick up on biosecurity. So you know, people don't really understand how that. What does that mean for Creighton Brothers?
Speaker 3:That is, keeping our hens, whether they're pullet chicks, the baby chicks or the egg-laying chickens, keeping them biologically safe and secure to where to try to keep them free from any kind of disease, or bringing anything into the house where they're at. Keeping anything bad, anything dirty to their lives outside, anything bad, anything dirty to their lives outside, and making sure that we don't track something in the house we don't mean it could be.
Speaker 1:And when you say we don't track. So a human being that walks into a chicken house has to do certain things before they can enter that area to keep those chickens safe, to keep the food products safe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's quite an involved process now where it's getting to the point of we haven't started doing the shower in and shower out yet for employees out at the farm, but there are some that they we do use a Dutch entry system.
Speaker 3:Now We've had to build on a little bit to some of our the rooms where they first go in, where it's not just a matter of hanging up your coat and maybe changing your shoes when you come in or something. Now they have to. They have t-shirts and like scrub, pants and things that they have to completely change Shoes, pants, shirt, everything before they go in and they have a like there's a bench set up and by the time you kick your legs over and go to the other side of that and on in to the house. You change everything where it's a clean and dirty line and then some of them do the danish and like do a shower in, shower out, in addition to just the changing clothes and things like that. And so, in the wake of all of what avian influenza has done to people, I mean totally decimate farms across the US.
Speaker 2:That's because, as that employee is walking into the chicken house, they're walking through the parking lot and if a duck or a goose was flying over and its droppings came down and that person walked in that and then walked in the coop, it could bring that disease into the coop or at home.
Speaker 3:We can't control where everybody lives their walk of life, where they drove their car, where they walk around. I know when we moved back where we were at down by all that river bottom area and we had a pond out in front of the house and more people living along all the lakes and everything it's like we had. So there were times this time of year when you had the Canadian geese and all their babies and as those babies get big, and you feel like you just have about 50 to 60 larger geese walking around everywhere.
Speaker 3:What they do when they walk around is very large.
Speaker 2:Those droppings everywhere.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was hard to walk on the driveway from the house to the barn and miss it all to the barn with, and miss it all right, and so I mean, and you don't have to really visibly step in it to potentially take what they might shed off in their droppings and things to take that into the into the chicken house.
Speaker 1:so creighton brothers does more than birds, more than eggs.
Speaker 3:Tell us about some other kinds of agriculture activity you're involved in Well, a big part that goes with the chickens is the ability to feed them. So we have our feed mill that takes all the corn in. We buy soybean meal on all sorts of other ingredients and things, mix them, deliver them to the farms every day, and so then, supporting that, we now farm about 10,000 acres, most of it corn we can do with yields. The last few years we've gotten up to 70% to 75% of our own corn needs now, where it used to be barely half.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of perhaps ill-informed or uninformed opinions about agriculture. People think that farmers just dump fertilizer everywhere because it makes their crops grow, and I remember your dad telling me about the equipment that is used that can analyze. Share a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the term. Precision farming is what they put a lot of things under and a lot of that. Now, when we first started trying to integrate any of that into our tractors or combines or different things, they started it out in combines and you could see, as you were picking, where maybe you had better yields in one pocket of a field than another. Maybe it's a low spot, maybe it's a high spot. So maybe you need to work on your drainage, maybe you need to um. Back when we used to spread the fertile you know manure fertilizer on the fields, um, we would see and they could always tell oh, I mean we would see, and they could always tell. Oh, I mean, it would tell you exactly what you thought you knew. But what do you do with that? And that was always the big question. Yeah, you can make a lot of pretty maps out of that and everything, but what's that really telling you and what can you?
Speaker 3:How does that translate to when you plant? When you plant, how does that translate to when you apply the fertilizer, in whatever form it is? Or, you know, spray for particular weeds? That are just something that are a constant problem out there wild pickles always one they're always talking about. There's just different ones that you have out in the fields, that you, I'm guessing, just don't have in your yard, and things a lot that are much more problematic because they're vining and they grow up the corn plant and they get tangled up in the combine when they're when they're picking, and so, um, now they've been able to, decades later. It has translated to from the day you start working the fields in the spring until the time you harvest, and it integrates all that together. It's GPS-driven in the combine or in the tractor or whatever, to take your applications and make them as precise as possible.
Speaker 1:So you're not spreading fertilizer across the whole field if it doesn't need it.
Speaker 3:You're spreading it in certain pockets of the field, or insecticide the same way yeah, because then there's they always start out in a field with the what they call the in bros around the outside and they do that. Then they start working up and down the field. Well, in that process there's overlap. So you want to minimize the overlap for a number of reasons. Um, cost savings yes, you want to. You don't want to minimize the overlap for a number of reasons. Cost savings yes. You don't want to waste product. We don't want to apply something that doesn't need to be applied.
Speaker 3:So one day I was out taking some pictures before a board meeting to get some fresh ones. We were out planting and doing things and they were spraying the field right across from the office. So I was out watching them and taking pictures of them and I noticed on the sprayer when it was going away from me. I was, and I saw the thing and I thought, oh no, like the nozzles were only working on one side, not the other, and I thought is that on purpose or are they clogged? Do they know they're not working? And they said, no, that was going over an area that all the technology and all that knew that had already been sprayed. They weren't supposed to be working so that they didn't double spray it or even triple spray it or something. They know where they've been and nozzles will turn on and shut off and everything else, because we don't want to waste it.
Speaker 3:On one hand, we don't want to pay for seed and fertilizer and different herbicides or pesticides, or whatever it might be, that are being applied for a purpose onto the ground.
Speaker 3:You don't want to waste your money on that on one hand. But then for the good of the soil, for the good of the end product or whatever it is, if there's not a need to do it, we don't want to do it. And then also with Indiana Department of Environmental Management, we like to try to treat them as our friend, not a government agency that just likes to tell us what to do and is a problem or anything. They tell us how far we have to stay away from bodies of water, the drain tiles, different things. Where drainage is heavier, we have setbacks all over the place in the field. If it's running past the river, any kind of creek, any kind of ditch, any kind of, if there's a tile out there that has a riser, you have setbacks that you have to stay away from them so far. And we have very large binder books that have all this documented.
Speaker 2:I've seen those before.
Speaker 3:Yes, you've seen those books and I always love that. You're, brian, you know we share those, with the students learning that, yes, farmers aren't the bad guy out there. Um, if you're utilizing all that technology, which all that technology does, come with a price. So, you know, maybe not every farmer is able to utilize it to its full extent, but, um, it's something that it's cost savings which every farmer is interested in, every business person is interested in. You got to be able to save your pennies so you can pay people and buy, buy your inputs, and it's. It all has to be able to work together and so you can. You know we want to be responsible keepers of our ground, good stewards right, we want to be those good stewards.
Speaker 3:We want to be responsible keepers of our ground. Good stewards, right, we want to be those good stewards. We want to be good neighbors. We want all that on one side, and on the other side you have to be able to save the pennies and dimes where you can so that we can keep doing that.
Speaker 1:So stewardship's been important. You are a family business. Faith and family have been really important and, I would say, longtime values that your grandparents and parents instilled in you and imbued in the culture of Creighton Brothers.
Speaker 2:Nate. You kind of got a family relationship with that yeah my job title actually Creighton. Brothers Endowed, director of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. So yeah, I feel like I'm almost adopted into the family in some ways.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that lovely gift.
Speaker 3:Mindy, yes, that was something that Nate has just been a great advocate for farming in his position, with lakes and streams and educating our future people that are going to go out and work with that, as well as the many, many touches in the community that they have from the grade school kids. I mean, you're probably doing as much to go out and tell a story about agriculture or the story about agriculture in terms of you know how great our lakes and streams are in places because, sadly, I think the one thing where people want to throw stones at the farmers about app applying and what they do to their, with their crops and everything else to pollute waters and the groundwater and everything else probably more sadly comes from the homeowner that over applies fertilizer to their yard that ends up running off into groundwater or the lakes or different things than what the farmer does.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've appreciated learning about agriculture in our area here, with all of these lakes and streams, is sometimes environmental organizations can come at agriculture in kind of a combative or confrontational sort of a posture. What we've chosen to do at the Lilly Center has come with more of a collaborative partnership, and you spoke to that a few minutes ago, and the reason for that is when we first started back in 2007, and we started talking to people like Creighton Brothers and other agricultural producers in our area and we started wanting to learn about goals that they had right and you even spoke to that.
Speaker 2:You don't want to waste money, which means you don't want to see extra fertilizer application just run off your fields and not get used by your plants. You don't want to waste other chemicals, whether it's pesticides or anything else, and that way you don't want to see that valuable top soil that's growing those crops wash off and erode off your field. And then when we talk to lakefront property owners in our region, they have the same goals. They don't want to see the fertilizer, the pesticide, the soils which we call sediments when they get into an aquatic system. They don't want to see those things come in. And so we quickly realize hey, we've got the same goals.
Speaker 2:This is a great opportunity to work together, right, and you guys have been great partners in that and we've learned from each other over the years and I've really appreciated that.
Speaker 1:Mindy, thank you so much for joining us today. We are thankful for the gift of food that Creighton Brothers brings to the table. We're thankful for your stewardship and your commitment to our community and I got to tell you your dad was really proud of you. He shared that often. So thank you for being here today, thank you.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Dr Nate Bosch and I'm here at my friend Diane Quance's house on Pike Lake. She's a great partner of ours in many ways and what I want to show you here on this property is some good examples of what lakefront property owners, and even non-lakefront property owners, can do on their property to help protect our lakes and streams. So we're going to talk about nutrients, we're going to talk about filter strips, we're going to talk about lawn fertilization here today. So let's start with probably the most obvious thing, which is this filter strip which is right here alongside me. So we have a channel on Pike Lake right here, beyond this concrete seawall. You can't see it, but there's some glacial stones up against that seawall which helps dissipate some of the wave energy that might come in and normally would bounce back off and go to the other side of the lake, downscour some sediments and bring nutrients back up into the water for weeds and algae to grow. In front of that seawall we've got some vegetation. We call that a filter strip. Some will call it a buffer strip. What's ideal is, if you can have that buffer, that filter, be native plants. The reason that we like native plants rather than non-native plants would be that those native plants are going to have root structures that are going to be deep and help pull in a lot of water and nutrients before it gets to the lake, hold sediments really well. With those strong root structures they're also going to be well conditioned for our climate here. We're in northern Indiana and so we've got some harsh winters at times and we even get some droughts in the summertime. So these native plants are going to be able to withstand that those extreme conditions, better than some of the non-native plants that you might buy at a more typical greenhouse or big box store.
Speaker 2:So we like our native plants along here. We have some horsetail rush We'll go around and show you some specific examples here in a little bit and we've got some wildflowers, some forbs. Back here behind me we also have a turf grass lawn right here, just on the shore side of the lake, just past the filter strip, and on the lawn oftentimes there's fertilizer that goes on it, there's sometimes irrigation, rainstorms will bring water in it and that's going to tend to wash things towards the lake, and so if we have that filter strip, that'll be interception, if you will, of those things as they move towards the lake. We don't want the excess nutrients getting to our lake, which can cause those excess weeds and algae to start to grow, and so we want to intercept that with the filter strips. So we're going to go through and we're going to look at some specific examples of the plants that Diane has planted here which you might consider on your own yard. We're going to look at specifically her yard and how she maintains her yard, the actual turf grass portion of her yard.
Speaker 2:But before we start to look at some of those individual things, I want to talk a little bit about those nutrients, about fertilizer, which would typically be placed on a lawn here close by the lake. Fertilizer is always going to have three components to it. If you look at a bag of fertilizer, it's going to have three numbers on the bag somewhere. The first number is going to be your nitrogen number. Second number is phosphorus and third is potassium. Nitrogen is something that's needed for all green plants and oftentimes that will really help perk up a yard, help it grow green, help it deal with any damage that might be caused from trampling or heavy use in certain areas.
Speaker 2:Phosphorus is that middle number. Phosphorus is the one that causes the most problem for our streams and lakes. It's what's called the limiting nutrient in our freshwater ecosystem. So the more phosphorus means the greener the lake is going to become. We don't want to see those excess weeds. They can impact recreation. They can start to choke out the environment when they're overabundant. We also don't want to see algae or phytoplankton which can also grow from that phosphorus. Once it gets into the lake. That algae could even be toxic algae, like blue-green algae, which can be harmful to people and pets who want to use and enjoy the lake. And then that third part is potassium, and potassium is usually needed in lesser amounts.
Speaker 2:What we encourage people who live on streams and on lakes here in our county to use is what we call phosphorus-free fertilizer. So that middle number of the three numbers is zero, no phosphorus. The reason we can get away with that and still have beautiful plants like lawn grass is because we have a fair amount of phosphorus naturally in our soils here in Kosciuszko County and really throughout a lot of the Midwestern United States, and so we don't need the phosphorus to have healthy plants, healthy lawns around our homes. So phosphorus we want to be zero. And even when we're in general using fertilizer, we want to use only as much as what our yard needs. If we put extra fertilizer on. If you're looking at the bag of fertilizer and it has certain application rate to use for your fertilizer spreader and you say, oh well, if this much is good, then doubling it must be better. We don't wanna do that. All right, that's gonna. What's that excess gonna do? The grass can only take up so much those grass plants. The excess is gonna simply run off with the next big rain event or snow melt during the winter time and it's going to end up in our lake and the weeds and algae in the lake are going to be happy to take up that phosphorus. But the people using the lake are going to be unhappy that those weeds and algae are using up that extra phosphorus because they're going to grow too much in an unhealthy sort of a way. All right, so we want to limit total amount of fertilizer. We want to make sure that middle number is zero.
Speaker 2:Let's go around now and look at some specific features here of this lakefront property and maybe inspire you for some things you might want to do on yours. Here's one of the plants that I want to highlight. This is called swamp milkweed, one of the reasons I love this plant. It's got a beautiful presentation and it's flowering time, but also it's really versatile. Here we've got it planted up from the seawall a little bit, so it's a little bit drier, but it can also deal with its feet wet or its roots in pretty saturated soils, and so it's a good plant that's versatile. Butterflies love it, which is another reason that I love this plant. Other pollinators as well Swamp milkweed.
Speaker 2:Here's the second plant that I wanted to highlight for you. This is a native hibiscus, also known as swamp mallow. By the name, you would expect that it can deal with wet conditions, also drier conditions. One of the other things I like about this is it starts small and it starts to spread out into more of a shrub-like appearance. It also allows some of its neighbors to kind of intermix with it a little bit, for some diversity in the plants as well. This is swamp mallow, also known as native hibiscus.
Speaker 2:All right, here's the third plant that we're going to highlight. This is called black-eyed susan, maybe the most popular of the three types we just talked about. This is the native variety of black-eyed susan, and so it can expand fairly aggressively, and so put it in a spot that you don't mind it to get a little bit bigger. I love these blooms on it. They stay week after week, sometimes a couple months, depending on the weather conditions that particular year. These do well in a pretty dry environment as well, so keep that in mind as you're planting it. They do fine getting closer to the lake as well. As you can see here this is called black-eyed Susan, another great native plant.
Speaker 2:Let's focus in on lawn maintenance. When you first look at this yard you see we've got a beautiful green color here. We've got some striping from a recent mowing. Notice how the grass plant is a little bit taller than you might expect in a lot of other mowed yards. That's going to allow the grass plant to be healthier than it would when it's cut really short. This yard Diane says she doesn't have to add fertilizer, she doesn't have to irrigate it by allowing it to be a little longer, and when she does mow it she mulches those grass clippings. So those grass clippings then fall down into the base of the grass plant and as they decompose, give off small into the base of the grass plant and as they decompose, give off small amounts of nutrients for that grass plant to be healthier so you can avoid the fertilizer If you really insist on needing fertilizer for your lawn. Remember we're going to go to phosphorus free, so we want that middle number of the three numbers to be zero. So we've got the 29, which is the nitrogen amount, zero, which is phosphorus, so that's phosphorus free, and then three is our potassium. These are some great examples you can do on your yard as well.
Speaker 2:All right, let's recap what we learned today. When we have a lakefront property like this or really any property, because all properties are going to eventually drain into a river or a lake we want to be mindful of the water that flows off our property. We've got some beautiful filter strips here. We've talked about lawn fertilization, but I want to leave you with three things that really everybody can do on their own property to help protect our local waterways. The first is what we've been talking a lot about, which is filter strips. This is again a stretch of preferably native plants that intercepts water as it's running off your property.
Speaker 2:A lake property is typically going to slope towards the lake, and so we want to keep those excess nutrients and sediments out of the lake. But even a property not on a lake, you're having water flow across your property and that water is going to end up in a stream or a lake. And so filter strip is the first thing that everybody can think of. Second thing would be fertilizer. We want to use phosphorus-free fertilizer. Our soils typically don't need extra phosphorus added and that phosphorus is going to cause a problem downstream for a river or a lake.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing that everybody can do is being mindful of your yard waste. We don't want to see those extra grass clippings, those leaves, end up in a water body. If you're on a lake, it's pretty obvious. You don't want to blow those things into the lake. If you're not on a lake, it might be less obvious, but you don't want to let those things get into the gutter along the street or into a storm drain, because those are going to go directly to a river or a lake as well. So filter strips, no phosphorus fertilizer and composting those lawn waste items those are something that everybody can do to help protect our lakes and streams. So excited we could be here at Diane's beautiful lakefront property on Pike Lake and we're hopeful it was an inspiration to you for some things you can do on your property as well.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Join us next time. It's bound to be fun.
Speaker 2:Listening to this podcast is the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit our website for full studies of our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference. Join us at lakesgraceedu.
Speaker 1:We'll see you next time. The doctor's in.