Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Community Orchard
Hi everyone. Many of you know that I manage a community orchard here in Toronto, Canada. And being involved in the orchard is one of the joys in my life. I love the fruit trees and I love learning new ways to help them thrive.
[00:00:16] The Importance of Community in Orchards
But the other thing I enjoy is community.
Amazing people come to volunteer in the orchard every weekend. We have one group that cares for the pollinator garden, and another that works with the fruit trees, pruning them, mulching them, and protecting them from pests and diseases. For me, community is so important. And interestingly, fruit trees need community too.
In order to thrive, fruit trees need humans to care for them. And they need a healthy population of soil microbes to give them access to the nutrients that they need.
[00:00:54] Introducing Foliar Sprays with John Kempf
So on the show today, we're going to talk about an interesting way that we humans can help our fruit trees thrive. And that's by using homemade inexpensive foliar sprays.
So my guest on the show today is John Kempf, the host of the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. John's goal is to help farmers move to a more rehabilitative approach to farming. And he does this with his company, which is called Advancing Eco Agriculture.
So John Kempf, welcome to the show today. Susan, thank you for having me. This is going to be entertaining. Exactly. We're getting into the nitty gritty of foliar sprays and the secret life of fruit trees.
that's really important. But thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about foliar sprays. We're going to be talking about homemade ones. We don't have to go to the garden center to go buy anything fancy.
[00:01:53] Understanding Regenerative Agriculture
But what role do foliar sprays play in regenerative agriculture, the type of agriculture that you practice?
So the purpose of regenerative agriculture is to regenerate the health of overall ecosystems, to regenerate soil health, to regenerate plant health, so that they're completely resistant to insects and diseases, and ultimately to have a regenerative impact on human health as well, or on livestock health, whoever, whatever it is that is consuming that food.
And so as a part of that, plants are the engine that drive that entire system, because through the process of photosynthesis, collecting sunlight energy, that is the only way we have of bringing new energy into the system. The impact that foliar sprays can have is that they can dramatically increase the plant's capacity for photosynthesis, or I should say, more correctly, They allow the plants to photosynthesize to more of the inherent capacity that they already have.
So what we have come to perceive as being common and normal is plants which are only photosynthesizing somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent of their inherent genetic photosynthetic capacity. So that means that in each 24 hour photo period, during the daylight hours when the sun is shining, these plants are only producing a fraction of the sugars that they're really capable of.
Foliar sprays, when properly designed, can dramatically increase that by two or three or four X, which allows the plants to produce a lot more sugars to put more sugar into the soil system and regenerate soil health, build organic matter, sequester carbon, whatever framework you want to use to describe it, and ultimately this regenerates soil microbial populations and improves plant health and disease and insect resistance.
So from my perspective, foliar sprays are the jet fuel that accelerates the entire system. They are not something that we need to be dependent on for the long term, but in the short term, they really accelerate the system and speed it up to a much higher plateau of performance. And that's really how we should think about using them is accelerating the overall tree health and plant health for the short term.
There's so many things that you said that I'm fascinated by, but let me go to the first one.
[00:04:14] The Role of Foliar Sprays in Photosynthesis
You talk about increasing photosynthesis. When I think of a foliar spray, I think to myself, isn't this just a different way to feed your tree? the tree gets its food from the root system. It takes it in liquid form.
Is it food for your fruit tree or is it something else? The answer is yes, it is food for your fruit tree. And in order for that food that your fruit tree is absorbing to have a beneficial crop response, it needs to be properly designed. It needs to be designed to have that impact on photosynthesis.
Saying that a different way, let's say, there's one key difference between putting on a foliar application. There's many differences between foliar application and soil absorption of nutrients, but one of them is that, to some degree, the plant can select which nutrients it absorbs from the soil.
But when you are putting on a foliar spray, you're not giving the plant much of a choice. And so if you put on nutrients that the plant already has adequate or abundant levels of, you are not likely to produce a significant plant response. But if you design it and address those nutrients specifically that plants require to increase photosynthesis, now you can produce a tremendous plant response.
Critical design, and design targeted to specific outcomes, becomes much more important than it does for soil applications. Amazing. Okay.
[00:05:43] Key Nutrients for Effective Foliar Sprays
So we're focusing on certain nutrients that are going to power photosynthesis, which are the nutrients we need to focus on for our foliar sprays? Oh, I'll go straight to the magical shortlist of five nutrients.
they are magnesium, manganese. Iron, nitrogen, and then a bonus fifth element on the list is phosphorus. Now each of those first four nutrients that I mentioned are directly involved in the photosynthesis process. Magnesium is the center ion of the chlorophyll molecule. iron is needed to put chlorophyll together, although it's not a part of that molecule.
Also nitrogen is a part of the chlorophyll molecule surrounding magnesium. And manganese is responsible for water hydrolysis. So even if you have perfect sunlight, perfect water, perfect carbon dioxide, And abundant levels of chlorophyll. If you don't have enough manganese, then that will limit the plant's photosynthesis potential.
And I am pointing this out and emphasizing it specifically because our crops are almost universally deficient in manganese today because of the way that we have mismanaged our soil for the last couple of centuries, and also because of the almost ubiquitous presence of glyphosate in our environment.
[00:07:06] Listenenr Questions on Foliar Sprays: How often should foliar spray be applied?
Okay, so we have a few questions that have come in so far. Let's have a look. here, this is from Catherine in Toronto. Catherine says, my question is, I don't get out to my orchard very often. Is it okay if I just spray when I can or do I have to follow an exact spray schedule? I try to follow the holistic orchard spray schedule without much success.
The brief answer is that whenever you get it done, it's going to produce a crop response. And when you don't get it done, then there are no particularly negative consequences. This is a different approach than thinking about applying insecticides or fungicides or toxins of some type. We're not trying to time everything specifically so that we kill certain organisms, but instead we're taking a more general approach of increasing the overall system health, which is something that we can do at any time. Okay, we have another one. This one is from Joe. Hello from Midland, Ontario. Your show today is a lifesaver in regards to saving money on commercial products.
Thank you very much for this. Oh, it's from Jen, not Joe. Jen. So thank you, Jen. And there's one more. Let's have a look. Greetings from Frankfort, Michigan. Looking forward to gleaning some useful information. And then there's thanks from Camille. That's from Camille. Wonderful. okay. So we're talking about foliar sprays.
[00:08:36] Mechanisms of Nutrient Absorption in Plants
Foliar sprays are, as I understand, are spraying the leaves of the tree. How do these sprays get into the tree itself? Oh, they just gobble them and chew them down, don't you know? Really? With their little leaf teeth. So there are several. There are several mechanisms that have been described for plant absorb nutrients.
They can just dissolve across the cell across the leaf cuticle and be absorbed directly by cells, depending on which products and their forms that you were applying. But I think one of the most important and most valuable mechanisms, is where the biology that lives on the microbiome on the leaf surface, actually absorbs the nutrients that are applied on the foliar spray and then transfer them to the plant because the biology on the leaf surface has a symbiotic relationship with the plant, much the same way that the biology does on that is on the root surface. So you have the rhizosphere microbial community and microbiome in the soil profile. And then you also have what is called a phyllosphere microbiome on the leaf surface. And just like in the soil, you also have the plant feeding these bacteria and yeasts on the leaf surface, and they in exchange are absorbing nutrients from the air, from dust and so forth, and it lands on the leaf surface and feeding it to the plant. And so that is one mechanism that I believe is underappreciated for delivering nutrients that are applied to the leaf surface. So the microbes, these little microorganisms, are being wonderful and in a sense of community, they're helping to feed the plant.
They're getting something out of it too, I'm sure. But do the nutrients get in through the pores of the leaves? The stomata. Is that how would they get in? Only in a very limited way. It's possible for some of them to move into the stomata. But the stomata really designed for gas exchange, not for absorption of liquids on the leaf surface.
So the other mechanisms are primarily, these various dissolved Ions being absorbed across the cuticle and being directly absorbed across cell membranes into leaf cells. Amazing. And so your little microbes are helping to make that happen. How wonderful of them. Very generous. There is a symbiotic relationship as you described, where just the same as in our own digestive system or the digestive system of any healthy mammal or animal, really, we have symbiotic organisms that really digest our food and make it available to us. And the same is true of plants. The reality is that really healthy plants absorb upwards of 80 percent of all their total nutrients from both soil and atmosphere through biology. So not directly, but indirectly. Wow. Amazing. Okay.
[00:11:30] Homemade Foliar Sprays: Ingredients and Application
We got another email here.
Who is this from? Joanne. Hello, Susan. Great topic today. My question for you. Can any of these items be used for foliar sprays? I read online somewhere that they can. The items are kelp, herbal tea and fish emulsion. Thank you for your advice. The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Kelp. You want to make sure that the particle size is small enough that you don't plug your sprayer fish emulsion.
You want to make sure that none of the neighbors are within smelling distance. But aside from that, those would be great ideas. What about herbal tea? Herbal tea is a great idea as well. It is actually a great probiotic as well as having a nice general smell. Let me say it this way, herbal extracts can influence plant health positively in much the same way that they can influence human health positively.
So if we want a relaxed tree, we'll spray it with chamomile or peppermint. It'll be so laid back. And if we want like a really excited tree, maybe we'll do licorice or something. I don't know. I'm not going there. I don't have the time. You're not going there. What I can say is that many of these herbs also have unique microbial populations on the phylloplane, on the leaf surface.
So take yarrow, for example. Yarrow has all these known medicinal effects, but what is underappreciated is that yarrow has one of the most diverse microbiomes in the leaf surface that is known with over 600 species that have been identified so far. it's possible that the effects of using herbal teas as foliar sprays may be coming from some of the compounds these plants contain.
It's also possible that they may be coming from the microbial populations on the leaf surface themselves. We don't really know. That's incredible. That's a fun experiment to find out about.
[00:13:24] The Coca-Cola Foliar Spray Debate
So here we've got another email and we're going to talk about Coca-Cola next. We're going to do that next. But here, this is an email from Elise.
Hi, I know you're going to be talking about Coca-Cola as a foliar spray, but I am a Pepsi fan. Can I use that instead? So the, the impetus for Coca-Cola is because it contains the highest concentrations of sugar and phosphoric acid. Pepsi also, and this is obviously non diet, you would, should never drink aspartame, much less feed it to plants.
I don't know why you would want to poison yourself or the environment. So I don't exactly know the phosphoric acid content of Pepsi, but I imagine that it wouldn't be a bad idea. It might be a slightly less good idea than Coke, but I'm sure it would be effective. Plants love sugar.
Obviously, they create their own sugar. And if you apply sugar in any form, then that just enhances their overall health. So let's, talk about Coca-Cola. So that's one of the sprays that you're recommending. So what does Coca-Cola do? How do you put it in any old sprayer and won't it make your sprayer sticky and won't it attract ants?
How are you going to, how am I supposed to spray with Coca-Cola? First of all, you should never apply Coca-Cola directly undiluted to a tree because obviously it's too acidic. It's too corrosive for the same reason that cleans battery acids and cleans out our insides in an unhealthy manner, so it needs to be diluted to at a rate of, let's just say approximately four ounces per gallon of water, four to six ounces per gallon of water diluted and sprayed on. So the context for the reason I recommended Coke as a possibility is, thinking of materials that can have a very positive beneficial impact on plant health that we have at home already, and Coca-Cola is one that fits that category because, as I mentioned, it is a form of readily digestible sugar and phosphorus is very often one of the limiting factors that really limits plant development, particularly in urban and urban environments. and plants respond very positively to it.
There was another comment about stickiness as well. And let me just say it this way, when you have plants that are healthy, they're green, they're photosynthesizing. If you apply any form of sugar on that plant, it is likely to be absorbed into the plant in a matter of hours. Usually at the very outside, if you have challenging environmental conditions, it might be a maximum of 6 to 8 hours.
It will usually be 2 to 3 hours. So there will be no stickiness on a living green plant. Great. Okay. So we are diluting it quite a lot. So again, what was the proportion? Four to six ounces per gallon of water. And that's U. S. measurements, obviously. Obviously. Okay, great. So it's diluted enough that it's not sticky.
We got a couple more comments here. A couple from Facebook Live, from Mark. Mark says, thanks so much for doing this. And Catherine says, thank you for that reassuring answer, John. Now, you've given us so many reassuring answers, so that was about one of them.
[00:16:53] Best Practices for Foliar Spraying
we've got an email here from Bonnie. Bonnie says, this is such an interesting topic.
Listening from Stowe, Vermont. How are these homemade sprays mixed and applied? So you said to us that in the case of Coke, it's diluted. Is there, does it always have to be a pressure sprayer that you would use? Or, if you've got a very small tree, can you just use a sprayer from Home Depot? You can use any type of sprayer.
You just have to be cautious that the materials you're using are not going to plug sprayer nozzles. I would say as a general rule of thumb, and there's obviously wide variability in the types of ingredients that are available on concentrations, but as a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid putting on concentrations of any material greater than 8 ounces per gallon, because you have the potential of burning leaves if you over apply and the intention also is to mist on the leaves a very light coating of droplets. You are not spraying the leaves until the leaves are wet to the point of dripping off. So the intention is just a very light mist, very rapid, Once over and at fairly dilute concentrations. And what about the bark? The branches?
Do we try to avoid them or it doesn't really matter. Does it really matter? They also have the capacity to absorb nutrients. Whatever you apply will be absorbed by them as well. Not quite as quickly as what is applied to the leaves, but they can also absorb nutrients and move them throughout the entire plant.
So yeah, don't give them any more or less consideration in the leaves, really. Okay, so another quick email here from Camille again. She said, and I think we answered this, will not the Coca-Cola attract ants to the tree? And I think what you were saying is no, because it's so diluted. So it's not because it's diluted, it's because the tree absorbs it in a matter of hours.
It's gone. It's gone. It's gobbling it up. Yeah, it's gobbling it up. Okay. So now we know a little bit about the science of spraying and we know a little bit about Coca-Cola and what it has to offer. Now on Facebook, there was a lively conversation when I announced this show and a lot of comments. And one person said he knows of somebody who takes a bottle of Coke and pours it on the soil.
Have you heard of that? I have not. Again, it would be a source of sugar and phosphorus. You would think that would stimulate biology. I could see that being a useful thing. It would be quite acidic, obviously. so yeah, I can see that being effective. And so maybe diluting it. Maybe diluting it might be a good idea again.
so other comments from Facebook. Ruth says, I've heard of Coke for cleaning your windshield, but not this. Daniel says it's good for cleaning corrosion off lead acid battery terminals. And Keith says something interesting. Keith is in California and he says sugars feed bacteria and fungi. So if beneficial fungi are present, it might help them grow, but it might also help pathogens grow too.
And he says, if you were going to try this, why not just use sugar water? And he said, but personally, I would use a compost tea that's been checked under a microscope. So if we're going to have a random list. The things that Coke is known to be used for, like cleaning battery terminals, I have to add one to the list.
And the one that I would like to list is that, police actually use it to clean up blood at the scene of an accident. Who knew? How do you even know that? How do you know that, John? That's random information. It's such an effective corrosion agent that it rapidly degrades. the reason for making the recommendation for, so there were a couple of different questions that were asked.
first, I am hesitant about widely recommending Coke applications to the soil because you have a solution that is very acidic and has high concentrations of phosphoric acid. And the reason that is a challenge is because soluble phosphorus can actually inhibit colonization of mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial fungus on the root system.
I made that recommendation specifically for foliar applications, not for a soil application. And then, regarding the interplay between pathogenic and beneficial fungi, when you have really healthy bacterial and fungal populations, it is those populations that give the all clear signal that maybe I should say it this way, it is the microbial populations that permit pathogens to express themselves or shut them down.
And so you might ask the question, how can we develop microbial populations that always suppress these pathogens from expressing themselves. And the answer, in a roundabout way, is foliar applications of nutrients. Why? Because when you have foliar applications of nutrients and you increase the photosynthesis, let's just say for the sake of discussion that you increase photosynthesis by three X from 20 percent to 60 percent photosynthetic capacity.
You now have three times more sugar in each 24 hour photo period, but you're unlikely to see three times larger plant biomass or three times higher yield. You might get a 20 percent or 50 percent increase, but unlikely to see a three X increase. So the question becomes Where does all the additional sugar go?
And the answer is, it goes out through the root system to feed soil biology. So it's when you have this tremendous sugar quantity being applied to the soil through the root system that you have this amazing microbial community that shuts down pathogens and prevents them from expressing themselves. Wow, great answer.
Okay, so that's, and that was a great question from Keith as well. We've got one more question, and this is also interesting here. This is from Cliff. Can plants over absorb through foliar spraying? Or do they only take in as much as they need? And Cliff also asks, when is the best time to spray?
So to the first question, yes, plants do not have the option of rejecting what you apply. So they cannot be selective like they can in soil. So that means we need to be very cautious about not over applying. And this is a very important point because many times many of the disease challenges and insect challenges that our plants are susceptible to are a result of the excesses of nutrients that are applied and not the deficiencies, so that's a very important point. And then regarding timing of application. The greatest crop responses are usually produced from applications either very early in the morning, like well before 8 a. m. or in the evening, and many people for practicality prefer to apply it in late evening. Okay, great.
There are a couple more quick, comments. So let's go to them. Madden writes from Portland, Maine. Hey, just a shout out. I love John's webinars, et cetera.
[00:24:18] Live Seminar Plans Post-COVID
Now that COVID is lightening up a bit, any plans for a live seminar or a tour, John? there's a few plans in the process, but none that I can really announce at this point that have been finalized.
And thank you for the compliments. I am glad you like the webinars. Yeah, I love the webinars too. So we've got a Facebook live comment from Alan and this is a good one.
[00:24:41] Foliar Spray Application Frequency
Alan says, how often would you apply these foliar sprays? It depends on the results you want to get. you can apply them as infrequently as once every three to four weeks and still expect to see some nice crop responses.
Or if you want some extraordinary crop responses, we actually have some commercial growers who are farming on a scale of hundreds of acres. there's one that I have in mind right now that applies every 48 hours. And with that frequency of application, he's been able to triple the average yields of apples in Washington, which is a highly intensely managed crop, so triple the yield is something that's pretty extraordinary, and that's what they've been able to accomplish.
And yet we do have to be careful about over applying so this is a fine line here. When you increase the application frequency, then you need to correspond that by putting on lower concentrations each time you apply. I got it. Okay. Very interesting. Now we have an email from Chase. and Chase says, hello, with that Coke, can we add Doritos as well?
Only kidding. So Chase says, only kidding. Love the show.
We talked a little bit about Coca-Cola.
[00:25:59] Homemade Foliar Spray Ingredients
So can you give me another homemade foliar spray that might be helpful for growers? There's a number of different potential ingredients that we could talk about. But one of the pieces that we spoke about was the value and the importance of the microbial community on the leaf surface.
So I think, perhaps one of my most favorite recommendations would be to use a live culture yogurt or kefir or any type of Lactobacillus culture that you have an actual live culture and apply that as a foliar spray, again, at a rate of about two to four ounces fixed into a gallon of water. And this is a very effective tool, particularly to prevent the infection of bacterial diseases.
So I first came across this as an idea when we had in our small home orchard where we had a dozen or so peach trees, but we had this invasion of peach leaf curl that became a tremendous problem. And I was thinking about what I might be able to use very quickly that I might have at home and not need to go buy something.
And I came up with the idea of using yogurt. So we made our own homemade yogurt. I put on a full year spray of yogurt once every I think I want to say is once every four days for three or four applications because the trees were very badly infected. The infection completely cleared up and peach leaf curl disappeared.
And we've now repeated that experience any number of times on different orchards, including even commercial orchards, because that is one of the diseases for which there is not really any effective treatment organically. And it just so happens that this treatment is very effective and it's easy, and its effectiveness comes about as a result of recolonizing the leaf surface with healthy bacteria and essentially outcompeting those that could be potential pathogens. That is incredible, those are incredible results. We've got some comments here. One is from Camille and she's back in the Coca-Cola treatment we talked about. She says is the Coke treatment safe for very young fruit trees under three years old.
And that I find that an interesting question. There is really no threshold of leaf age at which it is unsafe. It's not unsafe for any plant in any environment at those dilute concentrations. You really can't do any damage with it. Okay. We've got another email here. Now, this is from Jeannie. So Jeannie says, hello, John. Thanks for doing this podcast. I have a small commercial apple orchard and I switched to a program of sap testing and foliar sprays this spring. It's been vastly improved as a result. So thanks for that.
[00:28:53] Heat Stress Management in Orchards
In the last three days, we've had record breaking temperatures.
It was 118 yesterday. This is 12 degrees higher than the highest temperature that this 40 plus year old orchard has ever experienced. I'm headed there after this to assess the damage. Suggestions for what to add to my next spray round to help them recover from this.
I have a nice array of Eden gold products available and anything that apicalag. com carries can be quickly purchased. By the way, love this discussion of things available to home orchardists. Our orchards sell scionwood to hundreds of people around the country, and many of them need this kind of information.
Thanks again, Jeannie. Thank you so much, Jeannie. Tell them about this radio show. I would love it if you could share information, because we get lots of good topics here. Jeannie, those are really great questions. and as I'm sure you know from our professional work, we do a lot of sap analysis and work with lots of orchards in your part of the country.
So I'm very familiar with the heat stress challenge that you're describing. I can't really comment on Eden Gold products because I'm not familiar with them. So I don't really know. But what I do know is that, when trees are really stressed by such a high temperature event and all this heat stress, There's a few things that happen.
One of them is that they break down proteins and actually consume proteins as an energy source. And, the result is that they will accumulate ammonium in the leaves. And the plant burns up all of their own sugars, just trying to stay cool. One of the immediate things that is needed is to resupply sugar in large amounts so they can convert the ammonium back into proteins and can recover their own energy. In our professional work, I would suggest a product called Rejuvenate, which contains black strap molasses, but you could also use sugars and I would recommend application rates in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 pounds an acre. So you'll need significant quantities and it will be very worthwhile. In addition to the sugar, I would also recommend looking at some vegetable oils for the same reason, because they provide plants with a readily absorbable and high energy source. So it's a great source of energy. So you essentially, you need to provide plants with energy to resupply them with everything that they have consumed trying to protect themselves and to stay cool during that high heat event.
So with vegetable oils, and I know we could we can talk about them as well right now. Do you dilute them as well? And is any vegetable oil appropriate? And does it also feed the microbes? So you can use many different types of vegetable oils. You do dilute them, again, and slightly lower your applications typically in the neighborhood of 1 to 2 ounces for small scale applications per gallon of water, 1 to 2 ounces per gallon of water, and in fact, if you can anticipate these high heat events, it can be very advantageous to apply oils in advance of the high temperature stress events.
And the reason is when plants have a surplus of energy, perhaps from oils from a foliar spray or when they become healthy enough to begin manufacturing their own waxes and oils, and they develop this glossy waxy sheen on the leaf surface. We can actually observe this visually. Some plants have much thicker layers of waxes than others.
And this is very valuable for heat protection in these high heat events for 2 reasons. One reason is that, these waxes and oils actually reflect. light and reflect heat from the sun much better. So the leaves stay cooler even in high air temperatures. And the second reason is because these waxes and oils are also very good heat conductors.
So they're both good reflectors and they're good conductors and being good conductors. The plant is trying to cool itself down with transpiration by essentially, losing moisture or for in the human equivalent would be when we are sweating. So plants are trying to cool themselves down through sweating, you could say, and because these lipids and waxes on the leaf surface are good conductors, that allows the cooling to happen faster and be transmitted more efficiently. So putting on oil applications in advance of a high heat stress event can actually allow those plants to survive that stress much more easily. Gotcha. Okay. Another quick question. This one's from Sharon.
So Sharon says, Hi, John. Love your work. Can you please tell us a bit about kind harvest?
[00:33:50] Kind Harvest: A Social Network for Growers
kind harvest is, specifically for growers who want to have agricultural conversations and learn from other people who are interested in regenerative agriculture practices specifically, but also just agricultural practices in general.
I put together Kind Harvest because I became very frustrated with the way conversations rapidly devolved on Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms. So it Kind Harvest is a social networking platform that is specifically for agricultural conversations. Got it. Ooh, sounds very interesting.
And I saw that on your website, so that's very interesting. Okay so far we have Coca-Cola, we have full fat yogurt culture, we talked a little bit about vegetable oils. Let's go back to the yogurt. The phrase that I missed including, and that is full fat content, and I just described how plants benefit from fats and oils.
They get a lot of energy from fats the same way that we do and we should not consume skim milk, nor should we feed it to our plants. Okay. Full fat then. Full fat yogurt. Yummy. Okay. let's do another one. One you wrote here is apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is an interesting compound and it might be more relevant for vegetable production than for tree fruit production.
But its relevance comes, first of all, it is a probiotic and a prebiotic similar to yogurt. It will enhance microbial populations on the leaf surface, which can be very valuable. But it's content of acetic acid. If you apply it, again, in rates in the neighborhood of two to four ounces per gallon of solution, it can actually trigger bud development of reproductive buds.
So if you have a plant or a tree that is not setting flowers and isn't flowering. You need to know when the timing is for when that particular species sets buds. So for many fruit trees, the reproductive buds are actually set the year prior. So for cherries and apples, for example, the buds would often be set in the June July time periods when bud initiation happens for next year's crop.
At those periods of time when we have the bud initiation, putting on a foliar application of apple cider vinegar can actually trigger bud initiation and bud development. So if we have a tree that isn't flowering, isn't reproducing, that can be a very useful tool. The same is also true of vegetable plants.
If we have a tomato plants that are six feet tall and lush green with lots of foliage, but not a single tomato. Putting on foliar applications of apple cider vinegar can help switch that. That's very interesting. I grow cherry tree in a UFO form, so it's like a cherry tree fruiting wall, and you really want the, the trunk, which you bend over, you want lots of upright sprouts. So that would be worth trying, if you've got an empty space where these sprouts are just not coming up. I could try that spray. Okay. A few more questions here. We've got one from Jim. Hi, Susan. Great show. I was wondering what the ratio would be if I were to use herbal tea.
And that's. Jim from Stratford, Ontario. I don't have enough experience that I have a qualified opinion. Obviously, it would depend on the concentration of the herbal tea and so forth, but if you want to dig deeper into that topic, I highly recommend the book that I wrote the forward for, it's authored by Nigel Palmer, and, I'm struggling with the title right now.
I want to say something like, organic amendments for the backyard gardener or something like that. I forget exactly what the title is, but Nigel Palmer wrote a really great book on how to supply nutrition and biology to your plants by culturing them at home, producing herbal teas, compost teas, actually not even compost teas, but, Bokashi and different fermentation methods.
And, he's done some really interesting research that brings together lots of these different. microbial culturing modalities into one integrated whole. That's a good book to look up. So that's Nigel Palmer and if anybody can find the book online while we talk, do send us an email and tell us the exact name.
That would be great. Couple more quick questions. We've got Dare. Dare is writing from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Great information. I am a new fan of John's. Listening from Prince Albert. Yeah, that's great. And here we go. Steve, writes in and Steve says, hello, just tuned in. I read John's book volume one and love it.
Is there a volume two? Volume two has been waiting for months for me to write the introduction. Everything else is done. In the next couple of months there will be a volume two.
Okay, we got a little bit more time. Let's see, what would you say, give us one more spray that you think was, would be really useful for people? One additional spray that would be really useful. We spoke a little bit about sugar in the context of Coca-Cola.
[00:39:11] Nutrient-Rich Foliar Sprays
We might also consider blackstrap molasses and blackstrap molasses can be particularly valuable because it is a good source of iron and it's really interesting.
There are three different nutrients which will turn plants dark green. Those are nitrogen, magnesium and iron, and each of those three contributes to the development of chlorophyll and increases chlorophyll concentrations, which, of course, allows leaves to intercept more sunlight and photosynthesize more successfully. The greatest crop responses come about as a result of a balance of all three of those. So it's common in conventional agriculture, for example, to over apply nitrogen, but not to address magnesium and iron to correspond. So if we address all three of those at the same time is when we produce the greatest crop responses. So blackstrap molasses can be a great source of iron.
And then to address the magnesium component, I would suggest Epsom salts. In fact, I'm such a big fan of Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, which is in most people's bathroom, or it should be if it's not. And, I'm such a fan of Epsom salts that I think it should be in every foliar spray at low doses. So somewhere in the neighborhood of a half an ounce of the crystals per gallon of water should be a part of every foliar spray because of the impact that it has on plant health and improving photosynthesis. That leads me to another question. To what extent can we mix and match? Put in a little yogurt, full fat, put in a little molasses, put in a little vegetable oil and top it off with some Epsom salts all in one sprayer.
Mix it with water. How would that work? That works incredibly well. Combinations are much more effective than individual products by themselves. The only caution that I mentioned back at the beginning is to avoid a total of all the ingredients greater than eight ounces per gallon. Anything less than that, you should be fine.
Greater than that, you have the potential for leaf burning. Okay, that is a really good warning. With the Epsom salts, do they dissolve in water or do they have to be in hot water in order to dissolve? You don't want them clogging up your sprayer. Epsom salts usually dissolve very easily unless you have extremely hard water or very difficult water to work with.
Okay. So it does easily as sugar. All right. I'm looking at the list that you and I talked about and I think there is one more I'd love to talk about quickly. Whey, whey protein. Tell me about that. So I mentioned that the three nutrients, which increase chlorophyll are magnesium and nitrogen and iron. We addressed magnesium and iron.
We haven't yet talked about nitrogen and whey protein can actually be a great source of nitrogen. And I'm mentioning this, and this is actually a very important point, because commonly in agriculture, when we think about nitrogen applications, immediately, our thoughts go to various nitrogen products like a miracle grow fertilizer or triple 20 or calcium nitrate or whatever the case might be.
The challenge is that those mineral forms of nitrogen, either ammonium or urea or nitrate, all have significant negative health consequences for plants. They tremendously increase disease susceptibility and insect susceptibility. Amino acid nitrogen or protein nitrogen does not have those negative side effects.
So putting whey protein into a sprayer and applying it can be a way to supply nitrogen to supply protein to the crop without having the negative effects of a water soluble fertilizer. huh. Very interesting. So where do you get it from? The whey? You can get whey protein, I'm imagining, buffy athletes drinking protein shakes, so anywhere you would get a protein shake and get whey protein. And this is the powdered whey. It's not from you don't have to make cheese or whatever in order to. The reality is you could also use milk if you want to just use straight milk. You could also use milk to provide proteins and fats and a little bit of calcium as well.
But actually, I think that the proteins and fats are much bigger positive contributor than the mineral content. But then the nitrogen, would there be nitrogen as well if you were using milk. Yes, there certainly is protein in milk. It's less concentrated than it would be in whey protein, but there would still be some nitrogen value there for sure.
So basically for the whey, we could go to a health foods shop and get some whey protein powder and mix a small amount of that into our homemade spray. And another possibility that might be more accessible might simply be to use powdered milk as well instead of the liquid milk. I'm glad you mentioned that because in our Facebook discussion that we had a while back about Coca-Cola, I asked people to suggest what they use, this is fantastic, fruit tree growers, what are they using,
interesting sprays? So we had Jack who said he uses a dose of kelp every 10 days. He says it's a known cure for all fruit tree problems. It won't get every problem 100%, but seems to address overall tree health and resistance or recovery from any number of insect damage and disease problems. So that's one kelp.
Yeah, I've been framing the available materials that you can use again in the context of what might be readily accessible at home. But there are two materials that I would highly recommend that are very broad, generally have a tremendous positive impact on plant health and productivity.
And those two would be a kelp or seaweed liquid seaweed application. This is a different word for the same thing and concentrated liquid ocean minerals that have reduced sodium and chloride. So these solutions often look like a magnesium chloride solution when you look at the label, but they have very concentrated levels of all the different minerals that are present in ocean water and this is very important because many of these minerals are absolutely critical in tiny concentrations like all plants to have completely functioning enzyme systems and be resistant to all diseases and insects.
They require tiny quantities of nickel and vanadium and chromium and arsenic. They need to be present in parts per billion concentrations so it doesn't take very much of them, but they're very important and they are almost universally deficient in many of our soils today because of historical practices and acidic rainfall and all these various pieces are environmental impacts that have happened.
They are not readily available for plans to absorb. So these naturally occurring broad spectrum minerals are very important and can have a tremendous impact on plant health. Fantastic. Okay, last comment here. This is from Camille and thank you Camille. Camille found the name of the book, Nigel's book. So the book is by Nigel Palmer, The Regenerative Grower's Guide to Garden Amendments.
Using locally sourced materials to make mineral and biological extracts and ferments. Thank you, Camille. You're lovely for doing that for us. That's wonderful.
[00:46:49] Final Thoughts and Resources
Ryan says, Do you spread at the drip line or at the base of the tree? Now, I'm not sure which he's referring to, but if you are putting any of this stuff in the soil, where would you put it?
Everywhere. Everywhere. Okay. Roots are everywhere. Roots are everywhere.
And John, thank you so much for this incredible conversation. You are for sure coming back to the show again.
I demand it. It would be wonderful. Thanks for having me here, Susan. I've enjoyed the conversation. That's so wonderful. Thank you so much. So today on the show, this was regenerative agriculture expert, John Kempf, and you can learn more about him at johnkempf. com. So J O H N K E M P F dot com, JohnKempf. com, definitely follow up on that. So if you enjoyed this show, you might want to listen to some of our other episodes. To do that, just go to OrchardPeople. com slash podcasts, and you can listen to archive episodes on all sorts of topics around fruit trees, food, forest, permaculture, and arboriculture.
you can learn more about fruit trees and how to grow them on my website, which is OrchardPeople. com. and also if you like this show and you are listening to it as a podcast, please do go to your podcast podcatcher and rate it and review it. That would be so wonderful. It brings more listeners to the show.
So that's it for today's episode. We will be back again next month with another great guest and a wonderful, another wonderful topic. I'm Susan Poizner from the Fruit Tree Care Training website, OrchardPeople. com. And I look forward to digging into a new fruit tree care topic with you again next month.
See you later. Bye bye.