Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - October 15

Well hi friends. Welcome to a beautiful sunny afternoon in Northeast Ohio from wherever in the world you might be. Thanks for joining us for this Ask Me Anything session. Thank you to all of you who submitted questions and for your participation in the Ask Me Anything conversations. I I find those to be a lot of fun and hopefully helpful for a lot of people. So the first question that's here is came through from John Rossani. Hi John, One of my biggest challenges about growing vegetables is spring flea beetles on brassica crops. About four to seven days after they're planted out, I see the first flea beetles. Direct seeded spring brassicas are even trickier because of flea beetle pressure. What is the best source of action to prevent this? Should I be applying foliar application in the greenhouse at the seedling stage? And what seed treatment would help? Would a seed treatment help with the direct seeded crops? John, excellent questions and the answer to several of your questions is yes. Should you be applying foliar applications in the greenhouse at the ceiling stage? Yes, you should. The the nutrients that are needed for plants to be resistant to flea beetles specifically are elevated levels of magnesium. Let me see if I can remember this now had a bit much going on. Magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum and particularly boron. Brassicas. Brassicas and cherries have amongst the highest boron requirement of any crop that I know of. And it's common for many growers who've been trying to discover where the boundaries are of improved plant performance with higher boron applications. I know of a number of brassica growers that are pushing boron applications upwards of £4 of actual boron per acre per year over the course of the crop season. And as their rates have gone higher, they've seen increasingly positive benefits. So and of course all of that depends on having adequate calcium in the soil levels as well to support the to, to, to avoid causing any boron toxicity symptoms. So in the case of direct planting and direct seeded brassicas, you need to use a seed treatment or an inferrow application or some way make sure that those seedlings have adequate levels of those elements, particularly boron, immediately right when they emerge, right as they emerge and as they germinate. So hope this helps. And then John also has a follow up question about growing garlic. Trying to form a picture of the critical points of influence for this crop. When would I focus nutrition on the cell division stage? Would the scape be a similar stage to the blossom forming stage of fruiting crops? Does the removal of the scape throw off the oxygen and cytokine imbalance of the crop. Would the head swelling be similar to the fruit fill stage? Would it be beneficial to focus on ripening if there is no grain or fruit to ripen? Very good questions. Again, John, the. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but in the development of a bulb, and this is true for both onions and garlic, we are the development of the bulb is essentially a vegetative process, not a reproductive process. So if you want to, unless you specifically want to propagate through scapes and perhaps do breeding work or something like that, then the, the best outcome for the largest bulb size and firmest bulb size is to focus on those nutrients which drive vegetative growth energy. So when we have large wide stems, wide leaves, rather have large wide leaves and good cell division, continuous cell division, continuous vegetative growth in that bulb all the way up until within the last week to two weeks of maturity. So the elements that we would be sure to provide generous levels of would be particularly calcium and then later on during the development period and during the fill, the bulb fill period, potassium as well, particularly for onions. Question from Dwayne. Is there any evidence of yield drag when using humic substances in the furrow versus in a fertilizer sideband, which is better plus rates and different humid qualities for broad acre crops in northern Alberta? Dwayne is a very good question. Generally humic substances, there's of course a lot of variability in humic acid, fulvic acid, is it potassium hydroxide, alkali extracted? Is it not alkali extracted? There's a lot of variation here. But speaking very broadly, the. The only possible yield drag effect that I am aware of, and actually it's worth expanding on this a little bit, let me finish my thought. The only yield drag effect that I'm aware of that humic substances could produce is that they can bind with nitrogen. And in a few instances, I know of growers who dramatically over applied humic substances or what would be an over application in my opinion, to the tune of a couple hundred pounds per acre that was concentrated in the furrow at planting or close proximity to planting and that resulted in creating a nitrogen deficiency. So that's something to keep an eye out for. And that's the only, the only scenario that I have experience with or that I'm aware of where humic substances can induce a yield drag effect. And the reason for that, the reason the humic substances so seldom cause yield drag effect is because they amplify the plant's ability for homeostatic Balance, and they also provide homeostatic balance within the soil itself. Now that's a very. Homeostasis. Homeostatic balance is a very important and very key phrase. We don't talk about it enough in the agronomic context. I wrote a blog post about it a couple of years ago. And homeostasis is essentially a fancy phrase for describing the ability of an organism to self regulate. So maintaining our body temperature, for example, is a homeostatic process. Our body maintains its own temperature within a fairly narrow range, very effectively, can increase heat production, decrease heat production. And so that is a function of homeostasis, maintaining homeostatic balance. And we do the same thing within, within a range of boundaries for electrolyte balance, for example, our bodies maintain a certain sodium to potassium ratio and our kidneys filter out and flush whatever is in excess supply to maintain a certain electrolyte balance. That's again an expression of homeostasis. Plants have this same ability to a limited degree. Soil microorganisms have the same ability to a limited degree as do soil clay colloids. But the one material that has this capacity to an exceptional degree is humic substances. And the fascinating part is that not only do humic substances have this capacity for homeostatic nutrient availability regulation. In other words, let's say you have excess of phosphorus in your soil, you can apply humic substances and it will reduce phosphorus availability to the plant. Or let's say you have phosphorus deficient soils, you can add humic substances and it will increase phosphorus availability to the plant. So wonderful, it's a wonderful function, a wonderful capacity to either increase or decrease nutrient availability dependent on what the plant's requirements are and to maintain homeostasis. But the amazing characteristic of human substances is that not only do they have this capacity in and of themselves, but they actually confer this capacity and increase the capacity of plants and soil microbes where their own capacity and their own ability for homeostatic nutrient regulation is expressed to an even higher degree. Now, humic substances give them the ability to maintain their nutrients more easily within their desired ranges. Fascinating characteristic, and a very important piece for us to be aware of. Then to your second question, Dwayne. Will the soil primer be effective if the ground freezes like it does in northern Alberta, for at least four months plus? The short answer is yes, it will. And what happens when soils freeze or become colder? Then all these biological processes slow down. They don't stop, but they slow down. And in our usual or common worldview, we tend to think of slowing down as being a negative. We tend to prize going faster and faster and being bigger and stronger and everything else. But slowing down is actually very valuable when it comes to the decomposition of organic materials in the soil. The when you look at what happens in soils closer to the equator versus closer to the north pole in terms of humic substance formation, then and we start looking at physics, the physics of particles, biophysics. If you, if you were to just consider the various mind human humic substances, the farther north you go, humic substances have a higher concentration of what historically was called humic acid and a lower concentration of what historically was called fulvic acid, which would have lower theoretically lower molecular weights. The further south you go, the closer to the equator you become, those ratios begin to change. You have much higher concentrations of folic acid, much lower concentrations of humic acid. And while there's much debate about those classifications and how these various compounds are described and their relative merits and use in agriculture, it's been described by several soil physicists that the reason we have higher concentrations, relative concentrations of humic substances, humic acids farther north, is because we have colder temperatures during the winter and the reaction speed slows down. As the reaction speed slows down, we get the buildup of these longer, more complex humic substances. And so having putting on a rejuvenate application in the fall when we are decomposing organic matter is going to lead to much greater generation of humic substances than when we applied in the spring. And this is one of the reasons why a fall application is so valuable, has such a much greater effect on building soil organic matter than a spring application does. Question from Ben Siwak. Hi Ben. I farm in Saskatchewan growing peas in my rotation over the last few years, root rot has become an issue to the extent that some fields, in some fields I can't grow peas anymore. I was told it is a soil disease and the only way to solve it is to wait at least 10 years before seeding peas again and make sure to use fungal seed treatments. I don't use those types of seed treatments. I was wondering if you have had experience with root rot and what you might recommend also like to thank you for your talk with Keith Burns. The idea of growing seed for next year in a diverse set of plant crops to get plant groups to get the best microbiome is something I'm looking forward to experimenting with for my. My wheat seed. Well, thank you, Ben. So to your question on pea root rot. I'm trying to remember root rot in different diseases is the. It's a common name that's used to describe different organisms. And I'm trying to remember if root rot in peas is fium or something else. What I can say we do have a. Our consulting team in the Pacific Northwest has worked with root rot NPS also in the Midwest. So we do have experience. Let me just look this up right now. There's a lot of positives to working with many different crops and many different diseases. But sometimes after a while things become a little bit blurry when you have disease. Common names that are different but that are have different organisms for different crops. So yeah, we have Fasarium plus the phonomyces. So I don't believe. Let me say it this way. I am persuaded that we can solve root rot in peas with a combination of nutritional and microbial seed treatments. And perhaps also looking at what's going on in the soil. I don't think it should. It needs to take 10 years. Places that I would look or experiments that I would do to see what the possibilities are is I would experiment with biocoat gold. And while you're in, you're in M or excuse me, in Canada we have a microbial inoculant that I expect would be very successful. But it's in the. Going through the registration process. I'm not sure exactly how long that will take. Tends to take a while to get through the Canadian registration process. But it is a microbial inoculant called Santera that I have a high degree of confidence in would be effective for this, for this disease to create a disease suppressive microbiome where it doesn't express itself to the same degree. And also given the association with these organisms, I would. One of the first places I would look is I would look to evaluate what the absorbed plant nutrient levels are of manganese and zinc. I suspect they're low, perhaps boron as well. In fact, I would suspect boron to be low as well. So I would look at manganese, zinc and boron as some of the first places that I would look at to produce resistance to that disease. Question from Mark Tutman. Hi Mark, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the effectiveness of foliar applied micronized minerals. I have applied micronized minerals in foliar formulations a number of times and followed up with SAP tests. I'm yet to see any significant level increases when compared with non treated controls. Well, in my opinion there's your answer and I'll respond to that. However, when we, when we apply soluble nutrients in foliar formulation, we often see increased levels in the SAP analysis. Is applying micronized minerals to the foliage a waste of time? In my opinion, applying micronized minerals to the foliage is a waste of time. Unless. Unless they are complex with organic chelation agents and materials that can get them to cross the leaf cuticle and be effectively absorbed by the leaf and. Or unless you have a very vigorous and healthy microbiome on the leaf surface. So it's possible to have. We know that we have this, this healthy microbiome on the leaf surface in what is called the Philo plane or the phylosphere, very similar to the rhizosphere and the root system. And these organisms can they are there. One of their functions amongst many is to consume dust, particulate matter and to provide nutrition to plants. And so the biology on the leaf surface can consume micronized minerals and make it available to plants. As long as you have enough biology on the leaf surface. Many plants and many crops today don't, unless significant progress has been made on regenerating the soil microbiome or the microbiome is being managed specifically. So we have a number of products in our product lineup are micronized, but they are also complex to facilitate transportation. And just for what it's worth, sometimes the argument is made that micronized minerals like micronized calcium carbonate and so forth are gain access through the leaf, through the stomata. That makes no sense whatsoever. When you start looking at the fraction of the leaf surface that is covered with stomata, it is so infinitesimally small that it makes the absorption of particulate matter through the stomata extremely improbable in any significant amount. So we do get very good SAP analysis response from micronized minerals that are complex. And then of course, we also are often adding microbial inoculants to our foliar applications as well. You know, we tend to think of foliar applications as primarily being for soil or seed applications. Excuse me, I misspoke. We tend to think of microbial inoculants as primarily being for soil, but they are also very valuable for the leaf surface, particularly some of the phytosanitary bacteria, if we want to produce disease resistant microbiomes on the leaf surface and so forth. Question from Jameson Brown. Do you have any thoughts on how nutrition could influence honeybee resistance to Varroa destructor mite? Oh my goodness. You had to ask this question. Yeah, I'm very familiar with the mite. Um, how would you go about determining what nutrients or microbes enhance the bees immunity to these parasites? So and then your next question. What are the nutritional or microbial imbalances that lead to susceptibility in to w. Aphids and apples? John and Gold variety. Okay, different question, different, different conversation. So on honeybees, you know, there's is already research in the literature describing how having adequate lithium in the diet will essentially make honeybee hemolymph. It's been a while since I read this. Right now I don't remember if it will, if it will actually kill the mites or if it will make the honeybees repulsive to the mites. I don't, don't recall the exact mechanisms or if the mechanisms were even described. But it has been described that having generous lithium levels in adult honeybee populations will dramatically shut down or suppress the Varroa destructor mite. And that led to a bunch of interesting questions for me. What are the heavyweight or high atomic weight elements that are comparable to lithium that have similar biochemistry? And what if the, the, the research that was being conducted was looking at lithium as a bio control, as a treatment and feeding it in sugar water or feeding it in, in the water source. But what if it's only required? What if it were present all the time in very tiny concentrations like a few parts per million. I don't know what an appropriate concentration would be for lithium. What are the plants that naturally absorb lithium very well? Or what are the, what are the geological regions that have elevated lithium levels? And why is it we, we know that there are some regions of the country. When I say we know beekeepers know practical experience. Beekeepers know that they can have honeybees in a certain geographic region that are supposedly resistant to mites. And they have gone through a lot of effort for selecting for mite resistance. And they select mite resistant queens. Queens and, and strains of genetics that have demonstrated very good mite resistance in a local geological environment. And then they transport them hundreds or thousands of miles away and they crash and burn. They fail to perform in the same way that that they did in their original environment. At some point it's worth asking the question what is present in that environment? What is showing up in the nectar or in the pollen in that geological environment that is not showing up elsewhere? It's not just the absence of toxins because some of these environments where honeybees are demonstrating better resistance are environments that are surrounded by mainstream commodity crops and are getting loaded with all kinds of pesticides, neonicotinoids included. So it's not just the absence of pesticides is also the presence of something else that is going on in that ecosystem. So there's, I think there's a lot of questions worth pursuing and exploring in that space, and I don't, I don't have answers. But I think there's, there's certainly a lot more digging that is worth a lot more research that's worth pursuing. To your second question on nutritional imbalances that lead to woolly aphids in apples, it is the classical magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum boron. You address those four and the woolly apple aphids will disappear. So follow up question from A related question from Travis Johnson do we have any experience with grain sorghum midge in the environment that causes them to thrive? Yes, we do, and it's been a while since I looked at this. But if I'm not mistaken, grain sorghum midge shows up in a similar environment or a similar plant nutritional profile as spider mites and thrips, particularly spider mites that is associated with elevated levels of ammonium within the plant and low levels of sugar in the plant SAP. If you want to dig deeper there, there are specific nutrition recommendations for how to manage that. Please connect with our AEA team and we can give you specific recommendations for dealing with those. Question from Kenneth I was wondering how you would address a low base saturation calcium soil. The base Saturation is around 30% with low magnesium, acidic ph, high hydrogen and aluminum. We are for the most part small grain farmers and I don't think that liming is quite an economical option. Liquids are an option for us, but is it justifiable to nurse calcium in the furrow? And what type? How much would you recommend? Kenneth for some reason this question seems familiar. I don't know if I did actually respond to it in the original webinar or not, but what I would propose is that you banned either pelletized limestone or liquid lime and I would use calcium carbonate. I would be slow to use magnesium carbonate. I would either use a pelletized form or a liquid line form and I would band it in the furrow or in a strip till. I don't know exactly what your planting setup is, but concentrating it in a band in the furrow and then also you might want to take a look at what types of plants can you bring into your crop rotation. If you are doing wheat and fallow, what if instead of doing fallow you did a partial cover crop or partial year cover crop with a diversity of plants that is known to bring calcium up and increase calcium availability. And you might also take a look at an application of a soil primer like a rejuvenating spectrum combination, because we have observed many instances where when biology is supported with these types of applications, either with COVID crops and also with rejuvenate applications, where all of a sudden the calcium levels jump from three to 500 parts per million to 700 or a thousand parts per million, or they jump from 1500 to 2500. There's these dramatic jumps in calcium supply and calcium availability even when none was applied. Now of course in order for that to happen requires that the soil have the right base geology in order to get that increased calcium availability. But this is not an uncommon phenomena. So I would suggest that the the use of banded limestone applications can be very valuable and have a produce a very strong roi, but that you should think of them as an interim tool and see what plants you can use and what biology you can use to build your calcium avail. Then a follow up question from Ken. How effective is an application of biology in this in the fall when the soil is dry and no plants are growing? And the answer is it can be very effective. I would prefer to have rainfall within three to four weeks of application, but I've worked with applications where rainfall didn't occur for six to eight weeks after application and we still got a very nice soil and plant response following that. Question from Patty Hi Patty, how do legume plants, or too many legumes in the plant community, cause compaction or hard soil? This is an intriguing question and the answer is they do. We see this in alfalfa fields, you see it in soybean fields. And the brief version, the short version, as I understand it, is that legumes, the nitrogen that legumes fix and make available to the soil microbiome and to the plants and to the crop, results in a much narrower carbon to nitrogen ratio in the soil profile, much the same as if you were to add commercial nitrogen fertilizer. And that narrowed carbon to nitrogen ratio results in the soil biology rapidly cycling much of the microbially active carbon that is available in the in the A horizon in the top 6 to 8 inches and releasing it as carbon dioxide. So you get a strong flush of carbon dioxide from coming from the soil surface. But the effect over a year or over a several year period is the soil becomes very compacted because the A horizon has lost its reserve of microbial active carbon. Question from Rye hi Ryan, I grow a companion cover crop with my crash crop that I crimp or the smothered after flowering, ideally, or before the cash crop begins to flower. When that happens, the cash crop seems to be well supplied in nutrition and can be seen to go up in plant health and heal from an infection, if there is one. For example, is this primarily due to nutrient release from the decomposing plant material or the decomposing and unemployed microbes the plant grew, or both? The answer is both. You are getting a response both from a carbon dioxide response from the decomposing plant material and you're also getting a response from the microbial nutrient release that is in the root system. Question from Sean what is the current relevance for application in regenerative practices utilizing Reams theory of biological ionization? RBTI I've studied it a lot and I really respect a lot of the pioneers. Carrie Reams was a pioneer in the biological ecological Agriculture space 60, 70 years ago. Are these methods still useful and applicable for today's regenerative agriculture? So. I would offer a guarded yes or a cautious yes. The reason I would suggest caution. There's, there's, there's a reason why REAMS approach is not more widely utilized today. Two reasons. The first reason is that some of the people who adopted and advocated for their use became very dogmatic and were closed to further development and further innovation. That was one challenge. And the second challenge is that the environment, the ecology, the microbiology of ecosystems has shifted dramatically from Rheims Day. And this is true, by the way, not just of Reams, but also of Albrecht. So there's this interesting phenomena where Reams and Albrecht left. They left very thorough documentation of a lot of case studies through the 50s and 60s and into the early 70s where they described how they were able to put on an application of a ton per acre of soft rock phosphate and 2 tons per acre of limestone and 2 tons per acre of poultry manure and observe this remarkable regeneration where a field or a soil just bloomed and exploded. We got, they got tremendous crop production, dramatic improvements in plant health, and the effect lasted for years afterward. And today we do not see those types of responses. We don't see the types of responses that they are referring to or that they described. And I know because I've tried those types of applications 15 years ago repeatedly in, in many different contexts and settings, we did not see those types of responses. So what has changed and what is different today or what was different 15 years ago or 10 years ago from 70 years ago? And I think the differences are that our biology has become much more degraded in, in many soils. But it's, it's hard to prove that because how do you go back in time and measure what existed earlier? And secondly, many of our agricultural soils in particular also have, have degraded biology and perhaps other things degraded soil structure as a reflection of chemistry use. So whatever pesticide residues remained in the soil 70 years ago were but a tiny fraction of what is certain to be there today. So it is a combination of those two reasons why I think we've made tremendous advances and tremendous progress in being able to measure and manage the microbiome effectively that we didn't have 70 years ago. I'm confident that if we had been able to measure the microbiome, then Reams would have been at the forefront of using not just chemistry, but also microbiology to manage nutrition effectively. And that's the direction that we need to go in in the future. Actually, I should clarify one important. I, I just misrepresented Reams there a little bit when I said he would have used microbiology instead of exclusively chemistry. The reality is Reams wasn't using chemistry, he was using biophysics. He used chemistry terms. He appropriated chemistry terms to describe what he was observing from a biophysics perspective. But his biophysics perspective was very valuable and it's still useful today for the people who can parse it and interpret it and understand it. Question from Johannes. Can heavy clay soils be restored? Can carbon be sequestered via foliar amendment applications guided by SAP and soil analysis, soil reinoculation with microbes, intense animal impact and rest? Or will I need to be applying larger amounts of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, etc, to balance my soils? I had my soils tested through Albrecht, the Kinsey lab in the US and the advice given cost me over $4,000 per hectare, which is not possible at the moment. So the answer to your question, Johannes, is yes. It's not an unqualified yes. There, there are a few qualifications, but generally the answer is yes. When you work with foliar applications, you do soil reinoculation, intense animal impact, all the things that you described. Yes you can. The plants and biology have the capacity to balance your soils within some constraints, within some boundaries. And those boundaries are what are the minerals and the nutrients that are present in your geological parent material that they can extract and make available some regions, for example, no matter how good biology you have or how good your, your management of your ecosystem is, and with your foil applications, etc, you will never succeed in greatly increasing, let's say, selenium levels, for example, or Molybdenum levels or iodine levels simply because they are not present in the parent bedrock material. Now, those areas and regions of the world are surprisingly small for many nutrients there. Many nutrients are present even in tiny quantities. And it's also worth mentioning that for many of these nutrients, the effective amounts, the effective amounts of molybdenum or cobalt or selenium can be measured in grams per acre. So it can be very cost effective to apply small amounts of these minerals as foliar applications and they will produce a disproportionate crop response and soil response from their application. There was one question that was sent to me directly by one of our growers in advance who asked about a fall application of the soil primer. Given his context is in Southern California and given a high temperature environment. He his question was that in they might have an Indian summer with 100 plus degree temperatures, very high air temperatures, which would also correspond to higher soil temperatures. And would it be better to wait to apply the soil primer application until the soil had cooled off or could he apply it right at the beginning? And thank you. The answer is that earlier is usually better, particularly if the trees are no longer, if their photosynthesis has slowed down and they're not sending as many sugars out through the red exudates anymore. And the benefit of, of the soil primer application and the reason for putting it on in the fall is because we get a lot of cumulative nutrient release during the dormant period. So when we have really active biology during the dormant period, the availability of nutrients builds and builds. And this is one of the reasons, one of the foundational aspects of why we get this rapid flush of growth in the spring. It is plant physiology has evolved this way as an adaptation to this flush of available nutrients. So that's one of the key pieces to keep in mind is one of the reasons why a fall application of primer is so effective is because we get this continued dormant season accumulation, which has a very big payoff, has a big payoff the following spring. Because if you actually, if you measure the soil bioavailable nutrients using a Haney analysis or other types of soil analysis, we often see some very significant improvements in bioavailable nutrients from a fall application of soil primer. And just like that, we've got 16 questions in the Q and A. Wow. Thank you all. Thanks for attending and for being here. All right, so got to dive into this 16, 17 questions in the first three minutes. I'm going to, I, I always say that I make an attempt to keep my answers concise and to keep moving. But I also everyone and the feedback that I get from these sessions, everyone tells me that the thoroughness of the answers and the explanation for why is also very much appreciated. So constantly trying to balance those two first question is here from Timothy Rob hi Timothy. Nitrogen struggles to get into my lettuce crops as confirmed by low total nitrogen SAP test. I've experimented with many forms of organic approved nitrogen fish, hydrolysate, cornsteap liquor, aminos macropack but observe very little crop response. When I use urea I observe tremendous crop response. Darker leaves, faster growth, higher brix. Why might these organic approved forms of nitrogen not be affecting my plants like urea, especially considering they're supposed to be healthier, more energy efficient forms of N. That's an interesting question Timothy. I don't know the answer to the context and everything that's going on in your operation. The first question that I would ask is what are your chloride levels? And the reason for asking that question is because when you have high chloride levels along with other anions, it's not just there's so nitrate or I shouldn't confine this to nitrate. But nitrogen in its various forms is strongly suppressed. The absorption of nitrogen, its various forms is strongly suppressed by the by the presence of high concentrations of other electrolytes and high concentrations of other anions. So electrolytes plus anions. So your electrolytes are going to be magnesium, potassium, sodium, chloride and nitrogen. Of course we're trying to get nitrogen so high levels of the other electrolytes can suppress the absorption of nitrogen in its various forms high levels so chloride fits into that category as an electrolyte but then also high levels of the other negatively charged ions like sulfur, phosphorus can also suppress nitrogen absorption except that urea has such a high solubility, also has a very high salt index and by itself it's also very strong electrolyte that urea is strong enough to overcome these hurdles that the other organic nitrogen forms may not be able to overcome. So the moment you say that, if you if you're describing a scenario where urea is being absorbed but other forms of nitrogen are not my first guess, and this is just a guess, is that your other anions or your other electrolytes or a combination of both, possibly in the form of chloride, might be excessive, which might be limiting the nitrogen absorption. So that's my best guess. That's the first place that I would start looking. Question for David King Looking for recommendations to study the management of vegetative and regenerative energy and plants. My Native American clients understand the concept of balancing masculine and feminine energy. Educated farmers understand auxins and cytokinins. Biodynamic farmers understand earth energy and cosmic energy. My concern is that all of my work is being performed from observations. I would like some science to back it up and expand my understanding. I recall you broached the subject in regards to California strawberries and ion management. Do you have any recommendations of where I could further my study and understanding of this subject? David, this is a fascinating question and the first of all, there's nothing wrong with observational experience. And I know that the reality is that you can dig deeply into this topic from a scientific perspective. However, it is very challenging and dry scientific academic reading and it is challenging to even translate that information into a context that is accessible to growers because. And so the research that you're looking for, if you want to look at this from a scientific perspective, you would primarily look at, look at it from the perspective of hormonal phytohormone balance, so auxins, cytokinas and so forth, and review the literature that associates all these various mineral interactions and microbiome interactions with these various hormones. I would also point you to the work of Jerry Stoller. A lot of, not a lot of work has of his has been published, but some of it is out there from Stoler Enterprises and those would be some possible resources. But don't, don't discount your observational experience because the, the key is every, each individual variety. When you look, you can't, we can't just talk about wheat because there are significant differences between tall grass and short grass wheat varieties, or tall stem and short stem. I should, I should say, and we know that apple trees have very wilding degrees of vigor. So we have to, we have to tailor our experience and our observations to specific varieties, to specific cultivars. And that is why even when you have the strong scientific backing in this, you still have to adapt it based on experience with the exact plant species and brighter that you're talking about. Question from Felipe Depending on my SAP analysis sample, how often should I apply foliars to my pear trees previous and after harvest? Besides SAP, any suggestions to avoid fungal diseases on pears during flowering and young fruit growth in a rainy and humid area? So the answer to your first question is how often should you fold your spray? As often as necessary and as often as practical to maintain nutritional balance. And the interesting part of that question is that the healthier your trees become the fewer applications are required. So we find that when your trees become really healthy, less frequent applications of smaller amounts of product produce longer and longer term effects until ultimately you get to the point where you need very minimal applications or perhaps even none at all in an ideal scenario. And so and early on during an early transition period, if you have severe nutritional imbalances, then they may require more frequent applications to the point of as often as is practical to the second part of your question any suggestions to avoid fungal diseases? So the it's I have a desire to oversimplify here and I have to be cautious. Again we we have to address the foundational macronutrients, particularly calcium and phosphorus, make sure we don't have excessive levels of nitrogen and potassium and but I would suggest that the majority of nutritional imbalances that are associated with disease are result of trace mineral imbalances, particularly zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt and boron. Iron is also involved but less we see that showing up less frequently corresponding or associated with disease. So but make sure to you have to address the foundational macros like calcium and phosphorus and silicon is also worth mentioning but then really pay attention to those trace mineral particularly the metallic trace minerals. Question from John Pierce. Hi John, what ingredients do you recommend for root dips? What should what with a PH range in the EC part per million range? John, this is a great question. So for root dips historically we have generally used rejuvenate and C stem occasionally humicarb for specific challenges with various ceiling soils and then also if it's possible, if it's if it's appropriate in a certain area and if it's approved from a regulatory perspective we would I would suggest Santera and Biocode Gold and if we're not able to use Sentara then I would probably use either Spectrum or OPA depending on the context the ph and so when you think about that I deliberately did not include seashield in that recommendation because if we're putting together a relatively concentrated root dip then seashield can have too acidic a PH because of the sulfuric acid stabilization. And neither the rejuvenate nor the SEM has a particularly high eclipse. So those tend to be softer, softer, less harsh materials, if you will. And I don't have a number for you off the top of my head about what the EC range should be. That's an interesting experiment. I would guess it should be sub 6000 but that's just an educated guess at this point and need to do more homework on that. Question from Francisco should we Fertilize in seedling production, the answer is yes, but not with potassium and not with nitrogen. What I mean by that is I'm not suggesting these ceilings require or should have no nitrogen, no potassium, but they should be very minimalized and the emphasis should be on calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. And when you do that, you produce a plant that has, as a small seedling, has a remarkably large root system and is very sturdy, has a large diameter stem, doesn't lose moisture very easily. So the biggest mistake that is made in a lot of seedling production is over fertilizing and providing them with excessive levels of nitrogen and potassium, and that leads to lower quality seedlings. You can get seedlings to grow as rapidly with calcium nutrition as you can with nitrogen nutrition. Question from Joe. When we get good nitrate conversion during the vegetative growth period, but do not get adequate calcium supply to the plant, does vegetative growth suffer overall? Assuming good total nitrogen reading on a SAP test, this is for broad acre crops. So question is, what do you mean when you say does vegetative growth suffer? Yes, John, you're looking for me. Your camera just came back on. All right, so you can get the same quantity of growth. So your, your quantity of growth doesn't suffer, but your quality of growth would suffer with, with less nitrogen, if you, excuse me, with, without adequate calcium supply. So if you take a corn plant, for example, a corn is a very vigorous vegetative plant. Even if you don't have good calcium supply, you'll still get a lot of plant biomass as long as you have adequate nitrogen. But the quality of that plant biomass will suffer. You'll have more disease and insect susceptibility as a result of the lower calcium levels. And corn is a really obvious kind of an extreme example, but the same concept holds true for many other plants as well. Question from Leland. My question is regarding work that Olivier Husson is doing with EH and ph homeostasis. The framework is based on the hypothesis that plants function physiologically within a specific internal EH PH range. And that is correct. They, they self regulate that homeostasis within very tight boundaries within the xylem and the phloem. The xylem and the phloem are very different, have very different EH and PH ranges, but they manage those very tightly and that along with microorganisms, they alter EH and PH in the rhizosphere. My question is, if this idea is beyond the hypothesis level yet and on native rangeland, would we expect enough effects to be measured to measure EH with some type of metering tool. So the question is, yes, this is beyond. The answer to your question is yes, this is beyond the hypothesis level. Like this is something that's well established in physiological functioning of cells and of larger organisms. The challenge with measuring EH with a tool which isn't that the tool is an ORP meter, which you may have heard of oxidation reduction pot. The challenge with measuring it with a tool is that ORP or EH fluctuates dramatically with moisture levels and with exposure to oxidation. So if you have sun that if you have soil that's exposed to sunlight, it will show much more oxidation. If you measure soil on one day and you get 2 inches of rain overnight, you come back and measure it again the next day, you'll have very different readings and very different numbers. So the challenge of measuring it with a meter is that the number is wildly variable. It swings back and forth a lot. And I expect what we, what we know at this point, or at least trying to remember where I read this, what I think we know at this point is that when you have high organic matter content soils, soils that have good aggregate stability, you have less variation, you have less up and down swings in healthy ecosystems. Question from Kenneth. Wondering how you would address a low base saturation calcium soil. The base Saturation is around 30% with low magnesium. Acidic ph is high hydrogen, aluminum. Where for the most part, small grain farmers and I don't think that liming is quite an economical option. Liquids are an option for us, but is it justifiable to nurse calcium in furrow? And what type? How much would you recommend? Second question is how effective is an application of biology in the fall when the soil is dry and no plants are growing? All right, you asked challenging questions, Kenneth, Sounds like you're in challenging conditions as well. So first, I am right on the threshold of saying that we should no longer measure our soil mineral levels or macronutrient levels on base saturation. We should no longer have conversations around base saturation because base saturation is misleading for very light and for very heavy soils. If you go below 10 CEC or above about 22 or 25 CEC, then the situation changes. So assuming you're within that range of somewhere between 10 and 20 CEC, then, and if you have, with your challenged economics, what I would suggest, and this is, I'm absent, I don't know the context of your planting equipment, whether you're dry or liquid, but I would suggest that you band in the furrow at planting pelletized limestone or liquid limestone. If that is an option. Specifically calcium carbonate. Don't use dolomitic limestone. That will be your most economical form of calcium. That will help buffer your acidic pHs. It'll help buffer the aluminum availability. And that's likely to give you the greatest and most economic crop response, the greatest roi. And then to your second question. How effective is an application of biology in the fall when the soil is dry and there are no plants growing? It's an interesting question for some of our microbial inoculants. When Bruce Tyno originally developed them, his goal was to develop them to be so resilient that you could spray them on bare concrete, leave them exposed to the sun for 30 days and come back and add moisture and they would come alive again. That's a harsh environment. So I'm actually, I'm not concerned if the soil is dry and I'm not concerned if there are no plants growing as long as there are reasonable expectations for that changing in the course of the next several weeks. So it's perfectly appropriate to apply a primer application or soil biology in the fall onto dry soil if we are waiting for cover crops to germinate or if we expect to have moisture at some point in the next month. But if we apply it dry and then it stays dry for three or four months and we have limited moisture. Even in that context, I've observed some very nice soil improvement responses, but they were dependent on the soil carbon levels. Was there enough carbon to support and sustain that microbial community? And even though it wasn't particularly active, it stayed in a relatively dormant period phase, had very low levels of activity until you had moisture applied and then it came alive. So you might in a very dry environment or limited plants growing, I would suggest that you expect to see a delayed response rather than a more immediate response. Question from Michelle. Every time I use zeolite, the plants respond with react with an extremely strong oxygen dominance behavior. Why is this the case if zeolite has such a strong sponge effect for nitrogen and potassium? The reason, Michelle, I suspect I. Let me be clear. I don't know this for sure. This is just my hypothesis or my theory. Zeolite doesn't actually have a strong sponge effect or absorption effect for nitrogen. It has a strong absorption effect specifically for ammonium. So if you are. If the zeite is binding ammonium and yet providing free movement or facilitating free movement of nitrate, that would explain strong oxin dominance behavior. It could explain it. I don't know for sure if that is what is happening, but that's One possibility that pops into my mind question from Terry in Ultimately you get to the point where you need very minimal applications or perhaps even none at all in an ideal scenario and so and and early on during an early transition period if you have severe nutritional imbalances then they may require more frequent applications great Midwest soils Do you have anybody that is producing 70 plus bushel beans soybeans without using fungicides? Terry I'm sure that we do I don't have to the point of as often as is practical specific examples that come to mind right off the top of my head but to the second part of your question any suggestions to avoid fungal diseases so the. I I'm sure I could we could have conversations with our farm services team and we would be able to find the number of growers for which that would be the case. Question from Dave Growing it's I have a desire to oversimplify here and I have to be cautious again we we have to address the foundational macronutrients particularly calcium and phosphorus make sure we don't have excessive levels of nitrogen and potassium silage corn and transition to regenerative agriculture practices. What would be rotation crops boy Dave I need a lot more information to be able to answer that question for you. Well the one thing that I would consider that I would suggest and but I would suggest that the majority of nutritional imbalances that are associated with disease are a result of trace mineral imbalances particularly zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt and boron iron is also involved but we see is particularly if you're growing silage corn which with silage corn you're coming off early enough that you can you can plant after the corn but you might also consider that showing up less frequently corresponding or associated with diseases with the development of drone technology we now these so but make sure to you have to address the foundational macros like calcium and phosphorus and silicon is also worth mentioning but then really pay attention to those trace mineral particularly the metallic given the right environment of course if we get enough rainfall and if everything works just right we can broadcast cover crop seeds with a drone three to four weeks before harvest and if we get rainfall and planting the right electrase minerals Question from John Pierce hi John, what ingredients do you recommend for root dips? What should what with the ph range and the EC part per million range the John this is a great question so for root dips species for which that type of application works well you can actually take the corn off and have a cover crop that has germinated it won't have grown a whole lot because it'll be in shade but the ceilings will be 2, 3, 4 inches tall. You take the corn off and it historically we have generally used rejuvenate and sea stem occasionally humicarb for specific challenges with very ceiling soils and then also if it just goes to town. So that's something that I would encourage you to to evaluate it to check out because you can really speed up and increase the amount of photosynthesis that happens on an acre in the fall. If you have seedlings that are already established it's possible. If it's. If it's appropriate in a certain area and if it's approved from a regulatory perspective we would I would suggest Santera and Biocode Gold and if we're not able to use Sentara then I would probably use E Spectrum or OPA depending on the context the ph and so when you question from James on a previous ask me anything you say that slug problems could be addressed by making sure you had enough iron either in the soil or on the plants. I'm not sure specifically implants and he you have to get the iron into the plants which is a common which is a challenge. You think about that. I deliberately did not include seashield in that recommendation because if we're putting together a relative a lot of areas I have a huge ongoing probably concentrated root dip then SeaShield can have two almost slugs. That has me re drilling much of the farm here in New Zealand for the last three years since I went to a more regenerative farming operation. I acidic a ph because of the sulfuric acid stabilization I have been having to apply much more iron based slug bait than I would like to. We're using Kinsey and neither the rejuvenate nor the C stem has a particularly high EC so those tend to be softer, softer, less harsh materials if you will. Soil fertilizer SAP analysis we're not showing deficiencies of iron. That's intriguing. You're not even showing deficiencies of iron on SAP and I don't have a number for you off the top of my head about what the eclipse as much as I would love this to be a simple solution as you say I can't help feeling that there is more to this than you say. Could you please give me a much more detailed answer such as how much iron we're looking for in our test and what is the best way to achieve the range should be. That's an interesting experiment. I would guess it should be sub 6000 but that's just an educated guess at this point and need to do more homework on that. Yes all right James, Good question. So question from the deep Francisco should we fertilize in seedling production? The answer is the most thorough answer on slugs that the most thorough explanation that I've heard is coming from Harriet Mellow so if you go to the yes, but not with potassium and not with nitrogen kind harvest platform at Kindharvest Ag, Harriet Miller has a an incredible course that she what I mean by that is I'm not suggesting these ceilings require or should have no nitrogen, no potassium, but they should be very minimalized and the emphasis should be on calcium in which she talks about carbon I think it's titled carbon microcycling and in this course at one point she gives a very thorough explanation of why slugs magnesium and phosphorus and when you do that you produce a plant that has as a small seedling has a show up and are problematic and remarkably large root system and is very sturdy has a large the the short version if I could condense it down there there are also there is a connection to water transpiration, evaporation and so forth and what a plant's water metabolism diameter stem doesn't lose moisture very easily so looks like but from a practical applic though the biggest mistake that is made in a lot of patient perspective I'm still of the persuasion in spite of your experience seedling production is over fertilizing and providing them with excessive levels of nitrogen. So I'm still of the persuasion that addressing adequate levels of iron will solve the and so my first question mark in potassium and that leads to lower quality seedlings you can get would be what is the desired value of iron that is being reported on SAP analysis? How was that desired value of seedlings to grow as rapidly with calcium nutrition as you can with nitrogen nutrition? Question from Joe when we get good nitrate conversion during the vegetative growth period but do not get adequate calcium supply to the plant does vegetate established and is that true to the desired value? Does your plant does your crop truly have enough iron? And I would suggest the Again, there's a lot that I don't know about your local setting in your local context, but I don't think it's reasonable to growth suffer overall assuming good total nitrogen reading on a SAP test. This is for broad acre crops to expect to address iron in the soil. I did a previous webinar on this so question is topic I think you can find it on YouTube but your soil can have generous even excessive levels of. What do you mean when you say does vegetative growth suffer? Yes John. Iron and the crop still be deficient because the iron is. Is oxidized and the. You're looking for me? Your camera just came back on. All right. So you can get the same quantity of growth. So your. Your quant only way to address that is with foliar applications of a reduced and chelated iron which is where we use our rebound iron. If you get the right form of iron just do a simple experiment. Duty of growth doesn't suffer, but your quality of growth would foliar application of a couple of spots. Write your name out. Suffer with. With less nitrogen. If you. Excuse me with without adequate calcium on the feeler just do a call. Do. Just do a small square and if you have iron that is reduced and chelated and your crop needs iron, you'll be able to see supply. So if you take a corn plant for example a corn is a very vigorous vegetative plant. Even if you don't have good calcium supply, you'll still get a lot of plant biomass. Well, there's one more caveat. If your crop needs iron and it doesn't have a surplus of nitrogen because surplus nitrogen can cover up as long as you have adequate nitrogen. But the quality of that plant biomass will these effects by already having a field that's dark green. If it doesn't have a surplus of nitrogen you in most crops you can see a a dark suffer. You'll have more disease and insect susceptibility as a result of the lower calcium levels. And corn is a really obvious kind of an extreme example green up response to an iron application within days. But the same concept holds true for many other plants as well. After application it's very rapid and so the the long term solution is to develop soil biology that can deliver nitrogen to the crop. The short term solution is to foliar apply at night. Question from Leland. My question is regarding the work that Olivier Husson is doing with the H and ph homeostasis. The framework is based on the hypothesis that plants hydrogen and I'm of the persuasion that when you function physiologically within a specific internal eh ph range when the crop has adequate degenerate levels of nitrogen, you're going to solve your slug problem. Question from Matt and that is correct. They they self regulate that homeostasis within very tight boundaries within the XY root production and possibly vegetables. What actions can I take to increase flavon in the flow the xylem and the phloem are very different, have very different EH and plant production. Are there specific nutrients a grower should focus on specific target crops or peaches. Oh Matt, this is a great question. Age ranges, but they manage those very tightly. Yes, there are specific nutrients that are involved, particularly the trace mineral metals, zinc and that along with microorganisms, they alter EH and ph in the rhizosphere. My question is if this idea is manganese, copper, cobalt, beyond the hypothesis level yet and on native rangeland, would we expect enough effects to be measured to measure EH with some type of metering tool? Now, you asked me about flavonoids and not carotenoids. So addressing all those minerals, magnesium as well, but the big contributing factor or a significant contributing factor in addition to these mineral elements. So the question is yes, this is beyond. The answer to your question is yes, this is beyond the hypothesis level. Like this is. This is something that's well established in in physiological functioning of cells and of is the microbiome. Because the microbiome in the both in the root system as well as within the plant tissue synthesizes a lot of flavonoids and provides them to plants, large organisms. The challenge with measuring EH with a tool which isn't that the tool is an ORP meter, which you may have heard of oxidation reduction potential. The challenge with measuring it with a tool is that ORP or so this is not just plant synthesis, but in fact it may be mostly synthesis from the microbiome. So using high quality microbial inoculants on the leaf surface and in the soil system and making sure you have really good biology established is probably Ph fluctuates dramatically with moisture levels and with exposure to oxidation. So if you have sun that if you have soil that's exposed to sunlight, it will show much more oxidation. If you measure soil on one day and you get two inches going to be going to have the most significant effect on increasing your flavonoid production as I understand it. Question from Melissa. I'm a new homesteader in northeast Texas with hopes of building some type of ag. If rain overnight, you come back and measure it again the next day you'll have very different readings and very different numbers. So the challenge of measuring it with a meter is that the number is wildly variable. It swings back business. I know you typically work with large commercial farms and forth a lot and. My question is regarding the PH of our sandy loam soil which is currently at about 4.5 NRC. I expect what we what we know at this point or at least trying to remember where I read this what I think we know at this point agent said that it must apply a lime regularly I believe you said that establishing good soil health down to 40 inches will help the soil to hold on to its nutrients and that a diverse mix of Forbes is the best way to build is that when you have high organic matter content soils soils that have good agricultural dots do I need to start with an application of ag line before instability you have less variation you have getting started with a Forbes I've also been vermicomposting would applying a slurry have less up and down swings in healthy ecosystems. Any effect on soil ph? So you ask a lot of questions Melissa and the answer I don't like giving this answer but is it depends so question from Ken I'm responding to your last answer Last question First would applying a slurry of vermicompost have an effect on soil ph? It depends if wondering how you would address a low basis on if your soil has a reserve of nutrients held in the soil mineral matrix that biology can release so some soils have high calcium and magnesium and potato calcium soil the base Saturation is around 30% with low magnesium acidic ph is high hydrogen aluminum where for the most part small grain farmers and I don't think that liming is quite an economical option potassium levels that are locked up in the soil mineral matrix and if you were to apply vermicompost theoretically you could release some of that and have an effect on ph that's certainly something we've observed many times however if your soil doesn't have that parent geological material doesn't liquids are an option for us but is it justifiable to nurse calcium in furrow and what type how much would you recommend Second question is how effective is an application of biology in the fall when the soil is dry and no plants are growing all right at that capability then you can apply all the vermicompost you want and you're not going to get the response that you're looking for. So the to your second to last question do you need to start with an application of lime before getting started with you ask challenging questions Kenneth Sounds like you're in challenging conditions as well. So first I am right on the threshold of saying that we should no longer measure our soil mineral levels or mic forbs no you don't. You could start with either of those but my question would be are you in a situation where you have to choose why not do both of them at the Same time and I'm of course there's a lot of context knowledge that I'm missing macronutrient levels on base saturation. We should no longer have conversations around base saturation because base saturation is misleading. But the the way to speed up the system ecosystem response to get the fat the fastest ROI for very light and for very heavy soils. If you go below 10 CEC or above about 22 or 25 CEC and the greatest crop response the most rapidly is to do both the lime application and the Forbes at the same time. It's not an either. Then the situation changes. So assuming you're within that range of somewhere between 10 and 20 or a question you can do both. Question from GEO red and mineral attrition of higher plants that cytokine CEC then and if you have with your challenged economics what I would suggest and this is known for shoot growth, not root growth and the opposite is also partially true for auxins. Am I misunderstanding something? I'm absent. I don't know the context of your planting equipment, whether you're dry or liquid, but I would suggest that you band in the furrow at plantation. What you're misunderstanding geo as I understand it is that. Pelletized limestone or liquid limestone if that is an option. Specifically calcium carbonate. Don't use dolomitic line. Yes, cytokine and does play a role in shoot growth and yes, auxin limestone, that will be your most economical form of calcium that will help buffer your acidic pHs. It'll help buffer the yield does play a role in root growth but they are the the minor hormone in each of those places in each of those little minimum availability and patients. So it is never what I'm attempting to discuss likely to give you the greatest and most economic crop response driving in my previous conversations. Shoots are never in shoots we never have 100% auxins and 0% cytokines. It's always a blend. It might be 55% auxins and 45% cytokines the greatest ROI. And then to your second question. How effective is an application of biology in the fall when the soil is dry and similarly in the roots. So both are involved, both are a part of eye and there are no plants growing. It's an interesting question for some of our microbial inoculants the system as well as other phytohormones. But it is the balance between the two that determines plant expression and which of those is dominant. So I hope that clarifies and helps answer your question. Hey John, when Bruce Tino originally developed them. His goal was to develop them to be so resilient that you could spray them on bare concrete. All right, I just want to jump in. There were a few questions submitted in advance. I just direct messages then leave them exposed to the sun for 30 days and come back and add moisture and they would come to you. I just didn't want those to get lost. Okay, great. Thank you. Question from Eugene. I'm alive again. That's a harsh environment. So I'm actually. I'm not concerned if the soil is dry and I'm not what is the best soil? Silicon fertilizers for blueberries, diatomaceous earth, basalt powders, etc. Not concerned if there are no plants growing. As long as there are reasonable expectations, diatomaceous earth is a possibility. But I don't see. I don't have a lot of data without changing in the course of the next several weeks. So it's perfectly appropriate to apply a primer application. But the data that I do have we don't plants don't let me say this accurately. Plants seem to respond location or soil biology in the fall onto dry soil. If we are weighted to diatomaceous earth positively for cover crops to germinate or if we expect to have moisture at some but not with improved silicon absorption according to our SAP analysis results, which is interesting. So we're getting a nice plant response but not a silic point in the next month. But if we apply it dry and then it's non response basalt stays dry for three or four months and we have limited moisture even in that context we can also be useful again we get to see a nice plant response sometimes depending on the source of basalt we have. I've observed some very nice soil get a silicon response but not always the form that is probably the most consistent but still variable is calcium silicate which improvement responses but they were dependent on the soil carbon levels was there's wallosinite and again the the degree enough carbon to support and sustain that microbial community. And even though it wasn't particularly active, it stayed in a relatively dormant phase had very low levels of activity on free of plant response. The degree of calcium absorption varies depending on the line depending on the quarry and the source of where the wallosanite came from. Some quarries are much more bioavailable than others when they have different crystalline structure and as well as till you had moisture applied and then it came alive. So you might in a very dry environment or limited plants growing. I would suggest that you expect to see a delayed response rather than more different particle sizes. So that's that's the best answer I have for the question. Question from Jake following up with the soil primer discussion Also in California wine grapes Immediate response Question from Michelle do we need to worry about spraying the primer onto dry ground and fallen Every time I use zeolite the plants respond with react with an extremely strong oxin dominance behavior. Why is this the case if zeolite has such a strong sponge effect for waiting for rain? I think I've maybe partially answered that question already. It's really a question of timing. I would be fine waiting for several weeks before rain. I would prefer to not wait for three month nitrogen and potassium. The reason Michelle I suspect I Let me be clear. I don't know this for sure. This is just my hypothesis. My theory zeolites before rain, which I don't think is likely to happen in your context. Question from Gavin what advice do you have for an aspiring agronomist with no formal ag education? Well, first of all, congratulations. You have doesn't actually have a strong sponge effect or absorption effect for nitrogen. The benefit of not having a tremendous amount of wrong information to unlearn has a strong absorption effect specifically for ammonium. So currently working as a mechanic, is there a formal education or certification you think would be valuable if you are if the zeolite is binding ammonium and yet providing free movement or facilitating free Listen to every podcast and watched every webinar so far. The movement of nitrate that would explain strong oxy when are you going to apply for a job with aea? Just out of curiosity. Currently working through kind harvest courses and studying webinars in closer detail. Have been trying to connect with local farmers and educators as often as dominance behavior that could explain it. I don't know for sure if that is what is happening possible given the only resource that you haven't mentioned I think would be very valuable for you. But that's one possibility that pops into my mind. Question from Terry in you would be reading through the recommended reading list that I've put on my blog. You can find it pretty easily by just doing a search for John Great Midwest Soils. Do you have anybody that is producing 70 plan recommended reading and lost bushel beans soybeans without using fungicides with what you have already with the work that you've already done in our podcasts and webinars, if there's any downside to having focused primarily on those, it would be that perhaps we have skipped over some of the more foundation Terry I'm sure that we do. I don't have specific examples that come to mind right off the top of my head but additional material? Oh, we've just focused on some of the more advanced agronomy concepts. I'm sure I could we could have conversation with our farm services team and we would so we haven't in most of if what I can just recall from memory memory we haven't gone into details on basic soils able to find the number of growers for which that would be the case, Quest lines and so forth. So it might be worth digging into some of those concepts a bit more deeply and find some good mentors. And then you also need to have real world experience with crop scouting and so forth. But I think there are many people that would love to have a conversation given the knowledge context that you've developed. Question from Dave Growing silage corn and transition to regenerative agriculture practices. Question from India Is it beneficial to just chop grass and leave it on the soil in between the free true rows fruit tree rows? What would be rotation crops? Boy Dave, I need a lot more information in a subtropical climate to be able to answer that question for you. Well, It can be the answer is compared to what. So the benefits will be that you'll be shading your soil and keeping it cool. The downside is that you will be or possible downside. Not necessarily downside but a possible down. The one thing that I would consider and that I would suggest is particularly if you're growing silage corn which with sound side is that you will be rapidly losing that residue as most of it oxidizes and goes into the atmosphere as CO2. The question is do you have a green growing crop that can benefit from that CO2 release? And if the answer is yes then silage corn you're coming off early enough that you can you can plant after the corn. It sounds like this could be a good idea. Question from Jared can you extrapolate the application instructions for Sea stem to be on a smaller greenhouse garden? Yes, absolutely. Question from Michelle but you might also consider insects are attracted by seed. With the development of drone technology we now without adequate levels of boron just for the boron are also because boron helps the translocation of other minerals and nutrients. So Michelle, I I don't know if I would say given the right environment of course if we get enough rainfall and if everything works just right we can broadcast certainly the the answer is broadly insects are less attracted to seed that has mineral nutritional integrity in general and boron is one key critical aspect of that. But it is more than just boron. You could have just cover crop seeds with a drone three to four weeks mineral levels of boron but still have, let's say, manganese and zinc deficiencies. And while your seed would be would likely preserve before harvest and if we get rainfall and planting the right well in storage, I would expect the seedling to still have insect susceptibility, disease susceptibility as a result of that nutritional imbalance by species for which that type of application works. Well, you can actually take the corn off and have a cover crop that to answer your question, boron does help with the translocation of other particularly of sugars and to some degree also of other minerals, including particularly calcium into the seed. And you could it's germinated, it won't have grown a whole lot because it'll be in shade. But let's say there's perhaps a domino effect where boron improves calcium Translocation will be 2, 3, 4 inches tall. You take the corn off and it just goes to town. So that's something that I would encourage you to which has an effect on improving the translocation of other elements. Question from Jeff. Question about soil application rates. If an acre furrow slice was evaluated to check out because you can really speed up an increase around 2 million pounds and it's 3% organic matter, how can rejuvenate at 0.4 pounds of N per acre recommended make any difference? Well, because the amount of photosynthesis that happens on an acre in the fall, if you have seedlings that are already established, the quantity of nitrogen that is contained in rejuvenate is completely irrelevant and is making no net contribution to soil. That's not its purpose. That's not what it's designed for. That's where the better question is. Question from James on a previous ask me anything. You say that slug problems could be addressed by making sure you had enough. If you have an acre of soil and you measure the atmosphere above that acre, you have 78,000 tons, excuse me, 78,000 pounds of nitrogen above every acre of soil. So why would you buy any more iron either in the soil or on the plants? I'm not sure specifically in plants. And these you have to get the iron into the plants, which is a common. Which is a challenge in a lot of areas. I have a huge ongoing problem. The purpose of rejuvenate combined with biological inoculants is to fix some of that 78, 000 pounds of nitrogen and make it available to your plant. You shouldn't need to be buying anymore. So the purpose of rejuvenate is not to add nylon slugs. That has me redrilling much of the farm here in New Zealand for the last three years. Nitrogen is to serve as a catalyst for microbial fixation of nitrogen which should be a lot less expensive for you than buying it. Question from Phil. We grow three and a half acres. Since I went to a more regenerative farming operation I have been having to apply much more iron based slug bait than blueberries with no to minimal chemicals. Still would like we're using Kinsey still struggling with spotting. We've been using AEA products for three years but are still spotting. Struggling with spotted wing Drosophila and no and now leaf rust this year. I think that's what that is supposed to say. Yield is good in taste soil fertilizer and doing SAP analysis. We're not showing deficiency is good but we are far from achieving disease and pest resistance. We do three SAP tests per season. Should we be doing more testing? Well the question Phil is what do your three tests per season show? And also obviously from a plant performance response you're not getting of iron. That's intriguing. You're not even showing efficiencies of iron on SAP. As much as I would love this to be a simple solution as you say, I can't help feeling that there is more to this than you say. Could you please give me a much more to where you need to be at three and a half acres you have a large enough scale depending on your marketing and context but you have a large enough scale that it's economically justifiable to do more and the more detailed answer such as how much iron we're looking for in our test and what is the best way to achieve the berries themselves. It's concerning that you have this. All right James, good question. So leaf rust again showing up this year. But the berries themselves are often and the fruit of a plant is often the very last stage to to achieve resistance. But you should have achieved it well before now. So the deep I would suggest doing more intensive SAP analysis but more importantly what are you doing with the results from the SAP analysis? What is your frequency of foliar applications? What is your mineral Best and most thorough answer on slugs. That and the most thorough explanation that I've heard is coming from Harriet Mellow. So if you go to the balance look like I don't know the answer to those questions but three Years in except unless there are extenuating circumstances and extreme environmental challenges. Kind harvest platform@ Kindharvest AG Harriet Mellow has with major mineral imbalances from let's say very hard irrigation water, high chloride levels or something like that. Barring any a an incredible course that she exceptional circumstances you should have achieved Spotted wing Drosophilo in which she talks about carbon I think it's titled Carbon microcycling resistance before now and in this course at one point she gives a a question from Mr. Anonymous attendee with a very challenging question. How do we find a soil chemistry lab that can be trusted? We have sent soil samples to different labs with a variety of results. A very thorough explanation of why slugs. If you want to really complicate your perspective, you'll split a sample and show up in our problematic and send it to the same lab three times and discover that you can get three varying results from the same lab. How puzzling is that? It's important the the short version if I could for us to understand that soil testing is a very imprecise science. If you look at the lab testing stand condense it down there. There are also there is a connection to endards the the standards that labs are held to. It varies a little bit I think depending on the type of water transpiration, evaporation and so forth and what a plant's water metabolism looks like. But from a practical apple test and now the nature of the test that we're talking about and the standard that it's being held to. But if I'm not mistaken, the the standards are plus or minus 10%. Well, if you think about pluscation perspective I'm still of the persuasion in spite of your experience or minus 10% deviation. That's a total of a 20% deviation. And so I'm still of the persuasion that addressing adequate levels of iron will solve the problem. And if you had calcium levels on one test at 2400 parts per million, on other tests at 3000 parts per million, you would think those soils would be radically different. But that's still within the parameters of the acceptable deviation. So soil testing is a valuable tool. And so my first question mark we just need to understand that it would be what is the desired value of iron? That is it's not a perfect tool, it's an imprecise tool. And we need to manage with that context in mind a shift from 2400 being reported on SAP analysis. How was that desired value of standard parts per million to 2800 parts per million? In calcium availability established and is that true to the desired value? Does your plant does your crop truly have enough iron and is actually not that significant unless we've replicated it across three or four half a dozen samples and we know we have replicated data. Single sample data by itself requires room for variability. I would suggest the Again, there's. There's a lot that I don't know about your local setting and your local context, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect to address iron in the soil. I did a previous webinar on this Another question on a career in regenerative ag should they follow the traditional university route? Which universities would I recommend or should they consider topic? I think you can find it on YouTube but starting their own venture I get asked this question so often I should get advice from people who actually have experience and perspective. Your soil can have generous, even excessive levels of on the academic system and perhaps publish a blog post or write about this a little bit because this is a common recurring question. Iron and the crop still be deficient because the iron is is oxidized and the oxygen what I would propose is that there are some specific educational tracks as I understand it, that actually offer valuable insights and perspectives but they're usually not agronomy related. They are kind of agronomy adjacent. Only way to address that is with foliar applications of a reduced and chelated iron which is where we use our rebound iron. They might be particularly agroecology a number of people that I really appreciate and respect. If you get the right form of iron just do a simple experiment do backgrounds in an agroecology degrees, horticulture, entomology and so forth. But we'll foliar application of a couple of spots write your name out. You want to evaluate I think to what degree the information being presented in the course is aligned with contempt on the field or just do a call do just do a small square and if you have very agricultural practices and I think agroecology from what little I iron that is reduced and chelated can tell and what little I've observed seems to be a pathway to learning a lot about agricultural ecosystems that hasn't been captured and your crop needs iron you'll be able to see well there's one more caveat. If your crop needs iron and it buy contemporary ag. It doesn't have a surplus of nitrogen because surplus nitrogen can cover up these effects by already having a field that's dark green. If it doesn't have a surplus of Nitrogen. Question from Tom. I'm wondering if oreganite can really boost yields and plant health. I think of oreganite only as a form of relatively high quality calcium carbonate. And you know in most crops you can see a. A dark green up response to an iron application within days. And so the answer is, the question is does your soil in your context require calcium carbonate and would it benefit from that? And perhaps so in small amounts but they're a surprising application. It's very rapid. And so the large number of cases where a small amount of calcium carbonate is valuable the long term solution is to develop soil biology that can deliver nitrogen to the crop. The short term solution is to foliar apply at night. Well and beneficial but it's really a question of is that the greatest crop response that you can produce for the amount of money that you're spending and in a lot of cases the answer to genesis. And I'm, I'm of the persuasion that when you is yes because it's relatively inexpensive but there's also a lot of cases for which that isn't true. So you need to. We need more information. Question from Casey. Can you manipulate a. When the crop has adequate degeneres levels of nitrogen you're going to solve your slug problem. Root exudates based off of what you foliar feed the plant in season? Yes. Apple absolutely without question. And significantly specifically expressing different amino acids or organic acids than what the species typically. Question from Matt in process. So I don't know fruit production and possibly vegetables. What actions can I take to increase flavonoid Know about that part of the that second question Casey, based on how you framed it and defined it but we know that as plant health changes, as microbiome integrity changes the plant both permit production. Are there specific nutrients that growers should focus on specific target crops or peaches. Oh Matt, this is a great question. Yes, there are specific nutrients that are involved particularly the trace mineral metals, zinc juices very different carbohydrate and amino acid profiles and organic acid profiles and also has a very different root profile exudate and when I say very different I should add a qualifier in that and that Manganese, copper, cobalt. On a, on a lab report if you make, if you were to measure the amino acid profile it might appear that maybe. I don't know I'm making some. Making up a hypothetical scenario here. Maybe you asked me about flavonoids and not carotenoids. Lysine has increased by 5% and tryptophan has reduced so Addressing all of those minerals magnesium as well but the big contributing factor used by 2% and methionine has increased by 3% and you look at that and you say well there's no significant differences here like these. These differences are not significant and they're not from your in my perspective or a significant contributing factor in addition to these mineral elements active but they are extremely significant from a microbiome perspective. We know that when we are trying to propagate microorganisms in the lab changes in relative concentration of nutrients in parts per million is the microbiome because the concentrations can dramatically alter the microbiome in the both in the root system which microorganisms thrive and which fail to survive as well as within the plant tissue synthesizes a lot of flavonoids and provides them to plants and so what appears to be very slight changes in amino acid profiles when measured on a dry matter basis can be very significant changes from a microbiome expression profile. So it's a very important point that is that is worth highlighting so so this is not just plant synthesis but in fact it may be mostly yes foliar applications I would absolutely expect as plant health improves photosynthetic efficiency improves and all the concepts of the plant health pyramid you will get changes in the and the synthesis from the microbiome. So using the profile of plant root exudates high quality microbial inoculants on the leaf surface and in the Mike Omeg My goodness Mike, what an honor to have soil system and making sure you have really good biology established is pretty probably have you here thank you for being here. We are struggling to grow big leaves in our cherry orchards without lengthening the internode spacing on our limbs. How can we grow both big leaves and short spacing between the nodes on the shoots going to be going to have the most significant effect on increasing your flavonoid production. I'm surprised that this is the case Mike the I would suggest elevating boron and calcium levels higher and as I understand it. Question from Melissa I'm a new homesteader in northeast Texas with hopes of building some type of ag perhaps also silicon levels which is something that we need to develop and to talk about but my first guess we we know that boron can serve as a growth not as a it's too strong of a word to say that it can serve as a business. I know you typically work with large commercial farms My question is inhibitor but boron can really serve to inhibit node length node spacing and cherries are close to the top of the list of the crops that have the highest boron requirements. They're right up there. Regarding the PH of our sandy loam soil, the Brassicas some research a long time ago which is currently at about 4.5 NRC that I read reported that the healthiest cherry crops were produced using with 4 pounds of actual boron per acre per year. And this was done years before SAP analysis this research was conducted so that is that's the place where I would start looking. Yes agent said that it must apply a lime regularly. Question from Tucker let's say a wine grape vineyard followed an inadequate NPK approach historically and executed an NPK post harvest fertility I believe you said that establishing good soil health down to 40 inches will help the soil to hold onto its nutrients and that a diverse mix of forbs is the best way to build a plan that did not address micros, trace minerals or feed the soil biology. Although bud break and rapid shoot growth relies somewhat on nutritional reserves, how would you approach fertile dot? Do I need to start with an application of ag line before gladiator out of the gate immediately next season to make a significant difference in vegetative and reproductive functions of the vine for that season Getting started with a Forbes I've also been vermicomposting Would applying a slurry have well Tucker, you know the phrase that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction? I would take that phrase and adapt it to your containing effect on soil ph. So you ask a lot of questions Melissa and the answer I don't like giving a say for every previous action that applied that was in this answer but is it depends. So I'm responding to your last answer. Last question first when applying a is applied where you want to go in a different direction. If you want to go in a different direction immediately in the short term like flipping a switch it will require an equal and opposite antidote or an equal and opposite counterforce. So flurry of vermicompost have an effect on soil ph? It depends on if your soil has a reserve of nutrients held the soil mineral matrix that biology if if for example you have a vine that and soil that now has I'm just making up a scenario here. If you have surplus levels of nitrogen then you will need to counter that with surplus and release so some soils have high calcium and magnesium and potassium levels of magnesium and sulfur and molybdenum. If you have potassium levels that are locked up in the soil mineral matrix and if you were to have surplus levels of potassium. You will need to counter that with surplus levels of manganese. And so you're asking me this question in the phrase of how do you get immediate results? You have ply vermic compost. Theoretically you could release some of that and have an effect on ph. That's certainly something we've observed many times. However, if you're to provide an equally strong opposing counterforce if you can take some time to transition and transition over a 6, 812 month period it'll require a lot less force. Soil doesn't have that parent geological material doesn't and be much smoother and easier transition and for that matter probably be easier for the plants as well and healthier for them to not have as much contact capability. Then you can apply all the vermicompost you want and you're not going to get conflict going on within within themselves the response that you're looking for so. The to your second to last question can't believe that an hour has I'm still addressing questions that were asked in the first eight minutes. How is that even possible? All right, my question do you need to start with an application of lime before getting started with thanks for your patience to everyone and I will try to keep moving through these Forbes no you don't. You could start with either of those but my question would be are you in a situation where you have to choose why not do both of them at the same time and. Question from Weston I'm going to broadcast wheat seed and heroin. Would you recommend blending seed flare on the seed? Yes, I absolutely would. Would it be good to blend granular sugar? Not necessarily. I'm not really a fan of sugar on seed and also I'm of course there's a lot of context knowledge that I'm missing. But the the way to speed up the I would be concerned about making seeds sticky and not having it broadcast quite as well. Question from Mark what is the critical point of influence for sizing brussel sprouts if nutrition is managed adequately during this period of growth? Do you recommend topping the system ecosystem response to get the fat the fastest ROI and the greatest crop response the most rapidly is to do both of the plants to produce large firm sprouts or is this counterproductive? The benefit of topping the plant is that you get a lot of uniform much greater uniformity and it's not necessarily counterproductive to have the high degree of uniformity from the base of the stem all the way to the top. The lime application and the forbs at the same time it's not an either or question. You can do both. Question from Gio. Red and mineral attrition of higher plants that cytokin is known for shoot growth, not root growth. And the opposite is also partially true for auxins. Am I misunderstanding something? And you haven't yet reached a lot of critical points of influence in. In the case of Brussels sprouts because you're still in the vegetative stage at this point, it wouldn't be until the following year. This is a biennial crop. So it wouldn't be until the following year that you get to the point of bud initiation and so forth. Question from Robert what can I do to improve soil besides moving cattle across it? With soil that is mostly sandy and 20 acres of pasture? I'm. I need to host a webinar what you're misunderstanding Gio as I understand our series or maybe I'll write a series of articles on some stand it is that of the things that I'm learning about pasture management. But the short version is yes, cytokine and pullet does what I would suggest, Robert is play a role in shoot growth. And yes, auxin does play a role in root growth. But they are managing your grazing pressure and your grazing system so that you produce a pasture that is dominant in Forbes. And what I mean by dominant in Forbes rather than grasses is not that when you look at it visually across the the minor hormone in each of those places, in each of those across the landscape, it appears you have mostly grass because you'll have mostly grass biomass. But if you count the number of plants per square patients. So it is never what I'm attempting to describe in in my previous conversations. Shoots foot. You'll have more four plants than you have grass plants per square foot. They're just hidden because they have less vegetative biomass. But in that type of ecosystem where you have Forbes beasts are never in shoots. We never have 100 auxins and 0% cytokines. If these being dominant, I'm persuaded that that is one of the pathways to regenerating pasture ecosystems. Always a blend. It might be 55 auxins and 45 cytokines very rapidly. Question Are we planning to expand our distribution network? Yes, we are. And similarly in the roots. So both are involved, both are a part of expanding it constantly. If you have any questions about specific regions, please reach out to our team the system as well as other phytohormones. But it is the balance. What do you hear farmers say are the biggest barriers to entry into regenerative soil practices. And what do you think the answers between the two that determines plant expression? The barriers are? Well Jeremy, there are a lot of barriers all the way. There's a lot of external barriers and which of those is dominant. So I would broadly, yeah, there are a lot of barriers. The barriers. Hope that clarifies and helps answer your question. Hey John, sorry, I just want to jump in. There were a few questions submitted in advance. Some of the barriers are becoming easier every year. Some of them are becoming harder. But you know, there was a period of time when we had product challenges where our products at AEA were. They were very effective when they were plants. I just direct messages that to plants but they weren't the easiest products to use. And to you I just didn't want those to get lost. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks to our incredible team, our R and D team at aea. We've made a lot of progress in this over the last 12 months in particular. But at the exact same time we would have product that we could send to two different group question from Eugene and one grower would have a lot. What is the best soil? Silicon fertile. Lot of problems with it. And another grower would have no problems with it. And we would when we had conversations with the second grower and this has happened several times like these other growers are having problems with product. From dispatch. Why are you analyzers for blueberries, diatomaceous earth, basalt powders, etc? Diatomaceous earth is a possibility, but I don't see, I don't have a lot of data not having problems. And I still remember this one grow in particular. But the data that I do have, we don't. Plants don't France was. Well, you just, you figure it out. You figure it out. And there's that mindset that tends to prevail in the farmers that are the innovators in the region of agriculture space. Yes, there are barriers. Yes, there are challenges, all kinds of them. And they just figured it out to go through and figure it out. I think I'll pause my answer to you for, for the moment on that one, Jeremy. There's, there's a lot more nuanced conversation that could be had. And all of you know what your own challenges are. There's community social challenges, mental. There's real physical challenges on equipment and technology that's available. There's labor challenges, there's increased management. There are challenges that barriers that are erected by the USDA and crop insurance. The list goes on and on. And yet there's a group of people that just figures it out and moves on. Is there any quantifiable data on the biocidal effects of glyphosate on soil and other biology? Yes, there is a lot of it. If you're willing to look, just go to Google Scholar and do a search for glyphosate challenges on soil. And also while you're at it, you might be interested in looking up the one of the three patents on Google. Actually not on Google. One of the three patents on glyphosate that is held by Monsanto is for glyphosate as an antibiotic. So without question it is a very potent biocide because it has been patented for precisely that purpose. Question from Daniel like to tell us in some detail about corn critical points of influence. How are they addressed? I remember you talking about some V stage of the corn plan is determine the number of ears, number of rows, number of kernels, etc. Where can I find this info in more detail and how is it used regarding foliar management? Daniel, you're I have talked about this in the past in a couple of webinars. I think we have one webinar that is titled Managing Nutrition at Critical Points of Influence and we don't talk about corn specifically, but if you want to talk about corn specifically, please reach out to one of our agronomy teams and they can describe for you how we put together nutritional protocols for those specific stages. And yeah, that's what I would recommend. Reach out to our team. It's beyond the scope of this conversation for me to go into that level of detail here. Question from Daniel Is there a way to loosen heavy red clay? The answer is yes. Generous levels of calcium, ultimately organic matter. And what that means exactly for your context is yeah, need more information. Know the answer to that. An agronomist recently expressed concern about using chicken litter in my organic rod acre setting due to the magnesium found in most litter. That's surprising. I thought most layer manure had higher calcium levels. I guess I don't know so much about bro manure, but my question would be why do we have high magnesium levels? My soil is at 24 to 27% base saturation magnesium with calcium at 65 to 68. Would you recommend staying staying away from chicken litter? Well, I would first recommend finding out exactly what the magnesium content is of the chicken litter and if it is high then you don't need to add more magnesium to this soil unless your CEC is below 10 at which point these percent base saturation numbers need revision or need to be reconsidered. So to your last question, what are the best practices for dealing with high magnesium soils? Part one kind of the easy answer is gypsum applications. Part two is changing crop types. Your CEC is below 10 at which point these percent base saturation numbers need revision or need to be reconsidered. So to your last question, what are the best practices for dealing with high magnesium soils? Part one kind of the easy answer is gypsum applications. Part two is changing crop types to having different root systems and building soil organic matter. Those are kind of the three. The gypsum is kind of the shortest to having different root systems and building soil organic matter. Those are kind of the three. The gypsum is kind of the short term answer that will give you a rapid high value crop response. Question from Meleta how to treat high bicarbonates and irrigation more than oxidizing effect on soil Depending on levels this there's a lot of term answer that will give you a rapid high value crop response. People who are working on treating challenged water conditions. So you need to buffer it out with acids or with a sulfur burner of some type. There's yeah, that could be a whole webinar in and of itself question question from me how to treat high bicarbonates and irrigation while not oxidizing Question from Daniel I'd like to ask about the Regenerative Ag Academy. Looking forward to watching the webinars on Redox and the Foliar design course. So that information is still available Daniel but it has all been migrated to Kind Harvest. So if you go to kindharvest Ag, those courses that were on the Regen Ag Academy have all been moving effect on soil depending on levels. This there's a lot of moved to that location. Question from Anton why do your recommendations typically rely heavily on foliar applications of plant Foliar applications of nutrient? Biologically, plant roots are specifically designed for nutrient uptake. People who are working on treating challenged water conditions. So you need to buffer it out with acids or with a sulfur burner of some type. Should we not be more focused on soil nutrient availability and the soil microbiome? What peer reviewed research backs up your conclusions? All right, so why first question why do our recommendations typically rely heavily on foliar applications of nutrients? For the very good reason that they are the applications that when they're properly designed produce. There's yeah, that could be a whole webinar in and of itself. The greatest economic crop response and the greatest soil regeneration response for the least amount of money input because we're harvesting or harnessing the plant's photosynthetic engine. With a well designed foliar spray you can increase a plant a crops photosynthesis photosynthetic rate and increase the quantity of sugars and carbon that they sequester. From Daniel I'd like to ask about the Regenerative Ag Academy. Looking forward to watching the webinars on Redox and the Foliar design course so that information is still available much less expensively, much more efficiently than anything else that you can do. Secondly, the purpose and the intention of foliar applications is as a transition tool well Daniel but it has all been migrated to Kind Harvest so if you go to kindharvest Ag, those courses that were on the Regen Ag Academy have all been moved. They are there to accelerate the system. They're not necessarily there to be a long term tool that there is long term dependency on, but they're there to speed up the process of regeneration in which they are unequaled. There is nothing else that works quite so well as a well designed foliar application in my opinion, with the possible exception of inocul to that location says seed treatments and Question from Anton why do your recommendations typically to your last question, what peer reviewed research backs up your conclusions? There is an abundance of peer reviewed information on the effectiveness of foliar applications. I referenced some of it in my some of my blog posts. You can go to my blog@john kempf.com There's a lot of information there. Or use Google Scholar if you're really looking for the information. You'll find it in abundance. There's a lot of it out there. There's one of the recent publications on foliar applications that I really like is by the International Plant Food Institute, which is I think located in France. They have a PDF that's available to download and also a you can request a print copy of the book for free as well. Rely heavily on foliar applications of plant Foliar applications of nutrient Biologically plant roots are specifically designed for nutrient uptake. Should we not be more focused on soil nutrient availability and and it is an excellent review of the kind of the state of current knowledge and scientific research on foliar application of nutrients. And I also the book is so awesome that I wrote a blog post about it. It's linked in the blog on my blog as well. Soil Microbiome what peer reviewed research backs up your conclusion? All right, so why first question why do I follow up question if you're not using AEA products, what generic minerals and biological inoculants would you include in a root dip for veggie for vegetable transplants and bare root trees? If you're not using AEA products then why are we having a conversation? Recommendations typically rely heavily on FO applications of nutrients. Partially joking of course, but also it's it's impossible for me to make recommendations for generic products because there is such for the very good reason that they are the application a wide degree of variation that I can't make reasonable, consistent, reliable recommendations. So I sadly have to pass on the answer to that question. Question from Shankar hi there Hope. Look folks that when they're properly designed produce over to seeing you in the end of this week or maybe next week. I'm not sure. We have built perma bed small farm models and systems in India to build soil aggregate structure from 6 inches to 4 inches depth. You mentioned that using Forbes of COVID crops is a great way how to identify them in India. So the type of plant that I'm describing is not a grass and not a lagoon and as I understand it broadly most of the other you might have some tropical plants that I'm not familiar with, but broadly many of the other plant species fit into this category that is broadly called forbs or broadleaves. They're not grasses and not the greatest economic crop response and the greatest soil regeneration response for the least amount of money input because we're harvesting or harnessing the plant's photosynthetic engine with a well designed foyers, not legumes and practically everything else as I understand it. Will our consulting services be available in the uk? Yes, they already are. Connect with Kish Johnson. Do you think that using existing bindweed as a native winter cover crop, tarping in the spring and adding soil primer after would be a viable option for using, treating and trying to outcompete the bindweed. I've noticed it doesn't die back in the winter. Perhaps working with it instead of against it is the best long term option for getting rid of it. Jeremy Depends on your context and your soil mineral and microbiome state. What we observe with buying weed is that it tends to go completely haywire and want spray. You can increase a plant a crops photosynthesis photosynthetic rate and increase the quantity of sugars and carbon that they sequester much less expensively, much more efficiently than anything else that you can do. Secondly, to take over when your soils have excess of levels of potassium and then gradually over time as potassium levels are reduced, it tends to lose its vigor. It's still there, but not nearly as vigorous. So I think the answer would depend on how conducive your soil environment is to bind weed. If it is highly conducive to bine weed, then simply tarping it and following the approach you recommend may not be enough. On the other hand, if it's right on the edge of where the soil has been largely remediated and no longer needs the services of bindweed, then your approach may be very effective. So it's going to depend on how vigorous your bindweed is and why it's there in the first place. The purpose and the intention of foliar applications is as a transition tool. They are there to accelerate the system. They're not necessarily there to be a long term tool. That there is long term dependency Question from Rich when thinking of bacterial fungal balance, do you see issues with some of these microbes like boron, zinc, magnesium as related to availability of other macros in corn and soybeans? Are there issues there with adding in humic and vulvix altering ph for availability? How would you address this? Rich I'm not I'm struggling to follow your question here a little bit, but they're there to speed up the process of regeneration in which they are unequaled. There is nothing else that works quite so well as a well designed folio. Do you see issues with micros like bronze Inc. Manganese or magnesium related to other application? In my opinion, with the possible exception of inoculants as seed treatments and availability of other macros and corns. I mean, so the way that I would say I think what you're asking is yes, the availability of all of these trace minerals influences the plant absorption capacity of other macronutrients. Zinc for example is associated with phosphorus absorption. Boron is associated with calcium absorption. Manganes is associated with potassium absorption. And so adding fulvic and humic substances tends to improve mineral availability of trace minerals as well as of these macronutrients. I hope I'm answering the question that you're asking and if not, then you're welcome to clarify to your last question what peer reviewed research backs up your conclusions? There is an abundance of peer reviewed information on the effectiveness of foliar applications. I referenced some of it in my some of my blog posts. Question from Rye Carlson hi Rye, I grow a companion cover crop. You can go to my blog@john kemp.com There's a lot of information there with my cash crop, but I crimp or is smothered after flowering before the cash crop begins to flower. When that happens, the cash crop seems to be well supplied in nutrition and can be seen to go up in plant health and heal from an infection if there is one. For example, is this primarily due to nutrient release from the decomposing plant material or the decomposing and unemployment microbes the plants grew, or both? Is this similar to the effect of applying a soil biological primer in a very large food source? Or use Google Scholar if you're really looking for the information, you'll find it in abundance. Great questions Ry. I would suggest that it's probably both and possibly a third factor as well. There's a lot of it out there. There's one of the recent publications on foliar applications that I really like is by the International Plant Food Institute, which is I think located in France. It may also be reduced to a flush of carbon dioxide release from the decomposition of the rye biomass. Many crops benefit a great deal from applications of carbon dioxide as you're describing, and so I would suspect that the carbon dioxide is also a contributing factor. Question from Andy Run a sheep and beef farm in New Zealand. A lot of farmers are using high analysis fertilizer every year and have a flat on they have a PDF that's available to download and also a with a plane. What would you recommend as a foyers? You can request a print copy of the book for free as well. Ready to move away from high analysis fertilizer? I I can't answer that question in the context of a webinar without knowing a whole lot more information. You're obviously producing forages so and it is an excellent review of the kind of the state of current knowledge and scientific research on foliar application of nutrients. You want materials that are going to to enhance very strong vegetative growth, but that will be the second priority. The first priority will be increasing photosynthesis, so you'll want to look at foliar materials like magnesium and iron and manganese most likely possibly also a touch of of nitrogen. Secondly, you'll want to look at vegetative nutrients, so those would be calcium, possibly nitrogen. Again depending on the context and the setting. And then that's not and I also the book is so awesome that I wrote a blog post not even considering we haven't even talked about the materials that really increase your forage quality and your livestock performance. So you may not get a significant forage quantity or yield response from adding a touch of cobalt or a touch of molybdenum, but you're likely to get about it. It's linked in the blog on my blog as well. Follow up Question if you're not using AEA products, what a significant livestock response from those applications. And they're very tiny quantities that are required so there's there's a lot of further questions I would need to know the answers to before I'd be able to make a specific recommendation. But I would I would invite you Generic minerals and biological inoculants would you include in a root dip for a veggie for vegetable transplants and bare root trees if you're not using a to reach out to our team at AEA and we'd be happy to dig into that question from Sam Farming on some land that used to have intensive chicken farming. Based on soil tests it appears there are significant there is significant arsenic contamination EA products Then why are we having a conversation? Is that a result of the arsenic added to chicken feed? I would guess that's probably the case Sam, although I don't know for sure. What should I do to mitigate and what should I avoid growing parts per million range from 23 to 120. Partially joking of course, but Sam, I don't know where you are in the country, but I vaguely seem to recall reading this is several years ago. I seem to recall reading that growing a crop of hemp was very effective. Also it's it's impossible for me to make recommendations for generic products because there is such a remediating arsenic but I could be mistaken. What you can do is you can go to Google Scholar and do a search for arsenic phytoremediation. The word phyto is for plants a wide degree of variation that so arsenic phytoremediation is likely to give you a list of plants that you can use to remediate and remove the arsenic from the soil and that you could you would when I say remove some plants will accumulate it in the plant residue I can't make reasonable, consistent, reliable recommendations so I sadly have to pass on the answer to that question. Other plants seem to have some magical ability with their associated microbiome where the arsenic levels seem to decline in both soil and implants and so that's that's what I would look for. Question from Shankar hi there. Hopefully look for. Question from Pranav, an apple grower from India. We have monsoons from the beginning of the harvest season which leads to uncontrollable fungal infections alternaria etcetera Leaving almost no leaves on the trees. Almost all the farmers are trying to control it through a mix of contact and systemic fungicides. I've been trying to control it by growing mustard as a winter cover crop. One to two applications of contact fungicides. What would be the best we're seeing you in the end of this week or maybe next week. I'm not sure a solution to control such an infection. I'm trying to remember. We have built perma bed small farm models and systems in India to build soil aggregate structure for Alternaria, if I recall correctly, is associated with manganese. But I think the the approach that you're taking, it's very valuable to from 6 inches to 4 inches depth. You mentioned that using forbs of COVID crops do try to grow more diverse cover crops, but you haven't mentioned that you're doing anything for mineral nutrition management. And that's the place where I would begin is try to make sure you have balanced mineral nutrition with all the trace minerals. Question is a great way. How do I identify them in India? So from Teemo, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of chemistry knowledge in your publications. Which topic would you recommend diving into to better understand the biological reactions of an implants? Teemo, the type of plant that I'm describing is not a grass. You say the biological reactions. I'm. I'm kind of assuming you mean the biological reactions in response to chemistry and to nutrient imbalances. In other words you're referring to. Yeah, I think. I think if I'm understanding your question correctly I would refer you to my recommended reading list. I've categorized that into different categories and that is it's a collection of. I don't know, maybe it's less than 100 books. I think out of. They're the best out of thousands that I've read and there are a number of those that I think you would find very valuable. Question from Francisco. If we use fertigation, what is the effect of fertilizing once a week versus every day? It depends on your and not a lagoon. And as I understand it broadly most of the other you. You might have some tropical plants that I'm not familiar with. But broadly many of the other plant species fit into this category. That is broadly soil, your context, how much water your plants are utilizing and so forth. But I've had some interesting experiences where high value fruit and vegetable growers chose to fertigate every day instead of once a week with anywhere from a 20 to a 30% yield increase and in some cases higher. So spoon feeding nutrients every day. If it is easy for you to do so with an automated system, you should absolutely do so. Just vertigate every called Forbes or Broadleaves. They're not grasses and not gay instead of once a week and there can be some remarkable crop responses. Follow up question from Dave Ryan on the silage corn crop rotation crops. What cover crops would be best or optimal? Dave I would refer you to the team at Green Cover Seed. Keith Burns has assembled a really great team of people who are the COVID crop experts and I also could offer some suggestions, but to do so would require me knowing more information is probably beyond the scope of what I'm able to address well in in this webinar. Question from Robert I'm a veggie grower that worked with AEA in Tennessee but have moved to Australia. I don't know whether to offer my condolences or my congratulations. Robert, Hope you're enjoying your your move. What do you recommend to look for when finding a SAP analysis company not able to ship all the way to Nova Crop? There are actually a number of growers in Australia who are shipping all the way to Nova Crop and when you're evaluating a SAP analysis lab, the one key thing to look for is consistency. Consistency of of reporting. If you send them five sets of leaves that are as biological identical as you can make them coming from the same location or as close to the same location as possible on the exact same plant, how variable are the results? That is the key we need. We need consistency, consistency of SAP extraction, consistency of measurement and so forth. That's the most important metric. Question. Not legumes and practically everything else as I understand it. Will our consulting services be available in the uk? Yes, they already are. Connect with Kish Johnson. Do you think that using existing bindweed as a native winter cover crop, tarping in the spring and adding soil primer aft From Andrew there's an agronomic line of thought that proposes when it comes to influencing soil structure, the cation would be a viable option for using, treating and trying to outcompete the bindweed ratios, namely calcium to magnesium should be drawn down from the total adjusted figures as opposed to the commonly accepted. I've noticed it doesn't die back in the winter. Perhaps working with it instead of against it is the best long term option for getting rid of it. Jeremy Diplomelic 3 or ammonium acetate figures. What's your take on that? I don't know Andre. This is the first time I'm hearing about what you're proposing. It's interesting. It's interesting but I don't know. It's. It's really as I understand it, if you look at it from a biochemistry perspective, the reason William Albrecht's work was so foundational, so fundamental was that he was able to identify that it is the ions on the outside depends on your context and your soil mineral and microbiome state. Well, we observe the soil colloid. It's the ions on the soil colloid that really influence flocculation of soil particles, particularly clay particles. So good flocculation we understand is an expression of calcium, magnesium, potassium with bindweed is that it tends to go completely haywire and want imbalance on the colloid. Now we also know that the malic 3 and the ammonium acetate extraction don't measure precisely what is on the colloid. They're our closest approximation as I understand it. But they also will measure calcium content in limestone particles for example. So I suppose it would depend on the the soil makeup, how much sand, silt, clay we have, what does the geological parent material look like. I've not heard the idea that you're proposing before. It doesn't make immediate sense to me on the surface, but I don't know for sure. Something worth digging into. Question from Daniel. Is there a nitrogen regulator like manganese is for potassium H. Magnesium is a regulator to a slight degree. So when you have plants that have extremely high levels of magnesium, then those plants to take over when your soils have excess of levels of potassium and then gradually over time as potassium levels are reduced, it tends to lose its vigor. It's still there but not nearly as vigorous. So I think the answer would depend don't absorb and don't utilize nitrogen as well. So there is an element of magnesium serving as a regulator for nitrogen. However, because of nitrogen is just very readily ready available excuse me, solubility. And because plants have adapted on how conducive your soil environment is to bind weed. If it is highly conducive to buying weed, then simply tarping it and following the approach you recommend may not did in nitrogen deprived environments. Or they're constantly searching for nitrogen and they take it up so readily. My understanding is that usually the magnesium would have to be considered very generous or even on the excessive side in order to have that effect on nitrogen. It can be a useful tool. I've many several occasions when we've had let's say tree fruit that were susceptible to fire blight that had high levels of nitrogen because of compost applications or something like that, you can put on a foliar application with a high content of magnesium and reduce the nitrogen content and increase resistance to disease be enough. On the other hand, if it's right on the edge of where the soil has been largely remediated and no longer needs the services of bindweed, then your approach may be very effective. How do we Detective? So it's going to depend on how Determine the adequate amount of gypsum to add as a source of calcium in a blueberry program. Do we need to check CEC analysis and current amount of calcium in the soil? What is the sufficient and optimal amount of calcium in the soil in order to have a balance between cations? Thank you Melita. That is an awesome question. When we look at calcium in the soil from a part per million perspective, which I suggest, I suggest that we need to start having these conversations in terms of part per million rather than how vigorous your bindweed is and why it's there in the first place and percent base saturation for the very simple reason that there are minimal thresholds. You you need Question from Rich when thinking of bacterial fungal balance, do you see issues with some of these microbes like boron, zinc, magnesium at a minimum of a thousand part per million calcium to grow really healthy plants and on soil with a CEC of 7 or 8 or maybe even I forget exactly where the threshold is. Somewhere around 10. If you look purely at the CEC and percent base saturation, a thousand parts per million would equal something like 80 or 90%. So it appears that you have excess of levels of calcium, but you don't. You have only just enough to grow a really healthy crop at a thousand parts per million. So we need a minimum of a thousand parts per million. And then I would suggest looking at calcium to magnesium to potassium ratios. I think the ratios that Albrecht identified are largely correct with some adjustments for various soil type is related to availability of other macros in corn and soybeans. Are there issues there with adding in humic and folvics, altering ph for availability types and extremely heavy soils? The ratios are still generally correct. But look at the ratios in terms of part per million ratios instead of percent pay saturation ratios and that's really produced the highest quality crop. Responses. Thank you to all of you for sticking with me as I go through these questions. I know some of these were asked a little while ago, so I'm trying to move through them. Question from Ed we're going through an unusually cold, damp rainy season close To Mexico City. How do we prevent rust or fungus damage to on oats plants? We had this, I had a, I had a day long session with a group of small grains growers recently. We were talking about rust and head rust and fazarium and other diseases. How would you address this? Rich I'm not, I'm struggling to follow your question here a little bit and many of these dis. Do you see issues with micros like bronzing, manganese or magnesium related to abuses and molds are most mostly a challenge on plants that do not have adequate levels of the trace mineral metals. So again the foundational stuff has to be addressed. But once the foundational nutrients, the macronutrients are addressed zinc, manganese, copper, boron. If plants have adequate levels of those four elements, zinc, manganese, copper, boron, the list the percentage of diseases that would be prevented is very large. It's above 60% for sure across most crops. If you addressed zinc, manganese, copper, boron, you would, we would be successful in preventing a lot of diseases, including these fungal diseases and rust. Question from Melissa. Is an endophyte turning pathogenic more likely a product of nutrient imbalance or microbiome imbalance or some other stress factor? Alyssa, the answer is yes. Availability of other macros and corns. I mean so the way that I would say I think what you're asking is yes, the availability of all of these trace minerals influences the plant absorption capacity of other macronutrients. Zinc for example, is associated with phosphorus. A nut tree crop, the context is a nut tree crop is susceptible to an endophytic disease, is normally resistant to my first from a, from a practical management perspective, the easiest piece to manage is nutritional imbalances. And I'm not, I don't know for sure what endophytic disease you're referring to, but what's absorption? Boron is associated with calcium absorption. Manganese is associated with I think about other, other infectious potassium absorption and actions which are in a plant basket or tissue like Pierce's disease or crown gall or citrus greening or Goss's wilt anytime. So adding fulvic and humic substances tends to improve mineral availability of trace mineral. We have a bacterial infection in the plant vascular tissue, whether it's the xylem or the phloem. Almost invariably that can be effectively managed with nutrition management. It's true of all of the disease as well as of these macronutrients. I hope I'm answering the question that you're asking and if not, then you're welcome to clarify just that I mentioned just a little bit ago Pierce's disease and citrus screening and others. Question from Gassam My plant stems have Question from Ry Carlson hi Ryder, I grow a companion cover crop a falling over droopy appearance despite having healthy looking leaves context of proper watering. My question would be I've seen you've seen vigorous growth and radical improvement of your soil. My question would be do they have excessive levels of nitrogen and adequate levels of calcium? Excess of nitrogen can give you weak up with my cash drop but I crimp or is smothered after flowering before the cash crop begins to flower. When that happens the cash crop seems to be well supplied in stems that fall over. That would be the first first question that I would ask. Question from Omari I'm an agronomist from Bermuda, recently been hired by the government to do extension work with local farmers. I've been inactive in agronomy for a decade and I've been asked by the director suggest some training traditioning can be seen to go up in planned health and heal from an infection programs and resources to help me get current Does AEA provide agronomy crop advisor training or are there any that you would recommend? Yeah, I think I just answered this. I would look at the Kind harvest platform. There's some really great courses there and also my recommended reading list. Does AEA work with government extension programs either as advisors or support to advisors? We have done some limited work and would be open to more in this in this regard. So yeah, thank you if there is one. For example, is this primarily due to nutrient release from the decomposing plant material or the decomposing and unemployment? Thank you for the work that you're doing. Amari. Question from Sean could you explain the effects of potassium chloride on pasture soils in areas with high rainfall? I think what I'm seeing is the effect of potassium accumulation, microbes the plants grew, or both. Is this similar to the effect of applying a soil biological primer in a very large food source in pasture soils with the chloride causing leaching of other cations? Yes, it can do that. Whoop something. Oh, there we go. Just bounced around. These soils have high Morgan extraction potassium levels 150 part per million. How would calcium application affect these pastures? So Sean, lots of conversations that could be had here. I would suggest that you listen to my podcast interview with great questions, Ryan. I would suggest that it's probably both and possibly a third factor as well. Oh, I'm blanking out. Richard Dick Mulvaney it may also be reduced to a flush of carbon dioxide release from the decomposition of the rye biomass many and read his papers on the potassium paradox. I have written about it some on my blog as well. The short version is that potassium chloride very seldom produces a plant yield response and if it does it's often due to the electrolyte effect, not due to the potassium response. And if I was trying to produce a high quality yield response in forages I would use gypsum to do that. I would use calcium sulfate and not potassium chloride. You'll produce a similar or better growth response and higher quality at the same time. Roz Kempe has a question about using homemade worm castings. Is this something you recommend? Sure, absolutely. And the reason I don't talk about worm bee crops benefit a great deal from applications of carbon dioxide as you're describing and so I would suspect that the carbon dioxide is also a contributing factor. Castings is because many people don't have access to them and certainly not on a commercial scale. In your career did you have a chance to work on eliminating the flavascence, the disease caused by phytoplasm bacteria in grapes? I would have to look that. I wonder if that's Pierce's disease. I'm not sure. Can you share some advice on plant macro micronutrients or any nutrition or any foil treatment for mitigating that disease? So this is perhaps a question for us to have a follow up conversation with or for you to connect with the AEA team on. But in short, whenever you have bacterial infections, I'm assuming this is a bacterial infection. Yes, you did say Phytoplasma bacteria. When you have bacterial infections in the xylem or in the phloem, it is a function of not having a proper carbohydrate balance, which is a function in many cases of not having enough molybdenum. Question from Andy I run a sheep and beef farm in New Zealand. A lot of farmers are using high analysis fertilizer every year and have to fly it on with a plane. What would you recommend as a foliar spray to move away from high analysis fertilizer? I. I can't answer that question. Manganese. Let me say it this way just for simplicity's sake. You're in Europe. Send leaf samples to Nova Crop Control and in the context of a webinar, without knowing a whole lot more information, balance the mineral levels according to SAP analysis desired values and I would be amazed if the disease did not disappear. That's been our ex that that's been our experience with these types of diseases. You're obviously producing forages so you want materials that are going to enhance very strong. And also yeah, we, we have developed our own desired values of nutrients specifically for disease resistance. So they might be slightly different from Nova crop control. But make sure you have adequate degenerate levels of trace minerals and I would expect to see vegetative growth. But that will be the second priority. The first priority will be increase the disease fade away. Question from Oliver. Do you have any special recommendations for compacted soil? Yes, I only have precinct photosynthesis. So you'll want to look at foliar materials like magnesium and iron and manganese most likely possibly also a touch of nitrogen. Secondly, one recommendation, figure out how to decompact it. Whether that's with plant root systems or with using steel machinery. Whatever it takes. Are there any products or practices that help mitigate salt stress on crops? Soil tests are minimum 300 pounds of sodium per acre. Ouch. As high as a thousand pounds of sodium per acre. Ouch. You'll want to look at vegetative nutrients. So those would be. And well water tests high in salt on bicarbonates trying to use as much surface water as possible. But still tests high on sodium, well calcium, possibly nitrogen. Again I would start asking the question why are you irrigating there and why are you irrigating with that water? And what crops can you grow that require less irrigation? What about pistachios? What about agave? What about other types of. Depending on the context and the setting. And then that's not even considering. We haven't even talked about the materials that really increase your for desert environment plants. Because continuing to irrigate with high salt and high bicarbonate water is carries the certainty of turning that soil into an even more alkali desert than what it currently is. That doesn't seem to be a sustainable long term solution. So there are materials that you can add and I forget what they are right now, but there are specific assets that you can add. Things you can add to your quality and your livestock performance. So you may not get a significant forage quantity or yield response from adding a touch of cobalt or a touch of molybdenum. But you're likely to get your soil to leach your sodium out of the a horizon further down into the soil profile. But that doesn't fix the problem in the long term. It makes the problem worse. The long term might be 20 years or 30 years or 50 years. In the long term it just you get continued Sodium accumulation, a significant livestock response from those applications. What is the best strategy to help crops in northern climates? 4 months without frost to help maximize our early plant growth and photosynthesis and they're very tiny quantities that are required. So there's, there's a lot of further questions I would need to know the answers to. In high luminosity months, May, June, seed gets in the ground in cold soil, lots of sun early on. Crops always seem to desire disease before the black layer every year even though the killing frost dates are getting later. Plants give up in late August when days get shorter and do is stay in the canopy for a longer time. The question is why are your plants dying of disease earlier? That's the question that we need to ask and that's the question we need to answer. I would suspect it's a nutritional imbalance of some type. Perhaps low manganese be one of the things that we keep in mind but probably low trace minerals generally. And yeah, we can answer that question with SAP analysis. Question from Nikki. I'm a farmer conducting a southern Sarah study on the microbiome of compost tea. I am comparing different brews of area to compost tea and what microbes are amplified after 6 and 12 hours given different single and combination feeds. Humic acids, kelp, molasses, fish, hydrolysate, alfalfa. I have found that there is greatest diversity of microbiomes in the beginning of microbes in the beginning. Yep, that would be what I would have expected as time goes by. Only about three main families survive before I'd be able to make a specific recommendation. But I would, I would invite you to reach out to our team at AEA and we'd be happy to dig into that question from Sam. Farming on some land that used to have intensive chicken farming. Based on soil tests it appears there are significant. There is significant arsenic contamination and are amplified. All the other bacterial families die off. My question is why does it do this? What are we brewing this compost tea for? Yeah, yeah Nikki, you ask really good questions. Is that a result of the arsenic added to chicken feed? I would guess that's probably the case Sam. Although I don't know for sure. What should I do to mid you are selecting four microbes that thrive in that particular environment and you're selecting four microbes that also thrived in your compost environment. And so the intersection of those two is negate and what should I avoid growing parts per million range from 23 to 120 narrowing it down to three families. And your last question what are we brewing this compost tea for? Is an outstanding question like what what benefit do we need the crop to have and is is this compost Sam, I don't know where you are in the country opposed t really the best fit and the best purpose for that. I love the question love the research that you're doing. It's an outstanding project and it's quite exciting that we now have tools available like DNA sequencing to be able to But I vaguely seem to recall reading measure and understand exactly what's going on. So this is you're doing really great work. I'm quite excited. The question that I would ask and I don't know the answer off the top of my head is what are this is several years ago I seem to recall reading that growing a crop of hemp was very effective. The instances in a crop life cycle where application of those particular groups of family or those particular families, those particular microbes can be particularly helpful is it when they're exposed to a remediating arsenic but I could be mistaken specific disease is it in particularly challenged soil environments. So this is the the opportunity as we have these we we don't understand very much about the role of what you can do is you can go to Google Scholar and do a search for arsenic phytoremediation specific of families generally and of individual species most certainly in the soil profile and in the plants and we know that many I think we know that many of these families and organisms the word phyto is for plants have very beneficial effects when they are most needed and at other times we apply them and we get very minimal crop responses and that's because they're not most needed right at that moment in time. That's the best answer that I have. So arsenic phytoremediation is likely to give you a list of plants for you but I would love to love to connect with you further and I'm sure that Laura Kavanaugh would geek out and would love to have a conversation with you about the project you're working on that you can use to remediate and remove the arsenic from the soil and that you could you would honestly remove question from Christian move Some plants will accumulated in the plant residue vegetable market gardens. It has become somewhat of a norm to use large amounts of compost often several centimeters every year. Yes, I know you're exactly right and it's a really unhealthy practice and one that I think we're on the threshold of beginning to change. Other plants seem to have some magical ability with their associated the results seem to often be often quite good. Do you think that the inevitable mineral imbalances from using those amounts of compost can prevent growers from getting excellent results in terms of plant health and resistance to disease in insects? Yes microbiome where the arsenic levels seem to decline in both soil. I definitely think that or do you think biology can overcome even the most severe imbalances? Biology is very powerful and can be very beneficial and implants and however many of these market gardeners so that's. That's what I would look for. Experience severe insect pressure and severe disease pressure but particularly case of insect pressure. It is common to use insect netting to prevent insects from consuming salad grains and brassicas and cucurbit crops. And that is a direct reflection of the excess of levels of nitrogen and the excessive levels of potassium that are resulting from these compost applications. How do you deal with a heavy clay soil with high calcium levels and low magnesium levels? How do we lower calcium levels without allowing magnesium levels to increase when lowering the calcium levels? All right. Your questions raise a lot question from Pranav, an apple grower from India. We have monsoons from the beginning of the harvest season which leads to uncontrollable f. More questions than they do answers. If you have a heavy clay soil with high calcium levels, why do you want to lower the calcium levels? Do you have good soil aggregation right now you want to improve soil aggregation. Have you tested to see what happens when you add even more low infections Alternaria, etc. Leaving almost no leaves on the trees? Almost all the farmers are trying to control it through a mix of contact and systemic fungicides. I've been trying to control it by growing mustard as a winter cover crop. One to two applications of contact fungicides. What would be the better calcium and yeah there's. There's a lot of interesting conundrums there with with what you're asking and this I don't have time to go into the intricacies of soil testing but this would be a question. This would be a case. The case you're describing is one where and again I'm making these comments without knowing a lot of. I don't know the context but it would be a case solution to control such an infection. I'm trying to remember of observe plants and soil and evaluate the tests and if the two don't agree you throw the soil tests away and you pay attention to the plants. I suspect that your high calcium levels my. My first question would Be do you have a calcarious based soil? Do you have a limestone based soil? Is there a chance that you have free limestone particles in your soil profile that are showing up on the soil analysis? So the soil test measures them and says you have high calcium, but you in fact don't have high calcium on the clay colloid? That'd be my first question. That's a fairly common scenario. And those soils and those crops actually benefit from additions of further calcium. And also when your alternaria, if I recall correctly, is associated with manganese. But I think the, the approach that you're taking, it's very valuable to try to grow more diverse cover crops. You have a really good microbiome, that microbiome will begin consuming those free limestone particles in the soil profile. And what will happen is your calcium levels, as measured on a SAP. Excuse me, on a soil analysis will actually drop, but your crop performance will actually increase because you have better calcium availability as a result of a functional microbiome and you also have better calcium on the CLE colloid. Are there ways of getting the formaldehyde out of liquid fish? Well, formaldehyde, I'm trying to think if for some reason I'm thinking formaldehyde is fairly volatile, but I don't know that that's true. I don't have an answer for you off the top of my head, Kevin. I don't know. Question from Cody. Can all AE products be applied through a pivot? If mixed correctly, the answer is yes, although they do produce. We have a track record of some nice crop responses. But just my instinct is we get a better crop response when we fly it on our foliar apply rather than through a pivot. But we do have a lot of folks who are doing pivot applications. Which AEA products would you suggest for fall foliar application to small grains in alfalfa as you're going into dormancy? I would particularly suggest boron. But I would ask that you touch base with our AEA team for more specific recommendations. We'd be happy to have a conversation with you on that. Question from Francisca, what is your opinion in using tensiometers or TDR for measuring water use? I don't have an opinion. Don't have enough experience with them to have a direct opinion. All right, I think that wraps up all the questions. There were 100 questions altogether for this or this session. Thank you to all of you who participated, who contributed questions. I enjoy these sessions. I hope you do as well. And I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Have an awesome day and happy growing. Thank you all. But you haven't mentioned that you're doing anything for mineral nutrition management. And that's the place where I would begin is try to make sure you have balanced mineral nutrition with all the trace minerals. Question from Timo I feel overwhelmed by the amount of chemistry knowledge in your publications. Which topic would you recommend diving into to better understand the biological reactions of an implants? Timo, you say the biological reactions. I'm. I'm kind of assuming you mean the biological reactions in response to chemistry and to nutrient imbalances. In other words you're referring to I think. I think if I'm understanding your question correctly I would refer you to my recommended reading list. I've categorized that into different categories and that is it's a collection of, I don't know, maybe it's less than 100 books. I think out of that they're the best out of thousands that I've read and there are a number of those that I think you would find very valuable. Question from Francisco if we use fortigation, what is the effect of fertilizing once a week versus every day? It depends on your soil, your context, how much water your plants are utilizing, and so forth. But I've had some interesting experiences where high value fruit and vegetable growers chose to fertigate every day instead of once a week with anywhere from a 20 to a 30% yield increase and in some cases higher. So spoon feeding nutrients every day. If it is easy for you to do so with an automated system, you should absolutely do so. Just vertigate every day instead of once a week and there can be some remarkable crop responses. Follow up question from Dave Ryan on the silage corn crop rotation crops. What cover crops would be best or optimal? Dave I would refer you to the team at Green Cover Seed. Keith Burns has assembled a really great team of people who are the COVID crop experts and I also could offer some suggestions, but to do so would require me knowing more information is probably beyond the scope of what I'm able to address. Well in this webinar. Question from Robert I'm a veggie grower that worked with AEA in Tennessee but have moved to Australia. I don't know whether to offer my condolences or my congratulations. Robert, Hope you're enjoying your your move. What do you recommend to look for when finding a SAP analysis company not able to ship all the way to Nova Crop? There are actually a number of growers in Australia who are shipping all the way to Nova Crop. And when you're evaluating a SAP analysis lab, the one key thing to look for is consistency. Consistency of, of reporting. If you send them five sets of leaves that are as biological identical as you can make them, coming from the same location or as close to the same location as possible on the exact same plant, how variable are the results? That is the key. We need, we need consistency, consistency of SAP extraction, consistency of measurement and so forth. That's the most important metric. Question from Andre. There's an agronomic line of thought that proposes when it comes to influencing soil structure, the cation ratios, namely calcium to magnesium, should be drawn down from the total digested figures as opposed to the commonly accepted Melek3 or ammonium acetate figures. What's your take on that? I don't know, Andre. This is the first time I'm hearing about what you're proposing. It's interesting, it's interesting, but I don't know. It's. It's really. As I understand it, if you look at it from a biochemistry perspective, the reason William Albrecht's work was so foundational and so fundamental was that he was able to identify that it is the ions on the outside of the soil colloid. It's the ions on the soil colloid that really influence flocculation of soil particles, particularly clay particles. So good flocculation, we understand, is an expression of calcium, magnesium, potassium balance on the colloid. Now we also know that the melic 3 and the ammonium acetate extraction don't measure precisely what is on the colloid. They're our closest approximation, as I understand it. But they also will measure calcium content in limestone particles, for example. So I suppose it would depend on the, the soil makeup, how much sand, silt, clay we have, what does the geological parent material look like? I've not heard the idea that you're proposing before. It doesn't make immediate sense to me on the surface, but I don't know for sure. Something worth digging into. Question from Daniel. Is there a nitrogen regulator like manganese is for potassium? H. Magnesium is a regulator to a slight degree. So when you have plants that have extremely high levels of magnesium, then those plants don't absorb and don't utilize nitrogen as well. So there is an element of magnesium serving as a regulator for nitrogen. However, because of nitrogens just very readily, readily available, excuse me, solubility. And because plants have adapted in nitrogen deprived environments, or they're constantly searching for nitrogen and they take it up so readily, my understanding is that Usually the magnesium would have to be considered very generous or even on the excessive side in order to have that effect on nitrogen. It can be a useful tool. I've many several occasions when we've had, let's say tree fruit that were susceptible to fire blight that had high levels of nitrogen because of compost applications, or something like that. You can put on a foliar application with a high content of magnesium and reduce the nitrogen content and increase resistance to disease. How do we determine the adequate amount of gypsum to add as a source of calcium in a blueberry program? Do we need to check CEC analysis and current amount of calcium in the soil? What is the sufficient and optimal amount of calcium in the soil in order to have a balance between cations? Thank you Melita. That is an awesome question. When we look at calcium in the soil from a part per million perspective, which I suggest, I suggest that we need to start having these conversations in terms of part per million rather than in percent base saturation for the very simple reason that there are minimal thresholds. You. You need a minimum of a thousand part per million calcium to grow really healthy plants. And on soil with a CEC of 7 or 8 or maybe even I forget exactly where the threshold is. Somewhere around 10. If you look purely at the CEC and percent base saturation, a thousand parts per million would equal something like 80 or 90%. So it appears that you have excessive levels of calcium, but you don't. You have only just enough to grow a really healthy crop at a thousand parts per million. So we need a minimum of 1000 parts per million. And then I would suggest looking at calcium to magnesium to potassium ratios. I think the ratios that Albrecht identified are largely correct. With some adjustments for various soil types and extremely heavy soils, the ratios are still generally correct. But look at the ratios in terms of part per million ratios instead of percent pay saturation ratios. And that's where produced the highest quality crop. Responses. Thank you to all of you for sticking with me as I go through these questions. I know some of these were asked a little while ago, so I'm trying to move through them. Question from Ed. We're going through an unusually cold, damp rainy season close to Mexico City. How do we prevent rust or fungus damage to on oats plants? We had this. I had a. I had a day long session with a group of small grains growers recently. We were talking about rust and head rust and fazarium and other diseases. And many of these diseases and molds are most mostly a challenge on plants that do not have adequate levels of the trace mineral metals. So again the foundational stuff has to be addressed. But once the foundational nutrients the macronutrients are addressed zinc, manganese, copper boron. If plants at adequate levels of those four elements zinc, manganese, copper, boron the list the percentage of diseases that would be prevented is very large. It's above 60% for sure across most crops. If you addressed zinc, manganese, copper, boron, you would we would be successful in preventing a lot of diseases, including these fungal diseases and rust. Question from Melissa Is an endophyte turning pathogenic more likely a product of nutrient imbalance or microbiome imbalance or some other stress factor? Alyssa the answer is yes. A nut tree crop the context is a nut tree crop is susceptible to an endophytic disease is normally resistant to my first From a from a practical management perspective the easiest piece to manage is nutritional imbalances and I'm not I don't know for sure what endophytic disease you're referring to but when I think about other other infections which are in a plant vascular tissue like Pierce's disease or crown gall or citrus greening or Goss's wilt. Anytime we have a bacterial infection in the plant vascular tissue, whether it's the xylem or the flow, almost invariably that can be effectively managed with nutrition management. It's true of all the diseases that I mentioned just a little bit ago, Pierce's disease and citrus greening and others. Question from Ghassan My plant stems have a falling over droopy appearance despite having healthy looking leaves. Context of proper watering. My question would be I've seen you've seen vigorous growth and radical improvement of your soil. My question would be do they have excessive levels of nitrogen and adequate levels of calcium? Excess of nitrogen can give you weak stems that fall over. That would be the first first question that I would ask. Question from Omari I'm an agronomist from Bermuda, recently been hired by the government due to extension work with local farmers. I've been inactive in agronomy for a decade. I've been asked by the director suggest some training programs and resources to help me get current. Does AEA provide agronomy crop advisor training or are there any that you would recommend? Yeah, I think I just answered this. I would look at the Kind harvest platform. There's some really great courses there and also my recommended reading list. Does AEA work with government extension programs either as advisors or support to advisors? We have done some limited work and would be open to more in this in this regard. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Amare. Question from Sean. Could you explain the effects of potassium chloride on pasture soils in areas with high rainfall? I think what I'm seeing is the effect of potassium accumulation in pasture soils with the chloride causing leaching of other cations. Yes, it can do that. Who something? Oh, there we go. Just bounced around. These soils have high Morgan extraction potassium levels 150 part per million. How would calcium application affect these pastures? So Sean, lots of conversations that could be had here. I would suggest that you listen to my podcast interview with I'm blanking out Richard Dick Mulvaney and read his papers on the potassium paradox. I written about some on my blog as well. The short version is that potassium chloride very seldom produces a plant yield response and if it does, it's often due to the electrolyte effect, not due to the potassium response. And if I was trying to produce a high quality yield response in forages, I would use gypsum to do that. I would use calcium sulfate and not potassium chloride. You'll produce a similar or better growth response and higher quality at the same time. Roz Campy has a question about using homemade worm castings. Is this something you recommend? Sure, absolutely. And the reason I don't talk about worm castings is because many people don't have access to them and certainly not on a commercial scale. In your career, did you have a chance to work on eliminating the flavascence story disease caused by phytoplasm bacteria in grapes? I would have to look that. I wonder if that's Pierce's disease. I'm not sure. Can you share some advice on plant macro micronutrients or any nutrition or any FO treatment for mitigating that disease? So this is perhaps a question for us to have a follow up conversation with or for you to connect with the AEA team on. But in short, whenever you have bacterial infections, I'm assuming this is a bacterial infection. Yes, you did say phytoplasma bacteria. When you have bacterial infections in the xylem or in the flow, it is a function of not having a proper carbohydrate balance, which is a function in many cases of not having enough molybdenum manganese. Let me say it this way just for simplicity's sake. You're in Europe. Send leaf samples to Nova Crop Control and balance the mineral levels according to Saponadol's desired values. And I would Be amazed if the disease did not disappear. That's been our ex. That's been our experience with these types of diseases. And also yeah, we. We have developed our own desired values of nutrients specifically for disease resistance. So they might be slightly different from Nova crop control. But make sure you have adequate degeneres levels of trace minerals and I would expect to see the disease fade away. Question from Oliver. Do you have any special recommendations for compacted soil? Yes, I only have one recommendation. Figure out how to decompact it. Whether that's with plant root systems or with using steel machinery. Whatever it takes. Are there any products or practices that help mitigate salt stress on crops? Soil tests are minimum 300 pounds of sodium per acre. Ouch. Ouch. As high as a thousand pounds of sodium per acre. Ouch. And well water tests high on salt and bicarbonates. Trying to use as much surface water as possible. But still tests high on sodium. Well, I would start asking the question why are you irrigating there? And why are you irrigating with that water? And what crops can you grow that require less irrigation? What about pistachios? What about agave? What about other types of desert environment plants? Because continuing to irrigate with high salt and high bicarbonate water is carries the certainty of turning that soil into an even more alkali desert than what it currently is. That doesn't seem to be a sustainable long term solution. So there are materials that you can add and I forget what they are right now, but there are specific assets that you can add. Things you can add to your soil to leech your sodium out of the a horizon further down into the soil profile. But that doesn't fix the problem in the long term. It makes the problem worse. The long term might be 20 years or 30 years or 50 years. In the long term it just you get continued sodium accumulation. What is the best strategy to help crops in northern climates? 4 months without frost to help maximize our early plant growth and photosynthesis. In high luminosity months. May, June. Seed gets in the ground in cold soil, lots of sunlight early on. Crops always seem to desire disease before the black layer every year, even though the killing frost dates are getting later. Plants give up in late August when days get shorter and do is stay in the canopy for a longer time. The question is why are your plants dying of disease earlier? That's the question that we need to ask and that's the question we need to answer. I would suspect it's a nutritional imbalance of some type. Perhaps low manganese be one of the things that we keep in mind, but probably low trace minerals generally. And yeah, we can answer that question with SAP analysis. Question from Nikki I'm a farmer conducting a Southern Sarah study on the microbiome of compost tea. I am comparing different brews of area to compost tea and what microbes are amplified after 6 and 12 hours given different single and combination feeds, humic acids, kelp, molasses, fish hydrolysate and alfalfa. I have found that there is greatest diversity of microbiomes in the beginning of microbes in the beginning. Yep, that would be what I would have expected. And as time goes by, only about three main families survive and are amplified. All the other bacterial families die out.