Advancing Eco Agriculture | Ask Us Anything with John Kempf David Miller | Regenerative Agriculture

Hi friends. Welcome to our Ask Me Anything session this afternoon. I've persuaded David Miller to join me here. Well, actually it's probably more like the opposite is true. David Miller persuaded me to join him. Actually, no, neither of those are true. We both wanted to be here. It's good to connect with all of you and see all of you here again. So our as many of you, we've had these Ask me anything sessions before, although we haven't had any quite recently. But the floor is really yours to ask us any questions that you have on any types of topics. And if you ask us how deeply to plant corn, we're probably going to skip out on answering that question and answer something else instead. So you have take the liberty to just type any questions you have into the Ask me anything. Yeah, the Ask me Anything box, the Q and A box down at the bottom. Then David and I will respond to those questions that you have as rapidly as they come in. Both David and I have a hard stop at the end of the hour. So often we really enjoy these interactions with our growers and the folks that we're working with. And often we have lots of really great questions. I've had webinars or Ask me anything sessions that we went well over 100 questions, even approaching 200 questions that were really great. And we really enjoy that. And often we just leave them open and then we go until we've answered all the questions, whether that's an hour and a half or two hours or whatever it is. But unfortunately we're not able to make that happen today. So if we do have that situation where lots of really great questions come through, which I expect, then we're just going to, this is on my part. I'm going to try to keep my answers short and to the point. I have a tendency to get into length, long winded explanations and try to get straight to them. So that's what we're looking for and hoping for and expecting today. Please type in any questions that you have into the Q and A and we're going to go through those as rapidly as we can, perhaps to kick things off as a couple of questions come in here. David, I'm going to ask you a question to get us started. What is something that you've experienced in the last year working with the consulting team at AEA and with the growers that you work with? What's something that you've learned or observed that is new or that was a surprise for you? What new things are you working on?

Well, thank you John. And hi everyone. To answer your question, John, there's a lot of things that we have seen this year across the company from east coast Florida to California and up to the Pacific Northwest. So from having snow on cherry blossoms and the challenges that that brings to extreme heat in California and desert in Texas, what are the things that stand out to me there's a number of things that stand out to me as, oh, wow, that is awesome. One of them was in cotton in Texas where boll weevils got in early and destroyed all the early set bulls. And with a heavy application of reproductive energy with the accelerates, like I'm talking about double rate of what we would normally do. The cotton plant expressed itself by putting on bull clusters. And the team down there, you know, talked to extension agents and so forth and old time cotton growers. Nobody's ever seen bold clusters, but we're talking anywhere from five, seven, eight clusters in a bowl. And each of those bowls has its own leaf. And this all happened like it was either take out the crop or do something extreme. And they did something extreme.

And.

That the last I talked with Chad on there, they were ready to harvest, but it looked like most of those clusters were going to make. So that's one of the. Oh, wow. How did that work? Also in cotton, we had the best year ever on James Johnson's farm. Many of you, if you've been following at all what we've been doing there, he had no insecticide, no fungicide spray, and his yield is higher than it's ever been on his farm. He's still in the harvesting, so we don't know what his field average is, but he's, he's over three bales on a lot of his Pima cotton. But that's been exciting. You go out west to California, great Pennyroyal. And I'm saying he thinks because these are people I'm directly working with, they had extreme drought or high heat. And on the block, my block, Block nine, I get privileged to have, you know, my own blocks. And with these growers it's kind of like we'll do everything David says. You're muted, John.

In that case, it has the wrong name. They need to start calling it the David block instead of blog 9.

Well, I'm okay with going with the name, but the thing that really stood out there is there were blocks that Greg was just harvesting for other people or had bought the grapes, but he wasn't managing the fertility and, and the management of the vines. And on block nine, he harvested north of Three tons, which on many of the other blocks he was under one ton. And that was largely because the grapes are shriveled up. Like the quality of the grapes wasn't there. We also had fun there with putting on a bricks for. Hey, wait, how long do you want me to go here? Let me give you one more that Rochelle Robertson's been working with. And they had a field that if it did okay, it was doing 45 to 50. If it did really good, it was 60 bushels and he was harvesting and he sent this video to Rochelle and he was never under 60 bushels and most of the time he was in the 70 to 90 bushel range. So he probably averaged in that lower to mid-70s on a field that usually made 50 bushels if it did well. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a really fun year.

That does sound like fun. You know, the of the various stories that you described, the one that is the most, the one that I find the most personally exciting is the cotton story of putting on multiple bolls in a cluster. And you know, it just, I keep repeating this mantra over and over. We don't really know what truly healthy plants actually look like anymore. Like, it's. We now know that cotton has the capacity to express itself that way genetically. But what would have to be true for cotton to express itself that way from the beginning and to put bowls into clusters right from the get go without going through that stress situation. So. And maybe, who knows, maybe it came about. Well, you know, there's the argument that could be made to say that, well, that expression of multiple bowls in a cluster came about as a result of stress. And yes, that's possibly true. And also, whatever genetic triggers were triggered as a result of that stress, those can also be triggered in other ways with.

I don't think it was because of stress. I mean, the bowls were destroyed and had we not done, done something to really push that reproductive energy, that plant would have gone vegetative in response to not having those bowls. So yes, it might have been stress, but I believe it would have grown and had a lot of vegetative growth had we not been able to set that fruit on there. John, I have a question for you too, but we have a lot of questions coming in. So why don't we fire away on the questions and then if we get to the bottom of the well, I'll ask my question.

We're not going to get to the bottom of the well. This is a deep well. All right, we're going to kick Things off with the first question here from Ganesh. Being a small holding vegetable farmer, how do we maintain soil organic matter if we are tilling multiple times with multiple soil cultivation practices? Well, the answer is you're going to have to keep importing it, you're going to have to keep adding it if you're cultivating all the time. And perhaps a better question would be, how can we figure out a system where you don't need the constant repeat tillage? Brian o' Hara has an awesome book and there's a few others that have come out recently as well. But what is the title of Brian o' Hara's book? No Till Intensive Vegetable Culture. So I think his operation on Tobacco Road farm is about 5 acres or 7 acres. So it's not large scale, but as you describe, being a smaller scale market gardener, that might be an appropriate fit. So what I find interesting about Brian's approach is that before going no till vegetables, he prepares his soil to go no till vegetables. He does till, he plows, he removes the rocks and the stones, he prepares his soil to go no till. Then he goes no till vegetable production and gets really great results with his growing practices. So those would be some things that I would suggest you look at and think about. Then we have a question from Steven. There's only one Stephen that would ask this question. Hi, Steven. Does calcium chloride have a synergistic relationship with cytokinin or auxin, since calcium is synergistic with cytokinin, whereas chloride is synergistic with auxin. Ah, I know the answer to this question, Stephen. I suspect you do too. The question is actually really simple. Or you could ask it from an observational answer simply, you could ask it from an operational perspective, does calcium chloride drive strong vegetative growth? And if the answer is yes, then it's associated with auxin. If we look at this from a chemistry perspective, there is math to evaluate this and there can be variation from source to source of calcium chloride. But the short version is that you can look at the calcium chloride molecular formula and do the math. And the easy math says that it is the element which is in greatest atomic mass, present in the greatest atomic mass, which is going to determine the relative vegetative or reproductive outcome. But that doesn't fully take into account the degree of synergy that they have with the various hormones. So my understanding, just based on plant observation, is that calcium chloride would have a vegetative growth response and drive auxin based on the activity of the chloride. David, is there Anything you'd like to add to that?

No, I would have the same sense about that, but I've never actually experienced it one way or the other to know. Definitely.

Yep. And Steve and I'd be happy to have a follow up conversation and dig deeper into that. There's a question here from Phil and David. This is a question for you. I'm a small scale blueberry grower in central Canada. Are there any examples of regeneratively grown originative methods helping to control SWD and Papilla japonica? I'm not familiar with that pest.

Actually, I just looked it up. It's a Japanese beetle.

Oh, that one I'm really familiar with.

So Drosophila. Yes. I have personal experience working with a number of growers who have successfully grown organic blueberries and not have issues with spotted Drosophila as long as they kept on top of the nutrition. So this, this grower was calling me about every other day is like, David, do you think I should go spray an insecticide? You think? I, you know, everybody else is spraying every three days. So he went out and based on the plant SAP analysis, he was out there doing a foliar every three, two, three days depending on exactly where he was in that fruit ripening stage. But what's happening in so many blueberries is that the, the nutrient uptake because of the extremely low pH and of oxidized soils and there's just a number of cultural practices that aren't conducive for blueberries to get very high on the plant health pyramid. So yes, very possible. It's just a matter of getting that plant health up. As far as Japanese beetles, those obviously are a, a much more, they have a much more complex digestive system, much harder. But John, I think you had experiences that in other plants. I don't know if it was in blueberries, specifically with the Japanese beetles.

Yeah, yeah. So before I speak about the Japanese beetles, just to expand on your point, David. The fruit are often the weakest point on the plant. They're the most susceptible to insect damage, most susceptible to disease, simply because they have the highest nutritional requirements. The greatest concentrations of manganese and copper and zinc and any of these other metals and minerals is going to be found in the bearing of the fruit. So if the plant has an imbalance or becomes deficient, any of those elements, it will show up in the fruit first. So this is why. Or in the blossom. So this is why the blossoms and the berries are often the most susceptible and the last place on a plant to become resistant. And this is why in the case that David was pointing out, and we have a number of growers now that we work with who've made, who have observed this transition, that during the transition period, if the plant is not healthy or if the root system isn't able to deliver enough nutrients to sustain the fruit, and we're depending on foliars, it's possible to do that. You can foliar feed every two or three or four days and sustain a crop at the point of resistance to the point where it's not susceptible to swd. And the day you stop or four days after you put on your last application, your susceptibility increases, your resistance levels drop way down. So we've actually seen this. Growers have gone 60, 70% of the way through the season, said, oh my, I don't have swd. Things are going well. They slow down applications and they run into trouble really quickly. So now on Japanese beetles. I would say Japanese beetles on fruit, on the berries themselves are a challenge for almost any crop, whether we're talking about grapes or blueberries or raspberries, because they are strong enough that they can feed on and damage the fruit. But it's quite. I'd say it's relatively easy or not more difficult than any other insect to produce resistance to Japanese beetles feeding on the leaves. So leaf damage should be pretty easy to drop right down. But fruit damage, off the top of my head, I can't think that. I have experience doing that that I can think of right now. Follow up question here from Ian. How do we increase the tightness of cabbage heads? David, I have some thoughts on that.

Go ahead, John. I've not worked a tremendous amount with cabbage, so I have some thoughts and ideas, but go ahead.

We actually used to grow cabbage at one point. I don't talk a lot about this, the story of our farm, because right at the point where we made a transition, we were growing lots of cucurbit crops and tomatoes, but prior to that, we also grew lots of cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower, particularly cabbage and cauliflower. So I have some personal experience with this. The tightness and the firmness. The relative weight of a cabbage head is going to be directly correlated to the degree of calcium and boron integrity. So it's really easy to overdo nitrogen and potassium and end up with a loosely formed head. Nitrogen in particular will do that. But having elevated levels of calcium and particularly boron produces a really solid, dense head that dense enough and solid enough and heavy enough that it will actually go over scale. What I mean by over scale is that the head will be higher weight than you would guess simply by the measurement. So a six inch head might weigh as much as five or six pounds instead of the expected four pounds. There's a follow up question here from Holly. In grass seed production, we have trouble getting calcium numbers to come up in our SAP analysis. While our soil test suggests we have plenty, we we frequently lime to maintain ph. It's been suggested that an improvement in soil biology could improve calcium. Update. Can you expand on this thought? Is it an abundance issue? Is it a lack of bacteria or fungi or specifically any other thoughts that stand out? What are your thoughts, David?

Yeah, I think those are all good places to start with the question and what I would look at first. First is is there a compaction layer? If you have just a shallow root zone and you're not your, your depth of roots is limiting your capacity for the plant to actually take up calcium because you have a limited root zone. Something to look at. And then the. Microbial side is very important to look at because calcium is going to be in the form of tricalcin phosphate. And so if you have very high levels of phosphorus, you could be tying up the calcium that you're putting out. And obviously looking at calcium synergists like boron and silica be important to consider as well. If you have high levels of potassium, definitely that could be causing an issue. So a lot of things to be looking at. And I would also add that grasses by nature are more likely to pick up phosphorus or will more readily pick up phosphorus than calcium. So considering, you know, what is your, are you seeing visual symptoms of calcium deficiency? What is the width of your grass blades? You know, maybe the SAP analysis and I don't, I don't know what your, what your data set is on this, but there is a possibility that your specific grass type or variety might need a little bit less calcium than what's actually a desired value on SAP analysis. That's something else that I would consider as a consultant.

Great, great response, David. A few thoughts that I would just emphasize and add on what you were describing when you say you frequently lime is that with calcium carbonate, high calcium limestone. Are there any levels of dolomite or magnesium there? David mentioned a very key point which is it is usual in our mainstream agronomy approach to try to figure out what's missing and add more. But what if in fact that's not the problem? What if the problem is the elements that are present in excess. So if you have soils that have elevated potassium levels or that have elevated magnesium levels, both of those will limit calcium flowing into the plant. If you have bond deficiencies, that will limit calcium supply. So those are some of the first places that I would look. And then as regarding to biology, think of your soil as a petri dish. How can you keep the soil cool, keep it covered, keep it cool and keep it moist so that you have good biology. And one of the things that we see frequently is if when soils have compromised biology, when they dry out or when they become hot from exposure to the sun, calcium supply just drops because we have limited biology functioning in those conditions. Follow up question here from Dave. Just a question about the Illinois soil nitrogen test. I've been reading about it needing calibration across soil types and for different crops. It sounds like a great soil test that is not being used in Australia. Have you been using it with any of your clients? Dave the brief answer is no, we have not. Not because I don't think it's a great test. I don't actually have enough experience with it to have a qualified opinion, although I respect Rick Mulvaney very highly. I think the reason we are not more widely using it is because we are more broadly using the Haney soil analysis, which contains a different form of organic nitrogen extraction that allows us to also evaluate the soil's capacity to deliver nitrogen. So don't have enough direct experience with that soil test to have an opinion. Anything you add to that, David?

No, not familiar with it.

David, I'd propose that you and I alternate reading questions rather than just one of us. So you pick one and then respond to it, and then I'll pick one and respond to it. Okay. Okay, so I'll take the next one. Otherwise sounds like I'm dominating the conversation and you're just listening in.

Perfectly fine. John.

I disagree. There's a question here. In my climate, when growing rye cover crop, it flowers past the optimal planting date for the following cash crop. I have to terminate it by disking. Is there a way through micronutrient management to speed up rye flowering so it can be terminated by rolling? I need an average about seven days. So in the absence of experience, I would hypothesize that putting on generous applications, generous levels of manganese and boron would help speed that up and maybe also phosphorus. So I would try a combination of those three elements, manganese, phosphorus and boron, to try to speed up the flowering and have it happen earlier. I think seven days rye, lots of Things happen fast with rye in the spring. Is seven days possible? I think so. I think five to seven days is a very reasonable stretch, very reasonable speed gain. David, do you have any. I see you nodding your head. Any other thoughts?

No, I was just agreeing with the answer. All right, I'm going to take a question here from David. Nuss in a ones over cucumber harvest. What is the ideal population and is there a key to getting a concentrated set? And David, I am not an expert in the ideal population, so I'd be happy to talk what has worked. But that's really going to be. You're going to come to that through observation. The key to getting concentrated set though is to be careful about the balance between vegetative and reproductive energy and make sure that your cucumbers have sufficient levels of phosphorus, sufficient levels of manganese and that grow them to where you have enough vegetative growth to support the crop that you want to produce and then hit it really hard, kind of like we did that cotton with the reproductive energy. And the easiest solution for that is accelerate. It's a blend of products that was put together specifically for that reason of encouraging flowers and supporting reproduction, pollination. So what I've seen in cucumbers where they're spread out or you have an extended set is simply because there's not enough phosphorus is often a big challenge with cucumbers or with cucurbits, I should say. And, and then the other thing is just the pollination because there's. There's so much vegetative growth, keeping that reproductive balance up and supporting that pollination is going to be key. So those are my thoughts. John, anything to add on that? You grew a lot of cucurbits in here?

Yeah, I've grown lots of cucurbits. The only other piece I would add to that is speed of early growth because David is absolutely right regarding the reproductive nutrients and developing concentrated set. But we know that we get a female blossom, or preferably depending on our genetics, multiple blossoms per node. So if you want concentrated set, that means you want to get concentrated set on six nodes at once. That means you need to have six nodes that are all close to the same growth stage, which means from the moment that plant is transplanted in the field or if it's direct seeded, you need rapid growth, very rapid growth in the first four weeks of that plant's life. So.

And do that. John, Sorry you broke up there for a second. I was just going to add that that rapid vegetative growth is best accomplished and your results are going to be best if that's coming from calcium or majority of that being calcium, you get that rapid vegetative growth with nitrate, nitrogen and potassium and chloride, then it's going to be very difficult to trigger that reproductive energy and get a lot of female blossoms and pollination.

Now, you're wrong about that, David. It's not very difficult. It's impossible.

Okay, I'll take that.

Yeah. All right. A question here on cranberries. I worked with Nathan this last year using AEA products and crop health labs. I grow the sour crop, cranberries. We had our challenges. Drought years, scale infestation, and trying to tune in SAP analysis for this unique crop. Cranberries being a perennial crop, how long does it take until I can see my plant defenses begin to take hold? I trade Nathan's advice on scale, but sadly had to revert to insecticides to stop the spread. So I don't have enough context. I don't know enough about what was happening, what was going on, to have an opinion specifically to your situation. But what I can say generally is that we used to believe that with the perennial crops, if we're working with tree fruit like plums or peaches or nuts or cherries or whatever the case might be, that it would take us two to three years before we were able to see a significant turnaround in tree health or in vine health. In the case of grapes, we now know that not to be true. It's possible to see immediate crop responses the first year for some challenges. But a lot depends on the rest of the story, the rest of the context. Like, what's the soil context like? And is the soil capable? When we start treating with biology and we start supporting the plant with nutrition, is the soil in a state where it is able to respond very quickly and support that plant transition? If it is, the transition can be very rapid and a lot of fun, and you can get very rapid responses. If it's not, it's going to take longer. And this is the reservation I would have about cranberries. Cranberries share lots of similarities with blueberries in that they desire a very reduced soil. And the way modern agronomy has interpreted that is to say that they need a very acidic soil and hammered it with lots of elemental sulfur and everything else to keep the soil ph suppressed, which does a number on soil biology. So in that type of environment, it may take longer before we get the soil biology to shift and plant health to shift. How rapidly can it shift? I can't predict that I don't know that without having a lot more information. But it could easily take a year to a couple of years. And with the right management see, here's the other piece. If we think about managing plant health not just from a perspective of putting on foliars and managing SAP analysis, but also how do we change our soils to be more reduced rather than focusing exclusively on acidic pHs, then we can facilitate that a lot more rapidly. And something that is particular is relevant for all growers but particularly relevant for you as a cranberry grower. I know it's heavy reading, but I would really suggest digging into and trying to understand the paper that Olivier Houston and a group of US colleagues published in this labs probably a year, year and a half ago at this point on soil eh and pH and these homeostatic processes as a driver of resistance. It's particularly relevant for cranberries and blueberries.

I think that's just. Just another book that comes to mind is happened to be reading at the one straw revolution where question was asked why do we grow rice in water? And he came up with a completely different system to grow rice that ended up working way better. So again just something to to read and challenge the status quo. Maybe there's a different and a better way to do it that would would improve all those points. Okay, we have a question from Sergio. Good afternoon, David. Sergio from Portugal here. Welcome to us. I make record of SAP analysis to my vineyard leaves and I consistently have 5 EC 10 to 12 probably actually not extremely high or I see that number quite regularly in grapes also have high sodium and high chloride. 600 parts per million of sodium and 2500 parts per million of chloride. How can I lower these levels? Well, probably you're getting it from the water. So if you have a different water source that would be step number one, stop putting it on if possible. If not putting on fumates to buffer it out with chlorides. Especially if you have high chlorides in water dropping that chloride. I'm trying to remember the numbers of the vineyard in California, but they increase the height of their drip and allow it allowed that water to fall further and bounce further. And I think that's carbon that you can let it drip through. There's a lot of that chloride will actually oxidize off. So those are things that I would work on long term. Once you've got sodium and chloride in that level, if you have access to spectrum DS from TINYO technology that would be something to. We've had success with that on sodium remediation hopefully that helps with that, but it's, it's a challenge if you have it in the water.

I'll just add to what you're saying David, that we found soil remediation of moving sodium and chloride out of the soil profile to be most effective when we use a synergistic stack. So lots of folks use gypsum, some folks use humic acid, others use water treatment products. You will get much better results if you use all of them in combination. Use humic substances and gypsum and microbial inoculants that can all help sequester sodium. When you do that in combination is when you're going to get the most the greatest effect of dropping sodium out of the soil profile. Question here from Timothy in situations where foliar applications of AEA products following standard crop programs for high value vegetable production do not result in an increase in plant breaks, what might cause this and what might be suggestions to improve? Mixed vegetable crops are consistently brixing in the 3 to 7 range with little to no bump in brix numbers after foliar application. Rainwater is the water source for foliar applications. Thank you very much. Alright Tim, this is an important question. It's a question that we get asked a lot. Always the detailed answer has nuance. But here's the kind of a brief direct answer. If there is not a strong brix response to a foliar application from AEA products, there is a reasonably high probability that it is probably associated with low levels of phosphorus and as an extension of that the soil's inability and the soil microbiomes inability to deliver enough phosphorus to the plant. This is often the case. It's not always. There can also be other things associated to the microbiome. Here's why the the advancing eco agriculture products do not contain water soluble or I could say water soluble forms of phosphorus because they have the effect of having of being detrimental to biology generally. So we rely on and our program and the way our program is designed relies on soil biology, mycorrhizal fungi and phosphatase enzyme producing bacteria, phosphorus solubilizing bacteria to solubilize phosphorus on the soil and supply it to the crop. When that soil microbiome's phosphorus delivery is not yet functional on par where it needs to be we can put on a foliar application and if the phosphorus flush we didn't get the breach response that we should be looking for and that we should be expecting. And this is why there's a lot more nuance here Also as there always seems to be. But this is one of the reasons why in the crop efficiency or the foliar spray and the inputs efficiency diagram that I put together, we see foliar applications produce much bigger crop responses on healthier soil, which is really interesting. You would expect the opposite to be the case, but the healthier the soil is, and the healthier the plant is, the greater a crop response of foliar application will produce and longer the effects will last. So the short version is that when soil biology doesn't deliver enough phosphorus rapidly enough, then the AEA foliars do not produce the expected brix reading. Jump. Now, I've been framing this conversation in groups in the context of phosphorus, for which phosphorus is generally. I shouldn't say generally, but it's often a limiting factor. But it is not necessarily just phosphorus. It can also be other things. And it depends on what the, the foliar was comprised of and what else was in the tank. It could be any of the other 22 elements that the plant doesn't have enough of that wasn't in the foliar and that the soil biology isn't delivering enough of fast enough. So that's a broad answer. I hope that was helpful, David.

Yeah, I think also it's important to. The question I would ask you, Timothy, is how long after was the brix taken? And remembering that brix is a measurement of the concentration of the salt solids. So sometimes we get a plant response and the brix doesn't necessarily actually go up. But there's other benefits that happen and it does not. There's not enough of it Right. To, to actually bring the brix up. So brix is a good measurement for sure. And yet there are other factors that need to be evaluated to consider if something is beneficial or not. It, it reminds me of a tomato grower I worked with in, in Canada. And at the end of the year we were doing our year end review and I was like, yeah, you know, I just, maybe we should have just put on more manganese. We never got our manganese level to really move. And he said, well, maybe it didn't move on the SAP, but with what we saw on our plants, we were the only people who were able to fulfill our contracts. Everybody else had phytosphora, so we never got it up to ideal, but we were the only growers in the region that were able to completely fill the contract.

And David, I'll just keep building on what you said. Yes. So other things can happen in the plant and it can go in other places. So to your point about. We didn't have manganese showing up in the leaf. It didn't go up on the SAP analysis, but we were able to fill our contract because we didn't have Phytophthora. Well, guess what a plant does when it has Phytophthora? The manganese moves to the root system to help protect the root system. So the plant may have had the manganese, but it just wasn't showing up in the SAP because it was moving it in other places. Yeah, good point.

It's a complex system. Who would ever.

So much fun?

Who would ever try to figure it out? All right, a question from Sebastian. Thank you. I am applying fresh manure, beef manure in March and April on perennial crops, walnuts and raspberries since decades. And I'm always low on potassium in my SAP analysis. Is composting an answer? Have you ever analyzed the manure? Maybe it's actually not that high in potassium. So, yes, compost biology may be an answer. Adding carbon may be an answer. But there are so many factors. Again, when you look at. Where's your beef manure coming from? If it's coming from a feedlot, you might have extreme high levels of sodium as well. So without seeing the SAP analysis, there's a whole lot of different possibilities. And if you have an excessive level of sodium or excessive level of magnesium, or if there's a lot of antibiotics and things that kill your biology. Yes, then composting is definitely going to be very helpful in that situation. If it's sodium, then composting won't help. It'll just. Unless, of course, you have something like the Spectrum ds, which does have a good effect on reducing the sodium levels that could potentially help you out with it. So, wow. We just asked more questions than answers, but those are the things that I would really look at of.

David, you missed the biggest piece of all. Yeah. What if you don't have enough manganese or.

True that.

Yes, it's entirely possible to have soils with abundant levels of potassium, but the soil has manganese in the wrong form. Thus, the plant is manganese deficient and it simply doesn't pick up potassium very well. So many cases, potassium. Perceived potassium deficiencies can be fixed by addressing manganese. And all of a sudden, potassium comes up all on its own, very mysteriously from out of nowhere.

Great. All right, you've got a fun one. No, that's good.

All right. Listening to a presentation with Bruce Tineo back in 2001, he spoke of adjusting cross Nutrition to promote more lower branch growth and avocado trees and promoting more fruit growth on plums and cherries from the main trunk other than the small branches. Do you know what nutritional inputs and timing he may have been referring to? Yes, I do. I'm probably one of only a handful of people left who knows what he was talking about. So I've not actually, I do not have personal experience with this. We've never had the need to try it because as we have started working with plant SAP analysis and balancing nutrient levels, these things have happened all on their own. We're starting getting spur growth from tree trunks and branches and limbs, and just the generation of new spurs where there hadn't been any previously. It's a common response. But we now have those tools available today that Bruce didn't have back when he was here. What he was doing at the time when he was using tissue analysis was that he would develop trees that had balanced levels and were maintaining balanced levels of calcium and potassium and nitrogen for several years in a row. And he would get rid of the multi year, not multi year, the biennial bearing problem. So once they had consistent yields and the canopy and everything was flowing smoothly, he needed a track record of a couple years before making this switch, which once he had that flowing well, he would elevate potassium 20% above the calcium levels in the tissue analysis, and then he would expect to see this flush of new spurs coming out. If you try that without first fixing the biennial bearing, without first having the rest of the nutrition in place and a line working really well, you will have a complete train wreck on your hands. And I have seen plenty of train wrecks from excess of potassium. And the train wreck is going to be fruit quality. You will have fruit that will be soft, that will ripen early, that will drop off the trees early. You'll have excess of abscessic acid. I mean, I can tell it give you a long list of things that are likely to go wrong if you have excess of potassium without first balancing calcium. So that's the short version of the story, in my opinion. I think we have been able to make further progress from what Bruce was doing with our use of SAP analysis. And we know that tissue analysis has lots of dysfunctions that caused us lots of grief and heartache. It's a very good question. Thank you, Ian.

All right, next question from how do I know where my trees rank on the plant health pyramid as they move up each level and when they have reached the pinnacle? How do I know when my crops and grazing Cattle reach optimal nutrition content. Well, you know where your trees rank on the plant health pyramid. Now, the pyramid has a fairly delineated levels and you might not see those levels exactly, but as you see the plant progressing and its resistance to insect and or, or diseases, you will be able to get an idea where you are on that plant health pyramid. And I will say that most of us are lower than we wish we were or that we thought we would be. It's getting those plants up to that level is not only challenging, but also very exciting. And when you have reached the pinnacle, I believe you'll know when you've reached the pinnacle of plant health, when your plants are performing at a level that you never imagined possible. Because as John says, we don't know what our plants are capable of doing. And so I encourage you to consider that the pinnacle is always up a little bit further. Although I will say the higher the levels of plant secondary metabolites and these very complex compounds, the more you will see shiny waxy coating on your leaves. You'll see much more resistant to drought and or freezing. Those are all indicators that you're higher up there on the plant health pyramid. Don, do you have any other thoughts on that?

It's really simple. How do I know they rank? What diseases do they have? What pests do they have? Those are going to be indicators of where they rank on the plant health pyramid. And when you don't have them anymore, you're at the top and life is awesome. David, we're going to have to crack the whip here. We've still got a number of questions and the clock is ticking along. The question here from Kevin, Is tissue analysis okay for ryegrass as opposed to SAP? It's just easier for us. Well, that depends. What results are you willing to be content with if you want to do consulting work with aea? The answer is no. We have no interest in working with tissue analysis because we want to get results. And so that's, that's kind of the short answer. We have our history with tissue analysis. Any agronomist, you ask any agronomist who is a really good agronomist, has been doing agronomy work for 20 plus years, or has, let's say 20 plus years of experience with tissue analysis and ask them the question if they can get the tissue analysis levels to correlate with the product applications and what they see out in the field. I have yet to find an agronomist who can tell me yes, it's never happened. So the short answer Is depends on what results you're willing to be satisfied with. But if you want to, you should not expect tissue analysis to be able to help you make significant progress on this pathway. It's just not going to happen.

Great question on nitrogen fixing and sharing. Puzzled on when nitrogen from legumes is available to surrounding plants. For example, can a tomato or a pepper plant exists at the same time within inches of clover and this clover need to be terminated first? Is plant competition a bigger hit than the nitrogen benefits? I can see nozzles on the clover. I don't see people growing corn field in a field of alfalfa.

Right.

So again, so much context, so many things to consider here. But when there is abundance, then these plants are going to be feeding each other. And I would suggest that. So when things are ideal, yes, that clover plant and that or alfalfa plant, that legume can grow right next to the tomato plant and it will be benefiting the tomato plant. Now if, if you have a stand up, two foot tall clover and you plant a tiny little tomato plant, that tomato plant probably is not going to thrive. If you plant corn in a quickly rapidly growing alfalfa field, that corn is not going to grow. But if you were able to knock that alfalfa back for long enough where the corn can become the dominant crop, I've actually seen that work quite well. So it's about which plant species is dominant. If your crop, the crop that you're growing is dominant, then yes, this intercropping thing works really, really well and has been done for thousands of years. It's about which crop is dominant and are you providing each of those crops with what they need to keep them in the right ratio and balance?

It's awesome. David, absolutely agree with that. And we should be seeing lots more cornfields growing on alfalfa because that is an incredible symbiotic. Symbiotic relationship when managed. Well, question from Isabelle. How to avoid scab on pair, Is that possible with nutrition? I don't have extensive experience on pears, but we certainly do on apples. And the short answer is yes, it's possible to reverse that with nutrition, particularly with cobalt. So I'm not going to because we're short on time. I'm not going to elaborate on that answer. But you provide trees with balanced nutrition generally and then specifically enhanced cobalt. I would say add, make sure you have generous levels of calcium as well. Calcium and cobalt and scab is going to to disappear. Been there, done that a dozen times.

Good roll. Right on with the next Question from John Warmerdam. John, welcome. Good to have you here. Don Huber has said that the mechanical application of water, rain or irrigation pushes oxygen into the soil. For crops using subsurface irrigation, is there a loss of this benefit and will the application of the water push the CO2 out and counterbalance this effect? I am thinking about a genapsis system. Mexico's floating gardens are often considered the most productive farm system, but they are irrigated only from below. I'm not familiar with that Mexico floating garden system.

Oh, come on, David. You've got to learn about the chinampas. They're incredible.

I will certainly. I will certainly do that. My response to that, and John, you're feel free to follow up with that is that while. Yes, I think when we have rainwater and or irrigation water, there may be some of that oxygen push. But really it's about the quality of the water. And when we think of water being H2O, we're putting oxygen right with the water. So whether you're getting it in subsurface irrigation or through the overhead irrigation, I don't. I guess I personally have not experienced where or thought about it in a way that we would be getting additional oxygen because of the force of gravity, if you will, with water falling on the surface of the soil. Rather it can create compaction and crusting, etc. But I do think the important thing is that whether we're irrigating subsurface or with rain or irrigation water is that our soils are able to percolate that water and exchange the atmospheric gas. That's really where the importance lies from, from what I. From my perspective. So, John, with your experience on the genampus, maybe you can share more.

I don't have experience on the chinampas, regrettably, but I really admire them a lot. But John, I think. I actually think that the mechanism that you identified in your question is exactly the same of the mechanism of water being applied from the surface. So it's my understanding that when water is applied from the surface, it's not necessarily pushing oxygen in so much as it is displacing the carbon dioxide, which then, as the water percolates through, draws the oxygen in. So in my understanding, I think the mechanism would be the same regardless of the form of water application. So hope that helps. Question from Stephen. You've mentioned in the past that gypsum applications can be done for soils that have a pH above 6.2 and limestone for soils with a pH below 6.2. You've also mentioned that gypsum has a peak release of calcium fortified for 90 days after application. Does the same time frame apply to limestone or is it different? Limestone is usually slightly slower. It's usually more in the 60 to 120 day time period. So it's slightly slower than gypsum is. However, it's important to point out that the time release curve is going to vary based on soil ph, based on soil moisture and particle size, particle fineness. So if you put on limestone, that is that 92, excuse me, the 60 to 120 day time curve for limestone, that information is published based on what is called ag grade lime, which has a spread of different particle sizes, but I think is usually about 80% smaller than 100 mesh, if I recall correctly. Well, if you're putting on product that has 95% smaller than 200 mesh, that's going to shorten up the time release curve dramatically. If you put it on soil with a ph of 5.5, that's also going to tighten it up a lot. So there's lots of variables that come into play.

And I think it's also important to remember the amount of calcium that's between becoming available is. Or that we're putting on in the yellow form. There's that release curve is not 100% of the calcium available.

Yep, yep, good point.

Cassandra, have either one of you noticed in perennial crops where hybrids have become more prevalent in the market, do hybrid varieties lack or have lost their plant defenses? I think when. When we hybridize, yes, we are hybridizing for specific qualities. And we have seen with the SAP analysis that some varieties, hybrids are going to have more of a problem picking up certain nutrients and therefore it seems like their defenses are less. But when we look at it from a nutrient uptake standpoint, it makes sense and they just need to be supported with whatever those nutrients are. Any other thoughts?

Thanks, David. Yeah, I agree with that. Hybridization is not inherently bad. It's just a question of what is it that we're selecting for. And the reality is that when the process of hybridization we could select for disease resistance, we could select for large and robust root systems, and we could select for really good nutrient absorption and large stem diameters and strong fruit set if those were the selection criteria. But frequently they're not. Generally they're not. Question here from Pablo. How do you improve harvest uniformity in organic tomatoes if temperature has exceeded 100 degrees during flowering, how can you improve flower set as well? So obviously there is a temperature threshold at which point when you Pass that threshold, you're going to have poor pollen germination and poor fruit set regardless. But it's possible to greatly increase the heat resistance or resilience, I guess you could say, of flowers for all crops. This is also really relevant for peppers as well, which have a tendency to drop flowers really easy in high temperatures with the trace minerals. Remember that early on in this, at the beginning of the hour, I spoke about how flowers and the reproductive parts of the plant, the fruit, often have the highest trace mineral requirements. And this is particularly true of zinc and manganese and copper and boron. And the presence of those metals or those trace minerals in high concentrations really affects pollination, fruit set and fruit not dropping off. So I would really Pablo, if you have access to the products, I would highly recommend using the AEA product accelerate during that period. It will really help pollination and fruit set.

Steve Henry how do you push vegetative growth with calcium? What products do you apply and how much? It all depends, right, because there's so many different things to consider. But the thing to think about with calcium is that because. Because it is key to initiate cell division. If you think about the small little plant, every time that a cell grows and then divides, calcium is needed to initiate that and also to build the cell walls. So if you don't have enough calcium, your cell numbers of cells and your cell wall strength and the speed at which those cells grow is affected by calcium. So applying calcium foliars like Holocau, putting calcium through the drip or irrigation, making sure you have calcium in your soil, varying that with any kind of of plant available calcium, that is not going to bring in chlorides and nitrates. Because unless if you're looking for vegetative growth, you could actually potentially use like a calcium chloride as an interchange. You don't want to get your chlorides too high, but we have already done that in situations where we needed a lot of calcium, is to do a foliar with holocaust and then a foliar with calcium chloride and switch those. But the important thing is that there's a consistent supply of calcium. So make sure you've got good biology. Make sure that depending what crop you're growing, you might want to do a full year more often than you would normally do to establish that consistent availability of calcium. Whoa, it's 2:00 already, John.

Yeah, we're up on the hour. There's been a few more questions that we haven't gotten to, for which we apologize. I'll be happy to follow up with those. I'll just respond quickly to two of the questions that are here. The one was on the apple scab on pears. I did look up what that organism is and yes, it's different from the Sorry I said apple scab on pears. It is different from the scab on apples. It's actually a fungal disease rather than a bacterial disease and don't have experience with it. Would have to look into it. But I'm very confident, completely confident that there is a nutritional solution for it and it's probably trace mineral based. Zinc, manganese, copper, boron, etc is the first foundation of resistance to the great majority of fungal diseases. And there's one last question at the bottom from Justinus. What is the shortest way to become a plant SAP analysis expert? It's really easy. There's an in depth course on kindharvest Ag that we go through and talk about all the different nutrient interactions that we pay attention to. So we're going to call that a wrap. We hope you found it useful and informative and we look forward to talking with you all again in the future. Have an awesome day and happy growing. Thanks everyone.