The Regenerative Orchard: Cherry Success with Mike Omeg

Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects.

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And thank you for listening. Hi friends, I'm delighted to have Mike Omeg here on the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. I've known Mike for a number of years. He's been a farmer that we've worked with in the context of advancing eco agriculture and so we've not spoken much in our conversation about the specific work that we've done with nutrition management and biology, but instead we focused on the cultural management. How has Mike managed cover crops between the tree rows? How has he managed to constantly keep his soil covered within the tree row with mulch and with mow and blow mower systems? And the impact that has had on his overall orchard economically with fruit firmness fruit size. And then we also spoke about the impact that nutrition management and soil biology management has had on disease and insect resistance. Mike spoke about how he's been able to reverse bacterial canker and greatly reduce or perhaps eliminate the incidence of powdery mildew and also how nutrition management has been able to provide him with a very high degree of freeze resistance and frost tolerance. This is an exciting episode with a lot of very practical how to information that is particularly relevant for all perennial crop production, tree fruits, berries, vineyards, etc. And in which the information is going to be appropriate to growers of all high value fruit and vegetable crops.

Because AEA produces this show, that means that we do not have to sell ads and we're not beholden to advertisers. This gives me the freedom to host anyone that brings value to the community and to gift free promotional space to organizations that help impact the regenerative agriculture movement. You'll notice that this season we're airing short messages from organizations that are doing great work in the sphere of regenerative agriculture and food. Part awareness spreading, part thank you, part community impact service, we realize that this show is a great platform to offer a wide audience to folks that we want to support. We hope that you'll check them out and get involved and support them as well.

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Hi friends, I'm here with Mike Omega, cherry grower from the Dalles, Oregon. Formerly of Omeg Orchards. Mike was awarded the Good Fruit Grower Award by the Fruit grower news in 2017 and has led the fruit production world with a number of innovative practices on his farm. I've wanted to interview Mike for some time and I'm very happy to have him here in the podcast. Welcome Mike. Glad to have you.

Good morning John. Thanks for having me here.

Mike, you've been considered to be a leader and an innovator in the fruit production world for some time. What was it that drove you and led you to constantly be trying new practices and how has your orchard evolved and shifted over the last decade?

Well, one of the things that motivated me to always be trying new things is that I was never and I am never satisfied with the status quo. I think that I have a natural tendency to say, are we doing things the best that we can and is there a better way? Never get comfortable in saying, I have everything figured out. This is the sweet spot, and I'm just going to stay right here. I think that just as life changes at every moment, we need to be changing in our business and how we manage ourselves every moment. And I follow a few principles, but one of them was said nicely by a chemistry professor of mine in college, and she said, question everything. And so that's what I do. It's been something that my family, my grandparents and my parents before me as they managed our land, have always been focused on doing the best job that we can. And that means trying and failing and succeeding. All those things are wrapped into somebody that is trying to figure out how to do things differently and do things better.

Mike I think that's very important. I. That's actually a recurring theme from other farmers that I've spoken with as well, is that they. They constantly question everything. And so when you're constantly questioning what's happening on your operations, what have been, what have been some of the questions and some of the answers that intrigued you, that surprised you?

I think one of the important periods of questions was right before I met you, actually, John, I'd been looking at our conventional production practices here on my farm and looking at, over time, a ever diminishing return on our investment of time, of capital, of labor, in our financial returns. And what I mean by that is it was getting harder and harder for us to eke out that premium return that we wanted for our fruit. We were just having a harder time generating that difference between, I guess you might say, wholesale cherries and what we consider as a premium market cherry. And so I looked at our production system and said, my gosh, we are just focusing on the top of the tree, the parts of the cherry tree that you could see with the naked eye. Boy, we've gotten really good at growing that part of the tree. Of course, nothing was ever perfect, as I mentioned previously, but I was, for lack of a better term, running out of good ideas. The creative tank was running low on things that we could do better with the management of the tree as you can see it. And so I thought, what about the parts of the tree can't see? And that led me to a really great exploration of the soils and roots and that often forgotten part of orchards and conventional farming logic, which is the ground. Everyone knows as farmers that the soil is important. When we buy a new piece of land or we look at planting a new orchard, the first thing that we look at is the quality of the soil. But after that, the way that I was farming in a conventional manner, we quit paying attention to the quality of our soil and just started focusing on those things I mentioned. With just the top of the tree, how can we prune it, how can we plant varieties, how can we do training systems, irrigation system design and that sort of thing. Everything that you could see and paid no attention to the ground. And I think that was probably one of the most exciting things for me, personally and professionally, is when I opened up a whole new set of challenges with how we could improve our soils and improve our tree health by looking below the soil surface. And it really got me charged up about farming again, not to say that I wasn't already excited about farming, but it really was one of those things that was exciting and new and brought me a lot of great satisfaction.

Mike, when you started looking at soils and thinking about managing the invisible part of the tree, how did that affect your farming operation in terms of practical management? Did you end up making any management changes? How did that change your farming operation?

Over time, we made a lot of changes to how we farm. It's not to say that we did a lot of corrective actions because we were farming conventionally. But orchards are fortunate in that we don't do a lot of tillage, we don't do a lot of the mechanical things that. And other crops are harmful to the soil. And we also had a permanent crop in place where our renewal cycle on an orchard is typically between 25 and 35 years. So we'll plant an orchard and leave it in place for 25 or 35 years. And so that gave us opportunities to do things that other crops may not have the luxury of being able to do. But we did add a lot of layers to our management of the orchard, where we did additional activities that were focused upon that invisible part of the tree, focused upon the soil. And I can talk about those there. There was a lot of different things that we tried. Some of them were successful, and some of them were not. But over a period, over a period of years where we were exploring new management techniques, we did settle upon some that we thought worked quite nicely.

I would love to expand on those a bit more. Mike, can you tell us about some of the things that you tried that perhaps didn't work so well, and then what you eventually ended up doing?

Well, there's lots of things I tried that didn't work out well. And I think that, you know, we all like to talk about the successes, but oftentimes can learn a great deal from failures or things that didn't turn out so well. I'll start with perhaps one of them that was. That's a mixed bag, because like anything that is worthwhile, this was a complex project ahead of us that we had. And we started out learning about how we could enhance our soils to. And things we could do to boost our plants. And one of the challenges that we had was how to scale that up. How to go from techniques that worked, say, in a small market garden where the grower is selling directly to consumer, maybe only working part time. And how do we scale that up to the size of operation that. That we had, which is 350 acres of fruit and 1800 tons of fruit produced every year. And we started out with things that we thought would be simple and easy. And one of those was, well, let's put out compost. We'll put out compost on all acres that we have under management, and that'll be of a benefit for us. So we set a time frame, because you can't do when you're talking that amount of compost. We couldn't apply compost on all acres. But what we found was that the logistical expense of moving thousands and thousands of yards of compost from where it's manufactured, which is. It wasn't anywhere local for us. So we had to go to the Portland metropolitan area, which is about 80 miles away, to get that volume of compost we needed. So getting that compost here, paying for the trucking, paying for an area where you can land that much material, buying or renting equipment that was out of our norm, Bucket loaders and that sort of thing became a real challenge for us. Just the cost of that material, to move it around and then to get it applied. We had a return on our investment, but it was a really massive operation. It was, if you will, sucking a lot of diesel, a lot of steel. And that is not where I wanted to go with biointensive management of my farm. And I think that the compost did work for us. But if I were to do it again, I would have taken that capital that I invested in the compost and put it into other material that we produced here on farm or other techniques. And I think we could have probably had an equal or better return on our investment for that with a lot less giant equipment rolling up and down the roads, giant equipment rolling at our landings, and then a lot of equipment to move that material out onto the orchard rows.

Mike, obviously you're making these comments about the Possibilities of getting even better ROI with other techniques based on experience. You're describing that compost applications were successful and did work for you. But if you were doing it over again, where would you prioritize and where would you focus based on what you've observed?

I think that if I were to start at day zero again in this process, where I would focus a majority of my energy to would be mulches. What we learned over time is that the primary benefit that we received from the compost was getting the soil underneath the tree covered with an organic material. What I learned was that it didn't matter as much what material was on top of the soil. We put pine chips on top of our soils. We put straw on top of our soils, different types of straw, wheat straw, grass seed straw. What I found over time was that the compost was, of course, contributing nutrients and, you know, all those things that we all love compost for. I love compost, of course, but in my flower pots, not on my orchard scale. But what I found was that the material that we were applying wasn't super great compost. It wasn't super powerful compost with those humic components that we needed. It was really serving as a mulch where it protected the soil from sun, from irrigation, the physical damage that irrigation causes. So the thing that I found was that in our orchard systems, where we maintain a permanent side alleyway in between the tree rows, for generations, our family has just been mowing that alleyway, like many other growers, and leaving the clippings sitting in the alleyway. What I found and arrived at was if we could move that grass that we cut and windrow it right in the tree row and cover the soil in the tree row, we could accomplish similar results to the compost with a fraction of that land, labor and capital investment that we were making with the compost and accomplish it with a practice that we already do, which is mow our alleyway rows. And so if I was to pick one thing that we landed on that improved upon the compost, it would be mow and blow, because we could then go right over the top of that. During the growing season, we would throw our grass clippings onto the tree row and then in cherries and other tree fruits. Pruning is a very important process that we do during the winter during a dormant period of the orchard, and we generate a huge amount of carbon in the form of cut branches that we stack in the alleyway. And just like the grass, we would mow that down and leave it there. But with MOW and Blow, we're able to shred those prunings and move them over into the alleyway with the MOW and Blow mowers and windrow those that carbon source right there in the free row as well. And boy, that is, that technique really pushed us forward, getting the soil covered, because I think that it allowed us to then put on some very focused and very fine tuned applications of nutrients, biological stimulants, a wide variety of things onto the soil, onto that mulch, and get a very rapid response without the big earth moving equipment process that the, the compost required us to do. I think that the value of compost in our systems is to apply a very purposely made, refined compost that can go on at a fraction of the amount that we applied when we just bought our, you know, thousands and thousands of yard orders of municipal compost. Instead, what we started doing was making a very small amount in comparison to the thousands of yards amounts we were putting on. We started making here on our farm, very small amounts of purposefully made nutrient focused compost where we incorporated nutrients that we knew we needed in, in our orchards, but put that material on in the form of a compost where we put on a fraction of it and got a lot more bang for our buck. Because that compost was really a nutrient input instead of a mulch input that we had been doing with the previous compost.

Mike, you've mentioned a couple of pieces I'd like to follow up on. I want to come back at some point and elaborate a bit more on the nutrient applications that you were describing. But also you've identified the Moen blow as being foundational to building a soil cover and covering the soil within the tree row. What are the possibilities of using cover crops and producing even more biomass for that MOW and blow operation in addition to the grass that you're growing?

That's a great question, John. We began to utilize cover crops in our, in our alleyways. Since some of your listeners may not understand everything about orchards here in Oregon. We maintain an alleyway between the trees that we can drive up and down. And you need to have some kind of crop that's growing there to hold the soil in place so that it doesn't erode and to keep your orchard from turning into, I'll just say, a dust bowl. We don't want to have thousands of small, just dirt roads going up and down our alleyways, right through our orchards, because that creates a giant dust plume which is bad for everybody, especially the soil. And Our trees. And so we have maintained sod, just perennial rye grass, creeping red fescue, there's orchard grass, sods. Many growers have, have their own favorite. And that, that sod does its job. It holds the soil in place, it keeps the dust down, but it does not contribute a whole lot to the trees. After we landed on the moen blow technique, we started with just blowing what we already had in the alleyways over. So blowing our perennial rye, in our case, over into the alleyway is where we started. But I began to say, all right, is this the best way to do it? Is there something else that we can plant in the alleyways and blow to the side? And so cover crops are where we went with our efforts to generate more biomass in the alleyway and then transfer that biomass using our mowers over into the tree row and have it act as a mulch. And we started here with COVID cropping on fallow fields that were waiting to be replanted. We would maintain cover crops and we had various mixes of plant species that we utilized in those areas. And we just took those plants that worked in our fallow fields, big open fields waiting to have orchard trees replanted into them, and we started putting them in the alleyways. And we had some success and some failure there because a big open field that has no trees growing above it is a very different environment for sun loving cover crop plants than the shade of an orchard canopy in an alleyway. We have found a series of plants that we really like to put into our alleyways and grow that generate a lot of biomass during the dormant season from basically fall until spring, we don't have a lot of equipment passing over our alleyways. And the COVID crop has an opportunity to grow during that time. And then in the spring, before we start doing our orchard management activities, where the alleyways are quite busy with equipment, we take that cover crop that's grown over the winter and generated a lot of biomass, and we blow that over into the tree row and it generates a good start to our growing season. For the cherries, when the soil is starting to warm up in the tree row, it gets this very nice coating of a diverse species mix of mulch on top of it.

Mike, when you, when you have these cover crops during the winter months, doesn't that have the effect of then choking out the sod? How do you manage, do you still have a sod for the following year?

That's a great question. We maintain a. We maintain two crops in our, in our alleyways each year. We have an overwinter and cover crop and then we plant a fast growing, you might call it a temporary sod. I don't know if it would be proper to call the COVID crop that grows during the warm season in our rows a true sod. But we maintain a green crop there, but it's not grown as cover crop because it's very difficult to generate a whole lot of biomass when you have as many equipment passes going up and down the rows from essentially May through August is what we do in cherries. We were never able to find a warm season crop that we could plant and grow as a cover crop where we generate a lot of biomass because we just have too many different sized pieces of equipment. We have ATVs, we have our TVs, we have various sizes of tractors. And so by the time you take all those tire tracks and draw them out going down the alleyway, we really only end up with about 24 inches right in the very center of the alley where anything has an opportunity to grow. And keep in mind it can't grow that tall because the crown of the plants getting constantly batted down by equipment passing over the top of it.

So in essence, what you're describing, if I'm understanding it correctly, is you actually plant two crops. You plant what you're considering a cover crop in the fall to produce biomass during the winter months, and then you're planting a soil cover or a ground cover in the spring, Is that right?

Yes, that's exactly what we do.

Mike, I think this is something that a lot of people are interested in. It's something that I personally get a lot of questions about. Can you tell us a little bit about the COVID crops that you ended up selecting, particularly for your winter cover, what the rationale was for those?

So when we started looking at cover crops, it was really difficult because when I began my research, what I found quickly was that there is a multitude of giant laundry lists of species that are available to us as growers that we can plant. And keep in mind that our focus has been on what works and not necessarily if it will sprout and grow, but will it sprout, grow and accomplish our goals. And so what I found in those lists were it was very difficult for me to find anybody in orchards that was doing what we were doing. There was few, if any, there was nobody I knew of that I could call and talk to and have an in depth conversation about what species are you planting? Because I didn't know of anybody that was doing this. There were people that were just like me, would plant a cover crop in a fallow field, but there was nobody that was planting it in the alleyway. So what I did, John, was I took the species that grew the best in the fallow fields and tried them in the alleyways. And what I found was that not every species did well. In fact, most species didn't do well. But the species that we landed on that did do a good job in the alleyways really do do a good job. I can talk about those specifically, if you'd. If you'd like.

Yeah. What did you find to have that level of success?

So, for us, the. The mix that we really like in our alleyways is a mix of annual rye, which all the row crop growers are maybe cringing when I say that, but it's not a problem for us in our perennial system. But we put in a mix of annual rye, triticale, and then a mustard species, a forage kale, a hybrid forage kale, and tillage radish. Those species work really, really well for us. And you might notice that I didn't name a legume in that mix, and that is because we had difficulty finding a legume that would work in this application. And we tried lots and lots of different legumes, and we never were able to find one that worked for us. But the other thing was that we found is when we were evaluating legumes in our fallow fields and in our alleyways, voles and gophers would become a real issue for us. They were very attracted to the legumes, and so I avoided those because we didn't find one that worked well. And the vole and gopher problem they generated was a big deal to us.

Yeah, I understand that that is a major deal for a lot of tree fruit production. But then also, when you say that you didn't find a legume that worked well for you, what were the parameters and the characteristics that you were looking for? Was it just because of slippery slopes, or what were the constraints on legumes other than the gophers and the voles?

Okay. So we evaluated a lot of different clover species, and what we found was that they. We just didn't get them to establish well and grow for us consistently. When we talk about having a return on our investment, we need to have every seed that goes into that mix be there because we know it's going to earn us a return, not because we want to feel good, feel that we're maybe doing something that we read in a book was Important. And so we just did not have consistent stands of clovers established for us. We found that vetch could work for us. It would establish and it would grow, and it would be of benefit. But here's where the catch comes in. Vetch is not very well behaved at staying in the alleyway. It would take advantage of that nice open space underneath the tree where it didn't have competition from its companions in the alleyway, and it would grow into the tree row, which would be fine until it would encounter a micro sprinkler. We irrigate almost all of our acres. Well, we irrigate all of our acres by drip or micro sprinkler irrigation. And so when that vetch vine would encounter the micro sprinkler, it would whip up around it, and it would make the micro sprinkler be ineffective because it would be covered. The sprinkler would be covered in vetch. And so, because I couldn't make vetch pave, I was forced to eliminate it from our mix.

Got it. Which actually leads me to another question that I had wanted to ask is, have you considered growing any cover crops in the tree row? It's. Is that a possibility?

Boy, that is. That's something that I would love to have happen for us. And it seems so incredibly simple to say, why can't we just grow something in the tree row? But yet it is incredibly, incredibly complicated to find something that works. I have tried countless species and countless mixes to grow underneath our trees in the tree row and have yet to find one that works really well. And I'm sure that people are sitting, listening right now thinking, oh, my gosh, what do you mean? Just look at all those things that. Look at all those things that you could plant. But it is very difficult to find a plant that stays low enough. It does not interfere with our micro sprinkler irrigation, and that can grow well in areas of the tree row that are in full sun, full blazing sun for the entire duration of the day and yet can grow right up to the trunk of the tree, which may be full shade for almost the entire duration of the day. And then, probably most importantly, compete with weeds that grow in a tree row that we unfortunately can't allow to be there because of the micro sprinkler irrigation. I have just not come up with that species yet.

And also a species that can survive being buried in underneath the mow and blow mulch and still emerge and remain short while doing all those things.

Yes. And have the foot traffic of. There's not A lot of foot traffic in the tree row, except during harvest. We have hundreds, we have several hundred people that enter a small block. Those people have to, I'm going to use a technical term, trump around the tree to get the fruit picked. And that tramples a lot of COVID crops. And so the list of requirements that we have for a plant, I have not found yet. That, that, that accomplishes everything. We can get things that grow beautiful underneath young trees, baby trees that don't have a big canopy and that aren't in production. But as soon as those trees get up and start to shade, as soon as we start having pruning activity going on, we would tramp those cover crops down. Then the mow and blow brings a whole new dynamic because there's nothing that I have found that will not interfere with the micro sprinklers that can take that mulch getting put on top.

Challenging set of conditions for certain.

So I'm open, I'm open to any ideas to the listener community out there for your podcast. Boy, if there's something that you've tried and it works for you, please let me know about it. There are a couple of species that do. I'm going to say okay, but to plant hundreds of acres of them is impossible because of the nature of, you know, they may be a tuber or they may be a bulb, or we may need to start them as a small potted plant. Well, that's practical under a few trees and in a backyard scenario or maybe a very small orchard. But when you talk about hundreds or thousands of acres, you. You could be talking about millions of plants that you can't find a horticultural nursery that could produce them economically for you. And it's a real challenge. Another thing is I found some species that I thought were great, but after we got a foot of snow on the ground, the gophers and voles also thought that they were great, and they were gone come spring.

An interesting set of challenging conditions. Mike, can you tell us a little bit about some of the species that you experimented with that were tubers or potted plants that worked? Okay?

Yes, I can. There are three of them that did a good job that we just aren't able to scale effectively. One of them is a juga. The Latin name escapes me, or your listeners, excuse me, will have to Google it. I. I didn't come prepared with the Latin name, but ajuga is one of the species that worked well. We planted. Not the variegated types or anything, the fancy ones, just the wild type, if you will. The second plant is moneywort. That worked quite well. Again, it was just something that was impossible for us to scale. And then the third species is a non hybrid comfrey that we found worked very nicely. Again, I don't remember the, I don't remember the Latin name of it. I could maybe send that to you and you could include it in the description for this podcast, John. But it was sold as the common name European comfrey. Although looking at it, it looks different than what I would consider European comfrey, but that's what it was sold to us as.

Got it. And we'll include the information on these various species in the show notes. For those of you listening, thank you for sharing that. Mike. A few moments ago, before we began speaking about your mow and blow and the COVID crops that you're growing, you mentioned that once you had established a mulch, you then also began putting on more nutrient applications and biological inoculants and biostimulants into the tree row. What can you tell us a little bit about some of the things that you've been using, new tools that you've adopted and the results that you've observed?

I sure can. So I started the process of focusing on the soil. Maybe many folks have done the same thing, but this is what I did, is I started to put on every biological bio stimulant and inoculant that was available. And, and seeing what worked. And what I, what I found was that there, there are, of course, like one would expect, products that work better than others. But what I, what I really learned was that Hindsight is indeed 2020. And I found that by spraying succulents onto the bare soil as we were maintaining our alleyways just didn't make sense to me without having material there to protect everything that you're putting on to feed everything that you're putting on. It didn't make sense. And, and so what I began doing is I began, as I mentioned, to put on material before and after my mulch because there are some things I wanted to be covered by the mulch and in contact with the soil. And there are other things that I wanted to have go on top of the mulch and add some biological horsepower to the natural processes and kickstart the natural processes of breaking down that mulch and having it go to work for us in the soil. So one of the things that I began doing is using a lot of fish product and landed upon a product that I really liked that's made with salmon and crab material that's available here on the West Coast. That product I found really, really pushed forward our soil efforts, our soil enhancement efforts. And we saw a direct benefit in the crop. We could go as simple as having an orchard where it's conventionally managed, but we applied this fish product onto the soil and onto the foliage of the trees and that would be the only difference. And we saw a big return on our investment there, a substantial return on our investment. We tried lots of other fish products. As you know, there are many of them available in the market and some of them worked better than others. But the ones, the one that we found that was made with salmon and crab here from the west coast, boy that, that really pushed us forward a lot in our, in our efforts. And that was one of the baseline or base components to all my nutrition programs now is using that, using that fish.

When you refer to that as the base of your nutrition programs, what other nutritional applications are you doing today and how have those shifted over the last decade or since you've started experimenting?

We use nutrition as it's necessary now. And we're able to do that because we utilize a technique to monitor what's going on in our orchard in real time throughout the entire season. And that technique is SAP analysis. For many years, I did my nutrition program about January or February. I would sit down and I would look at all of the returns that we had for our orchard for size and price. I would then look at maybe a couple of leaf samples that we'd pulled during the growing season, maybe a soil sample. And I would write down on a piece of paper everything I was going to do for the following season. And we would follow that recipe and we would make minor tweaks depending upon what the size of the crop was. If we were going to have a light yield or an average yield or a heavy yield, maybe we would have a disease problem that started developing. So we'd boost a nutrient or two, but we essentially would just follow what was written down on the back of the envelope this time of year. We'd follow that through the entire season, you know, eight months from when the time something was written down, we were doing it. Well, orchards or any farm is not a static system. And there is all kinds of in season changes that occur that need that require us to change our approach in nutrition, what we're doing. And there was no technology that I had confidence in available and tell SAP analysis for knowing what was going on right now in my orchard. So every two weeks we take a sample from the time that the first Leaves are expanded until right before a leaf drop. So the entire growing season of our orchard, we are sampling, we're sending those samples in, we're getting the result back, and we are calibrating every nutrient application that we put on based upon those samples, because we have a real time picture of what our trees have need for or what they have excess of. So every nutrient in every tank is there because the SAP analysis and it has indicated it needs to be so. It's very difficult for me to give you generalities, John. You know, I would love to do that. I'd love to say that our nutrient program is based on X, Y and Z. But I really honestly can only say that FISH is something that is in every, virtually every application. What else is going to be there depends upon what the results of the SAP analysis is.

Obviously, Mike, if you're measuring and using SAP analysis and you're customizing, then there's the possibility that your nutrient applications are very transient. They're shifting and changing all the time. And there aren't any constants except, as you just indicated, the one constant of being a liquid fish application. One question that I have is how similar are your current types of nutrient applications to what they might have been before you were using SAP analysis? Are there still general similarities? Were you applying similar trace minerals there? Or perhaps a different way of asking the question would be what were the changes that SAP analysis indicated that really surprised you or that were unexpected?

That's a great question, John. I'll give you some. I'll give you some examples. Before I started doing SAP analysis, I would put on semi loads of triple 20 foliar fertilizer. I would put on large amounts of zinc in the spring, thinking that the trees needed zinc in order to generate bigger leaves. Because we all know that bigger leaves on the tree mean more carbohydrates being generated for the tree to size those cherries. And that's what our goal is. So I'd put on lots of triple 20 and lots of zinc. And what I found was that I was shooting myself in the foot. And because my trees did not need zinc, they did not need triple 20 because the potassium that I was applying in that triple 20 was pushing calcium out of my trees. So when we started doing SAP analysis, I found myself putting on oodles and oodles of calcium and no triple 20 because the trees had become deficit in calcium. And over time, I was putting on more calcium than I ever could have possibly imagined. And I was putting on no potassium and no very little if any zinc. And that was a big surprise to me because our baseline program was actually harming our genetic potential of the trees to generate the returns that we want. And that was a surprise to me. And I never would have known that I was actually taking away from the potential of the tree unless I had done SAP analysis. So that was a big surprise. But things change. I think it was Bill Gates who said something like, people, people generally overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And I kind of love that saying because as we've gone through time, we see things happening in the SAP analysis that are surprising. And so, for example, I was mentioning that we applied lots and lots of calcium and we, when we first started this process years ago, what we see now is actually our calcium levels. For example, in 2018, our calcium levels were actually quite good. I never thought I would have said that given the challenge of how much calcium we put on. But the various activities that we've been doing with focusing on our soil and our foliary nutrition based on SAP analysis, we've gotten our calcium levels up to where I'm comfortable with them. And believe it or not, I never thought I would say this in a million years. We actually had a difficult time with keeping our nitrogen levels in the last growing season at a point where we needed them. I found myself actually putting on a large amount of nitrogen relative to what we've done in the past. Because our nitrogen levels weren't high, we needed them to be higher. And boy, that was a big surprise. But again, I never would have done the right thing and put on nitrogen and backed off of our calcium applications had I not had the SAP analysis right there in front of me, showing me the trends in those two nutrients and having me be able to take action to correct them.

We've certainly observed that SAP analysis and adapting to SAP analysis is one of the hallmarks of success of really exceptional growers. Because if you're not testing and if you're not measuring, then you're just guessing. And there are many growers who have historically been comfortable with guessing. And that's rapidly shifting and changing.

Boy, it sure is. You know, and there probably are growers out there that are so in tuned with their crop that they might be able to look and be lucky by having the guest be successful. And then they tell themselves that they're never wrong. And boy, that's a mistake. I think that SAP analysis has been foundational to allowing me to efficiently use the biologically intensive techniques that I've been doing on my farm and have a return on investment. You know, I don't sell my fruit direct to consumer. I sell my fruit into the wholesale market. I don't have the luxury of my own brand and you know, my face on the package, so to speak. My fruit is anonymous in the marketplace. The only thing that my fruit has to speak for itself in the marketplace is the size and quality of the fruit. So because of that competitiveness in the market, I have to make sure that I am very efficiently managing my inputs because I don't receive a brand premium. I don't receive a special premium for my product because it's a unique brand and consumers want that brand. I get a premium price because my quality is above average. Generally nobody's perfect, it's not always that way. But the quality of my fruit is above average and it needs to be able to compete in the wholesale market. And so the use of bio intensive practices has to be done in a way that ensures a return on the investment because these expenses are added expenses versus the conventional fruit that I'm competing against in the marketplace place. And they're oftentimes require higher levels of management and labor, which of course are two of the more expensive things for one doing business. But by doing SAP analysis, I am able to make sure that I'm hitting the mark with these techniques to the best of our ability. And that adds a very important boost to the return on the investment because we're targeting them perfectly. And the efficacy of that investment becomes quite high when instead of just guessing with something that's an expensive input, you're putting an expensive input right where it needs to be at the right time, at the right amount. And boy, the return on investment is quite substantial. When you start doing that.

That leads to the question that I've been wanting to ask Mike. We started this conversation based on answering the question is where are the opportunities to have a large return on capital, return on management? You describe some of the challenges that you've had in the orchard industry in competing with the mainstream. And you mentioned that the foundational place where you would start is with keeping the soil covered with mow and blow, with mulches, etc. And you also mentioned nutrient applications, but you haven't spoken about the return on investment, return on Capital Management, etc. For foliar applications. And these nutrient applications that you're describing, how do those compare with the use of soil covers?

I think that there is, there's a synergistic effect between mulches and the foliar applications that we're doing on our crop. The lands that I farm, my family lands that I farm, have been in. In my family for over 100 years. And. And they've been farmed for well over 100 years. They are not native, undisturbed soils. They are heavily utilized soils that have had, over time, A lot of tons of crop taken off them, A lot of activities that may have been, in hindsight, harmful to the soil. We're in a restorative process in our system. If I had virgin, perfect soil to begin with, the foliar program that I need to apply now may not be necessary, because the soil might potentially could be providing everything that the plant needs. That sort of sounds like the garden of Eden for plants. Instead, what I have is I have tired, old soils that we need to restore. And if I were to do that only with mulches and covering the soil up and mowing, Blowing our cover crop. As patient a person I am, because I'm. I view this as a long game. I'm not that patient. I don't know if, in my working lifetime, we would be able to accomplish what I want to accomplish and have the economic return that I want to have Just by mowing and blowing mulches onto the soils. I think you said this, John. One of the fastest ways for us to improve our soils Is to have the crop that's growing in them Be doing the improvement for us. And so I view the tree as the conduit for putting carbon into our soils At a much higher rate Than what I can do with mow and blow and with applying mulches. Even if I were to truck hundreds and thousands of yards worth of mulch, Wood, mulch, or compost mulch onto my soil, I really couldn't accomplish as much as that tree does. And so I view the nutrient applications as twofold. One is that, of course, with nutrient applications and calibrating those based on SAP analysis, I'm able to make sure that I get as close as I can to the genetic maximum potential of the cherry in the given climate that it's growing in for that season. And I'm able to do that by growing as big a leaves and as big a canopy on my tree as possible. The engine for sizing fruit is the canopy of the tree. And that means big leaves, lots of surface area. That can be accomplished much quicker with foliar applications Than any mow and blow. I mow and blow a few times, you know, a handful of times a year is when that mower is passing by. However, I can apply nutrients through foliar or through fertigation every couple of days, which is what we actually do in the case of fertigation. And I'm able to size those leaves up big. But the other thing that that big canopy does, besides grow this year's crop is it invests in future crops by contributing carbon and other nutrients into the rhizosphere and building the soil. So the tree is simultaneously generating the crop that's going to pay the bills and put food on the table and money in the college fund for my kids. It's at the same time it's putting its own bank into the soil and building its future. So the tree is building my future with the crop I'm going to harvest. And it's also building its own future by boosting nutrients into the soil. And I think that foliar applications and fertigation applications that we do, those nutrients that we apply need to be viewed as both near term and long term investment. And so we continue to do foliar and fertigation onto our trees even after the crop has been picked because we're growing next year's crop. And so we fertigate and we apply foliar nutrition based on SAP analysis that we continue even after the cherries are off the tree because we're growing future crops.

Mike, you've been doing many different things. You've been composting for now we learn about fertigation and foliar applications and you've been talking about the returns in very abstract terminology of return on investment, etc. Tell us about results. What has changed with your trees? We started this conversation by mentioning a desire to develop the root systems. What has changed with root systems? What has changed with tree health? What have you actually observed in the field?

One of the things that I have some anecdotes and then I have some actual data to share. So. So we'll start with the anecdotes. In November of 2014, we had one of those once in a lifetime historic freezes that you may have just experienced in Ohio, John, recently, where in November the lowest the temperature had been was 43 degrees. And our trees generally go into dormancy about November. But it had been a very warm fall and you might say early winter, and the trees were still actively growing. We hadn't had any acclimation of cold hardiness. And then we had an arctic front come down and we went from lows of. In the, in the 40s to below zero in one day, and it stayed below zero. And here at my house, we had negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit. And the leaves on the trees just turned black, Just like a dahlia plant looks. After the first frost, the leaves turned black and they just hung on the trees. And we had, in our area, several hundred acres of trees that just died. We had blocks where all the buds were frozen on the trees. But at that time, I was doing some comparison analysis between, I'm gonna say mulch and intensive bionutrition applications and conventional applications for management of the orchard. And so I had two orchards that were sitting within a quarter mile of each other at the same elevation. One was on one side of a small canyon, and one was on the other side of the small canyon. They were the same age and variety of tree, same irrigation. The only difference between them was the nutrition management. One had been had compost, had mulch, had biointensive nutrition applied, and the other orchard was just a standard conventional orchard. After that freeze, all the trees in the conventional orchard were killed or were dead. They froze. They. They froze out. The entire canopy was killed. We could have regrown them from the roots, but the trees were dead down to the soil, and they'd been killed. The entire orchard was. Was smoked. There wasn't one tree that was left. When you went and cut bark, it was black underneath instead of bright green. And I had to remove that orchard that following spring. The orchard where we'd been following these biointensive practices, believe it or not, had 110% of a normal crop. So we actually picked 10% more fruit out of that orchard than we did the previous year. And that truly amazed me because I couldn't believe it. That difference was only due to the nutrition management and these other activities that we were doing. There was no other difference there. And that really shocked me. The other. The other thing that we've observed over time is a marked reduction in two pathogens that are problems for us, two diseases that are problems for us in cherries. One of them is bacterial canker. Bacterial canker causes cherry trees to eventually die. They create a lot of gum, so they get a canker that is a swelling of SAP under the bark. And then these cankers burst almost like a. Like a blister, and SAP oozes out of them. That disease is a particular challenge with certain varieties and certain root stocks of trees. And we have to avoid certain varieties and certain root stocks of trees because we just really can't get them to ever Grow very well because the trees get plagued by bacterial canker. And if it doesn't wipe the orchard out, it takes enough trees out of the block that you lose the value of that block as an economic unit. So say 20% of the block maybe is killed by bacterial canker. That remaining 80% can never perform at the level we need to remain competitive, because you're missing 20% of the trees in there, and you can try to replant them, but the baby trees you put in to that existing block succumb to bacterial canker. So one of the challenges that I faced was this disease. And the consultants at Advancing eco agriculture that I work with started to tell me that we should try to take on these diseases, this disease of bacterial canker, by focusing on the nutrition. And over time, we had an amazing transformation in the block that had significant amounts of bacterial canker enough. I was going to take the block out, but I left it there because I didn't have anything to lose. And what we found was that the bacterial canker was actually eliminated from the block. It wasn't just reduced, it, it was actually eliminated. Virtually all of the trees in that block had one or more canker sites on them. Some were far worse than others, but almost every tree had at least one canker on it growing. And what we found is, I think it was by the third or fourth year, we could not find bacterial canker in that block. I had neighbors coming to the block. I had extension staff and research pathologists from Oregon State coming to that block. And they could not believe the change in the block, that there was not canker there. A second disease that's more problematic in cherries is powdery mildew. That disease affects the foliage and fruit, and it's a real challenge. It. Powdery mildew is the disease that is targeted by almost all the fungicide applications that are applied in conventional and organic production of cherries. And what we've seen is that highly susceptible varieties that normally would require extra powdery mildew applications, actually, we've been able to reduce our applications by half. And maybe I could reduce them by more. I'm just a bit nervous about reducing them by more. But we have been able to apply half the number of fungicides to those trees, and we have no mildew there. And this is another thing that neighbors couldn't believe. So we actually had a walking tour through that block that was hosted by. Well, we've had a couple of them. One of them was hosted by extension, and I made a bet with the neighbors There I said, can you go find any mildew in this block and I'll buy you a steak dinner? Actually, I have never had to buy a steak dinner because folks cannot find mildew in that orchard. And a typical orchard with that variety on it would have lots of mildew because even with fungicide applications we're not able to control it. So those are two things that, that we've observed that I honestly thought we, we would never get to where through nutrition we're able to manage our disease diseases, in this case with bacterial canker and with powdery mildew. I was really shocked by that. And to me it speaks to the value to the tree and the long term value to the orchard of providing the nutrition that the tree needs and the tree will take care of itself.

Mike, these are some extraordinary anecdotes. Thank you very much for sharing them. I think I'm certainly inspired by hearing these stories because we've heard many of the leaders of the biological agriculture space saying for decades, I mean, William Albrecht back in the 1940s used to say that insects are nature's garbage collectors and diseases are here to take the unhealthy plants out of the system. So it's encouraging to hear that we can actually manage plant nutrition and produce these effects. You mentioned that you also have some data. I'm not sure what the data is in regards to, but I would also love to learn more about what were the effects that you observed in fruit itself. There's the health of the tree component, but how did managing nutrition affect fruit quality for you?

That's a good, that's a good question, John. And brings me back to the numbers. The anecdotes are always fun to talk about, but the data is too. So I believe in measuring, and not just in SAP analysis of course, but I believe in measuring results of the management activities that we do on our farm. I think it's incredibly important for us to be observers. I think farmers need to be observers, but I also think that farmers need to be engineers in the fact that if we don't measure, we'll never really know for sure. So on our farm over the years we collect lots of data and we continue to do so. And in particular we collect data on the size and firmness of our cherries because those are the two primary criteria that, that base the price that we're going to receive per pound for our fruit. And what we have consistently seen over time is that when we apply biointensive management practices, we have a higher quality of fruit in Size and in firmness, because those are two easy things for us to measure because we can take a sample and we can measure the size and the firmness. And in general, across varieties and across management techniques, we can increase our fruit by 1/2 row size consistently. And oftentimes we can boost our fruit by one row size, which is the gauge of which you measure cherry fruit size. We also have our fruit be significantly firmer, raising, raising our firmness upwards of 50 to 100 grams per millimeter of pressure when we examine the fruit. So those two factors, we have rings of data on increasing our size and firmness. But what we have seen on a per acre basis is that we fairly consistently return. Our net return on investment with these practices in cherries is somewhere between 820, $100 per acre. It depends on the variety and it depends on the year. But that is the, that's the net difference in our return after we take our expenses of the bio intensive practices out. When we back those out, if we look at what an acre of Biointensive cherries returns versus an acre that we farm conventionally, we're consistently between $820, $100 ahead as profit for ourselves. So those are real numbers. And that really gets my attention and I like it because it's good to do something that is interesting to me as a, as a farmer, you know, and exciting, but also pays the bills and pays them well. That, that's a win, win.

Mike, you've described some phenomenal, some extraordinary stories and anecdotes with the freeze protection, et cetera. Of all those surprises that you've had on your journey as you've experimented with these various approaches, what was the most unexpected?

You know, I'm going to wrap you into this story, John. When, when you and I first met, however long ago it's been, now I remember, I was incredibly impressed with your knowledge and really connected with you as a, as a person and as a farmer. And I was just very, very in agreement with everything that you said as we, as we had our many long conversations until you told me that I could reduce mildew and bacterial canker to zero. That's when, that's when I doubted you, John, because I thought never in a million years will that happen. And I had, you know, I had Albrecht's writings and, and, and the writings of many other pioneers that have come before you and me, John, not that I'm a pioneer, but. You sure are. I, I always thought that they are. They're drinking the Kool Aid. On that that's never gonna happen. And boy, I was wrong and surprised when, when we were able to back that off. I was really confident we could make the fruit bigger. I was really confident that we could generate higher yields, which we've been able to do. But I never thought we'd knock down powdery mildew and bacterial canker. And I'm still cautious about them. But boy, that was. That's probably the biggest surprise for sure.

John Good. Well, thanks for the compliments contained within that. I know it's been a lot of fun for us to see that happening on your operation and others as well, so thank you for sharing that. Mike There are many growers who are listening, many other fruit growers, vegetable growers. What is a book or resource that you would recommend that everyone needs to read to become more immersed or other things people need to consider that perhaps we haven't spoken about?

Well, since, since you're asking one, I can't answer, so I'm going to answer with two. YouTube has been invaluable to me, I think books, I love books and I every place where, where there's room for a book, there's one there and I love to read and it's very important. But one of the hard things for me in books is by the time the book gets out there, I sometimes feel that maybe the information, the actionable information can become a bit dated. And So I use YouTube a lot. There is an amazing amount of information on YouTube. You know, one of the things that we did to, to make that really effective active compost on our farm is introduced a lot of vermicompost techniques to that process. I learned that all on YouTube, whether it's fabricating a piece of equipment or doing something a little different. YouTube is a great resource. But since I love books, I have to include a. A book. And it's. It might sound a little bit obtuse, but I love to read really old books from the 20s and 30s about how people ran their farms when they were where there were integrated livestock and row crop production together. And I really like books that focus upon not just the, the love and romance of farming, but the business of farming from that era. And there's a great book that I love and I read it, oh, every year or two and it's called the Farming Ladder and it's written by a gentleman named Henderson, and it describes his farm in England, Oat Hill Farm, and how they ran the farm. They had horses, they had poultry and cattle and sheep and they cut hay and Oats and they had barns in it. And it, the focus in that book is just really, really neat because he talks about keys to his success in not just applying the art and love of farming, but the business aspects of farming. And I really enjoy that book so I would suggest everybody find it on. I don't know if it's in reprint. I have an original but you could get it and I just enjoy that a great deal.

Mike, I've read many, many books and there isn't often that someone recommends one in agriculture that I haven't read. But you've been successful. I'm going to be getting it and reading it as soon as I have the opportunity.

That's good, you'll enjoy it, John.

Yeah, well, thanks for the recommendation. Mike, your views on orchard management and nutrition management have shifted as you've described over the course of the last decade or so. And there's this one question which I think is very important for us to ask and to think about today. What is it that you believe to be true about modern agriculture, about modern fruit production that is perhaps different from the mainstream view?

I think if we were, if I consider the mainstream view to be conventional agriculture, I think the thing that is different is that biologically intensive practices are not antagonistic to large scale agriculture. I don't believe that large scale agriculture and biointensive and regenerative practices, practices are mutually exclusive. On my farm we farmed 350 acres and we were able to implement practices that were done on people with a third of an acre that they had under production. We were able to scale that, we were able to, to find ways to make things work. And that is where the challenge lies. I think for us in this field that people that have this passion is if we really want to have a substantial effect on world food production, we have to make a crude statement. Bring in the big companies, the big acres, the big boys if you will, if we really want to have an impact. And I think that that can be done because these aren't mutually exclusive. Regenerative farming, biologically intensive and large scale agriculture. They aren't and they don't have to be. But I think sometimes folks like to be members of a tribe or a point of view where when someone walks in the room who, who say is of industrial scale agriculture if you will, we want to yell boo. And that I think that that's sad, but it also is holding us back.

Yeah, Mike, I couldn't agree more. It's one of the things that I'm really Excited to hear you say this. And one of the things that we've worked hard at, at advancing eco agriculture. In fact, the majority of our customers, the majority of the people that we work with are large scale growers, commercial growers, because you are absolutely correct that at least in the developed countries of the world, they contribute the great majority of the food supply. And it's important for us if we really want to have an impact on climate, on agriculture, on water quality, etc. All the things that agriculture can have such a positive impact on, we need to be implementing these ideas and these solutions on a large scale. And, and it is possible to do that and you are doing that very well. So thank you for sharing that.

Well, thank you for your efforts and, and to the team at AEA for, for their efforts. John, I, I'm very excited for, I'm excited for every day to bring new challenges in farming. And focusing upon biological and restorative agriculture has just brought. Brought a real sense of joy to me when I walk through the orchard. It's exciting and I love it.

Wonderful. Mike, thanks for joining us on the podcast. I'm looking forward to having you back at some point to share more stories. Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me, John.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of success. Regenerative systems at aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We measure, we test, we analyze and we provide recommendations based on scientific data and knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow. Visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.