Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - July 10 , 2026

We have lots of questions that have come in in advance from our newsletter subscribers, so it's unlikely that I'll get to very many live ones, unfortunately. I suppose I need to do these more often. But also, please do subscribe if you want to submit questions for these. Please do subscribe to our newsletter and that'll give you the chance to submit questions in advance. And if you have questions that we don't get to, Field Lark is constantly improving, constantly getting better. Feel free to— and there is a free version of Field Ark— feel free to sign up for Field Ark and ask any questions that you have there because we continue to get feedback from growers about how impressed they are with the results that they're getting and the things that they're able to learn about their specific agronomic questions. So definitely recommend you connecting to that if you have questions that we're not able to get to here in this conversation. So with that, I'm going to jump to the questions that were submitted. First question here is from Alex. I will be establishing a small-scale commercial elderberry planting in the next year. Does AEA have any experience with nutrition management and/or sap testing for elderberry specifically? Yes, we do on a limited basis. Obviously there's not a lot of elderberry production out there, and I don't think we have large enough volume of samples yet that we've set desired values for where sap analysis targets should be, but we do have a good index of comparison crops that we can, that we can index against. And then a follow-up comment here: based on my research, the main pests for elderberry are Spotted Wing Drosophila and mites. If you don't have any specific experience with elderberry, what would be a good holistic management strategy for those pests based on other berry crops? So This is a great question, Alex, and we do actually have a lot of experience with various berry crops—blackberries and blueberries and raspberries and so forth—on SWD, Spotted Wing Drosophila resistance. We've been quite successful at managing nutrition to achieve resistance to that insect in the fruit, and even to my surprise and amazement, sometimes within the first year. So I would suggest definitely connect with our team at AEA, and they'll be able to put together an integrated approach for you on that. That includes microbiome management and nutrition management, and to the degree that it's relevant and appropriate, ecosystem management as well, depending on your context and what it is that you're doing. Next question here is from Larry. I manage a small pecan orchard in Missouri that has grafted improved trees about 25 years old. Most trees suffer from moderate to severe pecan scab and severe pecan weevil infestation. I'm into my third year of no synthetic inputs and my version of adaptive cattle grazing. I feel that I see marked improvement in general tree and ground cover health with the exception of scab and weevil. I applied Pinion and Photomag in June at recommended rates and am optimistic about future response. In your opinion, is my optimism warranted and do you have any other recommendations without more information? So on scab and weevil, yes, I do have additional recommendations. And this is, of course, kind of just— this is a general recommendation because we don't have any other agronomic information about what mineral profiles are or what else might be going on. My expectation on both the scab and the weevil is that you need to do more to address trace minerals.— there's almost a certainty that zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt, boron, etc., you address those and get those into balance, then I would suspect— expect to see a lot less pressure from scab and weevil. Those are, those are the strong indications there. If that's the challenge, if those are the pests you're still having challenges with, that's where I would start focusing. And of course, to fine-tune those, you need some tests and some data to know exactly where you're going. Next question here is from Dexter Rice. On the recent podcast episode with Jim Dunlop, in regards to sap analysis interpretation, Jim said his approach has shifted over time from focusing on levels of minerals to focusing on the top 3 items in the test, which indicate the metabolic status of the plant. I understand that total sugars are a good indication of how efficiently the plants are photosynthesizing. But could you please explain more from your perspective on what we may elucidate from this metabolic viewpoint and then how that information is actionable for our management decision-making? Ah, Dexter, this is— I'm trying to keep my answers concise here and you're pushing the boundaries of keeping answers concise. So the short version is that having sugars either too high or too low on a SAP analysis is detrimental. If they're too low, the plant is consuming them faster than it's generating them, perhaps because of high ammonium or nitrate levels. If they're too high, the plant is not metabolizing sugars correctly and converting them into more complex carbohydrates and proteins because of some other stress factor— mineral deficiencies, mineral excesses, drought stress, whatever. There's a variety of things that could be happening. So I suppose, and that's, then there's also the EC and the pH numbers and perhaps the pathway to understand those most thoroughly. This is, this is an answer that is, this essentially what you're asking about is trying to understand plant metabolism. So this, this is a big topic obviously. But I would suggest one of the most valuable entry points— it's not an easy entry point, but the most valuable entry point is researching and studying Olivier Houssan's work on plant pH and EH homeostasis. There is a 6-hour-long free course on Kind Harvest You can read his published literature. I interviewed him on the podcast. He is French. There's a French accent. There's things to work through, but the information— like, once you really understand what's happening with plant metabolism from a pH and EH and sugar metabolism perspective, hydrogen metabolism perspective, all those things integrate and tie in with each other— it gives you such a different perspective on how to approach the plant's internal landscape, its internal environment for optimal health and productivity. So that's the place that I would begin. It is a bit complex. And then also, if you remember something that Jim Dunlop pointed out is the use of AI. So you can certainly use FieldLark for this. You can also use other AI engines, but take Olivier Houssin's work, take his research papers, which those are already incorporated into FieldLark. So they already— Field Ark already has access. And just ask it specific questions about nutrient interactions and what's happening with metabolism. And I think you'll— those tools can be a very rapid learning tool. The follow-up question here from Blake Coleman. I'm an almond farmer here in Modesto, California. My main concerns are dealing with diseases such as blossom brown rot, jacket rot, and green fruit rot during bloom time. By not using the typical fungicides on the market. Also insect-wise, navel orangeworm, plant bug, and stink bug tend to be our toughest pests that don't seem to care about plant brix levels, plant health, as stated by you, others, and Dykstra. And if you have time, I was curious about your thoughts on how to tackle red leaf blotch and Alternaria in orchards. Now Blake, you ask great questions. Um, you're also getting me to struggle with concise answers here. So the short answer, we did see, to your, to your first concern dealing with these various diseases during bloom time, we did have trials run, running on using Pinion this spring on, I think, 3 different substantial field-scale trials that I'm aware of. Those went quite well. We got some very strong responses from those. And I do expect that pinion is going to be one of the known solutions for those challenges during, during almond bloom going forward. But also from kind of an underlying metabolic perspective, those blossom diseases or early reproductive phase diseases show up as a reflection again of a lack of trace minerals. So the zinc, manganese, copper, boron axis becomes very important there because those reproductive parts of the plant have substantially higher requirements for those trace minerals than the leaves do or other parts of the plant. Navel orange worm, plant bug, stink bug. You know, it's interesting that you associate me with, uh, with BRICS levels, because I certainly have seen some, uh, a pattern of correlation with, with BRICS levels, but I also have major reservations about using BRICS levels as a, as a quality indicator. I, I wrote a couple of blog posts on my blog, which you can find at johnkempf.com, um, that's now 3 or 4— well, it's longer than that, half a dozen or more years ago— on the challenges with using BRICS readings. And the challenge is that they can be very confounding. They can be artificially inflated or deflated based on a whole variety of different factors that make their, uh, reliability— you, you have to be a high-volume tester, and you have to have a lot of consistency, and you have to have a perspective on what's happening and what's going on that influences BRICS readings. Before you can really use them as an indicator of what is happening. So the, the, the general hypothesis of BRICS as an indicator of insect resistance is somewhat accurate, but with a long list of caveats. And I pointed out many of those caveats in those blog posts, but I think people are generally not aware that brix reading or using brix readings is a bit of a minefield from my perspective. So to your answer of how to solve those problems specifically, navel orange worm is, is not that difficult once you start addressing some nutritional imbalances and particularly boron and the stink bug as well. I'd be interested in going into a bit more detail knowing exactly what your sap analysis and soil profile looks like. But I would— my first approach would be to elevate calcium and boron levels, particularly boron, to the degree that calcium can support it. And I would expect to see those be rapidly depleted and also would expect your brix levels to change, perhaps to drop, as you increase boron, simply because boron facilitates sugar transportation and moves it around a lot better. It's a question here from Darryl Kern. During the transition of a coastal Bermuda hay meadow from synthetic nitrogen to biologically supplied nitrogen, can the foliar application be made during a dry spell, or should they be delayed until rain is anticipated? What is the maximum concentration of nitrogen that should be applied? Uh, Darryl, this is, this is a question that's tough to answer without a bit more detail. And the detail that I need in particular is what exactly are you applying? So you're saying biologically supplied nitrogen, but then you're talking about maximum concentration nitrogen that could be applied. So I'm going to assume, because this is something, topic I've been speaking quite a bit about, I'm going to assume you're asking about foliar applications of urea or possibly other forms of nitrogen. There's a podcast episode that's going to air next week where I had an awesome conversation with Patrick Fabian from Fabian Seed Farms, which you can look up on social media, where they have now— what is it, better part of a decade, over a decade worth of experience with melting urea and putting on foliar applications of solubilized urea. And they are putting on 5 gallons per acre of an 18-0-0 liquid urea straight with no water to dilute it in drone applications on small grain crops and corn crops. Not, not on their own farm, but they're working with other farmers who are doing this. So, um, urea. Plants are much more, much less sensitive to urea than they are to some other forms of nitrogen like Liquid 28 or 32 as a foliar. And, um, so that, that is, that's kind of the maximum concentration. To answer your question specifically, what's the maximum concentration of nitrogen that could be applied? There's, there's both a concentration component and a total quality, uh, total quantity component. So If you took that 18-0-0 instead of putting it on with a drone at 5 gallons per acre and you put it on at 20 gallons per acre, I think in most crops you would have a burn problem because urea is a very high electrolyte content, very high EC solution. So that's— there's both of those considerations that you have to keep in mind. And actually, I'll just touch on that point, expand on it a bit further. The rule of thumb, that Patrick Fabian has been using and now has lots of experience with is maxing out at 10 pounds per acre of actual nitrogen per application. I suspect on a number of crops, particularly the grasses, if you put in sugars and carbohydrates and carbon with it, more complex carbons, and you used a larger water volume, you could perhaps do more than that and get away with it. But that is the comfort threshold that they have realized. And the other thing to consider is that if you put on 10 pounds of urea as a foliar, that's of nitrogen as urea as a foliar, that's the equivalent of 40 pounds of nitrogen applied to the soil in terms of plant response. So that's a substantial nitrogen application. Question here from John Warmerdam. Hi, John. In your recent podcast with Jim Dunlop, He shared he felt that calcium mobilization was improved by the addition of sugars to his foliar sprays. My understanding is that calcium is best picked up by growing root tips, and when new root growth wanes as the season progresses on tree crops, calcium uptake is much more difficult. Aside from his suggestion, which perhaps may help fuel new root growth, what would you recommend to help maximize calcium uptake later in the season? There's a few aspects here, John, which I'm guessing you're probably familiar with, but once we started shading the soil and keeping soil covered and not having it exposed to the sun, we did this experiment with Greg Penneroyl on wine grapes and calcium absorption almost tripled through the course of the season simply by keeping the soil shaded and keeping it out of the sun because that facilitated a better microbial population. I don't think it necessarily facilitated— there was an increased water application, so maybe that facilitated new root growth as well. That could have been a contributing factor. But just simply keeping the soil cool had a substantial response on calcium uptake. Um, the other aspect is boron applications, and I find, John Kempf, you're dealing with stone fruit And I'm uncertain how these would respond compared to some other plants, but because of their sorbitol concentrations. But I find that plants have a very different response, or that calcium absorption has a very different response from boron that is applied as a foliar versus boron that is applied to the soil. Sometimes when we put boron applica— or let me just cut to the bottom line. Our— my general perception is that boron applied as a foliar It produces greater calcium absorption from the soil than boron applied to the soil. It seems to trigger this attractiveness within the plant where there is more calcium absorption. Um, so those are, those are partial questions, but John, I'd welcome a follow-up conversation with you to dig into this. It's, it's a great question, great conversation. There's a question here from Donovan Kelly. Um, Can John clarify what he and Jim Dunlop— boy, Jim Dunlop has become a very popular person very quickly. It's awesome, Jim, great work. Can John clarify what he and Jim talked about in the podcast episode about blending products together? What products was biology added, sugars and nutrients together? Is it beneficial to blend different nutrients together? So the, the blends that are being put together, and you're asking about bubbling, they were not particularly bubbled. They were just blended together and then left in a tank for a period of time before application. The products are essentially AEA products, and so they're, they're mostly nutritional products. There are carbohydrates in there. We have, we have a whole bunch of stuff in there that doesn't show up on the label for a whole wide variety of regulatory reasons. And intellectual property reasons. But there's, there's humic substances of various types, there's seaweeds of various types, and there are sugars of various types. So when you, when you put together, you can, you can just imagine putting together a, a combination of, of Rebound trace minerals and MacroPak and MicroPak in these various combinations. Uh, sugar— there are, yeah, I did say there are different types of sugars being added. The interesting part about the AEA products is I still remember this, this conversation that I had at a lunch table with Don Smith down in California half a dozen years ago. I sat down across the table from Don, and Don leaned forward and said, John, you know, there's something unique about your products. They're alive. He was looking at our products under the microscope and culturing different organisms in in the laboratory. And our products are very specifically designed to not have a detrimental effect to biology, not to suppress biology. And so there are, there are not any specifically added microbes. There's no specific added inoculants in any of our liquid formulations. Now, obviously, we do have our dry powder inoculants that we use as well, but none of our— at present, we don't have any liquid products that are microbial inoculants. But they don't suppress biology. So there is some just inherent biology in them that is— arrives as a part of the manufacturing process of some of the ingredients. And so what is happening in this blend tank is not so much a propagation of biology, I don't believe, because these are still very concentrated, very high EC solutions with very high mineral concentrations. So it's not biological propagation so much as I think it is a blending and a synergistic, um, effect that is being created by these, by these minerals being in combination. But the reality is we don't fully know what is happening. We've just come to the realization that having products that are alive and giving them time to blend together produces a much greater response than just tank mixing them and putting them on. Question here from Catherine: we have a biodiverse, primarily apple orchard with an on-site cidery that we planted 2015 through 2018. No synthetic inputs, not even fertilizer. Trying to do the things even as we aren't exactly sure what we're doing. Like many orchards, we struggle with apple borer I'm wondering what insights you might have. We tend to use manual methods, but we like to encourage biology. All right, so if the primary challenge is with the apple borer, then this is, this is kind of, it's a relatively easy insect from a changing the plant's metabolism perspective, but it's more challenging because of the location on the tree that it is in. So my recommendations would be for a foliar application of PhotoMag and Rejuvenate and boron, Rebound Boron. And I actually have a clip that's going to post here in the next day or so, where I talk about some of the things that I've been playing around with here at home on apple seedlings, actually, um, to solve these types of insect challenges. And that, that, that combination of Photomag, uh, which is your proteoly— uh, protein synthesis nutrients, um, and Rejuvenate, which is a source of carbohydrates, plus— and I obviously I'm introducing these products very simplistically. And that's one of the things I was realizing in my previous conversation or previous answer to the previous comment is we talk about these products very simplistically as though, oh yeah, Rejuvenate is carbohydrates. Well, that's a bit like saying, that's a bit, I don't know. I don't even have a good analogy off the top of my head, but it's a good, it's a bit like saying that, oh yeah, forests are trees. Forests are much more than trees. They're shrubs and vines and understory plants and birds and animals and on and on the list goes. And that's— so a lot of our products are actually very sophisticated and very complex. It just doesn't show up on the label because of a whole variety of regulatory and IP reasons. Um, so anyway, I got sidetracked there from the answer to your question. So Photomag, Rejuvenate, Rebound Boron, that combination Foliar application will solve many, many insect pest challenges. But you need— if you do only one or a couple of those, may or may not be effective. And also, if you try to replicate those just by replicating the mineral content of what shows up on the label, you should expect your mileage to vary quite substantially because there's a lot more in there than just the mineral content. A question from Sam. My farm in east central Missouri is subjected to yearly early season drift from highly volatile 2,4-D and dicamba from nearby corn and soybean operations. My blocks of wine grapes are particularly affected in a negative, in a negative way, displaying distorted growth expression, sometimes poor fruit set. What would you recommend to potentially counteract this and improve vine health in light of this unfortunate situation? Oh, Sam, I sympathize. It's a difficult situation that you find yourself in, and I know that, um, unfortunately you don't get a lot of sympathy from other farmers who are your neighbors and who are contributing to the problem, which is unfortunate. At least that's true in many parts of the country. I shouldn't say that's true for you specifically. But, um, 2,4-D is a challenge because of its hormonal effect. Dicamba is easier, and the many of the herbicides that function as chelation agents are easier. 2,4-D functions as a synthetic hormone, which is what makes it a little bit more challenging. So, um, We need to treat herbicide drift and herbicide damage similar to, and recovery from that damage, similar to hail recovery damage in the sense that timing is critical. If you can build up nutrient levels in advance, that's valuable, but putting on a foliar application of nutrients immediately after exposure, the sooner the better, can can help things turn around very quickly, particularly for the chelation agents, but also to some degree for the 2,4-D. So over the years, growers have played around and tried many different things with a surprising amount of success. We've seen lots of success from C-Stem applications. We've seen lots of success from a combination of macro pack and micro pack. And we've seen a lot of success from the application of Holocal and Rebound minerals, which MacroPak and MicroPak essentially replicates. So the principle, the foundational principle here is that in 2,4-D, this is less true for 2,4-D, I'm going to focus on the herbicides that function as chelators. They land on the leaf, they penetrate the leaf, they begin producing metabolic reactions. You see some visual expression of that usually within a day or two. And at that point, it's my understanding that— or let's just say that there is— that's just the beginning stages of the metabolic impact. And when you look at— I happen to have the numbers for glyphosate most highly in my head. I haven't dug deeply into the, uh, the chelation constants for a lot of the other herbicides. So I'm going to use glyphosate as an example just because it's the one that I'm most familiar with. But if you look at the chelation constants, the chelation strength for which minerals glyphosate is most strongly attracted to, uh, the top of the list is calcium, second on the list is magnesium, third on the list is cobalt, and fourth on the list is manganese. So what you want to think about is how can you give the plant— the application happens or the drift happens— how can you give the plant high levels of relatively free calcium, magnesium, cobalt, manganese, that it can— so that these, these, these molecules, these herbicide molecules can attach to those minerals. Because once they're attached, once they formed a chelation bond, they're functionally inactivated and they no longer have a detrimental impact on the plant. So timing of application is very important, and that array of trace minerals and nutrients, calcium and magnesium, is very important for a lot of the various herbicides. And then in the case of the hormonal herbicides like 2,4-D in particular, and all those others that are in that similar category, an application of C-Stem becomes very valuable. So it's kind of a longer answer to how I would approach trying to solve that. And unfortunately, yeah, I can't speak with confidence to say that, oh, you do XYZ, it will solve your problem, because obviously concentration and drift exposure can vary quite substantially. And depending on the plant stage of where they're at, their response can also vary substantially. It's a question from John Brown. I see some AEA products are made from micronized minerals such as rock phosphate in Accelerate or lime in Holocal. Can plants uptake these micronized minerals as foliar sprays? I have foliar sprayed similar products and subsequent sap and tissue tests showed no measurable difference from the control. Bingo! Great, great checkpoint, John. Um, glad you're using SAP Analysis to verify. That's, you know, one of the questions that I've asked our team is when— and one of the things I've talked about is when is 5% greater than 15%? When is 5 greater than 15? Or when is 5 greater than 10? We so easily get caught in the trap of looking at and comparing mineral products based on their nutrient concentrations, and that is a trap. Our 5% manganese will outperform a 15% manganese over and over and over again on sap analysis results and on tissue test results. But when you look at the price per gallon or the price per pound of active ingredient, it looks like the 15% is a lot less expensive. Except when you look at the price that you're paying for performance, it immediately becomes very expensive. So that you're checking because that's the important part. So to the foundation of your question, can plants uptake these micronized minerals as foliar spray? To a limited degree. It's, uh, it's quite limited in my understanding. People want to talk about stomatal absorption of these micron-sized particles. I think that's largely a fairy tale. Um, what I believe to be happening, and we have the SAP analysis results to show that Accelerate and HoloCal do deliver a strong calcium response, um, what I believe to be happening is that a lot of those minerals are actually metabolized on the leaf surface by biology because often we are adding or we are fully feeding them with microbial inoculants of various types. And again, HoloCal, like all of our products, is designed to support and enhance biology instead of to suppress it and to be alive. So I'm of the persuasion that a lot of what is happening at these micronized minerals are actually being metabolized by microbes on the leaf surface and then being contributed to the plant. Now, the question mark that I have And I don't have an answer for this, is how can that explain the speed of the results that we see? Because many times we'll put on, let's say, a Holocal application. It's been years since we looked at this, but when we were first formulating this, we can put on a Holocal application and as a foliar and see a crop response and sap analysis in a matter of some of the results that we were seeing were as little as 6 hours. Can biology exchange that that rapidly? Perhaps. There's certainly something happening, whatever the mechanisms are. And that's, that's my one hypothesis, but I've not— it's not been a priority to test that hypothesis because just from a very practical experiential perspective, we are getting the results, and that's the piece that counts. There's a question here from JP. Uh, I have a mixed fruit orchard in Southeast Florida that is becoming increasingly infested with Sri Lankan weevils. They're now feeding mainly on mango leaves, but also on avocados, jujube, and other species. My current plan is spinosad for adults on the canopy and nematodes for larvae in the ground. If this were your orchard, Would you focus on insect suppression or on changing the plant and soil ecology that made the infestation possible? Yes, both. Do I have to choose? Choose both. If you have significant pest pressure, then obviously you have to take care of it in the short term, and then also change the plant's internal terrain. So if you have— If you have larvae in the soil and you have adults on the leaves, let's— I made the recommendation earlier for Photomag and Rejuvenate and Rebound Boron. I would do the exact same thing here. Question from Rico: You often talk about getting disproportionate responses in growth and yield with a well-designed foliar feed, which I have seen firsthand as well. Can you speak to how to generate a similar effect while when talking about soils, either in furrow when seeding broadacre crops or in an orchard setting? After you have balanced your soil nutrition, what factors really gets the maximum growth/immune response through the rhizosphere? Ah, Rico, that's an awesome question. You're making me think a lot with this. Um, How do you generate a similar disproportionate response in the soil? Conceptually, I would say that the answer is treating plant roots and microbes in the soil, the rhizosphere, the same as we do plant leaves. If we were able to, if we had the capacity and there are operations that do. We have the capacity to fertigate with the same or greater frequency as we did our foliar applications, and we, we essentially thought of a fertigation as foliar feeding our roots and stimulating our biology. That is where you get the, the disproportionate responses. It is a combination of stimulating root growth, continued root growth, and continued biological development all season long to deliver continued nutrition. Um, that's kind of the, the macro-conceptual approach or perspective that I would take. Obviously, there's underneath that large umbrella, there's lots of individual things that you can do— microbial inoculant seed treatments, um, putting on specific nutrition in close proximity to the seed to stimulate biology. Um, all of those pieces contribute, but that's, that's the framework within which I would approach, and then within I would within which I would suggest that we see those types of disproportionate responses. Question from Steve: If we are applying 20 to 30 pounds of foliar melted urea before R1 to corn on sandy soils with a low potassium, is there harm to applying some foliar potassium acetate at the same time, or is it recommended in a separate pass? Um, Steve, hesitant to answer that question right off the top of my head. It depends on your water quality. Depends on your water volume, your application volume. My concern would be with electrical conductivity of your total solution and the total pounds of electrolytes that you're applying to the plant because potassium acetate also has a very high EC. So it's going to be context dependent. I don't have enough information to be able to answer your question well, but I would suggest Um, I was just testing it, and you're going to— if you, if you produce a burn with that combination, you're going to see it in a day or two. So test it with an application on a small strip before you do a larger application. I think it's possible, particularly if you do more water volume. Um, and if I'm understanding correctly, you're doing 20 to 30 pounds of Foliar Melted Urea, not— you're also, yeah, you're pushing the upper boundaries of of urea applications as well. So yeah, you're gonna have to test it. I don't know the answer to your question. Question from Andrew: In a fully pastured dairy, how can we manage a mixed species sward of predominantly ryegrass and clover with plantain, Timothy, and cocksfoot orchard grasses to increase lipid levels to help reduce enteric methane emissions, as well as fully deliver the cow's nutritional needs? Well, there's a number of things we could talk about here. I seem to recall a conversation— a research paper, rather— somewhere about the use of feeding seaweed and specific forms of kelp to reduce methane emissions. Um, I'm going to, I'm going to leave the methane emissions alone for just a moment. I'm going to focus on the first part of your question, which is how do we increase lipid levels? How do we manage a mixed species sward to increase lipid levels? Now, there is a mineral nutrition component, there is a microbiome component, and there is a, a grazing management component that, of course, all these three things are inter twined with each other. So on the mineral side, um, you need, in order to achieve high lipid levels, as a foundation— there's obviously other nutrients, zinc is important, copper is important, these other elements are very important for livestock health— but the specific nutrients that are essential to have adequate or generous levels of in order to achieve high lipid levels is calcium, sulfur, boron. Sulfur in particular. If you're in a maritime environment with a lot of rainfall, you need— our rule of thumb is 10 pounds of sulfur per acre, or maybe I can say this more simply, even 1 pound of sulfur per acre per inch of annual rainfall. So if you're in a 40-inch rain— annual rainfall environment, that's 40 pounds of sulfur application per year. That is just a replacement for what is going to be leached out in most environments. Sulfur is foundational for building lipids. Without that, it's not going to happen. Um, the calcium and boron component as well. Boron, a minimum of 3 parts per million in the soil is what it's going to take. Um, the microbiome component— you're managing a mixed species sward, should have generous biology. I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail there. But then you do have the inclusion of plantain and I see plantain actually is the only forb that you have listed. You need more forbs because forbs will build more lipids in their root system. They will transfer more lipids to the soil. They'll transfer more lipids indirectly to the grasses that are growing around them. So you need a higher proportion of forbs, and one of the ways to achieve that— I, I wrote about this in a couple of articles, I'm not sure they were published in Stockman Grass Farmer, I think they're floating around in different places— but, um, one of the things that you need is to stimulate more forb development and to stimulate the microbiome that facilitates lipids is occasionally— not suggesting this is a regular frequent occurrence, but once every couple of years, 5 years, 3 years, whatever is appropriate in your context. Occasionally you need to graze the grass to the dirt. You need to stress the grasses, and this can— maybe that means set stock grazing for a week or 2 weeks. You need to deplete the sugar reserves of the grasses enough to stimulate forb growth. In other words, to stimulate a weedy field. The next week, or the next, excuse me, the next, the following year, you'll have a lot more forbs. It will look a lot weedier. It appears as if though your pounds of biomass production per acre is less, but in many cases, the actual meat or milk production per acre is the same because the forbs have a higher mineral content, a higher energy density, and they convert very, very efficiently. And usually 2nd or 3rd year post that hard grazing, you get substantially improved yields because of the impact that those forbs have on the soil microbiome and on the lipid content of the rest of the sward. So there's a lot of interactions here that I'm kind of glossing over and giving you just a very high-level perspective, but those are the approaches that I would take. It's a question from Greg. How do we get significant drought stress resistance into the trees most efficiently? Uh, Greg, there's some interesting things that we're researching, and we actually have a product in development that can generate a substantial degree of stress resistance that I hope to have on the market in the coming 6 to 12 months. But the one thing that you can do— you asked the question most efficiently. I've studied this more on annual crops than I have on perennials. And I don't know exactly how it transfers. Is it also annual and seasonal, or is it— to some degree, it would be multi-seasonal. But on annual crops, the way we produce drought stress resistance later in life is we create drought stress early in life. So there are, for many vegetable crops or grain crops even, if they have substantial drought stress at early stages, it immunizes them against drought stress later in life. And some of that would be true for trees as well. If you can, In an ideal world, if you could induce significant drought stress when they are a seedling, that's going to activate a whole bunch of different genetic code and gene SNPs that will confer drought stress later on in life. But I'm of the persuasion that you can even do that within a specific growing season. So that's one component. And then, The other component, and I, I talk about this a little bit, and I think the one webinar is titled How Nitrogen Creates a Yield Drag or something to that effect. But one of the things that we've become aware of is as you change your nitrogen management and you change and you manage photosynthesis, you manage for photosynthesis. Your water— the plant's water requirements drop dramatically because it doesn't need to use water to convert nitrates, and it doesn't need to use water to create sugars to convert nitrates. And, um, the, the rule of thumb that I have— this is just, this is experiential observation on a broad scale. I don't have hard numbers to quantify this. It's just, yeah, it's a lot of experience and observation. But it seems when we start managing nitrogen differently and we optimize for photosynthesis, the combination of those two things results in a reduced water need for many crops in the neighborhood of 30 to 50%. It's a big number. It's a really big number. When you think about what that means, that means you've just created a lot of additional drought stress resilience. Because the water demand isn't nearly as significant because of imbalanced nutrition. The question here from Thomas Picard of the Star Trek Enterprise— no, doesn't say that last part, I just had to include it. Um, Phil's probably laughing at me in the background. In recent content, you have been insisting on preventing heat stress essentially through foliars and notably using sugars, which seems to be the first limiting factor. Could you expand a bit on the nature of that sugar to be compatible with the plant physiology, and why not molasses as suggested in the last podcast with Jim Dunlop, and then its usual dilution? So we've experimented with a lot of, of various sugars, and the AEA team has, in particular Jim and Kevin on the team that they work with there in the PNW. But we've also— I mean, years ago, the reality is This is kind of in some ways coming full circle because, um, the original early formulations of Photomag included dextrose and it got pulled out, uh, for reasons of organic certification compliance. So there are a variety of different sugars which are useful. They have different metabolic impacts on the plant. Molasses can be very useful and valuable on the tree crops and the berries that Jim was referring to and that he works a lot with. And he also works a lot of other crops as well, but the crops that we were discussing right in that conversation, molasses is often less preferable, not because of a lack of effectiveness or anything like that, but because of its, um, capacity to stain fruit. So you get these dark stains on cherries or blueberries or something like that, you have a problem. So molasses is often not included in those applications for that reason. Question here from Dan: In my experience, silicon calcium and boron foliar has finally helped to get a handle on stone fruit brown rot without toxic fungicides after 50 years of effort. How do I maximize boron nutrition and minimize toxicity in soil and foliar applications to woody perennial plantings for insect resistance? It's very easy. You partner it with calcium. Partner a high dose of boron with a high dose of calcium in the same spray tank, and you will be able to put on substantially higher doses of boron with no toxicity. I did this application just yesterday where I put on a foliar application of a high dose of calcium and boron on some tree seedlings, uh, fruit tree seedlings that I had planted that still had high levels of nitrogen residual from their year in the nursery. And we got intense Japanese beetle pressure, hundreds of Japanese beetles. Put on that foliar application combination of— I have a clip that's going up where I talk about it, but combination application of Holocal and Rebound Boron and Photomag. And literally in 24 hours, I went from hundreds of flea beetles to, in my crop scouting this morning, finding 3. That was a lot of fun. How do we use endophytic, epiphytic, and rhizosphere biology to drive epigenetic changes and to induce resistance immunity to a fungal disease such as chestnut blight without traditional genus crossbreeding? Dan, you like asking complicated questions. Well, look at James White's work. And what— I'm not sure to what degree they have talked about this publicly, James and his colleagues have talked about this publicly. I know I had this in personal conversation with them, or perhaps it was even at an event where they were discussing some of their work, but they have succeeded in transferring microbes and endophytes from old corn cultivars to modern corn cultivars that had completely lost those endophytes because of cell culture propagation and so forth. And so they succeeded in transferring that microbiome from A to B. And another way of transferring a microbiome of all these various organisms is, uh, growing in really healthy soil. So if you have soil that contains these microbial populations and you propagate your parent seed stock in that environment, then that will propagate to the next generation. There's a number of different mechanisms, and without question, I'm, I'm working on a project right now outlining a book to write about our experiences and observations on, on managing nutrition for insect resistance, because I'm recognizing there is this large gap between what we experience on some farms and what is generally experienced by growers who try to replicate our results on their own with their own materials. And the realization that when you look at the historical genetics work that was done, there's this, I'm reading this fascinating book, I forget the title right now, but it's describing all of the research work that was done during the '20s and '30s and '40s 40s, that's the 1920s and '30s and '40s, on producing insect-resistant and pest-resistant crops. And then it goes into the metabolic— the changes in metabolic profiles. And it just reinforced my perspective that many of the— when we talk about breeding work and improving genetics for disease resistance or improving genetics for insect resistance, We now have all these genetic markers and gene SNPs turning genes on, turning genes off, and so forth. I'm not suggesting that that isn't accurate, but I am suggesting— I am of the opinion that those genetic pathways being activated or deactivated translates to changes in nutritional absorption and nutrient absorption. And that results in metabolic changes which translate to disease resistance and insect resistance. I mean, when we have— we know, for example, that all the apple scab varieties have substantially higher levels. They're just genetically very good at absorbing cobalt. They have substantially higher levels of cobalt than the apple scab susceptible varieties. And we've been able to draw other correlations where varieties that are very resistant or very susceptible to particular disease have a very different nutritional profile. So yes, there are genetic differences, but those genetic differences translate to nutrient absorption differences. That same concept also applies to the microbiome. We know that the microbiome obviously has even greater genetic diversity, and might— the microbiome activates and deactivates different genetic sequences within the, within the plant's DNA., and it also influences mineral absorption. So those, those three, we need to stop thinking about plant genetics as the plant genome in isolation. Instead, we have to also consider the, the microbiome, the microbial microbiome that is associated with the plant, uh, genetic material and that activates it or deactivates it, and the mineral component, the mineral nutrition status that change the metabolic profile of plant. Once we start integrating those things, we will develop a much more comprehensive and complete picture of what truly drives resistance or susceptibility, and that will accelerate our capacity to develop truly disease-resistant and insect-resistant crops. Much more rapidly than CRISPR engineering or genetic modification. So a question here from Jana: Please explain more precisely how sodium and chloride accumulation distorts breaks, and if there are, there are high levels of sodium and chloride in plants in leaf sap, is there something which can be done to reduce their levels? It's a good question, Jana. I'll answer the second part of your question first, and that is prevention is an order of magnitude more easier than cure. Once sodium and chloride levels are elevated in plant sap, then you need to compensate for that with additional nitrogen, with higher elevated nitrogen levels, with elevated phosphorus levels. So there are ways of compensating for it, but it becomes a compensation and a nutrient balance question at that point. Because there's relatively— well, I was about to say there's relatively little that can be done about it, but there are scenarios. This, this has— this does not have 100% success rate because it is microbial in nature, and there's variables in plant mineral status and metabolic profiles that we don't fully understand what all the variables are at this point. But I do recall a number of instances where we have foliar applied Spectrum PSB— sorry, not Spectrum PSB, I forget what the acronym is, but the version of Spectrum that is known for sodium digestion— and that has helped to really drop sodium levels. The other thing that can be done, particularly if sodium and chloride are coming in the irrigation system, is with water. Is putting on or including in the irrigation system humicarb. And those humic substances do quite a good job of binding chloride in particular, reducing chloride absorption. So now back to your first question, how do sodium and chloride accumulation distort BRICS? There's a number of different, both direct and indirect mechanisms. One is that BRICS is not, a reflection of just sugar, is a reflection of total dissolved solids. And the presence of sodium and chloride as electrolytes distorts the plants, um, distorts the plant's metabolism. And you have, in, in many situations, you have less sugar accumulation, but you still have the presence of sodium and chloride. So for anyone who Who believes that Brix is a measure of sugar alone, it's very simple. Just take, uh, develop a solution of calcium chloride and measure the Brix reading. It's not zero. Other elements and their compounds refract light as well, in addition to just sugars, and have a, have a refraction index. I feel like I've not fully answered your question on, uh how they— how their accumulation distorts brix readings, but it will have a substantial negative effect on, on sugar accumulation within the plant. Question here from Dimitrios: if I were going to the field, what instruments would you have with you? A refractometer, pH-EC meter, pH-EH meter, or is there a better answer? Uh, There was a day when I had— when I would go into the field with a small toolbox carrying a sap squeezing device, a garlic press, or even a hydraulic press, and a refractometer and a pH meter and an EC meter, all the Horiba, uh, Cardi Twin meters. And I don't do that anymore because the, the refractometer— I spoke earlier in this conversation about my challenges with the refractometer. You can go to my blog and look up or just do a search for what I wrote on Brix measurements. I, I'm not a fan of— let me say it this way. I think BRICS readings can be a useful qualitative tool. They are not a useful management tool in my opinion because they are too highly variable. They have too much fluctuation. They're too inconsistent. And even if they do indicate that you are in a negative or a positive space, they give you no indication of what to do as a result. So I'm a fan of the concept, just not a fan of the practice. And the, the pH and the EC meter also require a fair amount of interpretation. And the challenge is, if you have an alkaline or acidic pH, or you have high or low EC, what do you do about that exactly?. And I would take— I used to go to the field and I would collect measurements at different points in the plant. The lowest leaf, oldest leaf on the plant, the newest leaf on the plant, intermediate leaves, leaves right beside the fruit. And I was able to develop some guidelines for managing potassium and calcium and sugar content based on, on the results that I got, but they still left extremely large gaps. So The short version is the moment you can justify it, and that moment is a lot earlier than many people realize, the moment you can justify it economically, you need to start using SAP analysis because the refract— you will learn more, you will learn 10 times more from a single SAP analysis than you will from a dozen instrument readings. So, uh, we've— I think the technology there, they were The technology of laboratory analysis has passed them by, and particularly what is happening with the crop tech sensors and being able to measure nutritional profiles in the field. These other sensors have a finite usefulness date, in my opinion. Question from Matthew. I've just chosen a small plot of land. I'm planning on using the fall soil primer, deep tilled, and injecting at 15 gallons per acre. Would I be better served to plant a cover crop mix for warm season from Green Cover or inject biology as soon as possible to get the most time in the ground? Soil is heavy clay. Uh, yes. Why choose? You don't have to choose between one or the other. I would do both, but I would definitely do the cover— I mean, I would do both of them. You need, um, I would, I would apply the COVID crop, plant a cover crop, and use BioCoat Gold and Seed Flare as a seed treatment and get the biology going through the crop. You have to— just injecting the biology alone is not enough because you have to feed it with root exudates as well. There's a follow-up question. Um, you commonly say that if a fruiting crop produces a flower, then it is genetically capable of bringing that flower to a fully formed and sized fruit. In the case of tomatoes, it is common on indeterminants to practice fruit pruning down to 3 to 4 per cluster on larger varieties to keep the fruit size and quality. Is this principle applicable to tomatoes when beefsteak tomatoes often want to send out 6 to 15 flowers on a cluster, or are tomatoes in an an exception to this rule. So there is a difference between what the tomato plant wants and what we want. The tomato plant doesn't care about fruit size, it just cares about successful reproduction. We care about size. So they're, they're not an exception to the rule, but we just have different expectations of what success looks like. A question here from Jay: I'm beginning to try some organic row crop farming in northern Ohio. I'm trying a system where I till a cover crop in the field, plant, make a single blind cultivation pass such as a rotary hoe, and then allow the weeds to grow as companion crops or interseeded cover crops. Then use in-row mowing or in-row crimping to set the weeds back, keep the cash crop competitive. As long as I can effectively harvest and clean the grain, Are there other factors that I should be concerned about from a plant nutrition perspective or other perspective? My thought is that the weeds that grow should be working to fix problems that exist in my soil, and this would be much cheaper, cheaper and easier than purchasing and interseeding cover crop seeds. Hmm, Jay, that's a fascinating idea. Um, one of the things that we're coming to understand is that in order for plants to be non-competitive, to be collaborative with each other and sharing water and nutrients, you need to have enough species diversity. So the question that I would ask is that, does your weed population, your weed profile, have enough species diversity? Do you have a cross-section of grasses, broadleaves, legumes, that is at least 8 plant families. There are very few fields who would have— normally, because it is true that weeds express, uh, grow to express a specific problem, you'll have dominance of 2 or 3 species. You'll— you might have dominance of ragweed and pigweed and lamb's quarter along with some foxtail thrown in there or something like that. So you'll have 4 species, let's say, that dominate and that represent 80 or 90% of the population or more. And in that environment, those weed species will compete with your crop for water and nutrients, perhaps to the crop's detriment. So the, the The relationship that has been observed in dryland farming further west is that in order to have a positive crop response from interseeder row crops, they needed enough diversity of plant species, and I'm not sure you would get that with weeds. So it's an interesting thought experiment, it's something that's interesting to try out and take a look at, but I would try it on a small scale before I would expand it. All right, I'm going to take one last question here. Question from Kay: The other day I was weeding around my black raspberries and noticed several jumping worms in the mulch. I'm very concerned as my neighbor has been having an infestation of those as well. Interestingly, I have been noticing that this one row of black raspberries has not been growing as well and always appears very dry. Despite irrigation and AEA soil and foliar treatments. This is the row that I found the worms. Field Lark suggested using ground mustard water to draw out the worms, but I've not had a chance to implement this yet. Do you have any additional insights on how to eradicate them to fix the soil and save my plants? I don't, unfortunately, Kay. I do not have experience with those. This reminds me of a story of years ago when we had growers who were planting onion seedlings in plastic culture, sweet onions, and they had such a robust earthworm population, nightcrawler population specifically, that the nightcrawlers would pull out the onion seedlings and pull them into their burrows, but pull them from the end of their leaves and pull them, basically invert them and plant them upside down in the soil. To such a point that the growers actually applied— I think it was diazinon, I forget, it was some toxic compound at fairly high doses for the express purpose of killing the earthworms. That just boggled my mind. But, um, I don't have a good answer for you. I mean, a saltwater application or a soap water application— you just put soap and salt onto the soil and that will definitely draw them out. You don't necessarily need ground mustard. Perhaps ground mustard be even more effective. I don't know. But in terms of treating them once you've gotten them out of the soil, I don't have a good answer. Don't know that. All right, my goodness, there's still lots of questions here, so I'll take a few more. I'm going over time here and I have another commitment soon, but I'll take a few more of these questions. There's a follow-up question here from Dan: Does pinion have to be absorbed into the plant to be effective? No, it is a surface treatment as well as an internal treatment, and in addition to that, it's absorbed very, very, very rapidly. And his follow-up question is, if so, should it be applied in the evening? Doesn't matter. You can apply it in the evening or in the morning or during the day, as long as it's not too hot. When using in a small planting situation, what should the Concentrate dilution rate be for the spray mixture? Our rule of thumb is 1%. We've been experimenting with much higher concentrations for drone applications and so forth, up to 10%, but as of now our recommended dilution concentration is 1% solution. It doesn't appear to be a biologically linked product like most other AEA products, so is its storage temperature range less critical? It is absolutely a biologically linked product. It still has the capacity to sustain life and to sustain microbes and encourage them. Um, last question— oh, a couple more questions here from Dan. Does Maximize Born Nutrition Manager control SWD fruit fly? Yes, in conjunction with other things. It's not just the Born alone. For SWD, you really have to be effective across the whole range of trace minerals and get them into the fruit in high— or into the berry in high concentrations. Is Photomag alone effective in many cases to stop spotted lanternfly from being able to feed, or does it take a much more precise nutrient management system? Um, Photomag alone is not enough to— Photomag alone is effective about 65 or 70% of the time. Photomag plus Rejuvenate is effective 80 to 85% of the time. Photomag plus Rejuvenate plus Rebound Boron is effective well into the mid to upper 90% of the time, um, as a point solution. That's one spray, one shot, treated, effective But then those effects— remember, you're changing the plant's internal metabolism with nutrition. That effect is going to wear off if you don't address the underlying imbalances that cause it in the first place. So you can do a one-shot application, but then the follow-up that is needed is, all right, what was going on and how do I make sure that I have proper nutritional balance in the long term? So you can do a one-dose shot application and be very effective and be very delighted by the results, but the, the longer term, you have to take a more systemic approach. And one last question here from Jolin: How important is water quality when irrigating pasture? We have hard well water, high iron, 7.3 to 7.5 pH. I don't have a way to use a K-line, an injector on my K-line system right now. Would that be worth it, or is there a better cost-effective alternative? I'm wanting to do a less intense CJ Fenzow experiment. Uh, Jolan, we should talk about that, but also talk about that experiment. But also, um, to come back to your question, it is important, um, I'm less concerned about the high iron than I am about the bicarbonates. So you say you have hard water. Uh, the good news for you is that you're also in a high rainfall environment, relatively speaking. Um, so it's going to be a lot less of a concern for you than it would be in a more dryland environment. Um, as long as you have water that is, uh, with a hardness of under 50 grains,— here in the East, I wouldn't be hugely concerned about it. And with, with pasture, with grasses, with acidic rhizospheres, they'll, they'll do a reasonably good job of breaking down the minerals that come from that irrigation water. But it would be worthwhile. You've already done some testing and you can do the math on this. But if you're interested, one of the things that I like about Logan Labs irrigation water analysis is that they report the mineral content of the water in pounds per acre-inch. So as a second metric, so you can see if you put on an acre-inch of water how many minerals you are getting. And it's quite fascinating to see water results coming back and realizing that if you're putting on 20 inches a year, you're getting 800 pounds of calcium or 1,000 pounds of bicarbonate. It can be quite eye-opening to see the numbers reported in that way. All right, I'm going to call it a wrap there. I've enjoyed this session. I apologize for not being able to get to many of the live questions, um, but I suppose that means I just need to do these more often and that you need to ask more questions of FieldArc and sign up for a newsletter and ask more questions in advance. So thank you much, everyone. Have an awesome day and happy growing.