Commercial Synthetic Fertilizers vs Hippy Juice

Growing Nutrients
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LOL, Dan you would think farming ‘organically’ is something new! Most millennials don’t realized people farmed organically for generations because crop rotation and organic inputs were the only tools available to them!!
I have to laugh when asking urbanites why the organic practices were left behind when ‘synthetic’ fertilizers became available ; they will tell you it was a evil plot devised by Monsanto or Bayer!!! The total truth of the matter is there is not a SINGLE difference in any of the nutrient ions AT ALL when comparing ‘organic/synthetic’
fertilizers. In fact, to call fertilizers that are not registered ‘organic’ SYNTHETIC is completely ludicrous!!

Rest of the story: ‘synthetic’ fertilizers displaced ‘organic’ because they were more efficient form in many ways. (much more concentrated in % of nutrient, less to apply per acre vs. organics, tremendous transportation efficiency, allowed for the first time specific nutrients to specifically address macro and micro deficiencies)…no… organics fell by the wayside because they could not economically compete with manufactured fertilizers. Manufactured fertilizers allowed the US farmers to feed the world with better production and improved quality of life! If you desire to grow your crops organically I feel more power to you!!
I have nothing against that at all, but please don’t delude yourself into believing you are in any way, shape, or form providing something different to you roots… a nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium ion is the same whether it comes from a miracle grow box, or a load of Aunt Martha’s composted Bat Guano!

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CX Horticulture is a company based out of Australia who have used a synthetic/organic blend of nutrients with great success since 1992!

Personally I have yet to see a more complete mineral breakdown in a nutrient range to date, this table is what’s in a base nutrients.

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My experience tells me using hippy juice overall beneficial. Plant healthier less money less labor

Royal knight Ag (rkagcanna) lb for lb go Against any program

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It not an argument of organic vs inorganic. It simply 200 years of good agronomic practices. You can see what different practices side by side. You can see segments that have only had organic practices for 200 years. They are amazing. You can see a plot that has never had any crop grown or been tiled.

The whole field had the exact same soil profile.

You can see first hand what happens in plots that the organics have changed because no cover crop was grown. In both organic culture and inorganic culture.

All of the first studies in the biological activities in a soil as a function of perduction come from sandborn field. Dr. Oscar Calvert isolated the first microrhyzi where collected and cultured and added back into some plots in the late 1950’s early 1960’s and in some plots ever since. He isolated the fungus used in beans to fix nitrogen and develop a way to treat them like freeze dried yeast, it for adding back into seeds for beans at planting. Yields became reliable and the rest is history.

We have 150 years of comparing organic and inorganic grows. The grow of yield between good organic and good inorganic is equal. That was the number on thing I learned.

I also learned that a good Organic grow takes a lot more effort to right. And I first hand learn how hard it is to scale an organic grow. I produced in two different sets of fields our primary production fields were certified organic 4 acres. Hard and rewarding.

The greenhouses where technically inorganic. But, we used the best practices organic, because we decided we could not afford the cost or time involved with chemical controls. They where a fall back if a mistake occurred. But, using organic fertilizer in the greenhouse was not economicly viable, if we wanted to recycle the greatest quantity of water and fertilizer.

I used an peatlite type mix with a composted pine bark and a little pine bark ash. Metromix 520. We picked this mix as our dominant medium because it was highly biologically active in all the good root fungus. We suplimented with two different fungus lines. One comercally available freeze dried line and a locally collected culture. Because from the work at Sanborn, we knew that the local fungi are better than any comercally available product. We also learned in our own production. That the local fungi always won out over any added fungi. You could see this as soon as 48 hours after a treatment. That the dominant fungi was the locals. I may still have the permanent slides we made in our grow as our reference slides. I made about 100 slides of fungi collected at our operation. Almost all where unknown types. A few we could identify. But, just looking at mycilium and zygospores is really hard to identify without a lot of work. We just knew from work at Sanborn and from composted pine bark studies at Georgia. That we wanted as a host for mycroryzi.

The soil bacteria mostly are trouble makers. So we try for mediums with high gas exchange. Trying to match the highest gas exchange with the greatest number of Waters a day was the goal. If we could get 6 to eight waterings, in a 24 hours we were very happy campers. This garrenteed us the maximum potential bio mass and the greatest number of flowers per square foot per week per year.

So this is my 40 years of horticulturel production sumerized.

I know I never want to live off of field production alone. The best I hope for from field, is to pay my fixed production cost for our greenhouse for a year. About one acre of field can pay for twelve months of greenhouse cost for 10k square feet.
The national average operating cost for a greenhouse is 23.2 cents per square foot year. You can calculate the exact value for any location. I have shared this already. I think the link is in pot mums. It’s handy because it has the link to the USDA districts for each state. You can get the exact cost for utilities in any location, no guessing needed. You can see if your number match your neighbors.

Enough,

I am sorry that you don’t like my interpretation of the science.

I am sorry if I have offended you. I am publicly apologizing to you. I will try to be more inclusive. But, if I see junk science. I have a social responsibility to point out to the larger community that something will not work.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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You are my new hero! Are you going to be in Seattle for the conference?

I want to buy you lunch!

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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I would love more detail.

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My experience is opposite in comercal production.

If I can’t get a label as detailed as an inorganic fertilizer. I can’t use it in my grows.

I need repeatability. I need to produce a finished crop every week of the year. I am limited in products that can give me that level of reliability.

If you can give me a garrenteed analysis, in batch size big enough to be statasticly significant. I will look at your products

But, today I can use the comercal production numbers, the space type and I can see the good from bad growers. It is really obvious and it all open source public data.

Maybe you can tolerate a crop failure in a home grow. But, if I am trying to raise a family. Organics feeding, don’t scale inside.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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It’s because there was a surplus of nitrate and phosphate salts after world war 1 and they said, “oh plants need these let’s sell them to farmers for cheap and it’ll increase yields,” which it did, temporarily… Then we got the dust bowl…

I have to laugh when I hear people equate growing pre world war 1 with organic growing in the era of microbiology. Like we had even a basic understanding of plant nutrition or plant microbe interactions. We’ve only been salt farming for 80-90 years now? We’re barely at the precipice of understanding plant systems, as much as anyone wants to claim what they’ve learned is all that’s needed. Well it might be enough in your life time but I’m going to be alive when we’ve lost a majority of our top soil to salts because it was easier and good enough. I don’t think current organic practices are very good either but, again, we’re at the beginning of a new type of agriculture and if you don’t see it that’s fine, let the new generation tackle the hard to understand stuff that’s necessary for global food security.

I fully agree that in soilless media, inorganic is most cost effective in low value crops… Cannabis is not yet a low value crop and there is definitely a difference between organic and synthetic nutrients. I could go on about it at length but suffice it to say, EDTA does not affect the plant metabolism like amino acids or fulvic acids as a chelating agent.

I fully agree that that’s the reason we are a world of salt farmers, it WAS cheaper. Unfortunately, in large scale farming we are seeing massive issues crop up after long term use of salt fertilizers. So while it’s cheaper and increases yields in the short term, it is a terrible way to fertilize and you will see fewer benefits each crop cycle. I see this everyday in the field. Farmers shelling out hundreds of thousands every year in chemical fertilizers and pesticides to see slowly diminishing returns and to find their soil structure and soil life to be some of the worst in the world. Again, soilless container growing in a greenhouse, use synthetics all day. I’m talking about the long term effects and there’s no argument in the scientific community that salt fertilization leads to a slow decline in field crop health that can take decades to show depending on the original soil profile of the land.

You didn’t offend me, I just prefer discussion over ranting. I’m not using any junk science I just believe that the crop sciences that you learned are inefficient in fields and lead to more problems in the long term than the benefits in the short term are worth. How many years after salts were introduced did you get your education? I got my education after the long term issues had come to the surface and have been demonstrated over and over to deplete soil health and thus plant health while having a devastating impacts on the environment. We’re at the beginning of a new era of agriculture where large scale fields will attend more to the microbial communities than the plants, using synthetics as a backup, much as you use chemical pesticides as a backup when biological strategies fail.

I think we largely agree that low value crop production in soilless media is best done with salts and biological IPM strategies with mycorrhizal fungi whenever possible. I’m only arguing that we are entering into a new production paradigm that will focus on soil health over plant health instead of the reverse, and that plant health will follow with much lower need of inputs, organic or inorganic.

Hopefully you guys will be alive to see it be the norm. It’s already happening, I’ve seen reports of farms reducing their costs by 30-50% while increasing yields upwards of 80% just by tending to the biology and structure of the soil.

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Last thing I’ll say, as I think we’ve gone off the rails a bit. We have the same interpretation of the current literature I’d imagine, I think I’m arguing for where we’re heading and your arguing about where we are/have been which can get pretty circuitous! I just think modern organic and inorganic haven’t caught up with the knowledge of microbiology and that’s where I believe we’re heading which will reduce the need for both types of fertilization. There will always be a place for synthetics and always a place for organics, but it’ll be far removed from the current practices of incessant reamending and fertilization. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a microbiologist so I’m pretty biased but I’ve seen the literature and the results in the field to be as confident as is possible in my predictions, which are of course open to debate.

I do appreciate the discussion especially since it’s not something that easy to get across in a couple sentences like I had initially attempted.

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Take a look on their website, they are distributed and sold in the US, I just haven’t haven’t come across many nutrient ranges with trace minerals like selenium and gold etc. obviously not essential nutrients but growth boosting macro’s nonetheless

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Alex,

Good question. I have grown horticultural crops since 1975. I have grown comercally since 1978. I attended the University of Missouri Columbia from 1982 through 1989. I received two degree BSag 1987 in horticulture in hard science. MS in floricultue 1989. Most of the work was in plant pathology, plant physiology and computer science. My these is “Development of a greenhouse order processing system” available by intern library loan. It is the first time the math and cost account algorithm done by hand in scheduling a glasshouse where automated in a quantifiable way. I used the USDA greenhouse stistical data. I created an optimation queue of nested sets using a regration algorithm. I took three month of hand work and at the end could create the production queue for a 500k sqft greenhouse is about 30 sec on the Midwest super computer MSCC. I started converting the Queueing algorithm to run on IBM DB2 public beta 1c through 1h in 1986. IBM and Dr Codd IBM fellow, asked for student submittion of use case models and demenstrating, relational models. i submitted a case study and an example of using nested set I could create optimization queue in a glasshouse. These could be allocated back to any project based accounting system for direct real time cost account of a project using the standard Dutch spacing method as the axis on the matrix. And scheduled vs unscheduled touches could be tracked.
I was one of 50 student from across the country to win a prize, from IBM. I got to go to IBM in Poughkeepsie and hear a keynote lecture by Dr. Codd. I was also on of five people who where asked to present my work. I was the only non computer scince student.

I don’t like using Wikipedia but, here is an History of fertilizer

We regular talked about the use of post 1950’s cost benifits of old organic methods vs newer method.

Do you know how many ton of mannur was collected in 1900 NY city? Vs 1950 vs 1980? This turns out to be important. You also need to look at the nutrional profile of people in the USA from 1900 to present as a good example. Because we consume and produce the greatest caloric count, we are a good case study.
The pre 1900 nutritional profiles are stable. The mean worker had just enough to live but less 1% where able to be fat. Remember pre 1900 fat is associated with wealth. Post 1900 we see big changes in general health. With the biggest changes start in the 1950s.

If we look use btu vs calorie. And we take the estimated btu cost of one ton of any of the big 4 crops. Corn, wheat, soybean and rice. Between 1900 and 2011 which is the last time I looked at the numbers. Btu cost of organic vs inorganic are equal. So it becomes a socal cost of one method over the other.

There are good producers and there are bad producers. The people who are bad farmers because of inefficient practices. Like to much fertilizer, they go out of business. Now they have left a mess behind. :frowning:

But modern production practice on a small farm are squeezing every dime. The are good land managers. They want to give the land to there children to farm. The average small farm in the USA is entering there 5th generation. They have a vested interest @Farmer_Dan

If we look at the big corporate farms in the big four. They are unbelievablely concus that there number one asset is land. Look at land prices for first grade land. The average price of farm land is 6k per acre last year. Missouri bottom land can go as high as 100k an acre.

I think I understand agriculture economics perty well.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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‘Salt Farming’??? Guys lets get realistic please. All nutrients, no matter their source are chemical salts! I have spent my lifetime in production ag and just retired last year. Since I was farming in Northern California, I can tell you production ag is very intense farming! You must realize something the ‘enlightened’ don’t understand…farmers are very good stewards of the land. They realize that their biggest assets are the land and their employees!

Soil and water conditions are monitored constantly. Also I have some more realistic news for you…Pesticides have evolved dramatically. In 1986 all we had were organophosphate and carbamate insecticides. We had to have all our employees blood tested annually (to monitor acetyl cholinesterase levels). With advancements in technology, I never had the need to use a category 1 insecticide after about 2001. Today almost all pests are controlled with specific IGR’s (insect growth regulators). They target SPECIFIC pests without harming beneficials or the environment. The general public is mostly ignorant, I’m afraid, because they are no longer closely associated with their food production. Altacor, one of our primary pesticides used to control destructive worms does not even have a Caution label on it, it simply has a ‘keep out of reach of children’!

I guess the point is that in a capitalist society, the economic competition drives innovation and efficiency. Farmers do NOT like jeopardizing their land or their employees. Enough said, my intentions are not to mock or disparage anyone. I have no PROBLEM with anyone that wants to farm organically…God bless them for their commitment. I simply wanted to state some facts that are lost on the vast majority the public!

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Before people get too side tracked with various discussions on nutrients, I would just like to point out a few simple facts so we can end a few debates and dilemmas.

There are 18 essential MINERALS that plants use in various amounts, 15 of these essential elements are abundant in soil, we deal with only the 13 that are generally managed by the growers.

  • Nitrogen
  • Phosphorus
  • Potassium
  • Sulfur
  • Magnesium
  • Calcium
  • Iron
  • Boron
  • Manganese
  • Zinc
  • Molybdenum
  • Copper
    And the one I dislike people using the most Silicon.

All these minerals are semi-organic to begin with, they are all naturally occurring and abundant on earth, some are mined and reacted with other minerals to decrease heavy metal values and make them pure and more than suitable to agriculture.

Even phosphoric acid, calcium and ammonium nitrates are formed in a process called the Haber-Bosch method which works remarkably similar to plant photosynthesis.

As for nutrients made from completely synthetic origins, I haven’t come across any. If anybody can show me so I don’t use them that would be much appreciated!

Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen are essentials obtained through the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

From this discussion I will differentiate but not exclude the following minerals/compounds as they are not essentials but also currently being widely accepted and used for various agricultural purposes like growth regulation/pest management, etc.

  • Cobalt
  • Titanium
  • Gold
  • Selenium
  • Iodine
  • Copper
  • Chlorine
  • Strontium
  • Chromium
  • Sodium
  • Bromine
  • Nickel
  • Vanadium
  • Aluminium
  • Cerium
  • Lanthanum
  • Rubidium
  • Tin
  • Tungsten
  • Lithium
  • Silver
  • Platinum

All naturally occurring compounds like :

  • Organic acids
  • Amino acids
  • Vitamins
  • Auxins, Cytokinins, Gibberellins
  • Hormones

Are all organic, wether they’re grown on a Petri dish and mixed into your baby bottle or in your soil mix :slight_smile:

As for complete organic growing through breakdown of soil blends and humus, good on ya, you just make all the soil microbes do the work of the scientist mixing those nutrients, sometimes even ending in higher quality products gleaming with wider terpene profiles and more developed cannabinoid spectrums! So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with no till farming and organic composted soil blends! I have personally seen 15 year old compost grow outdoor cannabis over 2 metres tall that was continuously re-veged and flowered 5 years straight with great results!

As for the production oriented cultivation experts here, regardless of your nutrient origin the only preventative method for nutrient salt build-up and correct nutrient usage are BENEFICIALS :

  • Fungi
  • Bacteria
  • Top-cropping
  • Enzymes
  • Worms

Cannabis plant matter contains over 60 elements, some as diverse as ammonium, titanium, gold, mercury, arsenic, and uranium. A lot of these elements come in the forms of salts and other mineral compounds and can be found in tested cannabis flower matter everywhere in the world as it is not something widely tested for yet. The only way to ensure the minimum amount of salts and overall element concentrations in plant matter is to use beneficials, particularly fungi & bacteria.

No offence to any purists out there, I am one myself, I just don’t like the misrepresentation of information on nutrients as I’ve been searching for the worlds best for a very long time.

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“As for the production oriented cultivation experts here, regardless of your nutrient origin the only preventative method for nutrient salt build-up and correct nutrient usage are BENEFICIALS :”

Alex, I agree microbes ARE beneficial and do have their place, however you are again stating a misnomer. Actually the only effective way to displace salts from a deflocculated soil is with sulfur, sulfuric acid,
popcorn sulfur, or Tiger 90. Gypsum (calcium sulfate) can also be used when salt concentrations are not too excessive.

I now promise to crawl back in my den!!

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Curious - why don’t you like silicon?

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Robert,

Thank you!

Very well said.

How many organic farm did you see with heavy metal problems?

What percentage was some one pick an animal source for NPKCa?

Warm regards
Ethan

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Yes.

But, I have seen Molibdum difficency in poinsettia. At least once a year I would see a grower with this deficit.

If you grow in a a soiless mix micros can be an issue. Hence the Cornell University peatlite blends of fertilizer in 1973 or 74.

We only figure out that molibdum was plant essential because of growing tomato in sand. Oops took a year. I will find the paper.

When they say plant essential, a study was done where none of that eliment is present. Turns out to be really hard to prove.

@TheMadFlascher, can you add here🙃 please

@BECorr, good question. :upside_down_face: let me try to answer.

Because, if I do an ash analysis. Burn the plant up and messure each element in the gas and ash. I do not find any silica in any significant amount. Si is the not there in any significant amount. In our soils we have a world’s worth. Some bamboos and similar grasses plus a funny plant Equisetum - Wikipedia
It moves Si well from roots to cell walls not the lignin. They have studied how the plant transports something so abundant. The plants that use Si it in quantity do some strange things physiology speaking.

I know only two non grasses that are higher flowering plants that use large amounts of Si both are types of barel cactus. They use Si in a very strange organic compound that they bind to Silicon carbide plus a dioxigen hydrate5
The use it for part of night time photosynthesis type process. Very strange.

Two source you need. A good one line periodic table. WebElements Periodic Table » Silicon » the essentials Is a good as most. You can do 100% of the stand greenhouse chemistry with a high schools chemistry book.

All my inhouse chemistry of water for the big four NPKCa can be done with a good high-school book in introduction to chemistry. 10th or 11th grade. And an EC meter. You can cheat on an EC meter with a contractor grade ohm meter from home despot. Takes a conversation in the high-school chemistry book. In mine it was a two page table.

The other thing is algebra from at least you can setup an equation standpoint. I don’t do any math by hand any more but I can estimate well enough. If I need help I have a spreedsheet cheat. It just a table out of A C Bunt modern potting composts. I created a slide ruler for most of the greenhouse calculation. Because, if you can create a definite perpose slideruler you have math that a computer can use.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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Ethan,
I have read that molybdenum has been associated with nitrogen utilization in some specific species and conditions. Actually SULFUR is essential in nitrogen utilization to a major degree…IMHO if you don’t have a source of sulfur in your neut program you are probably wasting nitrogen… Very easy to see this demonstrated with your lawn. Take a section and fertilize it with ammonium nitrate, calcium nitrate, or any other nitrogen source not containing sulfur. Now take a section and fertilize it with good ole ammonium sulfate (21-0-0). Water it in well and tell me how the color/growth looks in 10 days!

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@TheMadFlascher,

Not much different in soiless grows. But nitrogen source become critical in short day plants with a less than 11 week crop time. Nitrate or go home. Some exceptions. The papers from Cornell University substrate laboratory from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Once the first peatlite mix was released, 18 months later you grew in it or you where out of business.

The lab at UNC does all the good work today.

The period of time in the late 1970’s when Georgia and North Carolina where fighting to find high gas exchange organic based media’s is good reading to.

Arkansas and Georgia did work that change my growing. Composted pine bark. As big a change in growing as the first peatlite mixes. For my target crops they were perfect. WR Grace released metromix 520 and 820. It meant between these to mixes I could find the has exchanges needed in old speclity cut flowers. Sweet pea Latherous oderatera, renuculus and anenome. Latherous was better in a puffed glass substrate. In a hydroponic type grow. Inside it’s how many times a day can I water. 6 to 8 in chrysanthemum is probably close for maximum biomass gains for cannabis. Lots of analogs. Evaporatransporation index for chrysanthemum is surprisingly close to cannabis based in a 2017 paper. Posted here on GN. I tabilized the to tables I crated yesterday and the curves are really simalar. I thought they might be or solidago was my second choice. The are some 9 week cut flower varietieds. It is flower size to plant dry wieght ratios led me to look for simalar short day plants.

I worked in some old cut flower operation in the late 1970’s that where still transitioning to soiless mixes. That was interesting. Every couple weeks new data on the crop you where relearning to grow had new hard numbers. I learned the importance of algibra first hand real life. I remember be shown at a grow how to calculate at feed by a very old a patent grower. Who pulled his preWW2 8th grade algibra book. I said. Oh we just covered that was wondering where to apply it.

Greenhouse we have some indexes you will have never seen. I still use tables for some. You can do load calculation in soiless that are really hard to do in soil without special tables and math.

My soil science professor use to complain that the greenhouse horticulture people couldn’t do real soil since math.

I finally responded in gradschool to him. By saying in a seminar when he completed again about greenhouse. That greenhouse people took the guess work out of soil scince by taking the soil out of the greenhouse. Took me years to understand why he was wrong. And greenhouse housed where right. A C Bunt monograph “Modern Potting Composts” is an excellent book for transfering all your soil science to Floriculture soiless science. Does a great job explaining why something in a true soil sand silt clay does not apply the same way in a soilless mediums. Plus a really early hydro grow method that works really well.

From those pesky voices in my head
Ethan :upside_down_face:

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I missed your evapotranspiration index. Where is it?