AdAgrA 2015: Restoring the Waste Places

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Breakout Session 2

Byron Smith

2- From Seed to Harvest: Planning and Scheduling to Maximize Yield

Mineral soil does intrinsically have certain minerals in it, like the physical structure, the chemical makeup of mineral soils might be potassium and silicon and different things like that.

But some of the key nutrients are not naturally there, like nitrogen.

That has to come from an external source.

And because that process is happening continually, you always have some nitrogen in the soil.

But on the other hand, plant-based soils like compost, for example, they came from plants, and plants always have to have nitrogen in them.

So you take even about the worst thing you can get which is sawdust has a carbon nitrogen ratio of 300 to 1 which means that that there's a there's a roughly third of a percent nitrogen in in there unfortunately that is not available for a long long time but we use we use in our media we add plants as our food source.

We don't use any manures or synthetic fertilizers because we're certified organic and veganic so we might use alfalfa pellets bean meal peanut meal What else have we used Yeah, we're we're just getting a truckload of sunflower seeds.

We're going to be sunflower seed meal these these These components are excellent sources of fertility and as you'll see this afternoon when I present our journey of going to certified organic and veganic, we had a lot of apprehension about how well we could provide fertility.

When we got into this veganic stuff some years back, we were 1 of the early adopters of veganic agriculture in North America and so we did not know how well it was going to work, but I will tell you this, we did not know how easy it was to make it work.

So we've been, while there's certainly challenges, there's challenges to all kinds of things, we found it to be a relatively simple process to get the amount of nutrients that we need.

And I don't consider myself an expert in that, but we certainly have some experience.

Cottonseed meal works well too, as long as you can make sure that it's, from my opinion, as long as you can make sure that it's from my opinion as long as you can make sure that it's non-gmo I am I'm kind of a opinionated person when it comes to genetically modified organisms so on to propagation It's interesting this statement from Adventist Holm.

I didn't know till I started getting into researching some of this stuff, I didn't know how specific inspiration was on some of these actual subjects of gardening if you know what you're looking for.

Okay, she says no 1 can succeed in agriculture or gardening.

Now again we have this blanket statement in relation to success.

That's pretty generic, pretty across the board.

So that implies that if you are going to succeed, what?

Now there's a character trait called attention to detail.

The reason why agriculture is so good at character development isn't because you have to work so hard, it's because you have to pay such careful attention to detail.

And you aren't going to get it right the first time and so you have to have perseverance and some of these things to keep moving forward.

So she says, no 1 can succeed in agriculture or gardening without attention to the laws involved.

The special needs of every variety of plant must be studied.

That implies there's going to have to be some close observation and maybe even some researching.

Different varieties require different soils and cultivation and compliance with the laws governing each is the condition, not 1 of the conditions, the condition of success.

So if you aren't succeeding, it isn't because of agriculture, it's because of me.

I am not complying with the laws governing the crops that I'm growing.

Now none of us like to see things that reveal our defects of character.

And we would much prefer to be in ignorance and to have everybody around us tell us we're really nice people and we'd rather have our plants tell us we're really nice people too.

And so God likes to use them to teach lessons to me.

And so continuing, notice this, I highlighted it, the attention required in transplanting that not even a root fiber shall be misplaced or crowded when you transplant, do you pay attention to make sure that your root fibers are not being misplaced or crowded?

Now I'm going to, before I let you off the hook on that 1, because like I said we do this every week and so the results testify to the work done.

So when I see problems I'm supposed to open my eyes and admit that I have a problem, which I don't like to do.

But if you go back here, it says that compliance with the laws is the condition of success.

So if I am not being not being careful with my transplanting I am not going to have the success that I could have.

The care of the young plants, the pruning and watering, the shielding from frost at night and sun by day, keeping out weed, disease and insect pests.

In the late 1800s, early 1900s, whenever it was that she wrote that, what options did they have at that time to keep out the frost by night and the sun by day?

That's really only protected agriculture, which they had a little bit of it back then, but that's really greenhouses.

So she says that that's 1 of the things that she's saying we need to do.

And keeping out insect pests, keeping out weeds and disease, the training and arranging not only teach important lessons, but the work in itself is a means of development.

In cultivating carefulness, patience, attention to detail, obedience to law, it imparts a most essential training.

I consider that to be pretty potent, most essential.

Essential is essential by itself, but when you add most essential, that kind of is a double whammy.

You better make sure that you're getting that 1.

So, but I wanted to highlight this thing here about the specific attributes of transplanting and so on.

Now when it comes to growing seedlings, and yes we start our plants from seed ourself, And I'll just interject that since I mentioned it.

We save our tomato seeds and a few other seeds because of economics.

Greenhouse crops are highly specialized plants.

They are not like anything that you would buy in catalogs for field plants.

And in breeding for gardens and field stuff, they might look at 10 or 15 traits.

In tomatoes, for example, they're looking at probably at least 50, maybe 100 traits.

And the breeding process involved is very, very intense.

And the result is that the seeds cost as much as a dollar a piece.

So when you're talking about thousands and thousands of seeds to put plants in your greenhouse at a dollar a piece and you do 3 crops a year that adds up to some serious money and when I was taking agriculture at university they told me I can't do what I did but because of the cost I decided to try it and because these plants are, the breeding process is so refined, you can actually save the seed and get identical, out of a hybrid plant, you can get it breeding true in the future.

And that seed is, that's my most profitable activity that I do, because I can, in a couple of hours of work, save maybe 3, 000 or 4, 000 seeds.

And I wish that every activity I did was that profitable.

But so far, with the varieties that I've tried, and I've tried probably a half a dozen varieties, I've had a pretty good success at getting plants that I can't tell the difference between the parent and the child.

And you know, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, by the way, about hybridization.

People often think that hybridized is some kind of freak thing.

It's just taking 2 controlled parent lines and crossing them.

And that's happening in nature every day, okay.

It's just that it's just that when they do it for for crops, they decide who the parents are going to be.

Deciding who our parents are going to be, but in the breeding labs, they decide who the parents are.

Genetically modified, different, but hybrids are not anything to be afraid of intrinsically.

So the 3 most important factors in propagation, number 1 is media.

Does anybody have a suggestion what the number 2 most important thing in propagation is?

So it follows, what do you think the third most important thing is?

I can't, I have, I have had more trouble propagating as in germinating seeds and getting successful plants, than I have in any other aspect of organic agriculture.

And the key for me, now the reality is, is that factoring out media, then yes, water, temperature, and media are the 3 most important factors.

But I can't overstress the fact that the right media for germinating seeds consistently is really important.

Yes, The question was can we add a fourth thing called?

Sunlight and there's probably a number of factors.

We're in Arizona sunlight is not in short supply generally speaking so light is and and actually with with with propagating the seedlings actually don't have a very high light requirement, but they have to have a light temperature Ratio that's in balance you get the temperature too warm and the light too low and you're getting a long spindly, very low solid content plant.

So there is, and we have to shade, shade, shade in our propagating.

Now I'm going to be addressing that with some of my stuff here, but I want to highlight from a philosophical perspective the air-water ratio.

That's where I was talking earlier that we're going to get to that.

Now when you think salt you think table salt.

No, salts are soluble ionic dissociated chemicals.

Louis Cuccia

Tree Grafting

Dear Lord, we know that you have created the world in such a manner that all things work by the laws that you've created.

Help us to understand and learn from your creation so that we can better understand and do the work that we need to do and learn and be the kind of people that we need to be.

Help us to gain from all the activities of this place and in the future we ask it in thy name, amen.

In order to be successful at anything that we do, we have to know the laws by which the things that we are learning operate.

If you jump off of the Empire State Building, you know where you're going to end up, don't you?

Well, we have to realize that without knowing what we're supposed to do, we can't be successful.

And Christ said, you know, without me you can do nothing.

And he said, without my Father you can do nothing.

So how much of our righteousness is ours?

So it's Christ's righteousness that becomes a part of us.

And it actually becomes the generating factor within us to do what he wants us to do.

He said that He is the vine and we are the branches.

And then Paul talking about, you know, the nature of people and things and all, he's talking about the different believers and he talks about the wild olive which was grafted contrary to nature into the good olive.

And so grafting was known before the time of Christ.

And I believe the way it got known was just by observance.

And so the thing that we need to realize and know is that there are certain terms that we use when we're using grafting terminology and so I'll go over those to begin with.

And there is the wild root, if you're starting with grafting stock, there's what's called grafting stock, That's the wild thing that comes up from the seed that you graft onto.

Then there is, there are 3 layers on a tree.

They know wood, But they don't know the cambium layer and that is the layer that grows the tree and lays down the wood.

That's the layer that is necessary to make contact with any graft.

And I'm told that it's only 2 cells thick.

So those 2 cells of the, what's, you know, the grafting stock and the cultivar.

The cultivar is the variety that you want to establish a new tree from or that you want to graft onto a mature tree.

So a variety and cultivar you can use in a kind of interchangeably.

So budwood, Budwood is last year's growth usually and it The buds are taken off and put in individually into the rootstock the wild root The grafting stock and then there's a scion Usually we take a piece of last year's growth that has the branch and we leave that branch intact with the buds on it and we graft that.

And so the other thing is when we're, that piece that we use, that's the last year's branch that has several buds on it is called a scion.

And then we can do what's called top working where we cut off a tree, we can cut it clear off to the trunk and we can put several science Into it at 3 to 5 or 7 inches apart depending on the diameter of the trunk and we can graft an older, mature tree that has roots that just have plenty of driving force with the sap and all the roots that they have and we can get fruit usually the next year possibly.

Top working is when there are branches, at least I'd say 3 to 4, maybe 6 inches in diameter.

That the scaffold is the part of the tree that makes the main branches.

There are usually 3 to 5 of those if the tree was originally started right.

So those can be 3, 4 inches or whatever and they're off in their different directions to make a nice canopy.

So you can cut each of those branches off.

If it's an apple tree, you could put a different kind of apple on each branch if you wanted to.

Or let's say that you don't like the kind of apple, or it's a seedling that is nothing.

You can cut it off and put the grafts into that, and then that top work tree will have the kind of apple that you put on it.

I have a, did you get 1 of these sheets here?

There are 3 handouts there and I'll go over that very briefly.

We may run out of time and that's something that I was warned that it just, the time just goes by so fast.

We only have an hour so I'm going to go through this as quickly as possible.

So maybe I'll go through the grafting techniques real quick, then if we have time I'll actually do each 1 of those.

I'm only going to concentrate on 3 or 4 types of graphs and I'm going to show you the 1 that makes the nicest union and It's the smoothest and it kind of holds itself in place first Yes, sir Yes Yes, I I had that down here.

Well good varieties and cultivars don't come along very often And a lot of times they're not from seed.

I was told that you could plant 10, 000 apple seeds and you may not get 1 good apple.

You've probably never heard that term before.

A sport is usually off of an original known tree.

That's a good apple or a good orange or whatever.

And then actinic radiation hits a bud on 1 of the branches and it starts to grow a new kind of orange or a new kind of apple which is sometimes very similar and sometimes very different.

Or it'll have a characteristic that's desirable.

For instance, on the the navel orange, the Washington navel orange, which is seedless.

There are 12 different cultivars that are propagated.

1 is, you know, I can't remember all of them, but 1 ripens in October.

Another 1 ripens in November, but the regular Washington navel ripens in December in our area.

Then there's 1 that's called the spring navel.

There's another 1 called a late lane or Australian Australian navel.

They ripen about the same time in December, but they hold on the tree.

They don't get puffy and lose flavor and everything.

There's another 1 that comes from Venezuela.

Venezuelan navel orange is the pink navel or cara cara.

You've probably heard of that, may have seen it in the store, but it's pink fleshed, Tastes very much the same as the Washington navel orange and has a beautiful color.

Might have a golden delicious and then it makes a sport and that golden delicious may be a beautiful yellow, but the sport has a big pink blush on 1 side or it's reddish or whatever.

It may change the character of the taste and the crispness of it, the ripening season, whatever.

So those are terms that you need to know.

Usually that's only 1 tree or off of 1 tree.

You multiply your efforts by taking that good cultivar or variety and graft it onto other small trees or if you want to top work, which we were talking about earlier, you take a piece of that wood and put it into a mature tree.

I had 1 tree that was a gravenstein and they top worked it before I moved there to a yellow delicious.

And yes, that has to do with compatibility.

And there's a chart there that tells you what kind of trees you can graft to what kind of trees.

So the rootstock can be, why do we graft this?

So we can take a rootstock and multiply our efforts with seedlings grown for that purpose.

So they can take a dwarf orange tree, which only produces a certain kind of seed, and that will Do a semi dwarf or a true dwarf and it only comes up to a true a true seedling every time same seedling and you take any kind of orange graft and graft it into that and it will take and produce a shorter tree instead of a 40 or 60 foot tree it'll be 10 to 12 feet tall or maybe 6 to 8 feet tall.

So there are different purposes and reasons why you graft.

And we talked about changing mature tree over, completely over to a different variety.

You can also create a tree that, let's say that we talked about that earlier, but you could put 4 different kinds or 5 different kinds of peach trees or peaches on 1 tree.

That has its good and bad effects depending on how well you know what's going on with the tree that you're grafting.

Those tree limbs have to be almost exactly the same size in getting the same amount of sap and nourishment.

Otherwise if you graft of 2 different varieties on 1 tree the 1 that gets the most sap is going to be dominant and it's going to really grow like crazy and the other one's going to become diminutive and maybe even die off.

So you need to make sure that they're the same size, you know, when you do all these different things.

People that buy these trees that have been grafted to 5 or 6 or 7 different kinds usually end up with 1.

Anyway, you're almost better off to take 2 trees and plant them in the same hole if they're going to be about the same size, unless you really know how to prune and you know what you're doing creating this several different variety thing.

But, if it's a very mature tree and these trunks, the main trunk is there but the scaffold main branches are very, very sturdy and well-developed.

You don't graft on the tip ends usually, you graft down low so then the rest of the tree grows out from that.

Larry Lesher

GMO’s: Where are They Not?

You're here, I suspect you have a pretty good idea.

So, I'm going to go into a little bit about what it is, but I don't want to spend the whole time talking about what we already know.

What I'd like to get into is a little bit more of the details about what's actually happening in the world around us and how extensive is this and what exactly do we need to do to sort of guard ourselves against it.

I don't think we understand exactly how ubiquitous GMOs have become in the world around us, and to what extent we're being subject to it and not understanding what it's doing to us, our children, the biology and the soil and how that's affecting the plants that we're eating.

And usually we talk about it on a superficial sort of surface level as an introductory, what is a GMO?

But I was hoping, and I think everyone seems to be nodding, that they're interested in a little bit more than that.

Well, to start, I'm just going to give a basic rundown of what a GMO is so that we're on the same page.

There's a lot of different ways GMOs come into being.

The most prominent 1, I guess, is the way I would say it.

And by the way, I'm not gonna have any slides or anything.

So if you want, take notes because you're going to want to go test all things and prove and hold to that which is true, not what I say.

And so, I just need to know really quickly, what time is this over?

A GMO on a certain level is a genetically modified organism.

It means that it has been genetically modified on a cellular level.

1 of the primary way as I understand it is they take a gene species that they want.

So for instance, if you have strawberries and you want more frost resistant strawberries, 1 of the things they've done is they've taken the strawberry gene and they've crossed it with a cold water fish, a flounder, because it has in itself the ability to resist freezing and freezing temperatures.

And so you find out what is in the genetics, the DNA that causes that to happen, and you will take that gene and splice it into the DNA and the genes of that strawberry in order to find that frost resistant characteristic now available in the strawberry for instance.

So if you don't eat fish and you're at the grocery store and you're getting your strawberries, you now effectively are eating fish on a cellular level at least.

And so it can be quite concerning for many people just on that simple level.

It's not that simple though when you think about how they get those genes to cross, we have this idea that it's some sort of very specific scientific process that we have down and it's 1 of the arguments they give for it is that it's going to be more precise than our traditional hybridization methods, which are, as they would claim, very haphazard, takes a lot of trial and error to grow out something and get, make a hybrid that does what we want it to do, have a certain characteristic that we're trying to impart to it.

If you are ending up with a hybridization process out to a, what we would call an open pollinated or a line that is stable, it takes about, well, you're gonna go to the F7, so that means it has to pass through 7 generations.

And each 1 of those generations, every 1 of those genetic characteristic potentials are available in every 1 of those generations.

So even though you've got the tomato that you were trying to generate that's a perfect round tomato every time, same colorization, very consistent, and so that's what you're shooting for.

You may take that 1 and grow those seeds out from that now nice red tomato, and The next ones can be yellow and green and not shaped round at all, pear shaped.

And you can get all the genetic potential that are in those genetics.

By the time you get to the F7 stage, you have what is called stabilization and it starts to reproduce after what it looked like, the parent plant.

Do you understand what I'm saying when I'm talking about that?

So that's hybridization as we hybridize out to a stable variety.

None of the seeds we have effectively have in their past been hybridized.

When you get an heirloom seed in its lineage, in its past life, it has at some point been hybridized.

There's not this idea of a seed that is from the Garden of Eden that we sell, that we have access to at this point in history.

Okay, so what they're saying is, is in this process that this genetic manipulation or genetic modification is a more specific science and we're better at it.

So it takes about 10, 000 tries to hybridize something and get what you're looking for, 10, 20, 000 plant tries to come to it.

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Series

Breakout Session 2

The Ideal Soil: Water

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

2- From Seed to Harvest: Planning and Scheduling to Maximize Yield

1h 12m

Tree Grafting

1h

GMO’s: Where are They Not?

58m

The Ideal Soil: Water

1h

2. Online Marketing: The Next Step

1h

Seed Saving

56m

Sound Doctrine