Planting tips & best practices for using AEA products | Ted Bruns, Product Application Technician

Thanks to all of you for being here today and for helping make our second Regen Rep event so successful. This event started last year with three organizations. One Advancing Eco Agriculture, who offers Regen Consulting, liquid plant nutrition and soil health products Kind Harvest, which is the Regen Ag social media and learning platform and Taneobiologicals, who makes natural and organic biological inoculants. These three organizations have been working to further the Regen mission long before regenerative agriculture was a buzzword, and since last year they have partnered together, invited some of the top minds in the industry and exemplary growers to give you the tools needed to start and further your regenerative revolution. We're also thankful to our media partners here who can help you learn even more about regenerative agriculture, so please don't forget to sign up for their content as well. These are Regenerative Food Systems Investment, which works to catalyze capital for regenerative food systems by offering opportunities to learn and connect Acres usa, which is the premier ecological farming education, media and conference organization and Regen Farming News, which is an online hub for regenerative ag news, jobs and trainings. Thanks to all of these organizations for making this happen today. We are now ready to get started with our first speaker of the day. Ted Runes is a Certified Organic Grain Grower at Genesis Genesis Farm in Nebraska and a Product Application Technician at aea, a consulting firm and product company creating customized crop programs combining biological and mineral nutrition products with regenerative practices. Ted operates Genesis Farm with his wife Jessica. They are located in southwest Nebraska growing a variety of certified organic crops including sunflowers which are processed into sunbutter, yellow peas and yellow popcorn for human consumption, triticale for flaking in multigrain mixes and wheat for sprouted wheat flour. Genesis Farms also grows a variety of COVID crop seeds including in oats and pea mix, triticale and vetch. In past years Genesis Farm has grown soybeans for seed, millet and corn for feed. Today Ted will give us some tips for planting and some steps for action. Please welcome Ted.

Hi. Thanks Sarah. Well, good morning. Good afternoon. I see there's people all over the globe here. Like Sarah said, my name is Ted Bruns. I'm an organic grain farmer in southwest Nebraska, real close to the Colorado border. I'm just next door in Nebraska from Julesburg, Colorado, Colorado. I see there's a lot of people from Colorado on today. As I saw in the chat, I would consider myself a mid size row crop farmer, but really I'm probably a small scale farmer at 1300 acres. I grow eight different cash crops on my farm as Sarah mentioned earlier, and that doesn't include the different cover crops I grow for grazing. My first experience with AEA was in the fall of 2017. We did the regenerative soil primer on a irrigated cornfield and it was at the becking of my landlord. He actually financed the first application and everything. He was deep into John Kemp's theory of biology at fall after harvest, post harvest, putting biology down, and I'm a believer in that as well. We started seeing positive results right away in the summer of 2018 and that's what got me hooked with AEA in the regenerative soil primer. The first two years we put the regenerative soil primer, applied it through our center pivot irrigation in the fall post harvest or just right before harvest, and the climate turned drier in 2020 and we stopped seeing good results from doing it that way. So I switched to an in furrow at planting application method after that and we've been in a drought or abnormally dry ever since. So that's the method I've been using the last couple years. I joined the AEA team as a product application technician about a year ago and today I want to share with you the importance of establishing biology at planting and also product mixing tips that I think work best. Establishing biology at planting with an inferrow application of the regenerative soil primer. Inferrow means at a depth of 2 to 3 inches or right at seed depth or directly below the seed. I have had the best results establishing biology this way in drier growing seasons. Infer with a tube inside a seed firmer is good. If inferrow is not an option, 2x2 fertilizer application is sufficient. Soil surface application is not preferred in my opinion. Referring back to when I used the regenerative soil primer through the center pivot irrigation. That was like a soil surface application with a water drench. And also what I think helped that application was there was a vigorous cover crop growing in that standing corn. It was a companion crop that we broadcast at last cultivation of the corn. It was a very nice established cover crop. We don't always get that here in southwest Nebraska where it's dry. Our annual rainfall is 16 to 18 inches and irrigation helps, but a good rain just makes a world of difference. I like establishing soil biology at planting because it helps the biology move out from the planting furrow as the root system of the plant grows. There are also soil benefits when applied in the fall, as I mentioned, and David Miller will speak about that later today in his presentation. In my experience, establishing biology at planting has helped with seeding vigor. The seedlings have a better chance in high weed pressure situations like Canadian thistle and burr ragweed patches. That's what got me hooked in the first place. Seeing that in the summer of 2018 my crop was not being suppressed by the Canadian thistle patches. It just blew me away. It was amazing. The power of biology. I've always had a belief in biology, but seeing it in that way, it just blew me away. The biology also helps with soil nutrient availability later in the plant growing season. I've had success with using sea stem and humicarb inferrow at planting. Those two products seem to help with establishing biology, especially on my silt and sandy soils that have less than 2% organic matter. Additional starter products you want to put in furrow at planting. You want to micronutrients based off your soil testing and whatever your A consultant recommends. Buyer Coat Gold seed treatment Very powerful stuff folks. Supports germination and strong initial growth consistency of seed. Germination can replace seed in occupants for legume crops such as peas and soybeans. They just told me that maybe a year ago. I wish they would have told me that sooner. I wouldn't be spending so much money on peat based inoculants that I need to use in my organic operation. The rate for application is four ounces per hundred pounds of seed. I have a 28 ounce Bushes baked beans tin can that holds one pound of Bioquil Gold and that treats 400 pounds of seed. So that's helpful for doing math. I especially like to use Bioquote Gold for crops where you are planting high seed rates like soybeans and small grains and pulse crops like yellow peas. You're putting 180 pounds of seed out per acre. Bicoat Gold is great in those situations. Anytime you're putting a bushel or more per acre of seed out, an excellent time to use Biocoat Gold. You're getting more Biocoat Gold out there on the seed and it, like I said, helps with the list in the slide there. I have been told Biocoat Gold can be used in place of graphite or talc. They just told me that about a year ago and I still use graphite in my planter boxes. As you can see in the photo. I like to keep it simple. I just put the Bio Coat Gold on the seed in my grain drill box. My seed box. That's how I put it On. I know some people, they put it on with a seed treater or when they have it in their seed tender, they mix it in there. I like to keep my bio coat gold out of the sun, out of the heat. And the best way to do that is putting it directly on the seed right when you're ready to plant it that way then it goes straight into the soil and helps with inoculating the soil, the seed, everything. And I think that's a big thing with all these biological products. I'll explain that a little bit later. Of keeping them out of the sun, out of the heat. They are biological spores. They're a living organism. You need to take care of them. As you can see in the photo, I have some great helpers there. And as an organic farmer that makes me feel good that my kids can be out there and not be exposed to insecticides like I was when I was a kid. You know that stuff really smelled. It actually smelled good and. And as a kid you don't know any better. It was probably bad for us. So that's one great thing about raising a family on organic farm. You see my little girl there down on the ground. She keeps me on my toes. As you can see, I use bar coat gold on all seeds that I plant. If you are looking to take the first step towards regenerative agriculture and inoculating your soil using biocoat gold is a good place to start. Now I'll move on to mixing AEA products as application product application technician. That's I feel was a missing link in the AA organization. I hope I can fill that as best I can in a part time capacity because I am also a a full time farmer. If you are mixing a products at your farm location, here are some basic mixing supplies I believe will be helpful. A tote or small cone bottom tank to mix your products. Cordless drill with a paint stir 8 inch screen pallet jack scale garden hose with a spray nozzle for spraying the screen off a fertilizer tender trailer. There will be pictures of these items in upcoming slides and I'll be talking about them when you're using them for mixing. You'll see that I like to keep things simple. These are just basic supplies folks. This is a picture of the 8th inch screen on the top of the mixing tote. It helps remove the biofilm and chunks of product when you are dispensing out of the containers. Let's talk a little bit about water. The best to use. I think there was a little bit of discussion yesterday about Water rainwater is the best in my opinion. RO water can be used. I don't have any experience with that, but I've heard it's it's good for using well water can be used but get it tested. High bicarbonates levels can reduce effectiveness of a products and avoid chlorinated water if possible. Now I'll describe to you how I mix a products I use gravity dispense out of containers. I just stack the totes on top of other totes, but strong pallet racking would be ideal. Maybe I'll be able to move on to that next level next year. I weigh the products as I combine them into the mixing tote with the pallet jack scale. As you can see in the photo, that pallet jack scale was a huge step forward in simplifying my mixing process. Before that I was doing it with five gallon buckets and jugs. The pallet jack scale was worth every bit of what it cost. Mixing Basic Steps for Success Agitate the products before dispensing out of containers I have all my products in totes a couple in barrels. You want to use an erewhon like on the AA website. You can assemble an erewhon. I prefer a paint stirrer with an extension on it to reach the bottom of the barrels and the totes. Remember to read the handling instructions and especially remember that rejuvenate expands when it is agitated. You need to remove some of the regenerative sorry, rejuvenate out of a container before agitating. Otherwise you're going to have a big mess. I experienced that a couple years ago. Step two Begin with a little bit of water in your tender. This helps the transfer pump. Suck the products out of the mixing tote. Number three. Dispense products into the mixing tote in batches as some products are not compatible with others in the concentrate form. 4. Add water to the tender before adding spectrum. You want your fertilizer solution diluted with water before adding the spectrum. Put the spectrum in your solution. Last in the next few slides about mixing, I'll describe some of these steps in a little more detail. Before moving on, I'd like to talk about the focus photo. This is rejuvenate being dispensed through the screen. You want to periodically spray the 8th inch screen lightly with water to clean off product buildup. Don't spray the water so hard that the biofilm chunks go through the screen. Discard any biofilm chunks that the screen catches. If you have trouble with getting product through your transfer pump to the tender Dilute with water in the mixing tote. I recommend diluting all the products with water, especially the thicker ones. It just helps with flow through transfer pumps. The only ones I probably do not dilute are the Rebound line of products and then also the product blends which usually have no problems with flu flow. Step 3 Batches I have comprised four separate batches for mixing. I know that all the products are not on this list, but these are the ones that I use the most. So that's just what I'm going to talk about is the ones I have experience with. SEM, Humicarb, Hollow, Foss and Rejuvenate all seem to be compatible with each other. Although Hollowfoss is a suspension product, it can give you problems with settling out sometimes. You could put it in a batch by itself if it gives you problems. I think I skipped number one, the Rebound products. As I mentioned earlier, they're all compatible with each other. No problems with mixing them together in a concentrate form. Number three Hollow Cow. It's a booger. I recommend putting this in a mixing tote all by itself. This product has a high PH and it's also a suspension product. If you mix Hollow Cow in the concentrate form with any other product, the mix will turn into a foamy liquid that does not flow through a transfer pump. Very easy. The only way to get it to flow is to is to dilute it with water. Lastly on the list, I have seashield in a batch all by itself. I think it is compatible with some of the other products, but the main reason why I put it in a batch by itself is because as an organic farmer I use a lot of seashield in my fertilizer applications to help feed the fungal populations out there, if there is any. Seems like in my low organic matter situations the fungal populations are in a dire need of food. Steps four and five Water in the tender Dilute with water to slightly below needed amount for the field. You can always add a little bit more later. Before I move on to the next slide, I'd like to talk about my fertilizer tender that's in the photo there. This was a big step forward in the right direction with mixing products. It has excellent agitation. It is a 1300 gallon cone bottom trailer that agitates the fertilizer by taking the fertilizer solution from the bottom of the cone through the transfer pump to the side of the tank where a 90 degree elbow inside the tank dispenses the solution around the inside of the tank to create a swirling vortex effect. It's, it's great for agitation. It's. I would say it's the only way to go, but in my opinion, it's the only way to go. Spectrum notes for adding spectrum. Keep it out of the sunlight. Mix into a slurry in a five gallon bucket. Stir with the paint stirrer. Attach the drill. Don't do it with your hand. You can, but I recommend using a drill. Wait five minutes, dump into the tender. The directions from Tanio. This is a Tanio Biologicals product, say wait five minutes, but I rarely do. Usually it takes me five or 10 minutes to mix up 50 acres. Maybe that's what they mean by waiting five minutes. I, I don't know. This is the product that has all your beneficial soil microbe spores in it. I try to treat this product like a baby when handling. What I mean by that is treat it with care because it has all the biology. Folks. Just treat all these products, especially spectrum, with care. There's probably a lot of farmers out there that are bald like me. You want to keep that out of the sun. We saw Dennis Warner Key. That's the first time I think I saw him without a hat. Boy, he's bald and he's got a really nice shiny dome there. And he takes care of his. He keeps it out of the sun. Mine gets a little bit heat sometimes, but maybe Dennis, he tries to keep his out of the heat too. I bet so. Step 6 agitate after all products, including the spectrum are in the fertilizer tender and diluted with water to the amount needed for the field application. Let the fertilizer solution agitate in the fertilizer tender for about 10 minutes. While you're agitating for those 10 minutes, the inline screen filter. Leave it out after installing the inline screen in the photo for a while, install it, and for a while agitate it and then recheck the screen for clogging. The screen in the photo is a 20 mesh screen. I use 20 mesh screens to help reduce clogging. The downside to using such a large screen is the particle sizes are larger and going through your pumps, it can be those larger particle sizes can be hard on your pumps and they'll wear out quicker. But the downtime of dealing with clogged screens can be costly too. What I kind of recommend to People is a 20 mesh screen on your fertilizer tender and then on your planter or if you got saddle tanks like I do on my tractor. The filter after that is a 30 mesh. Some people put a 50 mesh screen there. So you got options to slowly screen these products down for your pumps and your equipment onto equipment agitation equipment. I've already talked about my fertilizer tender, trailer tractor equipment tanks. I got saddle tanks. A lot of people have tanks on their planter. I recommend you putting a eductor nozzle inside your tank. You just I have a hydraulic pump that is solely for agitation. It just circulates from the hose that connects the two tanks, goes through the hydraulic pumps and dispenses out these eductor nozzles that are in the bottom of each of my two tanks. Makes for very good agitation. Takes very little hydraulic flow to operate it and get good agitation pumps. Talk a little bit about pumps. I think all pumps work. I prefer the piston pumps myself. Squeeze pumps and hydraulic pumps work good as well. There are all kinds of different fertilizer pumps out there. The best one is the one you are most familiar with and like the best. I have a diaphragm pump that is for fertigation through my center pivot irrigation systems. Electric pumps. I have no experience with them, but sometimes those have some magnets involved there and I heard those could possibly be an issue with some of the micronutrients and AEA products that we that the products consist of. Contact if you would like to contact me after you purchase a products, which I hope you do, and you have any questions about mixing and application, you can give customer the customer care team at AEA a call. Those people are awesome. Stephanie's great. Robin was great when I first started out in 2017 and 2018. So give them a call. That's what they're there for. They truly are a customer care team. Wrapping things up folks. I hope I was helpful today. I don't think every farmer needs a mixing process or equipment exactly like mine. But I hope my presentation today helped you spur your own ideas of how you should best work with AEA products. The bottom line folks is AEA products are different. The main then they're different than mainstream fertilizer and sometimes can be difficult to work with. But with a little bit of thought process and ingenuity, you can unlock the regenerative and biological potential that these products can bring to your farm operation. Thanks for your time today.

Excellent Ted. Thank you so much for that presentation. So we do have some audience questions here and we have just about 10 minutes to get through some of them. So I will kick it off with a question from Dennis and Steve. We'll see how nice they are with this question. Given you your digs At Dennis there their question is are you using any sticker agents for the seed treatment?

No, I am not. The peat based inoculants that I use, that kind of helps. But yeah, I have thought about that. Sugar water, things like that with a Mr. I've thought about that but no, I do not. They the, the biocoat gold seed treatment, it doesn't. It sticks to the seed all on its own. I've used competitors biological seed treatments and a lot of times it would end up in the bottom of my box. So I have not experienced that with Biokoat gold.

Okay, so the related question and from Mark that I think was answered in the chat but just in case he said how do you keep the bio coke gold on the seed if you have a vacuum plan? Feels like it all blows off. Is that an issue?

It could be. I do not have a vacuum planter so I'm sorry, I can't help there Mark. But we did, I did do had a custom operator and he had a vacuum and I guess it seemed like it was the air drill though, so it was blowing it through the tubes with the seed. A vacuum planter is more suction or vacuum. So I don't know. It's a good question. I, and I'm not gonna lie to you and say I know so.

All right, thank you. And if others have a response to that, they're welcome to answer in the chat. And then Andrew asks, are there pumps that are easier on biology than others?

Well, that's one thing I didn't mention. As long as you keep the pressure below 40 psi, any pump should be okay. I've. I have a gauge on mine. I rarely see it go above 20 psi. So.

So there's not one that you think is better for biologicals or optimizes it?

No, not really. As long it's not a high pressure one. As long as you keep your pressure down. And one thing I did forget to mention the, the fertilizer manifolds that go to each one of your rows. I prefer the flow diverters versus the manifolds because sometimes the manifolds, they have them orifices in there and they can get some clogging issues there. And to alleviate that, some people will be putting on 10 or 15 gallons per acre. The. But the orifice that they have in there is a 20 or 25 gallon per acre orifice that will help just keeping everything flowing.

Okay, great. Chad has a question. Do you fill the grain box fully before adding biocoat gold or add and mix while filling?

What I do is I'll put some in the bottom, some seed in the bottom, and then I'll put some biocoat gold down. Then I'll fill the drill the rest of the way up and then put it on. And I stirred in with an, with an axe handle. I. I keep it simple.

Great. Thank you. Step by step instructions. That's great. Did you need to do any equipment modifications for the application of biologicals?

No, I did not because I was already using biologicals from another company and they were a lot of suspension products. So I was kind of already set up. I'm glad that AEA has less suspension products than the previous company. I was working it. It made a world of difference of getting the product out there without the clogging in, the product falling out of the suspension. Great.

Okay. Norman wants to know, have you done any microscope work to see what is actually in your soil?

No, I have not. I do a smell test and I can tell, my nose knows from a couple years ago what it smelled like. And I still have. You know, I got fields in different stages through the regenerative process. I have one field that I bought last spring and it was treated like dirt. I mean, it's hard as a road out there. And I go out there and smell and there's no smell. The fields that have been organic for 13 years now, my predecessor, Dennis Demel, was farming them organically before I took over the organic operation. And those smell wonderful. If we have good crop rotation, sometimes we do the tillage because for weed control and we are going backwards. Biggest question I get from growers when talking to them is, well, how much longer I need to keep putting biology down onto my soil until it's done, it's had enough. Well, it depends on your agriculture practices. Are you tilling? Are you putting a lot of herbicide out there? All those things are detrimental to the biology and you're taking a step backwards. So you need to take two steps forward to use those tools. I mean, I'm not against herbicides. They're tools, but they're detrimental to biologicals in your biology, in your soil.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that. Let's see. Oh, Norman had a follow up to that, a little bit different. Who makes the fertilizer tender that you mentioned?

There's a company in Atwood, Kansas, which is J.D. skiles. But I did see there is an other a company out there doing it as well. I don't know what the brand name of those are, so.

Great. Thank you. And Ryan has a forced Air cone style Tea brewer. Brewer. Excuse me, would any of these products have issues mixing and. Thank you.

He says it probably has really good agitation, so I think it would be good for mixing. I've seen tea brewers, I. I think they use a lot of air. Maybe I don't believe the air is necessary. I would go with the plumbing of liquid to agitate.

Okay. Robert wants to know, can you treat seeds with Biokote Gold weeks or months ahead of time?

Yes, you can. I don't do it myself, but I've heard of people doing it. I would suggest you, you know, keep that seed and cold storage cool dry place to help to help keep seed germination. Good. As well as keeping the biocoat gold good as well.

Great. Just wondering what kind of distribution system do you have on your planter?

I have a John Blue flow diverter and the John Blue piston pumps complement those diverters. Every once in a while the diverter will clog up. But not like a manifold. I've had squeeze pumps with a manifold and you'll get some settling over. It'll take a couple years. Well, it depends on how much fertilizer running through it. The, the manifolds will eventually clog up with the suspension products falling out of suspension. That's where they seem like they. They fall out of suspension.

Okay, a little bit different here. Are there any experiences with using humic acids to improve water quality, for example, when carbonate levels are too high?

That is beyond my pay grade. Somebody else needs to answer that for you. Sorry.

That's all right. You guys heard it here. Feel free to comment in the chat if you have any answers to that. Okay, just scrolling through here. Okay, so your existing native biology was insufficient due to low organic matter and sandy silt soil question mark. That's a question. You're nodding your head Yes.

I agree that with that statement question. Yeah.

Okay. Do you ever envision. It's a bigger word than I'm used to. Do you ever envision the possibility of the BCG microbes taking a foothold in your soil to reduce the requirement to apply at every planting?

Well, that goes back to what I said earlier. Depends on what kind of agriculture practices you're doing. If you're using a lot of herbicide or if you're using a lot of synthetic fertilizer with high salt or doing a lot of tillage, you're disrupt. Disrupting the biology. And you're taking a step backwards, which with each one of those I try to do a two step forward, one step back approach. I try to put a lot of biology out there and then when I go to til it's setting the biology back. But if I'm taking two steps forward, one step back, I'm staying the same or slightly improving.

Okay, last question here. Ryan would like to know if you could speak more on the limitations of surface application. Any tricks to get it to perform better?

Rain. Get it to rain. It works really well. David Miller will talk about it in his presentation more, but from what I see, it looks like it works more in the eastern corn belt or eastern regions of the United States where they have 30, 35 plus inches of rainfall. I'm originally from western Ohio and that was a 45 to 50 inch annual rainfall. I probably wouldn't stress it as much there about getting it into the soil instead of a soil SAP soil surface application there in that region. A soil surface application probably works nine times out of ten. Here it's the other way around. It'll work one time out of ten.

Awesome. Well, that was so much great information and tips for our farmers. Thank you so much, Ted, for joining us today.

Thank you, Sarah.