How Do You Science | Meet an Extension Vegetable Specialist

Love veggies? Me, too. And so does my friend Tim Waters, regional vegetable specialist at WSU Extension.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What Extension is
• What it was like for Extension agents back in 1918
• How he solves problems—from insect ID to veggie pathogens to lightning strikes in fields
• One cool journey from community college all the way to a PhD

Resources you can use:

• Check out WSU Extension yourself (or look up Extension near you)
• Learn more about WSU research farms
• Find out how to a start a veggie garden yourself
• See some Prionid beetles and giant water bugs
• Even more giant water bugs! You won't believe how these guys breathe underwater and care for their eggs in this PBS Deep Look video

 As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu.  Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Transcript

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Dr. Universe

Hey, friends. I'm Dr. Universe, and if you're anything like me, you've got lots of big questions about our world. 

Today I'm talking with Tim Waters. He's a regional vegetable specialist at an Extension office at Washington State University. His main job is solving problems. I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Let's get started.

I was looking up what your exact job is. 

Tim Waters

They used to call people like me an Extension agent in the old days, right? So, WSU is the land-grant college in Washington. And land-grant colleges have three major missions. They have a mission to do research. They have a mission to educate—people that come to get undergraduate degrees or graduate degrees. And then they have a mission to do outreach. So, the Extension agents are the main outreach arm of the university.

And so that's been going on in Washington for a very long time. There’s been an Extension agent in Franklin County since 1918—well over 100 years. WSU has these partnerships with the different counties across the state. And the idea is to have people in the place where the population is and then to help people with their problems.

So, the original person that was placed in my position in 1918—the primary problems were teaching people how to get rid of sagebrush—because sagebrush was the indigenous vegetation that was here before they could farm—and then teaching people how to get rid of jackrabbits. Because jackrabbits were a huge plague on everything they planted. So, the idea with Extension people is that they put us in these communities to try to help solve problems in the community.

Dr. Universe

So, when you're doing outreach or solving people's problems, what kind of people come to you with problems? Is it mostly farmers and growers?

Tim Waters

It's a little bit of everybody. We’re kind of a catch-all for just random things in the community, right? But my primary audience is farmers and people that work in commercial agriculture. So those are the people I primarily am responsible to. But we also get random community members that come in, that are growing things at their house, that have questions.

I'm an entomologist. I've studied insects to get my degrees. And so, people come to me with random insect questions that don't always relate to agriculture. But we want to help people find solutions, so even if people come in and ask questions for things that we don't know, we like to send them the right direction.

And we're really the front door of WSU. The main campus is based over in Pullman, and not everybody gets to go to the main campus. So, we have these Extension offices in all 39 counties in the state so that people can easily access Washington State University. We're liaisons for the university and the community, essentially.

Dr. Universe

One of the things that we talk about a lot as Dr. Universe is that WSU belongs to people in Washington. That's who it belongs to. And it sounds like that's what Extension is, too.

Tim Waters

Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, that person that was in this chair in 1918—they got a lot different questions than I get now. The things that people do have changed over time, so we try to change to match those needs.

Dr. Universe

I love thinking about that—there was somebody doing your job in 1918.

Tim Waters

Yeah, it’s really cool. I have the handwritten report and the old pictures and stuff. It's fun for me to look at that once in a while and kind of see where we've been and where we're going. 

So, there's a copy of the expense report for what they had done that year. They had a picture of a Model T pickup—that's the vehicle they got around with at the time. And it was loaded with barbed wire that they were taking out to work with people to make these fences to keep jackrabbits out of their property.

They actually purchased rounds for .22 rifles to give children to go shoot jackrabbits. If I sent an expense report in for some of those things today, they would go, “What are you doing?”

Dr. Universe

Tell me what a day might be like for you.

Tim Waters

My days change a lot. So today I sat in my office all day and I worked on presentations for grower meetings that I'm going to go to. I worked on grants yesterday—writing grants, which is my least favorite thing to do. 

Dr. Universe

And a grant is where you—

Tim Waters

—write up a project that we had an idea for and try to get funding to do that project. And those are all applied projects that hopefully will help my growers.

Monday, I met with the president of WSU and talked to her about one of our research projects and the potato growers. That was kind of fun.

During the growing season, I get a lot of inquiries that may require me to kind of change my day. So, when growers are growing a crop, there are some things that can wait, but there are some things that are very, very important to do. So, when those very, very important things come up, I pretty much drop what I'm doing and head off to look at those.

So, for an example: in July—I don't remember what day it was—I had my plan for the day. We have a research farm over here in Pasco, so I was going to go to the research farm and work with my team a little bit. And somebody called me. They suspected late blight was found in a potato field. So late blight was the disease that caused the Irish potato famine many, many years ago, right? And it spreads very, very rapidly. So, I literally dropped what I was doing, and I spent the rest of the day looking for this pathogen in fields with growers and consultants to try to make sure if it was there that we figured out how to manage it and stuff like that.

So, my days vary quite a bit, and there are some very interesting days. Problem solving is probably one of my favorite things. The growers we have in this area are really sophisticated. A lot of them have been growing for a long time, so I know when they call me, it’s a problem that's not usually going to be easy to solve.

I think one of the funner ones I went to look at was lightning strikes on fields. So, when lightning strikes a field, it looks like a bunch of other random things, but there are some things you can cue on to determine if it was a lightning strike or not. So, like in a potato field, you’ll see a dead area, and it's a really large dead area that literally happened overnight. It was green, and then it turns brown. And actually, when you dig the tubers out of the ground, the tubers at the top of the potato hill look like they've been in an oven or a microwave all day, where they're just skin left. And then as you get down further into the potato hill, you'll see potatoes that look like they got touched with a hot wire or something like that. And it's really the lightning strike just cooking the plants instantly.

Dr. Universe

That's so interesting.

Tim Waters

I've seen it in onion fields and potato fields and stuff like that. One of my colleagues, Carrie, and I started about the same time, and we joke with each other that when we retire from our jobs, we'll be the smartest we will have ever been, right? Because we've had all this experience.

Now, when I go to a field, if I see something that looks like a lightning strike, then I know what that looked like before, and I can think about the weather and look at the weather on our AgWeatherNet and stuff like that and try to determine what caused that. So, you just build this sort of catalog in your brain of things that have occurred. And you know the people to contact to try to help you resolve those situations or whatnot.

Dr. Universe

Yeah, it seems like to solve those problems you would have to know so much specialized knowledge about so many different kinds of plants and animals.

Tim Waters

Yes and no. My phone is my big savior on a lot of this stuff, because I have a good network of—I refer to them as my friends—crop consultants and growers that I'll call. So, a lot of times it's my network that really helps me solve problems.

Dr. Universe

So, what's the best part of your job?

Tim Waters

Well, for one, I'm not very patient, so sitting still for a long time is not good for me. So having a lot of things to do is really good. Random things keep me interested. 

But I really like helping people. And so, when people call me, they have a problem, and if they don't solve these problems, it can really be tough for them. It can cause economic hardship. It can cause problems for their employees and stuff like that. So, when I can help them, it's really rewarding.

Dr. Universe

You mentioned the research farm. Does that mean that you do research as well?

Tim Waters

Yep. Yep. So, I have a research farm not far from my office, and I have a team, and we work on research questions there. Traditionally, like in 1918, the person that was sitting in this office didn't do research because that wasn't part of their job. And there were a lot more specialists in the state that worked on crops. Currently, we don't have a lot of specialists that work on vegetable crops, so there's more opportunity or need for research.

And I come from a research background, and for me, growing the crops really teaches you what you can do wrong and what you can do right. So, I love having that hands-on experience of growing the potatoes, the carrots, the onions, sweet corn, beans, melons, peppers, tomatoes—all those things that we grow—because I know what the growers are dealing with. So, like if there's a heat wave coming through, I can go out to our research plots. I can look at how the heat wave is impacting the potatoes or whatever, and sort of anticipate some of those problems growers are having and also empathize with them, too. Right?

And they know that I've grown these crops. And obviously I'm not growing them for money like they are, but I'm growing them to test different things. So, I get really good firsthand experience on the problems they're dealing with and how to grow the crop.

And then also when we get these questions we can't answer, or it kind of triggers something in the back of my mind of a research project we can do, we can put these on the farm here in Pasco or in Othello and evaluate them and see if we can come up with solutions to common problems that growers are having.

I joke that I hate writing grants, but when I get these ideas, they typically come from repeated questions or concerns from growers and stuff like that. So, I do enjoy that part because I can say, “Okay, we've had this common issue. Let's think of a way we can design a research project to try to resolve that issue”—on an insect or a disease or maybe a nutrient need or something like that.

Dr. Universe

It seems really cool too that you're growing crops so hyper-local with the people who are growing as a career, because it seems like as the climate is changing and stuff that would be such useful data.

Tim Waters

It's really fun. And honestly, it gives me some credibility with the growers and consultants. And they always joke that I'm not as good of a farmer as them—which I'm not—but I sort of know how to water a crop, right? And so, when I'm asking them questions about irrigation, they know that I have some background in it from what we've done.

And the other cool thing is, when we do projects, we can bring people out and show them firsthand. Seeing something in person has a pretty big impact compared to reading a report, right? I really like that opportunity where people can come out and look at what we're doing, and then they can also give us feedback on what they would like to see done differently. A lot of the little tweaks or changes we've done in projects have come from feedback from growers, consultants that come out and they're like, “Well, that's interesting, but have you thought of doing it this way?”

So, I love having that feedback. You know, scientists have a pretty inquisitive nature, and so that's helped me a lot—just not being afraid to ask questions. When I go out to farms, I ask a ton of questions about how they're doing things, because the better I understand how they're doing things, the better I can help them.

Dr. Universe

Did you always know that you wanted to do this kind of work?

Tim Waters

No, I had no idea. I'm a first-generation college student. I grew up in a small town around agriculture, but not in agriculture. I went to the local community college, and I thought I wanted to be an architect. And I took an art class. And I remember the first day they have you draw a straight line and a circle and like six other things on a piece of paper. And the instructor looked over my shoulder and she said, “What do you plan to do?” And I said, “I think I want to be an architect.” And she said, “I think you should think of something different.”

And so, it was really painful for a couple hours. I've always enjoyed being outdoors. Science has always made sense to me. So, when I finished community college, I decided I wanted to get a biology degree at WSU, thinking with a biology degree I could work outdoors or something like that.

And I was finishing my undergraduate degree, and one of the folks that taught classes in the biology department, Dr. Al Black—we became pretty good friends—and I was talking to him one day about jobs. And he's like, “Have you found a job yet? What about graduate school?” And I had worked and paid my way through school, and I did not understand. I was like, “Well, I can't afford to go to graduate school. I'm ready to be done. I need to go make money.”

He said, “They need somebody to work on insects. What do you think about insects?” I'm like, “I don’t know. I don't mind insects. I can handle insects.” And he said, “They'll pay your tuition, and they'll pay you to study insects.” And I was like, “Okay, now I'm listening.”

And so, while I was doing my master's and then later my PhD, I got to tag along with Dr. Walsh to go to all these farm visits. And I learned that agriculture is also one of those things that kind of makes sense to me, and I really enjoyed the impact that he was having with the growers.

Dr. Universe

It's very cool that you became close with your professor and got that kind of guidance.

Tim Waters

You just don't know what you don't know. You see what's in your little sphere, but there's a lot outside of our sphere. When you find those things that make sense to you, it really makes taking classes a lot easier. So, when I was in biology classes and then later in entomology classes, they were relatively easy for me because I was very interested in them. And then once you find something that makes sense, you can find a path, right?

Dr. Universe

So, you work a lot with plants. I have to ask, do you have a favorite vegetable?

Tim Waters

Boy, I think onions are probably one of them. But don't tell the potato growers that. I really like potatoes too. But I spend a lot of time working with potatoes and onions, and they're challenging crops, and I like a challenge.

Dr. Universe

It's so interesting that you're like, “I'm a problem solver, and my favorite crop to grow is a tough one.”

Tim Waters

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Universe

And you're an entomologist. So, do you have a favorite bug?

Tim Waters

You can't see my desk behind me, but there's a bunch of random insects laying there that people have brought in for me to identify. There's one over there called the Prionid beetle, and it's about the size of my thumb. That's probably one of my favorites…

Actually. Belostoma is a giant water bug, and I absolutely love those things. There's one that's the size of your thumbnail, and then there's some that are, you know, quite large. And it's pretty neat to think that an insect could be as voracious to eat tadpoles and stuff like that, right? And they've got those big raptorial front legs that they grab things with, and then they sting them and drink their insides with that big, straw-like mouthpart.

Dr. Universe

That's amazing. And the dads carry around the eggs on their back.

Tim Waters

Yep, they do.

Dr. Universe

That's cute.

Tim Waters

Yeah, they're my favorite because they're big and kids get a kick out of them. So, when we show off the display cases, they always want to know what those ones are. And they really are one of my favorites.

Dr. Universe

That's all for this episode, friends. Big thanks to Tim Waters for giving us a window into Extension. 

As always, if you've got a science question for me, you can submit it at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. That’s A S K D R U N I V E R S E dot W S U dot E D U. Who knows where your questions will take us next.