Hey, it's Ross and today we are going to talk about rust, the rust that will form on some fig leaves. And I've been waiting to do this video because I haven't had rust on my trees. Pretty much at all this year we're now in mid-October. We only have about two weeks left of the season before frost. In which point I'll have no more leaves for the most part. And I'm running out of time to show you guys what rust looks like and to do an informative video on it for you. So it's a bit of a shame I guess and for your sake that I haven't been able to talk about it until now. But this seems to be the only tree in my yard with rust. I'm not entirely sure if I'm just special or if other people in my area also haven't gotten rust. But you can see that it looks what it looks like here. It's this orange brown discoloration on the leaf. And this is a disease. This is a fungal disease. So anything that is a fungicide will help prevent the disease. It will not remove the disease. I don't think anything can remove the disease. At least something I'm not aware of. But you can see it here. There's more of that browning. This light green here, that's a fig mosaic virus. So kind of ignore that. But we're just looking here at the brown. And what happens is the rain will hit these spores. And then the rain will then kind of plop up in each direction. And then you kind of get a covering of the plant of these spores. It's actually more likely for the lower half of the plant to have rust rather than the top of the plant. In fact, the lower it leaves will end up in most cases if it's severe. We'll end up falling off. And you'll lose photosynthesis receptors that way. You'll lose some energy because every time you get rust on your leaves, and it's a bad form of rust, those leaves will eventually fall off. Just like any other old fungal disease, whether it's peach leaf curl, cedar apple rust, my European grapevines also get some kind of fungal disease I'm blanking on the name, but you can see a great image of it here. I think part of this is black rot. But this is really what my grapevines look like at this point of the year. This one over here is almost completely defoliated. So my area has quite a lot of disease in it. We're very humid here. Here's also cedar apple rust. And for whatever reason, my fig trees this year, unlike every other year I've grown figs, do not have rust. And if they do have rust, it's very limited. And I did a poll on the fig community to see who has rust and who doesn't, and it seems like a lot of people have it and very few in my area do nots. And I wonder why this is, and I have to think that something that I have done this year is a part of that reason. This year we tried something new because there is new research out there from various professors and universities that are suggesting that silica is a really nice supplement or a amendment to use in your soils. One of the benefits of silica is it acts as, it gives your plants more resistance to disease. Of course, the silica supplements and sprays or amendments that you use have to be applied to the plant before the disease is active for it to work. And I think it has to be applied continuously throughout the season if I remember the research I read correctly. But in the beginning of the year, we used a lot of rice holes as a mulch on a lot of my containers, guys. And it said that rice holes contains a certain amount of silica, which is a big reason why I started using rice holes. It's also a really affordable source of mulch for myself, and it's sustainable. Another thing that we used in our pots here, guys, on every single one, you can still see it. I believe that's what that is. But that is dietamaceous earth. Dietamaceous earth is also said, and it's food grade organic, also said to have silica in dietamaceous earth. So I think between the combination or one of the other has had some kind of effect on my trees. The other really important thing that I've been doing to prevent this, rather than spraying copper, which I've debated doing in the past, which is a fungicide. I've been picking up all of the fallen leaves, and you can see underneath these trees, there's just very few leaves. And I go around to these trees, you know, I check them almost every day, and I'll go around weekly, and I'll collect these leaves if I see them. This helps with a couple of reasons. Mainly I was trying to do this for fruit flies, I think, to king, leaf matter, attracts fruit flies. You know, SWD is a big problem with figs, at least in my area. But also it's been said, and I truly believe it helps with rust. It really does, because the leaf on the ground stays wet a lot longer for that disease to be able to penetrate that leaf, and then that leaf then starts infecting healthier leaves that are then on the tree. It just takes some water, guys, to hit the spore on the leaf for it to be infected. I think it only takes about 24 hours for the leaf to be wet, and the disease to activate. So either we had a miracle year here, guys, or I've just been increasing my game, my fig game. So that is the video, guys. I hope you enjoyed what I've just talked about on rust, and I hope you've learned something. I'm sorry I couldn't get this video out to you guys sooner. At this point in the season, probably a lot of you have rust, and this video is coming a little bit too late. But, you know, some things to think about for next year. And again, all these trees over here, completely rust-free, for the most part. Alright, guys, take care, and I'll talk to you all soon. See you for the next one.