re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures
Hello, Doc.
I'm wondering if I might procure a few pounds of the aglabs dry broadcast for the 2.2 cubic meter bales of the Promix HP CC?
I have most of the drench & foliars that aglabs sells for both leaf & seed crops, so I'm probably covered in that regard.
I've been scanning your posts here looking for images of your soil test results & recommendations on the promix to see the actual numbers & also what is in the dry broadcast for it.
One question, I think I saw you write that it was almost too high on potassium? Did you blend the worm castings with the promix at 20% prior to sending in your test to aglabs? I'm wondering if the high potassium is from the promix alone or could be reduced by scaling back the volume of worm castings you used at 20%?
BTW, something occurred to me that might help you more closely peg the ideal soil report numbers on your high brix grow:
#1 Jon Frank makes his living dealing with farms & market gardens.
My FIRST curiosity is this: After you tested the pro mix, got the recommendations from Jon & integrated the dry mix with your base potting soil & perhaps let it mellow a bit, did you consider taking a sample of that amended potting mix & immediately sending it back to Jon in order to see how closely his initial recommendations hit the mark of ideal according to his current knowledge?
This is one MAJOR advantage that micro-farming has over macro-farming - the ability to completely amend the entire farm very thoroughly & quickly, whereas the market farmers would be so worn out after working the back 40 that they would not care about spending more money on another soil test within a week or so of the first one when the dry broadcast hasn't even been properly watered in yet.
In other words, is it possible that Jon Frank has not yet considered whether he could fine tune his recommendations further by focusing on micro-farmers who are able to immediately & thoroughly integrate his dry mix into the entire topsoil of the entire farm? What Jon Frank/you, I, & everyone might learn is whether he could further fine tune his recommendations up on this &/or down on that in order to give more precise recommendations on both small & large scales.
Perhaps what you will get is one more dry mix that will take your high brix grow/pro mix dry broadcast closer to ideal from the get go by simply combining both recommendations into one for subsequent orders?
#2 Have you called Arthur Ziegler to try out his Sea-crop.com as a soil drench & foliar spray? I noticed one of your commenters mentioned Seacrop, but I couldn't find a comment from you on that. I emphasized to Jon Frank the incredible results people are getting from Seacrop. I'm amazed that he doesn't seem to be on board with it yet, because he is reverant of Maynard Murray's discovery that sea solids can be used as fertilizer at a dilution of 1 tsp. per gallon. Ziegler removed 98% of the sodium chloride as limiting factor from Murray's great idea & went on to dedicate his book to Murray as well.
Rock dust is great. I'm all about rock dust. However, we're talking about a concentration of virtually all of the minerals & trace minerals known to science in a whole, living culture when we're talking about seacrop.
The one expert, at present, whom I respect the most in terms of his knowledge & results in nutrient dense cultivation explained in a lecture in 2013 that he no longer trucks in liquid fish for his client's farm operations because results were simply not there, while he gets observably better results with Seacrop across the board.
Anyway, seperately, it also occurred to me that if you post images of the soil test results & recommendations, it might go a ways towards teaching people in a forum like this & remove the intimidation factor from what they are calling "high brix" growing, as the simple recipe/ratios which beget quality production are on the test. A great learning tool.
Since I brought up the soil test as learning aid idea, here is a picture of the soil test for the community garden I assisted in establishing last april. I also had the local land grant college do a $10 soil test on a sample from the same bed to demonstrate to people that these tests are not at all the same - aglabs reflects what is available to the plant as opposed to what exists in the soil, but is unavailable. Anyway, this is what you hope your soil test never looks like. =)
It's truly a nightmare. I literally spoke with Jon Frank for one hour & recorded the conversation digitally to get his recommendations on how to deal with the donated sand we had on hand for our raised beds at the community garden.
It was an opportunity to do demonstrate the advances made since Reams took florida beach sand & made high brix soil out of it, according to Frank, with nothing more than soft rock phosphate, lime, & chicken manure.
Instead of going with his recommendations, everyone ignored me & went with a 50/50 blend of dairy compost & sand mixed with a front end loader.
I knew the phosphorous was going to be *really* bad, but when I got the test results for the dairy compost/sand mix from Jon, he literally sounded depressed.
In any case, I'll wrap this up for now.
Just to reiterate, I'm definitely interested in two or three pounds of the dry broadcast, if it's 1# per 2.2 cubic foot bale? Please advise. I'm unable to send PM, this being my first post.
Thanks
