Hi, everybody. I'm Joe Lampel, the Joe behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner Show.

Today's episode is an encore, and just like every encore that we post, they are all worthy of a second listen or watch,

and this is the first time it's being posted as video, so I think you would enjoy this one even more if you ended up watching this on our YouTube channel as well.

But at the time that we originally

set up this podcast interview with today's guest, Dr. Caitlin Stack Whitney, it was intended to be

around an article that she authored regarding the practice and concerns of using wild harvested

and widely distributed ladybugs, specifically convergent ladybirds as they are commonly known.

They're taken from sites in and around the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California,

and they are then stored and shipped to retailers and to home gardeners across the country

who buy and use them as a form of natural or biological pest control

against primarily

aphid and other soft-bodied insect pest. But without a full understanding of the unintended

consequences of this natural pest control strategy, the idea seems fairly benign, but it's not,

and that's what I wanted to talk to Caitlin about today, and we certainly do that, but the added benefit of this conversation goes much deeper than just the concerns of transporting and using non-local ladybugs, especially when there are many resident ladybugs wherever we live.

Caitlin is an environmental studies scholar and assistant professor in the science technology

and society department at the Rochester Institute of Technology, College of Liberal Arts. And here's the

bonus. She is also an active home vegetable gardener and a very experienced community gardener,

even serving as president of her community garden association when she

lived near Washington, D.C. So what you are going to hear today is rich, deep, and very thought-provoking,

so let's get into it. And as we do, thanks to our sponsor for today's episode, The Ultimate

Gardening Sheath. The Ultimate Gardening Sheath is the one piece of gear that truly changed the way that I

garden. After years of juggling my pruners, soil knife, and microsnips, I co-created this sheath

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