John Kempf

How to create a disease susceptible orchard

Leaf residue can carry potential disease pathogens from one season to the next.

The best short term solution to solve it is to apply Soil Primer to have the residue be rapidly digested and broken down.

The midterm solution is to cover the naked soil and provide the existing biology a food source so they can thrive and accomplish the job on their own. Stop the continuous herbicide applications.

This picture was taken in the dormant season, but I don’t need to see these trees during the growing season to know they are immune-compromised, susceptible to insects, susceptible to diseases, and biennial bearing. I can know this to be the case because it obvious this soil is not capable of delivering the nutrition the crop needs to be healthy and high yielding.

Rejuvenate speeding the digestion of corn residue

Rejuvenate was originally developed to speed up residue digestion. Once it was discovered how rapidly the product stimulated soil biology and released nutrients from the soil, growers began using it in-season with some very good crop responses.

The intent was to develop a microbial stimulant that would lead to rapid residue breakdown without added purchased nitrogen. When purchased nitrogen is added, much of the carbon in the crop residue is lost to the atmosphere as CO2. While we do want to cycle large volumes of carbon and have CO2 release to the atmosphere, we only want this to occur when green photosynthesizing plants are present that are capable of capturing it once more.

When Rejuvenate is added, crop residue breaks down very quickly and is captured as organic matter in the soil, and can be released during the following peak photosynthesis period.

This is a set of comparison photos of corn residue treated and untreated with Rejuvenate five days after application. In the treated section, the center pith of the stalks has already turned black, while the untreated side is still white.