Spring Root-flush

 

Spring Root-flush

Winter dormancy is an important development stage in the tree growth cycle. During this time period crops rest and recharge for the upcoming growing season. Both cold air and soil temperatures are required to supply much needed “chill hours” for resting trees. “Chill hours” are a lot like REM sleep to you and me. REM sleep is the nightly deep-sleep that is vital for keeping us healthy and well rested upon awakening. Simply put, trees need cold temperatures to slow (or stop) their growth activities. When temperatures are too mild, trees do not receive adequate “chill hours” and break dormancy in an energy-deficit condition. In other words, trees don’t sleep well and awaken stressed.

 

 

Spring root-flush:

In California, normally happens with prunus species like almond, early peach, plum, nectarine, apricot and cherry varieties, in the 3rd to 4th week of January. This activity begins when soil temperature (in top 2-4”) reaches 45°F and precedes bloom by approximately three weeks. Buds visibly swell with water and nutrients. The new hair-root growth is needed to support the upcoming crop with water and nutrients. Once root-flush is underway, growers should take advantage by beginning fertigation or soil fertility applications. Nutrient focus should be on root health and crop support.

 

Temperature:

Soil temperature is a major driving factor in the onset of spring rootflush. Currently, soil temperatures, in California are 50-52°F (well above 45°F) due to the high volume of rain (4-5”) that has fallen in the past four to five weeks and continues to saturate much of the state. California has another 4-6” of rain forecast in the next week. Due to this increase in soil temperature, rootflush is now underway.

 

Chill hours:

http://fruitsandnuts.ucdavis.edu/Weather_Services/chilling_accumulation_models/Chill_Calculators/?type=chill  [Check your current chill hours]

Another concern is that “chill hours” are below normal for early January and trees are not getting the rest they need. Rootflush is underway and therefore so is root respiration. Respiration is the plant process of “burning up” or releasing stored nutrient energy for plant use. This is a problem because new roots are using up nutrient energy that is meant for the upcoming bloom.  Due to these circumstances, an energy deficit is beginning that cannot be restored from dormant rest. If you enter the bloom stage in an energy deficit (stressed) condition, it will affect the plant’s ability to pollinate, set and “stick” crop. One symptom of bloom stress is “June drop”. Plants self-regulate by aborting excess crop to ensure they do not run short on nutrients. They are programmed to know how much crop load they can support based on their health and availability of nutrition.

 

Feed the Soil:

When short on “chill hours”, the next-best alternative is to supply energy to the plant via “plant-ready” nutrition. Treatment emphasis should be on the soil, since the roots are already at work. Using an orthophosphate source provides much needed “plant-ready” phosphorus for root growth and health. A unique root benefit is a fungicide-like response within the rootzone. This is especially important in waterlogged conditions. Unlike polyphosphate fertilizers, orthophosphate is not temperature dependent. This means it is readily absorbed by new roots in cold soil temperatures (<63-68°F). In addition to feeding the soil, this is also an ideal time to re-inoculate the rhizosphere with soil microbiology. The more diverse your soil microbiology, the better your soil-nutrient and water efficiency you will experience. Dr. William Albrecht said, “We must not forget that microbes are what make a living soil ‘alive’…microbes, eat at the first sitting…Plants eat second. Plants and microbes must be in symbiotic activity and not in competition for fertility if our productive soils are to be maintained.” So, how productive are your soils? As the farmer, it is good stewardship to know and make necessary adjustments to nurture the soil and ensure it is still productive for the next generation.

Here’s to your success!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soil Microbes Get Their Food First

 

It was less than three generations ago that Pasteur’s work in France suggested the bacterial causation of disease. Even though we are coming to see that the bacterial entry into the body may be encouraged by weakness induced by deficiencies of many kinds, yet the fear of microbes, germs and bacteria is almost universal. Everybody is afraid of getting germs. Pasteur told us that heat is the best weapon for fighting these microscopic life forms and we have been heating, boiling, steaming and sterilizing in the fight against microbes.

Now that the science of microbiology has brought us penicillin, streptomycin and other similar microbial products as protection for our bodies against the microbes, particularly since we are learning to live with them more for our benefit than for our harm. We are coming to see that microbes are a foundational part of the pyramid of life forms, of which we are the topmost. If we are to live complacently with them, we must remember that they are next to the soil in that pyramidal structure. They are between the soil and the plants. They either cooperate with, or compete with, the plants for the creative power in the form of nutrients in the soil. Hence, they are a part of the biotic foundation on which animal and human life depend. Microbes are now recognized as important because they eat more simply than all other life. They also eat first of the fertility of the soil.

1.      struggle for calories

Microbes are less complex in their anatomy and in many respects are less highly developed than plants. Unlike plants, the microbes cannot make their own energy-food compounds by the help of sunlight. On the contrary, sunlight kills microbes. By the process of photosynthesis, plants build their own carbohydrates for body energy from carbon dioxide in the air and from hydrogen and oxygen in water from the soil. Plants make many carbonaceous complexes from these three simple elements which they build into intricate energy-giving compounds of high fuel value and as deposits above the soil or as additions within its surface layer. Plants work in the light. Microbes work in the dark. Unable to derive energy directly from the sun, they must get it from these chemical compounds passed on to them by the death of the plants.

As a means of getting energy for heat and work, the microbes burn or oxidize organic compounds, just as we do in our bodies. Microbial life depends on just such compounds as make up dead plant and animal bodies. It simplifies them. It tears them apart. It is the wrecking crew taking over dead plant and animal tissues or return the separate elemental parts back to the air, water, soil or other points of origin. It is working in the dark and sending back to simplicity all that the plants built up to complexity.

This microbial struggle is what we call decay. The process of rotting organic matter is the result of microbial processes of digestion and metabolism of the organic matter, by which the energy initially put into chemical combination through plant photosynthesis, is released again for microbial life service.

As humans, we too use organic compounds such as sugars, starches, proteins, fat and other food components to provide our energy. This occurs as part of the process by which we break down these compounds into carbon dioxide, water, urea and other simple substances eventually thrown off as body excretions. Humans, like the microbes, are struggling for calories. In humans we call it digestion and metabolism. For the microbes, it means decay, or the simplification process which the different substances are undergoing when we commonly say “They are rotting.”

2.      competition with crops

Plowing under some organic matter in the garden or field is a good way of disposing of crop residues because the microbes “burn” or oxidize them. They do it slowly, however. Yet the process of microbial combustion of such materials may have disastrous effects on a crop planted soon after plowing, when we say we “burned out” the crop.

Microbes need more than energy “go” foods. They need the “grow” foods, too, just as we do. They do not demand that their nitrogen be given them in the complete proteins or the more complex compounds of this element as we do. Nevertheless, they are just as exacting in their needs for nitrogen, at least in its simpler forms. This is a “grow” food necessary to balance their energy foods in the proper ratio just as we demand the balance in speaking of our own nutritive ratio, or the balance of carbohydrates against proteins in our own diets or in the ration of feeds for our domestic animals.

So when we plow under any woody residue of stalks, leaves or other parts of plants that have given up their protein contents for seed making, these residues are an unbalanced microbial diet. They do not permit the microbes to grow rapidly on them. They are too much carbohydrate. As a diet they are deficient in “grow” foods. They are short in proteins, or nitrogen, and in minerals, hence decay very slowly.

Woody crop residues, like straws, have long been used for roof covers in the Old World. They last well but need to be replaced more often at the ridge top than over the entire roof. It is at the ridge tops that birds sit more often to leave their droppings, which are rich in urea nitrogen. When this soluble nitrogen – along with the mineral salts of the bird droppings – is added to the straw, the first rain hastens its decay. This decay, however, is limited to the ridge of the roof, or to the area in which these supplements of nitrogen balance the microbial diet originally consisting of straw. Until this balance was brought about the straw was too carbonaceous to decay, and was good thatch. Microbes require little of the “grow” foods but without it they do not carry out their decay processes.

When strawy crop residues or sawdust, for example, are plowed into the soil, the soil microbes are offered a diet that is high in carbon, or energy, and low in bodybuilding foods. Since the microbes are well distributed throughout this plowed soil, they are in such intimate contact with the clay that they make colloidal exchanges with it for its available nutrients. They can take ammonia nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium and other nutrients for their own growth from the clay to balance the sawdust as a more adequate diet.

It is unfortunate for the plants when woody residues are plowed under. When the microbes are more intimately in contact with the soil than are the plant roots, the microbes eat first of the available fertility elements. While the microbes are balancing their sawdust diet by taking the fertility of the soil into their own body compounds, we do not appreciate the production of the microbial crop, nor the proportion of the available fertility which they appropriate for their own needs. Instead we see how poorly the corn crop or other plants grow when planted soon after straw, heavy weeds or sawdust are plowed under. We say “The crop is burned out,” when it is extra fertility and not water that is needed. Yes, the microbes eat first. This disaster follows inevitably when the soil is too low in fertility to feed both the microbial crop within and the farm crop above the soil.

But unfortunately the disaster is only temporary. While the energy compounds are being consumed, the excessive carbon is escaping to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The nitrogen and inorganic nutrient elements are kept within the soil. Thus while the carbon supply in the soil is being lessened by volatilization, the ratios of the carbon to the nitrogen and to the inorganic elements are made more narrow. These ratios approach that of the microbial body composition – more nearly that of protein.

Thus by decay the straw with a carbon-nitrogen ration of 80 to 1 leaves microbially manipulated residues going toward what we call “humus” and toward a carbon-nitrogen ratio of nearly 12 to 1. This resulting substance is then more nearly like the chemical composition of the microbes themselves. So when no large, new supplies of carbonaceous organic matter are added to the soil, new microbes can grow only by consuming their predecessors or the humus residues of their creation.

Humus residues, used as food by the microbes, comprise a diet low in energy values, but high in body-building values. Humus is also unbalanced, but unlike straw, it is unbalanced in the opposite respect. It is not badly unbalanced, because “grow” foods, like proteins, can be “burned” for energy. Man can live by meat (protein) alone, as Steffanson and other Arctic explorers have demonstrated. It is a bit costly, however, so we use carbohydrates to balance the protein. In that case the proteins are going for tissue building rather than to provide energy. The microbes also can use protein-like compounds for energy and very effectively. We encourage them to do this when we plow under legumes. Here again they balance their own diets but with benefit to the crop above the soil, rather than with disaster which follows the plowing under of straw.

When we plow under proteinaceous organic matter, such as legumes, with not only a high content of nitrogen but also a high content of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and all the other inorganic nutrient elements, the microbes are placed on a diet of narrow carbon-nitrogen ratio. The ratio of carbon to the inorganic nutrients is also narrow. It is like an exclusively meat diet would be for us, or like a tankage diet would be for a pig. The energy foods in such a ration are low in supply. Conversely, the nitrogen and minerals are a surplus. This surplus is not built into microbial bodies. Instead, it is liberated in simpler forms which are left in the soil as fertilizers for farm crops.

What we plow under determines what we have as left-overs for the crops. The microbes always eat first. The crops we grow “eat at the second table.” In wise management of the soil we must consider whether the composition of the organic matter we plow under is a good or poor diet for the microbes. If the soil is so low in fertility that it grows only a woody crop to be plowed under, then there can be little soil improvement for the following crop. It gives the microbes only energy foods. They must exhaust still further the last fertility supply in the soil to balance their diet and consequently the crops starve.

But if the soil is high in fertility so that it grows legumes, and if we then plow these protein-rich, mineral-rich forages under, the microbes receive more than energy foods. Given the nitrogenous, fertility-laden green manures plowed under, they pass this fertility back to the soil. Here their struggle is for energy, a struggle by which they are not in competition with the crop, the energy for which comes not from the soil but from the sunshine instead.

Microbes eat first. On poor soil with little humus and inorganic fertility, this spells disaster to the farm crop if we plow under only the poor vegetation which such soils produce. Growing merely any kind of organic matter to let it go back to the soil is not lifting the soil to higher fertility; any more than one lifts himself by pulling on his bootstraps. On soils that are more fertile in mineral nutrients, the idea in plowing cover crops to turn under is to help the farm crop. It helps them if we plow under the more proteinaceous and leguminous cover vegetation which fertile soils produce.

While we have been mining our soils to push them to a lower level of fertility, the microbes that originally were working for us are now working against us. They are eating first, not only so far as the plants are concerned, but indirectly so far as even we and our animals are concerned.

It is in this competition with the microbes that inorganic fertilizers and mineral additions to the soil can play their role by balancing the microbial diet. Such minerals are taken by both the plants and the microbes. But if the fertilizers are put deeper into the soil, they may be below the layer where they affect the microbes, either favorably or unfavorably. They will serve the plants, which send their roots down there, under the power coming from the sunshine. They will not affect the microbes unless they are mixed into the humus-bearing surface soil. Putting the fertilizers down deeper puts their nutrient contents where the plants, rather than the microbes, eat first. This is fertilizing, by means of inorganics, the fertilizing crop that combines them with organics to serve the microbes when this fertilizing crop is turned under for true soil improvement. This is a way of composting the inorganics within the body of the soil itself.

-          Excerpt from The Albrecht Papers Vol.1 - 1948

Healthy Soils Mean Healthy Humans

Photo credit Marc Suderman

THE INTENSE PUBLIC CONCERN focused on the dangers from poisonous – even carcinogenic – chemicals sprayed on the landscape, makes appropriate the home-spun remark by George Washington Carver who said, “When the manger is empty, the horses bite each other.”

For us to see the analogy between his last five words and the chemical warfare on pests and diseases, calls for no unusual stretch of the imagination, which pictures man as the top stratum in the biotic pyramid “biting” all the other strata beneath – but supporting him.

It may, however, be going beyond the elastic limit of your imagination to see another analogy between Carver’s first five words,  and the declining or exploited fertility of the living soil now failing to serve, via nutrition, as the foundation stratum for all others, viz. microbes, plants, animals and man.

That this changing lower stratum should cause the “biting” of each other by the upper ones may not be so self-evident.

But that pyramidal construction of the many life forms, from the soil upward, represents the evolutionary succession which arrived at man as the apex; all via their individual healthy survival.

 

The latter was possible only by fitness of each in the climatic soil setting growing suitable nourishment. Only by that combination could all of them have been available to feed man on his very late arrival.

Accordingly, the healthy human survival calls for consideration of that struggle also from the soil upwards, through nutrition for self-protection against so-called ‘diseases’.

That call seems more logical than one for more powerful drugs, of which each is catalogued against a specific ailment for its cure, through man’s ministrations from his uppermost stratum downwards.

In support of the importance of the soil as nutrition for healthy self-protection and prevention of diseases and pests, observations and research studies at the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station in the U.S.A. deserve citation here in connection with plants, the only producers of food through their collection and storage of the sun’s energy.

Those bits of knowledge are particularly appropriate as ecological approaches in the broader scope of the interrelations and interdependencies of man and other forms of life. We need, especially, to see the interdependence between ourselves and the more lowly ones, including the living soil and its microbes by which, in the ultimate analysis, we must be fed.

As far back as the 1920’s, there came suggestions from Missouri’s agricultural research that plant diseases may be caused by deficiencies of some of the inorganic elements required from the soil as nourishment.

Those suggestions turned up in connection with the early application of the technique in which purified acid, colloidal clay, with calcium adsorbed in it, was used as increasing amounts in quartz sand to study the growths and their bacterial nodulation of soybean plants.

This method served as the tool to control, in refined detail, the plant’s diet of fertility elements offered, and to measure the resulting chemical contents of healthy plants proving themselves users of atmospheric nitrogen and producers of satisfactory yields of forage.

This discovery of a case of plant “disease” caused by deficient nutrition was an accident when the plants were suddenly – and some very severely – attacked by a fungus. The symptoms suggested a “damping-off” disease.

That accident, in the plans of the research programme, brought to mind a scientist’s statement, namely: “Many discoveries are accidents for the minds prepared to recognize them.”

Consequently, those irregularities prompted more careful examinations, which revealed that the differences in percentages of healthy and diseased plants were a clear-cut case of the numbers invaded by the fungus as a reciprocal of: (a) the increasing amounts of exchangeable calcium offered as nutrition; (b) the better plant growth shown by more height and heavier weights; (c) the greater uptake of calcium; (d) the more and larger nodules on the roots; and (e) more nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere through synthesis of more protein and thereby the autoimmunity through physiological defences, often viewed as antibodies and other such mechanisms.

Since each of those several factors could suggest by its increase that it was the cause of the highly correlated decrease in the numbers of sick plants, there is much danger of erroneously concluding that such causal connection holds true.

But correlations are perfect when both phenomena have a common cause, as was true here. The larger plants, the less of disease, and the more self-protection resulted because of the several increased effects via nutrition which was improved through the increases of calcium available in the soil.

Other research on the variable composition of plants, grown by similar techniques of feeding them, showed that by narrowing the ratio of calcium to potassium, offered by the clay of the soil, one could grow large yields of legume-plant bulk carrying increased carbohydrates but reduced concentrations of amino acids or proteins, and reduced nitrogen fixation from the atmosphere.

By using a wider ratio of calcium to potassium going to the plant roots from the clay, the plant’s yield as bulk was decreased, but the amino acid contents in protein and the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen were both increased.

Accordingly, in some of our crop production which disregards balanced soil fertility, we can see plants being literally “fattened” under their protein-deficiency, but their larger carbohydrate output, with a “sickening” effect on the plants – much in the same manner as humans develop obesity – and our fattening of livestock, brings on increased susceptibility to diseases.

In the self-protection by plants, the significant factors suggest themselves as causes according as they favour nutrition, including more complete protein synthesis.

That nature projects self-protection (against insects) into the next generation, according as the soil grows it, was also demonstrated by some research studies by the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.

One readily accepts the theory that any seed, as a dormancy or with life processes at a very low rate, must preserve those processes in their health between their very high rates of the crop making the seed and of the succeeding generation started by the planting of it.

If such were not true the species extinction would result.

For demonstration of the theory as fact, ears of hybrid maize, grown on soil given nitrogen fertilizer only and on soil given both nitrogen and phosphorus, were wrapped and bound as pairs within cellophane sheets with the ends of the ears exposed to permit entrance of insects, common to stored grain.

The grain grown from soil given nitrogen only was taken by the lesser grain borer first. The inside of almost every grain per ear was bored out to leave the shell and the waste meal resulting.

In contrast, there were but a few borer holes in the grain grown on soil given both nitrogen and phosphorus. That damage was only at points of close contact of the two different grains.

The damage had occurred during about two and a half years of storage. During the early part of that time, the absence of insects prompted neglect of observation, hence the date of the first attack is unknown.

After two and a half years, some open-pollinated corn, grown on soil fertilized with barnyard manure, was added to the pairs, with their active insect fauna, and the storage period extended for about six months.

During that period there were some few additional insect attacks on the second hybrid but the open-pollinated grain, grown by the soil treatment of barnyard manure only, had but one hole suggesting borer damage.

Such observations of nature in action on stored grains, raise the question whether we exhibit much wisdom in our designing of chemical poisons to fight the disease and pests, when by evolution nature grew the species of our diseased and insect-ridden crops which were not so attacked and destroyed.

That fact was shown by their healthy presence when we came along so late for domestication of them. Plants had their self-protection grown in them. They passed that attribute to their seeds in storage and even, apparently, on to the next generation to continue the ingrown capacity its predecessors demonstrated.

That farm animals (and wildlife) grow better health or more autoimmunity on better soils has been a continuing farmer demonstration, more particularly by a herd of 200 beef cattle, by the Poirot Farms of Golden City, Missouri.

During the past forty years their exhausted soil of the eastern edge of the prairie has been under restoration by a farmer and conservationist, who has been honoured as a master in each of those categories.

As a naturalist, he is a keen observer who has followed nature’s laws in building up the fertility of much of the soil of 1,800 acres by using the choices of wildlife and of his livestock as guides for proper additions of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, cobalt and even iodine, some of the latter three coming to the soil via their presence in the salt.

“Science does not yet know all the biological values Mother Nature produces in the soil,” says Mr. E.M. Poirot, senior partner. “Animals just below man in the pyramid of life strata, are a part of the natural balances. Their choices and responses are, therefore, valuable guides.

“Observations of them are our best helps until the chemical laboratory can point out the ‘why’ of the effects of the soil restoration on animal health.

“Before I applied any phosphate, now nearly forty years ago,” he says, “my cattle were so hungry they chewed bones whenever they found one, and in the absence of them they would chew oakwood brought in from elsewhere…At any place where phosphate had been applied, cows would crop the plants, literally, down into the soil.

“Where lime and phosphate had been applied on part of the field, the cattle would mark the place to the line by avoiding the grass growing four inches from the drill-line of the applied treatment.

“The animals seemed to want more of the elements applied. When those were offered, either in the soil or in the feed boxes in the pasture, diseases all but disappeared, their weights and general conditions improved, and they began to bear normal calf crops.

“My cattle are now living in good health, without need of any veterinary services for infectious diseases during the last eighteen years.

“They are reproducing normally and giving a calf-crop to nearly 100 percent, without winter shelter and without grains, silage, legume hay or other feeds, save a special protein mixture during the winter at one pound per head daily, along with the Bluestem hay left in the field at the spot where each bale was dropped while baling.

“Through restoring the soil, over 200 head are now enjoying margins of food, self-protection and reproduction on the same land area, which less than four decades ago could not supply an adequate ration for eight head of their ancestors.”

From the preceding examples of natural self-preservation and careful observations of the autoimmunities of the lower forms of life below man, we cannot escape the deduction that each living unit, from the simple cell to the most complex organism, survives, to a large degree, according as it develops its own self-protection.

Better health of plants and animals are readily demonstrated as results from the more fertile soils.

Each body establishes many immunities which are not yet catalogued. Nor have we comprehended and explained many well enough to make them successfully manageable as uniformity throughout the crowd.

No epidemic is 100 percent disastrous. There are always those who survive on their own. Nor is health in any group 100 percent perfect.

But there is much to be gained in the latter by the individual’s own effort of learning about his own nutrition, with buoyant health as a studied objective by concern with the natural qualities and nutritional values grown into, and preserved within, the foods we eat.

-          Excerpt from “Soil Fertility & Human and Animal Health – The Albrecht Papers Vol. 8

Phosphorus - There is a chemistry

 

When phosphate loads are rapidly complexed or not made available, fundamental sugar formation continues to function. Symptoms wave a warning flag that can be seen from great distances. Leaves often become reddish and purplish – a lack of chlorophyll – and tips die off. Seeds, tubers, grains, all suffer since all require phosphorus for adequate metabolism. Growth is slowed accordingly. The corn plant has a sign all its own. When there is a phosphorus deficiency, the kernels drop off about an inch or two from the cob’s end, or they may fail to develop in the first place.

In short, there is a chemistry involved whenever anything is put into the soil, inorganic, organic, salt form, whatever. Rock phosphate is called tricalcium phosphate, and this means it has three calciums, or three negative charges for bonding. This makes it more difficult to disattach from fixation than would be the case with dicalcium phosphate, which has only two charges – thus tri, di! Last, there is the water soluble monocalcium phosphate, which means that as a consequence of acid treatment this form has only one remaining bond.

So if you’re over 6.5 pH, and you want to farm organically for good and obvious reasons, you’re in trouble. You probably shouldn’t be using nonwater soluble phosphorus because the soil does not have enough acid to free it up. If a soil system has a pH of 7.5 the farmer probably shouldn’t be using the di forms. He should go to strictly mono forms of phosphate. Any farmer who doesn’t take into consideration the importance of the active hydrogen ion as being the most important thing to work with thereby authors his own failure.

Acid treatment merely means rock phosphate is being converted from tricalcium phosphate to monocalcium phosphate, and that this highly unstable form is subject to natural reversion back to the stable tricalcium form. The rate of reversion differs. The pH, the free calcium in the soil, the organic matter – all figure in this rate of reversion. But it is safe to say that 75% of the monocalcium phosphate reverts back to stable tricalcium phosphate within 90 days. In some soils the reversion takes place within hours. As soil conditions worsen, release of nutrients from rock phosphate worsens, and the chemical amateur becomes married to buying salt fertilizers, each go-round worsening still further the structure of that soil.

The water soluble phosphates are simply water soluble, not acid. But they are a poor substitute for having the proper pH with calcium, potassium, magnesium and sodium in equilibrium, and form an economic point of view they take on ripoff dimensions.

First, the soluble phosphates come from rock phosphate in any case. By treating, say, 1,400 pounds of rock phosphate with 1,200 pounds of sulfuric acid, the fertilizer industry gets 20% superphosphate – the tricalcium phosphate form being converted into water soluble monocalcium form. This chemical reaction causes 20% superphosphate to be represented by about 45% monocalcium phosphate, and 55% calcium sulfate, or gypsum. This means the bag of 0-20-0 contains about 45 pounds of water soluble monocalcium phosphate, which is presumably desired, and about 55 pounds of calcium sulfate, which may or may not be desired, but which farmers are frequently not aware of.

The fertilizer rating 0-45-0 is quite different material. Farmers who see symptoms of phosphorus deficiency sometimes think a higher rating is the answer, and this one comes styled triple superphosphate. Here the acid used to do the etching is phosphoric. This eliminates the calcium sulfate in the bag, calcium frequently needed to kick up to calcium reserve, sulfate needed to complex an excess of magnesium. By invoking the hotdog concept of plant nutrition a much needed nutrient might be eliminated exactly when it is needed.

Ammonium phosphate such as 8-32-0, 11-48-0, and 80 on, also involve concentrated phosphoric acid in the processing, and this provides a handy outlet for otherwise unsalable fossil fuel company byproducts.

- Excerpted from Eco-Farm An Acres U.S.A. Primer