3 Things To Do When Plants Don't Respond to Nutrient Applications

A peach grower in southeastern Pennsylvania has a problem. He is working with a block of young peach trees who are in their fourth leaf with very small amounts of new shoot growth, a very small amount of fruit, low vigor. The trees are not doing well. What is worse, the trees are not responding to nutrient or biostimulant applications. When fertilizers are applied, when biostimulants are applied, measuring plant response with plant SAP analysis as well as visually, there's no plant response. The trees are not improving. How do you fix this?

Hi friends, I'm Jon Kempf, hosting this podcast. I am passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce fruit of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've discovered that there are many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems and and how to develop regenerative agricultural systems. However, much of this knowledge and this information is scattered. It's found all over the place. Some of it has been published in peer reviewed publications, but there are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that has not been published and that hasn't been shared with many people. I started Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agricultural systems become adopted globally and become the mainstream, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared. To help achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. While we have developed products at AEA that embody the principles of regenerative agriculture systems and make them easier for growers to apply this knowledge and these principles can be applied anywhere and when they are applied properly, they will always increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or ideas, topics that you would like for me to discuss, Please connect on LinkedIn or on Twitter where my username is visionbuilder7 or you can also email me at john kempf.com I would very much like to hear from you and to hear your feedback. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and thank you very much for listening. Enjoy the show.

In our work with many growers growing many different types of crops in a broad range of climates and environments, we've observed a number of situations, particularly in perennial crops. Although this can also happen in annual crops where plants do not respond to biostimulant and nutrient applications the way that we might expect and the way that growers might expect. We've worked to try to understand why is this happening and what can we do, particularly in very challenged situations, to turn a soil and crop situation around very quickly. And we've learned that there are three major characteristics that define many of these very challenged environments. And there are three things that we can do to quickly recover and regenerate plant health. Regenerate tree health on perennial crops very, very quickly. The first piece is that we need to stop applying excess nutrients. So there is this idea within agronomy and plant nutrition that primary focus and emphasis needs to be on applying the nutrients that are missing. Let's do a soil analysis, let's do a SAP analysis or a tissue analysis, and whatever it is that we are low in, that's where we're going to add more of. We're going to add more calcium or manganese or zinc or whatever shows up as being low. Consequently, we have missed one of the biggest pieces, something that we have learned. When we started using SAP analysis and looking at nutrient interactions very closely, we observed that, particularly in the case of the macronutrients, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc. I would say as much as 80% of the time or more, the nutrient deficiencies that crops experience are the direct result of excess nutrients that the grower has applied, another nutrient excess that is creating an imbalance and a nutrient deficiency of the nutrient that we are low in. So the first step if we want to quickly recover a challenged situation, is we need to stop applying nutrient excesses. The second piece, which has emerged very clearly where we have really severely challenged environments and severely challenged crops, there is often an accumulation of pesticides in the soil profile that is suppressing the soil microbiome and is also strongly suppressing plant root development. One of the pieces that we look at right away in these types of situations is applying a microbial inoculant that can bioremediate fungicides and herbicides in the soil profile and allow the native microbiome to really flourish. There are a number of different microbial inoculants that have the capacity to digest and break down hydrocarbons and bioremediate soil profiles. When we apply these bioremediation inoculants to very challenged soils and very challenged crops, given the proper environment, given enough moisture, etc. Within a matter of a couple of weeks, first, there's a tremendous microbial flush, where we get microbial population growing very quickly, that is followed almost concurrently by strong root flush, where we get tremendous root growth happening. And that is then followed by a regeneration of the canopy and the vegetative part of the plant. So applying these bioremediation inoculants to take out some of the herbicides and some of the fungicides that can have a suppressing effect on the soil's microbiology is a very key piece, particularly when we're working in perennial environments that have continuous applications of some of these products over a many year period. The third piece is to apply biological inoculants that are not bioremediators, but that actually have the capacity to unlock minerals from the soil's mineral profile, from the soil mineral matrix and make it available to the plant. The reality is that there are many bacteria and many fungi which have been very well documented to provide exceptional plant responses. And what has happened in many cases, as soil microbial communities have been damaged or challenged by pesticide applications, these biological populations have either become dormant or in some cases may be completely missing. And when we put on some of these beneficial bacteria and fungi, we can regenerate the soil's microbial community. And the result is almost always a tremendous nutrient release of the locked up nutrients in the soil mineral profile that have not been available to the plant up to that point. So those are the three steps to recap. The first is stop applying excess nutrients that are actually creating deficiencies of other nutrients. The second is remediate the toxins that have been applied over a number of decades. And the third is apply biological inoculants and biostimulants that can rapidly regenerate the soil's microbial profile. When you do those three things, almost always we see a tremendous, tremendous plant response, crop response. And there have been any number of instances where we began working with growers who were actually had made the decision that they were going to push out a block of trees because the trees were very low energy and were going backwards. In a matter of a single year, sometimes in 18 months, you could completely regenerate those trees and go from being the lowest yielding block on an operation to being in the mid to high range. It can happen very quickly. And one of the pieces that I personally am so amazed by is the incredible resilience that is present in these natural ecosystems. When we have soils and crops that have been extremely challenged and we give them an environment in which they can thrive and get out of the way, the results can be really spectacular in how quickly they respond.

This podcast was brought to you by a great company that I work for, AEA Advancing Eco Agriculture, the leader in regenerative agriculture since 2006. At AEA, we believe in challenging the status quo to find more profitable and regenerative ways to grow crops. We also believe that healthy plants are resistant to pests and disease, and that to grow healthy plants, we must first think differently about agriculture, about empowering life instead of suppressing life, about regeneration instead of degeneration. To achieve this, we formulate and sell products that help growers produce higher quality yield with less risk of crop failure. In short, we help growers make more money with less risk. Thank you for listening.