Are diseases present because pesticides were not applied in time?
Nutrients should be available, but not soluble ~ William Albrecht To develop regenerative farming systems, it is important that any soil amendments or fertilizers we…
Fixing nitrogen without Legumes
Legumes don’t fix nitrogen. Only bacteria do. And there are many more bacteria capable of fixing nitrogen than those associated with legumes. We just need…
Insect susceptibility determined by types of plant sugars
Sugar metabolism and carbohydrate synthesis are at the very foundation of plant health, but we generally don’t learn much about them in agronomy or even…
John’s Recommended Reading List
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson I believe constant learning is an imperative,…
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is one of those nice words we do not hear much nowadays. It means the body’s ability to balance itself. ~ Charles Walters1 Homeostasis is…
Close Connections
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. ~ John Muir What does it…
What actually produced the difference?
When observing changes on farms, we give credit to the wrong factors at least half the time. ~ Gary Zimmer A foundational premise of holistic agriculture…
The bulls-eye of the wrong target
We have become masterful at hitting the bull’s eye of the wrong target. A colleague sent me a recent article1 describing the discovery of a…
When Quality is the goal, Yield is a result
When yield is the goal we focus on, we manage plant nutrition to produce the highest yields possible. It becomes strictly a numbers game, making…