All right. Recording is on. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the fourth Unconventional Fruit Working Group, today's August 28, 2024. The topic of our conversation today is nutrient management. This conversation is being recorded and will be available on MSUS Media space, and I will send out that link to everybody who registered, whether they're here or not, and we're still working on getting a more formal list and group together to streamline the organization of this group. But I think all of you who are on this call today. Nutrient management is an interesting topic when it comes to unconventional management, mostly because fertilization by enlarge in conventional agriculture is done with um synthetically produced nitrogen and other nutrients, whereas in organic management, specifically, everything needs to come from natural sources. And so nutrient management can actually be a challenge in terms of sourcing where your nutrients for your crops are going to come from. We'll talk a little bit, or I'm hoping to hear from some view about what you do to determine what your needs are, nutrient wise, if there are specific products that you like to use or that you have had successes or failures with, and what some of the alternative approaches you've considered, or if this is something that you don't see it as worthwhile for going what organic certification asks you to do. You know, this might be something that many people, and I'll use home growers as an example. Many home growers who don't necessarily like to use insecticzer, fungicides on their plants won't have any issue using synthetic fertilizer, even though it wouldn't be within the realm of certified organic production, right? So this is something that maybe there's a little bit of variation on. Um, as all of you or most of you would know, MSU offers soil tests that are contracted out to another lab, and soil tests and leaf samples as well are kind of the basis that we use to determine what nutrition needs to go in a field, especially in fruit production. And if somebody wants to start talking about SAP analysis, if anybody has experience with that, that would be a great topic to discuss as well. So As with pretty much every other time we do this, I ask that extension people, which would, in this case, be Jackie and me. We generally take a step back and let the growers have this discussion, and we'll say some comments or ask some questions as needed. But this whole meeting is really meant for you to talk to one another. So does you want to start with a thought or a question? And one more thing. Just when you do start talk, especially if it's your first time talking, just say briefly your name where you're located and if you're a grower or what you do? Yeah. I'll start. I'm John Carter. And I don't have any advice for anybody. I'm looking for advice. So are any of you experience with growing blueberries? No, it doesn't look like it. Jackie, are you? Jackie. Hi there. Sorry, I. Can you hear me now? Yes. Awesome. I'm eating lunch. I didn't want you all That's right. So I worked with blueberries a lot. My current position is focused on tree fruit, but I used to be in a blueberry lab. Unfortunately, my background is actually entomology. So I'm more of an insect person, and nutrient management is not my wheel house, so I'm looking to learn from some of you folks today. But, I have experience in Blueberry pest management, but that's it. Thank you. Specific challenge with blueberry nutrition. That you have a question about? Me? No, I do not. I'm just We are not blueberry farmers yet. We're getting ready to cut a stand a red pine, and we are going to have 36 acres of lot of tops and wasted lumber. And we're going to try and turn that into biochar and then plant blueberry bushes, and we don't know a thing about them and need to find out in a hurry. So that's what we're trying to do. Well, I'll say in my experience with being an extension Asia that has been that long, don't be in a hurry. You some patients ultimately ends up paying off. You definitely want to be taking a soil test probably before and after you remove the red pine there. You know, as you know, blueberry specifically need to have a pretty acidic soil, generally close to a PH of, I think five, that you want to have f blueberries. And if you don't naturally have that, that means a lot of soil amendments. Um, and I think Carl might be able to speak to that with the azaleas over at Applewood. About what you have to do when your soil isn't naturally acidic enough, Carl, do you have any comments there? Yeah, I mean, we've been adding sulfa for many, many years, and it's the pH has come down after many years of application, but it does not happen right away. For sure. Now, in a Pine Forest, there's a good chance that you already have a pretty Engage. So you're probably all right. But have you done a soil test there? Not yet. I planted these trees 60 years ago with my parents, and it's been Pines ever since. It's kind of sandy. So we'll be doing that soon, so we'll be getting the test. How do I go getting the test through Michigan State? That's a great question. Yeah. A great thing to have on our I don't want to talk here. Let me just MSU actually offers two different types of soil tests, and I want to make sure that we have the right one. Okay. So I'm just going to share my screen. Right now. This is I put in soil test MSU EDU and it reverted to home soil test dot MSU EDU. So most of you are going to be commercial growers, in which case, you go to submit a commercial sample, which is and highlighting right here. So you need to purchase a commercial soil test bag from your extension office. So John for you, that would probably be in Hastings is where the extension office is. And so you buy that in person and there are instructions on your bag. Now, some of the growers who watch this conventional group are home growers or smaller scale growers. You know if you only have, you know, a very small even if a very small patch, you're more likely to be using the homeland and garden soil test mailer, in which case, you can either buy it from your local tension office or you can order it online through the MSC bookstore. Um Now, the commercial sample I think is actually a little bit cheaper than the home one, but the recommendations end up being different. Commercial samples, you'll be getting recommendations on a per acre basis. Whereas a home one will be much more tailored to the realistic size of your garden or yard. Their instructions right in here on taking the soil sample, that's how a soil test will be done through MSU. MSU gets those results in gs the samples in the mail, sends them out to an external lab who does the processing, but then gives some Michigan specific recommendations. Um, and those are generally elemental recommendations. So it's not telling you specifically to use, you know, a given product. It's not going to give it to you in terms of how much chicken liter con you need to add. It will give it to you in terms of you need to have this much nitrogen. And so you can fill in the gaps yourself that way. We also have a I think it was called anatomy of a soil test report. So this is an article that was written in 2023 by Christina Charles and Christina Curl, who are on our field crops team for MSU. And this is mostly for commercial growers, but it's a great summary of what a soil test report is actually telling you. I encourage you to look that up as well. Now leaf samples can be a little bit different. Leaf samples really depend on the crop. You'd have to and MSU, for example, doesn't offer the leaf sample testing that you'd have to go through a private lab. Charlotte's sharing something in a chat. So Apples typically, for example, are doing you take leaf samples in later July. And whereas other crops might be a different time. With soil test, you're generally going to want to take at the same time every year. If you're doing multiple soil tests over the years. Now, I've gone on and talked too much. I just said extension people don't talk too much, and here I am. But there's a great example for you. I do want to bring up Kevin was talking about how he uses how he's doing some work on carbon sequstration. And you had mentioned biochar, Kevin, do you have something to add? I am fascinated by biochar because it so many times with the carbon sequestration, I'm working with orchards, all of the online calculators for trying to figure out how much carbon is being sequestered basically takes all your biomass, your trees, and it equates it to zero because eventually when that tree dies, it's going to decompose and release that carbon dioxide pack up in the atmosphere. While some soils can hang onto carbon a little bit better. It's still going to be a small percentage of that total carbon. Biochar is the way to short circuit that and you would be able to take that carbon that is in the trees wood and roots, and lock it away. Could you succinctly explain what biochar is? Yeah. I don't know the technical terms, but instead of burning the wood, you would heat it up at, is it 300 to 500 degrees or something and Pirozation. Say partout. Yes. You're making charcoal out of it, then it does a good job of mimicking some of the attributes that clay have in soil to in terms of hanging on nutrients and It's an interesting field. I think the data is mixed as to how beneficial it is. But again, this is out of my wheelhouse, but I'm intrigued by it, so are we? Yeah. I way to lock all of that we, at least maybe from what I've read, about 80% of that carbon that you'd have in your trees would stick around in your for hundreds if not thousands of years. That's that's the advantage of it. The other major advantage of it is that the microisal community that helps with all the nutrition, going back to nutrition. I don't know if the nutrition is for humans or if it's for the plants, but I assumed it was for the plants. The biochar has a tremendous amount of surface area, and they make a little condominium spaces for all the small organism, microizal components to live and supply nutrients to the plant. That's what we're looking at, especially since the Pine red pines are wonderful for blueberries, and that's why we chose blueberries. So it seems to be a direct correlation. Does anybody know how long after you cut a tree, the red system will retain the micro rizal community that it has down there, or did anybody have a clue on that? I could speak a little bit about that since my background is in soil microbiology. I have a mixed orchard here. It's really young in Northern Vermont. And I put an article in there that you might find interesting. It's about inoculating with microis fungi like the particular one that blueberries need, which is a little different, I think from what pine would want. But I'm not 100% sure on that, but it's an interesting study that was done in Central Vermont and looking at pollination quality, quality of pollen and how the pollinators are attracted to that in blue berries that have been inoculated instead of blueberries that have', which of course will then lead to higher yields. That's not necessarily what they've been looking at. And I have managed the small blueberry farm here in Vermont and pollinators is definitely something you want to be thinking about. You know, adding other plants that can help with that continuous nectar and pollen that they need, because I think three or four years ago, some of the blueberry farms in the area saw a significant drop in pollinators, especially bumblebees, and that did have an impact on their production. Abs. But I'm thinking you could inoculate that biochar with some of those micros of fungi and nutrients before applying it, and that might set you up. Yes. I think that's the idea that we want to pursue, for sure. Yeah. Because like you said, if you do not inoculate the biochar, it's actually a little detrimental to the plant the first time around because it will sequester all the nutrients, and it's like, you think about it as activated charcoal in that way, that it'll suck everything there is in the soil away. And you don't want that, obviously. No, we do not. Yeah. I mean, they will rebound in a couple of years, but your plants might have died by then. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want that way to go. Yeah. Thank you very much, So we started talking a little bit about microasal inoculation. And Chart, would you care sharing a little bit more about what Micros do just on a very basic level for those who might be unfamiliar? Sure. I mean, what we understand currently is that one of the things they do is they just create so more surface area on the roots. If you can imagine, the little ifi how thin they are, compared to the roots of the plants that are actually massive compared to those, and it just can go so many more places and get nutrients. And in particular, they would be very good to get phosphorus. Mm. And that's one thing with blueberries because your pH is so low, ph phosphate is not very available in your soil to begin with. And so you really do need some of these micsal fungi that can help you with that. So that would be one thing in general, but they can also sequester manganese on their outer walls, you know, they add to soil health in general, because they're slimy and produce all sorts of good things that make the soil sort of make aggregates, and therefore, you're better infiltration. Lots of benefit. And they probably also have some disease suppression and other things that and they're good for stress. Any plant under stress will have But because they've evolved from a parasitic, standpoint, they do sometimes slow your growth down the first year. You might see a stunted, really green plant, and you don't really see the benefit until a couple of years later because there is some the fungi aren't doing this for free. They're receiving carbohydrates from the plant, obviously, nothing is free, not even in the microbial world. I hope that was a little quick introduction, but there's so much more to learn about. These organisms and how they interact so. Absolutely, you know, and I'm glad that you shared that. I worked for a couple of years in a lab that focus on Mcariz when I was in undergrad. And so I automatically, in my mind, I know a lot about them, but then I realized not everybody does, so it's good to share it with people who might be unfamiliar. And you're right, we're writing a research paper about mecarso protection against nenematod infections, right? Because they're physically taking up the space that some parasitic pneumatoes might take up. So it's very interesting. Now, I wanted to touch on phosphorus real quick. And I see that Austin is on the chat, and he's in Ontario. And I remember talking when I was in grad school, you were talking about phosphorus additions being particularly difficult for organic production. And one of the work arounds in Ontario was that, uh, manure from non organic cows could be still used in organic systems, and it was kind of a work around added phosphorus into the system. Anyway, I don't know if Austin has any comments on that or if anybody wants to talk about maybe unconventional ways of adding phosphorus into your environment, if it's something you're short on, micros being one option to increase efficiency or increase usage of phosphorus in your plant systems. Any thoughts? Hi. I'm el Shields. Sorry. A small pigure in the blue Mountains, about 80 kilometers west of Sydney. And I've been trying to focus on the soils for the last couple of decades. It's an old orchard that's been farmed since early last century. And we've worked on when we've replanted, we've used the lots of green crops and incorporated them to try and overcome the issues of non specific replant disease. And we're now at a point where about 8.2% organic carbon, and we've used a lot of cop tea and all of the grass clippings thrown under the tree. And now we've just had a detailed so analysis done and we're it anywhere 90-130 units of nitrogen naturally occurring over the orchard. Now, one of the things that we're doing is now we're replanting not that we're replanting a lot now, but what we've been doing is we've been shing trees in Situ and incorporating that into the soil, and the interesting thing has been that it's amazing how quickly the chips will be incorporated, and we've got sort great stanza fungi have come up in in areas, particularly along where the rows were. And so yeah, and we're get we're now getting our soils to a point where pretty well everything's in balance, and it seems to me that part of the problem with soils is that too often we're reactive not proactive, and we don't deal with a problem until after it's occurred. And I don't think we can measure I don't think we can measure the influence that even small amounts of particularly trace elements have on overall on the impact of tree growth and tree health. And I think healthy trees are more resistant to particularly fungal diseases. Yeah. This is Season. I'm a tree for grower. Couple of thoughts. I cheated. I have two orchards. I have an existing small orchard and then that I used to train myself and then I have a new one. On the advice of a peach grower friend that I have in California. When I put in the new orchard, I actually put in 30 years worth of phosphorus ahead of time. He said, mix the minerals in in a new application, if you can. It's just a lot easier, and that has worked really well. It's been very interesting to see the performance of the trees in the new orchard as compared to the middle orchard. Everybody's doing well. But I also work with wood chips. With the advent in Michigan of Marcinenia, though, which crept into my orchard. It's a new disease here, about three years ago, and it likes to overwinter in part and things that are on the ground. That has become a challenge. So I had wood chips down. I pulled them all up last year, and and have been working to get the Marcanania under control? It's pretty well managed in the new Orchard. It's somewhat managed in the middle Orchard. But hopefully, you know, I don't really know how long it'll take to get that nculum out of my orchard. But, you know, hopefully in another couple of years, I'll have it again under control, and I can go back to a mulching system. But picking the mulch up for me was step one into getting the Marcana under control. So how does it manifest itself? What does it do to the tree? It defoliates. So yeah, it's not a good actor. And ops, I'm sorry, I'll have to come right back. Okay. So while Susan's out, and Austin was making a comment on phosphorus. So maybe you can jump in while before she gets back. Yeah. Yeah. So I think what Susan did with the phosphorus ahead of time from what I've read and what I've heard, that's probably the best thing you can do for a new orchard is to get the fertility in the ground nice and deep or those deeper roots can get it. And additionally with the phosphorus fertility side of things, I don't know where the organic regulations are at today, but there are for manure. They change from time to time. But there are some organically approved products like rock phosphate that you can put down, and they're not readily available the day you put them down. They're a little bit more slow reas, kind of probably similar to what Susan did. And I think those are great options. Now, the placement of those phosphorous fertilizers are going to be really important in an orchard. You've got plants that are relatively far apart. And we often are tempted to put everything rate where the root zone is. And that's important, especially when we're establishing that orchard to get that root zone well fertilized. But as that orchard matures, I was recently listening to something where they found that in between the trees, some of the nutrients got out of balance, and they maybe had a zinc deficiency or something along those lines show up because they were over fertilizing rate under the The trees so right around the trunk, and then under fertilizing in between the trees in the walkway or the space between the trees where you drive and whatnot. So that under fertilized area, there's roots out there, too. Trees are a lot different than crops. The roots kind of go everywhere. And they're out in that low fertility area. And there's too much in the right under the tree, especially on a lower CEC soil, where you just don't have that holding capacity. You've got a larger bulk of soil out in the in between the rows that you can also manage and add fertilizer to, but also spread out that fertilizer. Once you get in the row figured out, then you can start working on the other stuff that's out a bit further. And also remembering where that fertilizer is going. So if it's manure, if it's wood chips, things like phosphorus don't move a lot in the soil. You do need to incorporate them into the root zone or an area where the roots are and where there's moisture. So that's another really important factors. These nutrients are moving with moisture for the most part. So you have to make sure they are a little deeper in the soil if they don't move like phosphorus or zinc or copper, things like that. So keep that in mind with the phosphorous fertility that I think is good. But it's kind of an interesting one where we might be over fertilizing rate under the tree just because we were trying to be efficient early on, but as you build things up, you may need to manage out beyond that that sort of two foot or 1 meter area right under the tree into the walkway, depending on how far apart your rows are, right? If you're on more standards and some older plantings, that might be a bit wider than some of the newer trellis systems with different amendments. But getting them the phosphorus in the soil is really important. It doesn't do a whole lot of good on top. And you put yourself at risk of loss, especially on some hilar ground if you've got any soil erosion there. And the balance of things is really important, too, and you can easily get things out of balance if you're not careful, organic amendments, especially things like malt, you can tie up nitrogen and things like that quickly, too, so just be mindful of that with some of those. They're really useful, and I think they're great. But just keep that in the back of your head when you're putting on different things that are really high in one nutrient or like carbon, for example, which can tie up nitrogen. I hope that was helpful, and it's kind of an interesting thing. Maybe we start soil sampling under the tree and in between the rows, too. Austin this is Susan. I'm sorry, but when my power is out that was DTE, the local utilities. Knock it on the front door. Also, hopefully, someone Bill answered your question about Marcinna, but it defoliates, it's not a great disease. I don't have it too badly, but I do want to get it under control. I only have a few trees that are susceptible to it. And Austin, I really appreciate your comments. I've also had really good luck with rock powders, and the information that you just shared about what happens in between the trees is really interesting. I think I've mostly done, again, that first orchard where I didn't amend the soil ahead of time. It was a bit of a trick to get the nutrient levels up. I am growing in a heavy clay soil. It took about three years for me with topical application to get the minerals balanced. The rock powder has worked really well for me also. Thanks, Derik. I do see paganic. I don't know about you guys. Yeah, I don't use paganic, unless I absolutely have to because it's so strong. But Sure. Yeah. Yeah. One of those things that if this is a persistent issue for you, you know, going with something strong might be the way to go. But does if you didn't notice in the chat, Susan had asked a question to apple growers about late season Brown memortd stink bug, if anybody has effective methods of control for it, who would like to share it well where You know, we don't have to stay on the nutrient management topic the whole time if you have. No, no, no, really. It's this is as much for relevant timely questions that people have as it is for the nutrient management is a guideline. So. Okay. Yeah. I did he didn't see the chat. I did put down a late application of Surround. You know, I don't normally put surround down this late because obviously, it's kind of a mess and taking the apples to market, but but you know, does it does seem to work well early season, so I'm trying that as an experiment. But I'm just curious if other than the biganic is helpful to know about, actually. I mean, if I see them creeping in, maybe I will do one application of Biganic, but it just seems like the darn buggers creep in, like, Just like right before. It's so annoying. That's one of the challenges with it as a pest is that it's usually and this is true for conventional growers as well, their populations increase this time of year when you don't want to be putting anything in the orchards because people are going to be in there harvesting. You have to deal with re entry intervals and pre harvest intervals that are very tight. And a lot of times these products that have low or no pre harvest intervals tend to be a little bitless effective than some of the ones that have really long ones or less persistent. So that's one of the main challenges with BMSB a as a pest. So I don't know if anybody else has other comments about it or experience, but Susan, I was wondering where what kind of plantings you have under your trees and what your cover is in your orchard in general because both assassin bugs and parasitic wasps go for the BMS B. So do you have habitat for those kinds of bugs nearby that could help you, maybe? Hope so. Right under the trees, I have just a mix of grass, white clover, red clover. And then about 40% of my orchard is wild flowers and wild grasses to hopefully support that native habitat. When I put down that mix, it was well designed. Not everything took the way I would like. I haven't had a time to go back at this point and kind of refigure out what should go with what and what supports exactly what? So, yeah, but that's helpful to know. It wasn't terrible last year, but, you know, I don't know. I mean, usually, 80% of my crop is clean. And so that's pretty good. But then I don't know, I lost like another 10% or whatever to lasts. They just seem like they just creep into my orchard in the last two years. So, you know, I just don't want that memory to keep going down. Can you put those bugs in prophylactically? Like, I know I've never worked with, like, buying bugs, but does that work? I mean, the parasitic wasps, you can. Okay. But I mean, I've only done them a few times, and I feel like it's been varied success. Yeah, I think it's a little bit tricky. Maybe somebody else is much more skilled than me, and maybe I didn't do a good job. Part of how things like parasite wasps like the Samurai wasp work is it's a multi season approach that's meant to just be generally lowering the density of population. You know, it's not an immediate curative. It's a longer term solution. It similar with samba wasp for spatorospa, especially if you're thinking about blueberries. You've got a blueberry grower here where they're longer term solutions. So, you know, you release them one season, you're not going to see results that season. But Jackie put in an article here. She put an extension article on Samaria, but also one about trap crops for inorganic farms. Jackie, can you comment a minute on what trap crops might be or generally what they are? Yeah. So I don't personally have experience with this, but I've heard of some research of kind of basically, apples are not armored sting bugs, like, favorite crop, and they're pretty generalist. So lots of people get pressure and get damage from sting bugs, but they move around and feed on lots of different things throughout the season. So there's research and kind of thinking, can we put something more attractive away from our crop? Pull them over there because they kind of aggregate on certain things and then treat that with something maybe that we wouldn't want to put on our apples but would be more willing to put on. U on those trap crops that aren't being consumed or and are kind of away from our orchard. So I just put one kind of scholarly article talking about some of the organic options for orchards that include these trap cropping with like, sunflower and sorghum. You know, it's kind of variable. It's something that's not like a widely known to be super effective, but it's a strategy that people use and have had some success with. So it could be worth investigating. And there's been some use of insecticide treated netting and such to on those trap crops to trap them in. But a lot of those things aren't recertified that you would use. So it's like, Okay, well, if it's not on your crop. I don't know, you know, I don't know all the legal stipulations around that or, you know, willingness to do that, but it does potentially open up some of your options. And then someone asked about the Samurai W, which is the parasitic wasp, and I put an update. It's from 2022. That is the most recent one I could find, but we have a biocontrol specialist on campus, Mariana Sukes, who has been releasing those samurai parasitic Freesting Bug control, and there's good evidence that there proliferating and spreading throughout the state. But I think Derrick Carty said, it's, you know, building up those biocontrol populations is a long term process. So, you know, if they're still doing releases, I can put Mariana's contact in the chat and perhaps they're look for farms to do releases, where there's high pressure. But other than that, it's pretty much a waiting game to see what their impact is going to be. Helpful, Thank you. Very helpful. I go back into our nutrient focus unless we have other additions to do this. Okay. Does anybody have specific products that they've found to be useful for them in their nutrient management portfolio while growing unconventionally or challenges, what's something that you haven't been able to get under control? Is there a specific nutrient or element that, you know, you've just haven't been able to nail down? Then you have issues with? We're in a really high rainfall area, like our averages in your term, 52 ". But we've had we've been in Larina, and we had something 5,000 mills between February 2020 and September 2022. And one of the issues that we have is things like Born Zinc Mes, which se to Leach. Fair fairly rapidly when you get those rain and it's reasonably well drained soil. And it can catch you unawares. So, you can have good levels and then sort of not very long after they're going down, so we focused lot on that. I haven't used a product this year called natromin, and it's basically a combination of all of the trace elements. With very little nitrogen at all. I'll be interested to see how it reacts. I mean, for instance of boron levels were down and last year, well I constantly put boron over the top, but also I used organo bor, which is a granulated so release product. And mons tests still showed that the levels were low. They weren't, you know, off the planet, but they were low. And just as an interesting thing as an aside, some years ago, quite a few years ago, I had issues with bacterial canker and stone fruit. And the response was, cover them in coppers, many times. And I sort of laterally thought about it and thought what caused the tissue to crack. And I came up with the concept of an imbalance between nitrogen calcium and boron and started to use as an experiment treated some of some areas with very high levels of boron, probably much beyond what people would recommend and virtually eliminated bacterial cancer. I haven't seen bacterial cancer since not that I've got many young standard trees there. But again, as I'm always constantly putting a I'm a sort of belief in a little bit and often. So I just incorporated in the spray program. But also, getting back to treating the soil. I've I just sort of treat the soil basically from fence to fence rather than tree line. So whatever I do, I do it generally over the entire sow. Looks like Austin has some comments on Boron. Though, I think that what you're doing with the Boron is really on the right track. I've been starting to work on some boron things more on the row crop side of things, but it does venture into some of the fruit and perennial crops, too. Boron is part of the cell wall, like you said, what causes the tissue to crack. But cell walls contain calcium and boron. In plants, and that's what makes them strong. Looking at our row crop plants here, well, as our yields go up, the stems and stuff on these wheat plants and corn plants, they're not getting that much thicker, as our yields increase by 25, 30, 50% over ten, 20 years ago. So creating stronger plants to support that fruit or that yield is really important. Same with apples and all these woody plants. We need strong plants to support them. And your principle of putting on a little bit at a time I'm 100% on board with, and I've been trying to find ways to do that, too. Here in Ontario, I don't think we quite get 50 " of rainfall, but I got 20 " of rainfall in July this year, and that's not normal. But we have events where there's a lot of rain. Boron is a water soluble nutrient. It's moving along with the nitrogen and sulfur as well. I've been working on some different fertilizer blends for my different crops. My stuff's on a little bit smaller acreage. So it's a little more challenging for me just to get a big bulk load done up, go and get it. I'm often making things myself as I need them. And what I've found is, I've got a blend that I make. The recipes the same every time, and I just go out more times with it. And I think that's working a lot better, especially when we have this high intensity rainfall. I'm not losing my water soluble nutrients. So the blend, it's got about 40 pounds of nitrogen, ten pounds of sulfur and about a third of a pound of boron, so that for most of my crops, I'm getting about a pound of boron on a year, which keeps my soil PPMs 1-2 is where I'm trying to maintain as I pull things out. The calcium side of things that you talked about with the balance of calcium really important. And some of the fruit and crops that I work on, we're really trying to find ways to create a blend of nitrogen calcium, boron and sulfur, which is hard. So we often pulled the sulfur out of that mixture. I've been playing around with calcium chloride in a conventional pepper farm, calcium chloride, which is Dal flake, nitrate, so urea ammonium nitrate, which is a 28% fertilizer liquid. And then you can put boron in that and or just like boric acid or sodium tetrahydrate boron, so Borax, mixing that in with those liquid nitrogen and calcium products. Those three nutrients don't seem to tie up. They seem to play well together. So if you are mixing up something, whether it's an organic source, like, even if it's like a manure tea, you might have good luck with adding some boron to that. Calcium is a bit trickier. You add calcium to things. It tends to tie things up. But when you're trying to grow like something like peppers on a really sandy soil with just low total amounts of everything. This is like a blow sand, so to speak, anywhere 3-9 CEC. So lighter soil doesn't hold as much, so we're out there spoon feeding this crop. But we've found that these spoon feeding applications definitely are paying off in a wetter year like this. So I think you're on the right track there, Bill. Just wondering, what kind of calcium do you have in your soil? What's your parent material there? We're a calcium carbonate parent material here in Ontario, but what do you have, Bill? This is shale soils which have been really all shale so, which have broken down with organic material over the ions. We've got about 60 to 70 centimeters of which should be two feet of topsoil, but as you go down, we can go down to about three feet. Although, unfortunately, once you go down to that level of PH is sort of five. But with calcium chloride again, I'm putting on the equivalent of 15 kilograms/hectare per year, which should probably be about 4 kilograms per acre. And again, a little bit and often, And your comments about other trace elements and things. One of the interesting things that I do is I use a bit of seaweed emulsion, not ssl, Natural cp. And particularly at the end of the season, natural cp nitrogen, and some of the trace elements. And the interesting thing from what I can see and what I've read is that the plants with the addition of nitrogen and natric will absorb much more of the nutrient that you apply. Rather than just wash off. The other interesting observation is that I'm a minimal pesticide usage. I'm not organic. I don't use any broad spectrum insecticides. And one of the things that I use a lot of particularly late in the season is calcium. And I reckon it has a fungicidal effect on things like bacterial cancer and sli blotch and even perhaps apple scab. Nine. That is really interesting. I like that. Thanks, Bill. Susan. Yeah, this is Susan, just chiming in. I've had really good luck with adding nice thick coating of minerals plus sulfur and boron. So I'm thinking, you know, sulu bor in my foliar sprays. And I think of that as a nutrient spray, but also as a disease spray. It's very, very helpful. You just co and of course, I use surround as well. I coat up the trees with, you know, the good nutrients and surround, and it just is very, very helpful. Bill, I've got a question. You mentioned using slow release nitrogen and I'm privy to talking to a lot of the people with Gerber baby food because they're involved with my research. But I was on a meeting recently and one of the gentlemen from Gerber was actually talking about how a lot of farmers are experimenting with using the encapsulated nitrogen and finding that they can cut their nitrogen applications by roughly half. Have you found that to be the case? Curious. Sorry, Kevin, were you directing it to me? So, yeah, I thought you had brought up that you're using the slow release nitrogen, is that right? No, no, no. Well, this year, I'm not putting on any nitrogen at all because I've got 90-130 units of nitrogen naturally occurring through the sort of organic carbon levels and breakdown that e put in the soil. So it's interesting that there's been a lot of work I've been reading stuff here where, you know, historically people have said, you need 200 units of nitrogen. Per heck, whatever that would be 40 units per acre to produce X number of tons. And there's a lot of thought now that you don't need anywhere near that amount provided everything else is in balance. And I've been working on sort of 30 or 40 units. But this year, after this, I had just had this detailed analysis done, and a consultant sort of look at it. And yeah, with those sorts of levels, I'm not going to apply anything else. I'm just going to try and balance up well, what I'm aiming to do is balance up the few deficiencies that I have, and this new product that I've been introduced to as this naturm in, which is basically a blend of everything, but without any nitrogen. Thanks. Interesting. So we have about 7 minutes left in our initial schedule, and you can continue to talk after, but is there anything else related to nutrition that somebody's been thinking about or wondering about or wanted to bring up that we make that we touch on? But, just to set aside, again, on stone fruit and Boron, we've still got a few a bit of stone fruit, about 300 trees. It's very difficult to grow Stone in high summer rainfalls, but one of the varies of we grow is Somerset, which is a very late peach. It's a beautiful peach to eat, but notoriously for spliting seeds and cracking. And again, I focused a lot on boron and boron and calcium. And basically, we've stopped seeds cracking, and we don't have the sort of sture cracks that historically we've had in the past. And lastly, we had a really, really good crop of well colored fruit, which, the two previous seasons, we haven't had much riot at all. Because of the wet weather, but yeah, it seems to Getting things in balance seems to stop this seed spliting as much as anything else, which I think is lots of ways access for the fruit to have water coming into it through the stalk end. And yeah, Boron seems to have a big impact on that. I'll see a question in the chat. I'm asking about experience using leaf tissue analysis. I'm wondering if it's worth it. You know, I used leaf tissue analysis when I was in grad school to mostly to verify, you know, the experiment that I was doing. And I found it useful then, but perhaps somebody else who has actually been using it to advise nutrient techniques in the field could add in. I see Susan for something in the chat. A. Be readings will be very different. That's true. A lot of sorry, Bill, I'll just comment, I'll let you speak. Not everything that's in the soil makes it into the leaves. Sometimes that's because of PH. Sometimes it's because of lack of mecarz or presence of it. Sometimes it's about nutrient mobility. It can be related to the soil size. It can be related to the other composition of other nutrients that are present. There are so many factors. So yes, soil and leaf readings are never going to be identical. Soil will't tell you what soil is missing, but the leaf analysis will tell you if something's not making it into your plant, that should be. Bill, do you have a comment? Look, I don't know what it's like there, but historically here. Orchards probably tender only have soil tests done every few years. And then try and respond to things. Historically, our soils have been a low pH. And as something you can't change rapidly. So I've been putting a ton of lime on for het every year to bring it back up. And I'll have a soil test done every winter and a tissue test done every February. And it's been an interesting It's I've been having it done for the last seven or eight years and it's been interesting to watch it, and it's helped me to learn a lot more about, you know what I'm doing. And I think that the cost I don't think we recognize the cost of having a small deficiency in something like zinc or Boron, the economic impact of that. And I wonder about the impact on things like biennial bearing and stuff like that. And I think each variety of apples responds differently to deficiencies. I mean, we have And I've noticed this, we have a variety, which is our own variety, which shows zinc deficiency more rapidly than other, and it shows it up in cooled leaves and things like that. And by putting some zinc on, you can literally see it disappear. And Braburn, as another one, which we've found seems to show deficiencies of zinc up quicker than other varieties. So I and because we pick your own we've got 12 varieties, and it's interesting to observe the differences between all of them. And so implied bill and what you're saying, and I agree with this is what's different about it is, you know, obviously, you do one tree at a time. So so you have to ask yourself, do you want to pay the 40 or 50 bucks for one tree? In my case, I had a couple of trees that just weren't doing well, and I couldn't sort it. And so for me, that made sense. Yeah, because it was really interesting to see what was going on with those trees and where we're almost out of time. Yeah, it was my question. Just a quick follow up. I mean, I did it a few years ago and I just felt like, I mean, maybe this is because I'm a soil scientist. I couldn't figure out how to interpret what I got. You know, and finding things online and even asking the lab and extension agents and stuff. I just got a variety of different interpretations. And I was like, Okay, And it left me just with, like, more questions. So but I think, like, taking it kind of like soil samples, you know, maybe taking them, you know, a variety of trees and doing it more than once, you do start to see a pattern, and then I guess it's trial and error to try and see if this, you know, plant will respond to what you do. Yeah. In my case, Charlotte, again, I wish I could remember what it was, but specifically, but there was one nutrient that was out of whack, and so I kind of clobbered the tree with a foliar application. And I don't remember what it was, but I don't remember. But anyway, but I did that, and the tree got better, and it was really affective in that case. Okay. So we are at 1:30. So I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording shortly. We didn't get to touch much on SAP analysis, which is completely fine. It's a more novel thing that you know, I'm honestly still on the fence about it. I don't quite understand it well enough to recommend it, but I was hoping we could talk about it. So what's the difference between tissue a life analysis? We'll talk about this a little bit after I'm done with the recording for people who want to say on, I'm going to stop the recording if I can figure out how to do that stop recording. All right. We'll send an e mail soon with next month's date and topic. We've been kind of going for this last Wednesday of the month. That's probably what we'll be doing in September. But sometimes that changes. But pencil that in if you're interested in continuing and I'm always open to new topics. So if you have an idea for a topic, send me a message. Send me an e mail PLOT KOW five at MSU EU and we'll do that. I'll stop the recording.
Unconventional Fruit Working Group 04: Nutrition Management August 28, 2024
From Derek Plotkowski August 28th, 2024
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