alright! this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com!today we have another exciting episode for you! and on this cold and cloudy, a littlebit maybe even drizzly rainy day, i got an awesome exciting episode for you guys! i’mat a place that i’ve been wanting to show you guys forever! and today’s the day i’mfinally here to share with you guys. it’s one of my ace in the holes or what is thatace in the pocket, no , ace up the sleeve, right? it’s like your secret like stashof stuff. i’m sharing with you guys my secret stash of where i’ve been getting some ofthe products i use in my very garden for the last several years. and we’re here todayat biologic crop solutions. this place used to be called biologic systems. now they’recalled biologic crop solutions. it’s an
organic soil products for your farm and gardeneven home owners. you could check out their website at livebiologic.com. we are here currentlyin santa rosa, california. and for those of you guys that live here in the bay area, youguys are super lucky to have this amazing resource right here. and also for those ofyou guys up in ashland oregon area, they also have a second location up near ashland, oregon,so you guys consider yourself lucky there as well. so you could actually drive hereand pick up some of the stuff, some of the awesome organic and more important than justorganic, biologic soil solutions that they’re offering. anyways, let’s go ahead and go in and we’regoing to give you guys a tour of the biologic
crop solutions yard, what they got growingon here and why, more importantly, i like them so much. so now we’re at the front of biologic cropsolutions, and this is their little warehouse building where they have all the bagged products.but besides just the bagged product, they also have bulk products. so whether you’rea backyard farmer, backyard gardener like myself or you have an industrial farm, theycan supply you guys the biologic organic products you guys need. i mean, this is how easy itis. they don’t have like big dump trucks and you know, like loaders to load up bulkstuff. their bulk is all in these super totes in one cubic yard or two cubic yards. so thatreally makes it easy to transport and handle
for you guys. so here at biologic, they don’t just havestandard bulk organic soil products. there’s a lot of places here in town, you know, thatwill sell bulk organic soil products. you could go down to like a local soil yard andjust pick up, you know, bulk products at a local nursery or, you know, landscape supplycenter where they’ll like load you up with a bunch of stuff. but not all composts, notall soil products are created equal. and in this episode, you guys will learn what a goodbulk organic soil product or even a bagged organic soil product, what the differenceis between a good one and maybe one that may not be so good. and what you want to ask forto know that you’re getting good stuff.
and i’m proud to say that here at biologic,you know, they do testing on all the bulk, you know, and some of the bagged soil productsthat they sell. so you know you’re getting your money’s worth. you’re paying topdollar for good products that are going to actually make a difference in your garden.because not all organic products unfortunately are created equal. and they’ve taken thetime to source some of the finest materials that i have actually found of all the placesi have ever visited. so anyways, let’s go ahead and give you guys a tour of the yard,what they got going on, some of the materials they have, and then at the end we’re goingto interview one of the ladies here who is actually quite knowledgable about growingbeyond organic, which is biologic and organic.
so when you get to biologic crop solutions,there’s not like a lot here really. there’s just like a little parking area that we’restanding in now. and there’s like a little warehouse with all the bagged products. there’sa little office over here, you know, where we’re going to go and talk to somebody.they got a lot of cool like plants growing. and then as we walk in a little bit more here,you’re going to see they got like a little greenhouse over there and they got like thesoil yard with like bulk soils in the back. what i’m going to do next is actually takeyou guys into the little greenhouse they got growing and explain to you guys why they havethis greenhouse on site and what they’re doing with it.
so what they’re doing in this greenhousehere, they got a lot of stuff going on. they’re propagating different succulents that actuallylook amazingly healthy. they got a few fruits and some vegetable plants. and what they’redoing here is actually they’re putting their money where their mouth is. they’re actuallyusing the products that they sell to grow all these potted plants, and, you know, other,you know, like raised bed container style plants, actually along in the property aswell, using growing them biologically using the products. and to me they all look veryhealthy. and, you know, they’re doing trials. so they don’t, they, you know, before theybring in a product they’ll be testing to make sure the product works and has efficiencyand actually does something instead of just
not doing anything. i mean, you could readabout all these products that they sell online all the time, but just because the product,you know, has a lot of data or marketing materials out there doesn’t mean it works. so i really,you know, literally hats off to biologic for testing the products and making sure theywork before they sell them. because a lot of other companies may not do just that. anyways, what i want to do next actually isshow you guys something free you could get here at biologic that will definitely changeyour plants life. so before i give you guys a tour of biologichere, what i want to let you guys know is that every tuesday they give out free composttea! and this is the best tea that i have
found in the entire area! it’s amazing thatthey give out free tea. and most places might give a gallon of tea. here they give you guys3 gallons of free tea! and if you want to buy more you could certainly do that. andit’s, they call it tea time tuesday or free tea tuesday. and the compost tea is a baseof what makes things biologic. and what brings the biologic aspect is the micro organisms,the beneficial bacteria and fungi and other living creatures in the soil that’s actuallygetting removed and not encouraged to grow when you use things like chemical fertilizerslike miracle crap fertilizer like these synthetic fertilizers that so many places includingthe place across the street, you know, sell these chemical fertilizers, you know. biologicsystem here is all about growing in an organic
and even beyond organic way, which is biologic.so they do that by giving out free tea. of course they also sell you the product so youguys could make your own tea at home. so that’s actually what i want to get intonext is actually share with you guys some of the products they sell you guys that theyuse in their own tea, and some of the products you will want to add to your garden to takeyour garden up to the next level, you know. whether you’re growing fruits, vegetables,succulents, medicinal herbs, the stuff they sell here will definitely bring you up tothe next level, get you guys having higher yields, you know, healthier plants with lesspests pressures and also higher things like higher brix and higher amounts of those volatileoils that many people may be looking for,
and all other kinds of cool things when yougrow in a system like that nature set up. i mean, they’re just basically duplicatingnature to the highest level using some man-made inputs and using nature to our advantage.and so they aren’t trying to subvert nature and go around nature by feeding plant rootsdirectly with you know water soluble nutrients that leach out and then can mess up, you know,the gulf of mexico, pollute the water table and all this kind of stuff. so anyways, actually i think i want to headinto the back and show you guys actually some of the big soil totes that they have. theygot some really cool compost, worm castings and even beyond standard compost, they gotsome fungal dominated compost which is actually
quite rare. so now i want to share with you guys the soilyard here. and the soil yard’s pretty cool because it’s not like big piles of soil,it doesn’t stink, everything’s fully composted and broken down. and we’re going to go backover here. so here they got two cubic yard totes of compost. and check out this composthere. this is a nice, rich, dark, black fully composted materials here. this is not likethat bagged crap that you buy in the store. so if you guys are a serious professionalgrower or even a home gardener, you want to get some good compost, this is organic certifiedcompost. and i mean, it’s nice and composted finely. and like really a neutral smell. thisis definitely really good stuff. at present
time this two yard tote will cost you about$150. so the stuff here at biologic, i’m not going to, you know, say that it’s cheap,aside from that free compost tea, but you will be getting a quality product. you’llhave to pay for it, you know, you’re going to pay a little bit of money to get the goodstuff because we know if we’re buying cheap stuff, you know, it’s not the good stuff!and so, anyways, besides this bulk product, let’s go ahead and show you guys two morebulk products that they currently have in stock, one of which i really like a lot. so the product i like here at biologic themost is actually a product that is very difficult to find. and most places won’t even knowwhat you’re talking about or have it. and
what basically is, it’s a fungal dominatedcompost. this is derived from things like wood chips that have been composted over theyears and create a high fungal activity in the compost. most composts’ that you buyis basically created through thermal activity or with heat and they have bacteria breakingit down. this is totally different than that. so if you’re just buying compost, you’renot going to get the fungal activity in there. and based on, you know, studies i’ve seen,personally experiences and farms and gardens i’ve visited who’s using the fungal dominatedcompost, the results are simply amazing because there’s just not enough of this fungal activitythat you’re going to get unless you’re adding in, you know, good amounts of the fungaldominated compost.
what they have here is actually a reject material.they got shipped this, and it actually wasn’t good enough for them. so they actually, theygot this product in 2015. they haven’t been selling it. they have other fungal dominatedcompost that they do offer. but this is basically been sitting here for a year, and when theygot this it was a reject because there’s actually too much wood chips that were notfully composted down. so it’s been sitting here composting for like a whole year andbreaking down. but look at that! this is nice and rich black stuff. now we’re going tocover this a little bit later, but if somebody is telling you they got a fungal dominatedcompost, don’t just take their word for it, don’t just look at it and say oh thatlooks like good broken down stuff, you know.
you want to ask them for the food soil webtesting, which i’m going to show you guys in a minute, and show you guys why it’simportant to get that documentation to prove what’s in the compost. because a lot ofplaces will say oh yeah ours is fungal dominated, but then they’ve got no testing. and thisbothers me a lot, you know. maybe they think it’s fungal, maybe it was made properlybut how do we know unless there’s testing. so i like that, you know, here at biologicthey get testing on almost all the products, specially the bulk soil products that theyoffer. so the other product they feature and theyhave totes have, which actually they manufacture themselves, so you’re not going to findthis anywhere else is their vermite technology
pure black castings heal mother earth. andwhat this is, this is a 100% worm castings. and check this stuff out here. this is someof the nicest worm castings. this is not like, this is 100% castings in here. check thisstuff out. i mean i could dig in this. this looks like black lava sand. i mean, it’sso dark. look at that. really nice, neutral smell. now they got their worms on a specialdiet to make these worm castings, you know. you could go to the store and you could buya bag of worm castings, but not all worm castings are created equal. the worm castings are onlyas good as what they’re feeding the worms. and it’s quite unfortunate, specially ifyou’re trying to get cheap worm castings, which i’ve been guilty of before in thepast, you know, they’re not going to work
the same because the cheap worm castings basicallythey got all this cow manure from the dairy industry and all this stuff. they take thatcow manure and they feed it to the worms. the worms eat it, then they poop out the castings.but the worms only have a single ingredient nutrient, which is dairy manure, which unfortunatelyalso may contain gmo remnants if that dairy is feeding their, you know, cows gmo cornand soy as their food. it also may contain things like antibiotics that may be also inthe worm castings residues, you know, once it’s made. but here at biologic, the wormcastings that they offer are fed a variety of different ingredients. and each ingredientthat they’re feeding their worms are in there for a certain reason. because basedon what the worm is eating, they’re going
to produce certain exudates or certain thingsin their poop like enzymes and like bacteria and all these different things that are goingto be beneficial for your soil. and then, furthermore, even to go to the next levelbesides doing that, they get testing on their worm castings, food soil web testings to provethe quality of their worm castings. so we’re going to be sure to show you guys that nearthe end. now besides these bulk soil products, theyalso have a lot of bagged soil products. so let me go ahead and take you guys to thatarea next. so here at biologic they recommend a basemix. and the base mix is this stuff is what they recommend. this is the berger, it’sfrench i’m probably pronouncing that wrong.
this is a good growing mix. this is an organicapproved growing mix. and it’s basically just standard peat moss, which is sustainablyharvested, plus the perlite in there plus small amounts of compost. so this is whatthey recommend and this is what i would recommend like if you’re going to start a raised bedor container gardening or use like some kind of soilless gardening mixture, this is a goodproduct to use. this stuff comes at a 3.8 cubic feet block, so it’s nice and big,but expanded it’s actually equivalent to about 6 cubic feet. and that’s actuallyquite a good price. i’m quite impressed, and this is high quality stuff. so i’m gladthey actually make this available to people. now once you get this, you’re going to wantto add stuff to it like the compost that you
guys just saw and like some of these otheramendments that i’ll be showing you guys in just a minute. so this is the warehouse here at biologic.and they got all kinds of different products on pallets and then they got oyster shellcalcium and all kinds of stuff. but i want to stop over on this product right here. andthis product right here, is one of my favorite ones, ahh i’m getting a workout here, thisis actually known as the gaia green glacial rock dust. they have this brand rock dustand another rock dust, the agrowinn brand. and let me see if i could hop down to backup there, whoa, yeah! but yeah, i like, i really like the rock dust and it, i believein my style of gardening and biologic style
of farming, gardening, you know, it’s, it’sa critical component of this farming style because, you know, if you think about it,we’re not really there to like feed the plants nutrients. what we’re there to dois we’re there to feed the microbes the nutrients that break them down and make themavailable for the plants. and, you know, besides the organic matter, the trace minerals arereally good nutrients for the soil microbes. they really love it and eat it up. and forexample, if you don’t have good soil microbes and things breaking down, working on breakingdown the rock dust, when you grow and use the rock dust , you may not see any benefits.and i know there’s people out that are saying oh rock dust doesn’t work and all this kindof stuff. well, maybe they don’t got good
biology, right? and i want to encourage you guys, you know,like i grow food because the food you eat and the food you absorb makes up you. i wantto be the highest quality person. i want to be able to get all the different nutrientsi need from the food! and if the nutrients are not in the soil, and i’m just saying,you know, and you think the nutrients are in the soil but they’re not in there, andyou’re making good high quality food, you’re missing stuff. i want to make sure and ensurethe nutrients are in the soil to ensure that i got in there. because if you’re just usingleaves, the nutrients may not be in there. but if you’re using the rock dust that hasan assay, you know what you’re putting in,
it’s in there and the microbes could figureout what they’re going to do. now aside from that, they got standard likeoyster shell calcium, they got you know standard kelp powder. this is whole kelp ground up,not the water soluble kelp which we will be covering in a second. they got all kinds ofthings over here like high phosphorus bat guano, nitrogen bat guano. over here, oh thisone i want to really talk to you guys about. oh this is their worm castings that you guyssaw in bulk. so if you can’t afford a big bulk tote, you could buy it by the bag. it’sactually quite affordable. it’s about a dollar a pound at present time for the castingsin the bag. and if you buy a big tote i think it’s like, it’s less, you’re going tosave some money.
but besides that, you know, one of the thingsi talked about here is like i’m like okay where’s you guys’ like biochar, you know.and they’re like oh we don’t sell biochar. i’m like biochar, man, that’s essentialto like a biologic system, right? because the biochar, that like provides the microbesa home where they could live, and they’re all sponge like nooks and crannies if youlook at biochar underneath the microscope. well, they’re like well john, you know,we got the granular humates. and the granule of the humate is also an excellent place thatthe microbes could hang out in. and looking at this granular humate, i’ve seen a lotof humanness but this looks like some really good stuff here. there’s all these littlepores and nooks and crannies in the humate.
now besides the humate being a mineral sourceto break down and feed your plants and feed your soil and feed your microbes, it alsocan provide housing for the microbes itself. so that’s another, you know, product thati’ve been using for years. and i didn’t actually know all this time that it’s actuallyalso helping and providing a home for the microbes. i thought that it was actually justfeeding, feeding the microbes. so that’s definitely really cool. so the last thing in this area that i wantto show you guys is actually right here. this is actually called the biologic humus. andthis biologic humus, what they call biologic humus here, what this is, you know, this iskind of like the, a fungal dominated compost.
and this is actually derived from wild alaskanhumus. so this is a fungal dominated compost that they’re offering here. and you know,this is very important and a key to my gardening style. and when i started adding the humusto my garden, because i didn’t add it from the offset. when i first learned and startedgardening i didn’t really know about the fungal dominated compost and how importantit was to have a proper biologic system going on in your garden. i know a lot of you guyshave not incorporated any kind of biologic humus or other fungal dominated compost intoyour garden, so you haven’t gotten the results unless actually you guys are composting yourown wood chips, right. if you just lay wood chips on the ground and let them sit there,maybe inoculate them with some fungus, they’ll
break down over a couple years. and you wantto go and harvest that bottom layer and have the rich black broken down wood chips thatare going to have these like white little threads which is the fungal hyphae runningthrough there, and use that in your garden, you know. once i started using the fungaldominated compost, i saw my plants and my crops started getting bigger like, i mean,just a little while ago, well maybe a year or two ago now, i had a beet, a beet was likethis large! and i’ve never seen a beet that large. but this is the power of the fungusand what happens when you get your soil fully balanced out. alright, so the next thing i want to showyou guys is actually i’m going to go ahead
and walk in this little bunker room. thisis where they used to have all the different organic fertilizers and stuff. now they justhave a few things in here. but i really want to stop here. i mean, they got all kinds ofdifferent, their own branded biologic system products. but they got something here. andsome people, you know, that i have had on my show before wouldn’t appreciate thisstuff. but after today i think i do. and what we have here is this is the organic liquidseaweed concentrate by acadian. now they are a big company, they makes all different kindsof seaweed products. and you know, there’s pros and cons to everything in life, you know.and you know, i was led to believe that the organic seaweed powder or kelp powder thatwas water soluble was like some of the best
stuff. because it’s water soluble. but thething with that is that they add additives to make it water soluble, and those additiveswhile maybe considered organic are not quite as natural as, you know, the liquid seaweedconcentrate that’s a 100% liquid seaweed without any kind of additives in it. so, youknow, there’s pros and cons to everything. and at this point instead of maybe gettinga soluble kelp, i might actually want to get the liquid seaweed concentrate. now they’reboth really good and kelp, once again, that’s another foundational aspect of my gardeningstyle and also the biologic gardening and farming that they teach here. because it alsoadds the trace minerals and a whole bunch of other different compounds like hormonesand oxidants and things that could help your
plant to grow and thrive. so the next thing i want to do, since youguys saw some of the different products they have here, they have a lot more that i don’thave to the time to go over with for you guys today, i wanted to actually take you guysin the office. this is probably the most important part of this video. i mean i had fun gettingmy hands in the dirt and showing you guys some stuff and talking about some stuff. butwhat i want to show you guys next is actually really important if you’re ever going tobe buying any kind of bagged or even bulk soil products. what you will want to ask foras the things that they have inside this office that unfortunately most places selling soil,bagged soils and even bulks soils, don't have.
and furthermore i’ll explain why askingfor these things are actually quite important. so let’s head into the office and show youguys what’s happening in here. so this is a very small office here. and inthis office they have a lot of different products here. and it’s cool that biologic here theyonly sell like organic solutions. so they, you won’t find chemical pesticides and chemicallyderived things and all this stuff. these are all natural solutions to solve things likepest problems, and to grow some of the highest quality, you know, vegetables, food, plants,medicinal herbs or whatever else you’re growing. now the reason why this works issimply this chart right here. this is actually called micro-organisms found in soil, compost,castings and compost teas. and this is a picture
of what should be in your soil. and by usingthings like chemical farming, you know, these things cannot reproduce, survive, and they’re,they’re getting edged out and kicked out of the soil because the chemicals and allthese things don’t allow them to flourish whereas the products that they offer herewill. so some of the things that are, that should be in your soil, that may not be, thingslike the bacterial, clumping bacterial, anaerobic indicators like the bacillus, cyanobacteria,acinetobacteria, algae, fungal hyphae, these are just some of the pictures of what theylook like, flagellates. ecto mycorrhizae disease causing fungi, these shouldn’t be in yoursoil if you got healthy soil. and they just show like amoebas, ciliates, nematodes, rhodephytas,all different kinds of cool stuff, right.
and how do you know if these things are inthe soils that you’ve got? well you could get testing. and even more importantly, youwant to get testing of or there should be testing when you buy your bagged or bulk soil.so one of the common tests that they’ll have when you buy soils at the soil yard oreven a bagged soil product, you would hope and they should have product testing likethis. this is from international ag labs. but this is a soil analysis report. so whatthis basically tells you, this tells you like the npk and some of the other, you know, standardminerals and things in the soil. and this is what most places will have. so you wantto ask for that because if they don’t have this then i don’t know what they’re doing.because you want to know at least the levels.
and if you know you don’t have to go toschool for soil microbiology because i didn’t, or like anything like this. you want to lookat this. this is a pretty easy thing to look at. you’re going to look at, so for example,if we’re looking here at calcium. calcium it says, you know, the desired level is 3000and in this lab result it’s 3112. so is that good or bad? that’s good! if the desiredresults is 3000, this is 3112, hey that’s pretty good, right? you want to make surethat the lab result is probably at least as high as the desired level. if it’s not thenthat may not be a good thing. and if one thing is out of range, that may not be necessarilya bad thing because not any one product may have all the different nutrients. but if there’sa lot of things that are below the desired
level, that would, in many cases indicateto me that it’s not a good soil product that you guys should buy. now this is just the base line. this is theminimum you want to ask for. but what you really want to ask for aside from that issomething like this. this is an, this is called the food soil web testing. this one is actuallydone by earthfort. and actually this one is done by the microbial matrix. and this testing,in my opinion, is even more important than just the npk testing. or the standard testingthat most places, you know, whether that’s a nursery or soil yard or whatever, will have.because what this does, this shows you what kind of , you know, bacteria and fungi andother things are in the soil at the time of
the testing. and this test should be alsothe current year’s test. so they should constantly be getting updated testing becauseevery time they make a new batch of compost, they get a new batch of worm castings, orwhatever, you know, it’s going to be a little bit different because things change over time.the biology and things in the mixtures change over time. so you want to make sure they haveupdated testing. the reasonable amount of time for them to have is at least within thelast year. if it’s got, oh yeah we got testing in 2003, man that’s 13 years old! that ain’tgood anymore. you need to have it pretty current, right. so in this testing here, this is the testingof one of their product. i don’t know which
one, maybe it’s the worm casting or maybeit’s the humus, but on here basically what you’re going to look at, once again likethat other test, they’re going to tell you the reference ranges or how, how much theyshould be in. and not in every case it’s always going to be high. for example, a fungaldominated compost, if it’s a fungal dominated compost it should be high in fungus, and itmay have lower bacterial counts, but it also is going to have the bacteria in there. butif they’re trying to sell you a fungal dominated compost and the fungus activity in here islow, in my opinion that’s not a fungal dominated compost and should not be sold as one. butyou know, i don’t know if there’s any necessary labeling laws that people say thisis fungal dominated compost made out of wood
chips but it may not have the fungal activity.and you don’t know unless they got the testing. and this one is for the, the humus product,the fungal dominated humus product that they offer. we’re looking at the active bacteriais in this test result it’s 62 and the range is between 3 and 30, so that’s actuallydouble the range. the total bacteria is 1327, the range is between 300 and 3000. so if thisis a bacterial based compost, you’re like man that’s kind of like in the middle, maybelow middle side, that’s not that good. but this is a fungal dominated compost! not necessarilyfor the bacteria although it’s in there. and the active fungi in here, the expectedrange is low 3, high is 30. this is a 102, three times the reference range! so that tome means this is a good fungal dominated compost.
so i mean, we could get more into the differentthings, you know, they got the protozoa which is also important. and they got fungal bacterialor fungal to bacterial ratios and all this kind of stuff. you could look at all thisstuff. but, you know, mainly we just want to look at the testing and make sure it’swithin the reference range or, you know, between it. oh here’s a really cool thing. the amoebasin this testing result, let’s see the expected range is low 10,000, high is like that’sa big number, i don’t think i have that much money, it’s one hundred million, nowait, a million, what’s after a hundred thousand, yeah a million. it’s a milliondollars. no it’s a million amoebas, say, amoebas. anyways, the testing was like 4,780,032.so this is like 4 times the range. this is
incredible! so we want to get products thathave, you know, a high, really high numbers. now besides just the numbers, we want to alsocheck that there’s a diversity of these different microbes in there. so yeah, veryimportant to, you know, make sure that the place you’re buying from, specially if they’reselling to you as a biologic product, they have this testing where you could actuallysee it. so yeah, that will help you guys out a lot. now we’re coming to the end of this episode.the last thing i want to do is actually interview one of the girls here that knows a lot aboutthis stuff, that’s here to help you guys. if you guys come down, she’ll probably bethe one helping you out. we’re going to
go ahead and ask her some questions aboutbiologic crop solutions and how it can help you guys grow a healthier, better garden orfarm. so before we interview jasmina, another thingi wanted to share with you guys in this office that’s, you know, impressive to me. andif you guys go to a place to buy soils and things like that, they should hopefully alsohave some things like this, you know. a big part of this is actually education and educatingthe consumers because most people have not had the, you know, exposure to growing biologicor microbially. even master gardeners unfortunately, in their curriculum they’re not really taughtabout all this stuff. i mean, this is like beyond, you know, what most colleges and universitiesteach. they may touch on this, but this is
like really where it’s at. and, you know,the education is important. so they have magazines, one of which is my favorite magazine acresusa, which has been talking about this forever. they also have, you know, books. this is oneof my favorite books, teaming with microbes. and if you want to learn more about biologic,organic farming and gardening, you want to pick up this book. this book breaks down,you know, biologic farming and gardening, you know, in easy layman’s terms. so youguys could get it and understand it. you know, i definitely recommend reading it. i meanit says, the organic guide to optimizing plant nutrition. and that is by using the methodsthat they offer products that allow you to do just that.
so yeah, next let’s go ahead and sit downwith jasmina and ask her some questions. john: so now i’m here with the beautifuljasmina, who’s not only beautiful but she’s also the manager and a biologist who workshere and will help you guys out probably if you guys come.so jasmina, first question i have for you is - how did you get into this business andget into soil? because, you know, there’s not a lot of, you know, women in, in , inthis kind of work actually that know a lot, or just even guys that know a lot. jasmina: i am lucky to be one of the few.i started out with a biology degree. and then i realized that i was very interested in soiland regenerative agriculture and working with
other beings, other humans, other microbesto have a greater effect and have a greater good. so i got into this business throughfriends, through a desire to use my biology degree to actually have an effect and benefitother people. so i was lucky enough to find this company. and they needed someone to helpbegin to broaden and widen our sphere of influence and make it so we can really spread regenerativeagriculture. john: awesome, that’s great. yeah, man,i mean, she’s really passionate like at least as passionate as i am. i mean when icame here, she’s like so excited about this stuff like, maybe even more excited than mesometimes! it’s really cool that she’s like really into it. and she knows like alot of stuff too. i’m super impressed. hey
what does your shirt say? jasmina: it says- dirt is dead, soil is alive john: so what’s the difference between dirtand soil? jasmina: alright, so dirt is your materials,your sandstones, your clays, your actual structure of soil. soil is when it’s brought to life.it includes not only the sandstone, the clay, but the organic material that’s breakingdown, and most importantly the microbes, the living microbes that are the only thing, theonly reasons why nutrients cycle at all. and if the only reasons why we’re here and weget to experience this, it’s because these microbes they’re breaking down materialsand working their microbial magic to help
plants succeed and help us succeed as well. john: awesome. so like if somebody has likedirt in the back of their house because they just planted a garden there, and you know,would it be successful or what? jasmina: absolutely. yeah. and what we, allwe do is we add the life. and so we suggest, we look at the porosity and see if it wasreally compact, if we needed to add the filler to that. but basically to turn dirt into soil,you just add the biology enough times for the biology of those populations to take holdand begin to reproduce. and they will turn the dirt into soil like they’ve been doingfor thousands of years. john: awesome. so you know, one of the bigquestions that comes up for me is like, you
know, people may have their back yard. andi recommend, you know, growing in raised beds you guys, if you guys never done it before.but some people might want to just garden in the dirt because they can’t afford alot of compost. and it’s normally thought that oh you know i got the dirt in the backyard, if i add compost to it, it’s going to turn into soil. so is compost enough tomake your garden flourish? jasmina: it is indefinitely the basis andit should be your major nutrient source. however sometimes it’s not enough. you apply yourlayers of compost and still your plants aren’t growing, your soil is still compact. so sometimeswe look to concentrated inocula like compost teas, like certain isolated microbes. andso sometimes our soil food web needs our help.
and so we get to facilitate the soil foodweb by adding concentrated doses of beneficial microbes and really establish a functioningregenerative soil food web that maintains health both for the plant, the soil and anyoneelse who comes into contact. john: awesome. so, you know, i like that word‘regenerative’ right. and let’s talk about that for a second. because a lot ofpeople don’t get this point, right. so like, in the standard model if you go maybe acrossthe street and bought like a 10-10-10 you know chemical fertilizer, which i wouldn’tpersonally use. but with that you got to keep buying the, the fertilizer to keep puttinginto your soil because once you put it in there, it’s water soluble, it drains awayand it’s gone. and it feeds your plant but
then it also drains away and can pollute things,which is not good. so you’re actually kind of like, you’re kind of like an addict.you’re hooked on, on chemical fertilizer like you could be hooked on alcohol or hookedon you know, pharmaceutical drugs or whatever you’re hooked on. so, so why is regenerativeagriculture and setting up a system like this, i mean, if you set up a system properly, willyou ever have to buy fertilizer again? jasmina: that all depends, if you’re inraised beds obviously you do need to mimic nature and provide the organic materials thatthe microbes are going to pull the fertilizers from. technically speaking, no you shouldn’thave to apply any available fertilizers if your soil is healthy enough, you have theproper microbes to break down the nutrients.
so we don’t use fertilizers unless we absolutelyneed to to jump start the eco system and the soil food web. however we prefer the raw organicmaterials through regenerative practices in that the organic materials are decomposed,incorporated into the bodies of the microbes, go throughout the soil food web, transferbetween microbes and then up to the plant. and then the plant then continues to secreteexudates back into the soil, putting those nutrients back in for use later. john: awesome. so basically in layman’sterms, that was kind of biology, i’m not a biologist, but in layman’s terms whatthis means is once you get the system set up properly and by adding some maybe someadditional food sources after every season,
every year like some more compost, maybe somerock dust, some trace minerals and what not. and you don’t need to add fertilizer becausebasically you got the little worker bees or in this case it’s the biology, you know,amoebas and the bacteria and the fungi, they’re breaking down all this organic matter andthey’re making fertilizer or, you know, nutrients for your plants. and this just keepsgoing. i mean, think about it. there’s no fertilizer pixies in the forest. there’sno fertilizer pixie in the grass land, right? but nature makes it’s own, creates it’sown fertility over time because it has the microbium or the beneficials in there. andthe organic matter that keeps dropping and piling on and composting in place. and thisis what i try to duplicate in my garden. so
i’m glad, you know, biologic crop solutionsis here to offer you guys the products, you know. so, jasmina, what are some of the bestproducts that somebody could add to jump start their garden today? like if they never didanything before? jasmina: obviously we would stay away fromhigh npk fertilizers. those fertilizers which are salt water soluble nutrients, they’reonly going to harm the microbes. what we would suggest to really get your soil biology, yourfood web healthy and functioning, would be a product that’s diverse and abundant insoil microbes like a humus product, worm castings, organic material you might find around yourown property, if you see mycelial networks those white fungal webs anywhere in the forest,go ahead and grab a small handful so that
you may use that as an inocula. so we suggesta diverse raw materials in their purest form that provides the nutrients that plants needwhen they need it instead of the water soluble fertilizers that not only increase the saltcontent of your soil but they also are actually killing the native microbes in that they removethe water from the microbial bodies. john: so jasmina, you talked about low npk.so why do we actually want to use fertilizers with low npk numbers at all? jasmina: we do need some water soluble nutrients.plants do need to eat. and so it is important that we do have npks, npk represent the watersoluble nutrients that are available, so we do need to make sure that there are nutrientsavailable in a water soluble form so the plants
can uptake them. but we prefer to get fertilizersfrom organic materials that naturally have a low npk. they’re not synthesized , they’renot changed at all by humans, it is just the raw material. such as your kelp meal, yourock dust, those materials we’d suggest to fertilize in that indirect way. you applythe raw organic nutrients in it’s complex organic material form instead of the watersoluble form which not only will kill your microbes and raise your salt, it will getflushed away as well. so there are so many reasons to go low npk high microbial diversity.you only want a small percentage of the fertilizer to be available at any one time so that youdo have more for later without ever burning a a plant.
john: yeah. so the thing i think unsaid jasmina,was that once you add the complex npks, right, the bacteria and the micro organisms breakit down at a rate that the plant needs. is that correct? jasmina: absolutely correct. yeah, plantsactually secrete carbohydrates and sugars, both out of the roots and leaves, their entireepidermis is secreting carbohydrates and sugars to feed their beneficial microbes. and itadjusts, the plants adjust the exudates based on which nutrient they specifically need orwhat environmental stress or pathogen that they’re dealing with at the moment. so plantsliterally communicate with their microbial matrix with the, with their microbial allies.and so they will ask in their own way, they
will talk with the microbes and they willask for what nutrients they need at any one time. and the microbes will be able to notonly understand the plant but perform that function faster than we ever could. so it’sno longer our responsibility to a certain extent to diagnose problems, we need to actuallytreat the issue instead of the just the symptom by applying the beneficial microbes. and assumingthat after thousands of years of evolving with plants, they know what to do. john: awesome. so let’s talk about thatwhat are some of the benefits of using this biologic approach to growing food? jasmina: limitless nearly. so it is once youbuild a healthy soil food web, you do not
need to apply available fertilizers so itwill cut cost. it cuts cost down drastically compared to conventional agriculture in whichwe’re used to feeding the plants every nutrient exactly when it needs it, and then dealingwith the different loss and damage that come with over fertilizing. so to take it froma regenerative perspective, not only is is less expensive, it’s more diverse. diversityis really important with dealing with biologic agriculture. if you have a lot of the samemicrobe, it is not nearly as valuable as having different species that perform different functions.so when you take your agriculture, your gardening, your farming, from a perspective of high microbialdiversity with a biologic mindset, then you have that stability your soil food web isdiverse, it’s strong, it can perform functions
your plant needs instead of setting up fromthe conventional framework which is treating things from a chemical perspective withoutacknowledging that the chemistry is a result of the biology and you’re going to see somemajor problems if you only treat it from a chemical perspective. john: cool. so are people going see like largerplants, healthier plants, you know, i mean, cost cutting of course they’re going tohave to spend less money over time. i mean, less diseases, less pests, i mean, what haveyou seen and what feedback have you gotten from customers now? jasmina: nutrient density. so you’re, theyields that some conventional farmers and
gardeners are used to are not necessarilygoing to be seen within your first season. as your soil food web does grow, the nutrientdensity and complexity, you see a very high concentration of the nutrients we’re alllooking for to sustain ourselves. and when you have biologic based agriculture you havemuch higher number of those important enzymes and nutrients in your food. you’ll havemore healthy plants, far more disease resistance. and that’s one of the major differences.when you take things from a fertilizer high npk perspective, you not only are harmingyour beneficials, you’re also attracting pathogens because all of those water solublenutrients attract so many different other what we think as negative, at least from theplant’s perspective, microbes that are only
going to cause the plant problems. if youhave a solid, healthy soil food web, you’re going to have that stability, you’re notgoing to see nearly as much disease and you’re going to have healthier plants and healthiersoils for season and season to come. that’s another important part. it’s not just aboutthis season. although many people, we do deal with annual plants and so we think just afew months or one season perspective. it’s very important to think of your soil. it isbuilding and it’s getting more complex, more resilient, it’s adapting and changingbased on what you’ve put in the soil, based on what the environmental factors are like.so it’s very important to invest in the future in your soil.
john: and it’s also very important to investin the future of our soil and of the earth for future generations. so you know, by usingchemicals it’s destroying the soil, it’s creating dead zones in the gulf. but by buildingyour soil, you can leave your soil better. and when you got it better than when you hadit when you bought your farm, better than when you bought your house, you can leaveit even healthier and make the earth a healthier place. and we all need to do this! becauseit’s going to take all of us to make a change in the world. so jasmina, another thing that’svery important is compost tea. i know that’s critical to your system. if you guys livein the local area, it’s definitely worth a drive to pick up your 3 free gallons, makesure you bring your own container, you know,
on tuesdays. but why is that so importantand people should use compost tea, and a properly designed and made compost tea. because peoplewill put like cow manure in a bucket with water and let it sit for two days and callthat compost tea. i don’t personally call that compost tea. but, you know, what’syour opinions on why it’s important and maybe a better way and proper way to get areally high, highly active microbial compost tea? jasmina: diversity. diversity is key. andthat’s one of the reasons why you would want to invest or at least obtain some composttea to get your soil food web started or at least to broaden that. because you may haveyour own compost pile, you may have a way
to collect the liquid that comes off of thatpile. and you may make your compost tea even in an aerated form. however it’s importantthat you get as many different numbers of species as possible. so sometimes it is beneficialto turn to commercially produced sources of your bacteria and your fungi and your protozoaand your nematodes and all of our other beneficial microbes just so you have them in your system.they reproduce, they sustain themselves naturally. so it’s not like you’re constantly purchasingthese products. but it is good to initially get that diversity in there. something, somespecies that you may not have in your native environment. it’s both important to haveyour native effective micro organisms, your native microbes in addition to a diverse subsetof beneficial ones from the plant’s perspective
that may not reside in your area. so sometimescompost tea provides what applying tons and tons of compost to your soil cannot reallyget going. john: awesome, awesome. so jasmina, it soundslike the, the compost tea really has your worker bees in there and it’s going to giveyour soil all the workers that are there to do their job. so let’s talk about like usingthese workers to help prevent diseases and what not. so how can they help with you know,maybe powdery mildew or something like that? jasmina: beautiful. so not only justly outcompeting. so it’s a microbial world and they’re always competing for space. so inyour soil, on your plant surface, there’s only a set number of potential places forthese microbes to attach and become and use
as their home. so the beneficial microbesare used to prevent disease and treat it. so they prevent it by just being present.their presence prevents another pathogen from taking their place. there’s only so manyplaces on your plant surface or in your soil for those microbes to live. and so just bysheer existing, just by outcompeting them, having as many different beneficials in yoursoil will make it harder for the pathogens to find a foothold and a place to enter, avulnerable point in your plant. not only do we have that indirect way of preventing them,we do have certain microbes that will target different pests or pathogens. we have onefor powdered mildew, for botrytis, for caterpillars, for different insects. we have ways to usethe soil food web to our advantage once we
understand a few things about how it works.we can use a predator to go after a pest or pathogen that will specifically go after thatpest without clear cutting and destroying all of your beneficials. the thing, the reasonwhy we don’t use pesticides, we try not to, is that they’re not , they don’t distinguishbetween your target organism and other life. and so not only are you going to hurt anddecrease your populations of the target pathogen you’re trying to work with, you’re alsogoing to be inadvertently harming and decreasing your beneficial populations, other microbesthat aren’t necessary beneficial but they’re presence there was out competing a pathogen.so you’re going to be missing many different functions when you apply a pesticide and killyour beneficials. and it actually leaves your
plant more vulnerable for another infestationto take hold, a more severe one. so we like using our beneficials consciously using thepredators of a pathogen that will only go after that pathogen without harming our soilas a whole. john: that’s awesome. and yeah if you’reusing chemical pesticides and what not, and then you eat the food, it could be harmingyou. and there’s a lot of data and research to that effect also. so jasmina, another thingthat’s very important to me and i covered a little bit earlier in the video is the traceminerals. so how important are trace minerals to this whole microbial system, you know?do people really need to add the rock dust? that’s a question i get so much, john, rockdust is not worth it, you know. i mean, i
don’t know if you guys would even sell itif it wasn’t really worth it. but, you know, what’s your take on that as a biologistand the manager here who gets a lot of feedback from the customers on using the rock dustand some other trace mineral products? jasmina: as we’re finding out both withour own health and with plant health and soil health is minerals are very important foroverall health and disease resistance. our emphasis on available macro fertilizers isnow we’re realizing that that’s not the focus. it should not be. and a little bit,a very small concentration of diverse sets of minerals does far more for the plant thana whole lot of your available macro fertilizers. and so with the minerals, you are providingthe microbes the raw materials they need to
give the plant what it’s asking for. wedo need to add the minerals to the soil because we need to give the microbes some resourcesthat they can extract and create these fertilizers and give them up to the plant. we can’texpect the microbes to fix everything if we don’t give them the starting materials tobuild soil correctly. john: so is it true by adding a diversityof trace minerals, you’ll also be building diversity of your microbium or the microbesin there? because is it true that certain microbes feed on certain minerals and mayreproduce more than others if they don’t have the right microbes? jasmina: absolutely. yeah, we have certainmicrobes that soluble isophosphorus and potassium
and do certain functions. and they intakedifferent minerals in order to provide those functions. and so, just like we’re talkingabout biologic diversity, having a diversity of minerals and nutrients is very importantas well. there’s different types of each nutrient and certain microbes prefer differenttypes. and having that diversity will at least if not guarantee, will increase the likelihoodthat you have in your soil the specific nutrient in that specific form that the microbe needsto give to your plants so that your plant can deal with whatever pressure it is goingthrough. john: awesome, awesome. yeah, so i mean, tosum this up, you want to have diversity of the microbes and the minerals and get a goodbiologic system in your garden growing. and
that’s what i teach. i teach not only justorganic. because, you know, in organic gardening they do a lot of stuff and they may not befocused on and know the importance of the microbes. they just keep putting down somemanure and, you know, some of this organic fertilizer which is like water soluble andmay contain you know toxins in there if it’s like you know like poetry manure from likefoster farms or other you know tycin and they’re feeding their chickens things that aren’tso good and then it ends up in their poop. not so good. so jasmina, why is it so importantto, you know, do this organically and, you know, all the products you chose to offerhere are like organic and natural? jasmina: it’s important to have your organicmaterials so that you have the foundation,
your soil is a few different components andwe want them to be regenerative and to be self sustained in there. and so to do thatwe put in a diverse array of organic material because that’s the important part. yourorganic material is your source of fertilizers, your source of life, your microbial food whichallows the microbes to build the soil as your plants needs. john: awesome. yeah, diversity, diversity,diversity. so jasmina, last thing i’d like to say is what are you guys’ hours here,if you guys want to like drop by and check out jasmina, learn from her and get some coolstuff here? jasmina: beautiful. so we have two locations.the santa rosa location here is open from
monday through friday from 10am to 5pm. andthen on saturdays from 10am to 4pm. and then we also have a location in southern oregon,which also does free tea every tuesday as well. and they are located in phoenix, rightoutside of ashland. their hours are monday to friday 10am to 6pm, and then saturdaysfrom 10am to 4. john: awesome. so if somebody can’t makeit out to one of your stores here. do you guys like have online ordering or can somebodycall and you guys could ship them some products or how does that work? jasmina: absolutely. we love to get the productsto you any way we can. we do have a website which allows you to order online. and we lovegetting phone calls and shipping products
to you. we’ll try to find the most reasonableway to ship because we don’t want these products to get to their final destinationand begin to build the soil as they are intended. john: that’s awesome. yeah i mean, i thinkit’s really cool that they just really want to get soil biology back into the soil! andthey do that by compost tea and also offering all these products. so what’s the websiteand how can somebody get a hold of you? jasmina: beautiful. the website is www.livebiologic.com.that’s one of the best ways to contact us. also by phone. the santa rosa is 707-800-7486.the phoenix location is 541-535-6726. and then we’re available by email at info@biologiccropsolutions.com john: awesome! so jasmina, any last commentsyou’d like to say to my viewers today before
we close up the video? jasmina: we are excited to work with you!we enjoy what we do here being facilitators of the soil food web, positive practices,positive participants in the soil food web. and we look forward to working with you andhelping you build you soil food web in any way we can. john: that’s awesome. yeah, i mean, i’mglad i was able to come out and make a video today after like 3 years of driving by thisplace so many times and visiting. they really got it to a nice place now where they gotsome of the, you know, greatest products. and this has been my like as i said earlierthat my ace in the hole, you know. it’s
been my like little secret. but i couldn’tkeep a secret any longer because i want you guys to know about this so you guys couldget the benefits of this. and that’s simply why i make my videos for you guys. so anyways, i hope you guys enjoyed this episodehere at biologic crop solutions, hey please give me a thumbs up. i’ll be sure to comeback , you know, in future times and make even you know more detailed videos on howgrowing in this method can help you and some of the products that they offer that can helpyou guys out. also be sure to check my past episodes. i have over 1100 episodes full ofall kinds of knowledge so that you guys could grow in a biologic, organic way and see howother people are doing that as well. and be
sure to click that subscribe button rightdown below so you don’t miss out on my future and upcoming videos, i have coming out aboutevery 3 to 4 days. and be sure to share this video with other organic farmers and growersthat you know who you think can benefit from this. because, you know, it’s just not talkedabout enough in traditional agriculture, home gardening and even organics, you know. they’renot, we’re not, they’re not talking about the biology and this really needs to get outto the world, and to my opinion help save the world and make it a better place for notonly us but the microbes and all the other creatures on the planet. so once again myname is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com. we’ll see you next time and until then remember-keep on growing.
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