Kason Charles - Agronomist

I had the honor of being invited to this Root Crop Production Workshop. These crops are lifelines, often thriving in diverse climates with incredible potentials for yield while demanding little, providing essential nutrients and energy.

Let's invest in their sustainable cultivation and recognize their crucial role in our diet.

Great job guys!

Growing crops requires a little more than water - fertilizer - harvest.

Successful food production requires not only knowledge but skill on the part of the farmer/ grower when preparing the soil, selecting inputs, planting the crop, and managing the crop from emergence to harvest.

Let’s grow food together!
Charles - agronomist

Plants, Phosphorus & Mycorrhizal Fungi.

Not all microorganism in the soil are harmful.

Plants feed up to 20% percent of the foods they produce daily to their mycorrhizal fungal partners present in the soil.

🧐 What’s really going on here? Why do plants think these tiny organism are so important? Interestingly we can purchase these same organisms in local farm center to inoculate our gardens.

This is another weighty conversation.
📩 Feel free to contact us if you would like to hear more about this topic or contribute to the conversation.

Picture: a bit of microscope work, a root filled with Mycorrhizal fungi

I found a really interesting article last night.

Some people just has some sorta energy that makes us uncomfortable.
Well some nutrients in the soil makes eachother very uncomfortable or unusable (antagonistic).

Aluminum is one of those, this study reviewed Al’s behavior in the soil and highlighted that soil with higher aluminum content (andisolic/ volcanic, ferralitic / a lot of the red soils) can naturally be expected to have lower available contents of phosphorus to enrich our crops.

This means we must construct planting strategies & fertilizer applications that are responsive to this lack of available phosphorus to our plants.

Phosphorus & Our vegetables

Remember to rotate your crops guys!

We’ve all heard that Phosphorus is the naughty element, it is always arrested by the soil. Our plants are the lawyers that brings bail .

Back story: Introducing clover 🍀 in a crop rotation is an old Soviet Union 🇷🇺 favorite because clover has a unique root system that “flushes” phosphorus out of the soil.

Crucifers (cabbages, broccoli) are well adapted to release acids in the soil convert phosphorus in the soil to a usable form.

Well, interestingly, for 2 decades now research has proven that cucurbits have that same phosphorus hunting capacity.

It’s definitely in my rotation 🌱 ♻️

I do have quite a bit of research papers on this topic, I’d be happy to share.
[email protected]

Let’s Learn More Together

The basic principles regarding planting our foods have long established.
The twist is that with new challenges:
wars,
climate change,
soil degradation (etc),
the application of these principles are constantly being researched and developed.

We are constantly developing new soil protective measures, we are constantly developing systems of crop management & newer applications of agrochemicals and inputs.

Let’s continue adapting.
Let’s continue growing.

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I’d let you in on a little secret, we’ve consulted on corn on 3 different continents.

It’s my favorite.

Livestock Fodder 🧐

Rainfall makes fodder/animal feed grow - fodder/ animal feed makes animals grow - animal growth = Meat - Meat = 🏦 💰

The southern African countries are the largest meat exporters to the EU & have started looking to the Emirates. While they may have large areas of land, their stocking rate (the amount of animals they can manage) is determined by the less than 500mm (that’s really a little bit) of rainfall they experience yearly.

In the Caribbean, 2 months can equate to 500mm of precipitation. With the correct livestock feeding & management system, we can realize tremendous potential in livestock/ ruminant meat production.

Improper Farming Applications or (a more sciency term) Land Degradation 😔.

Land degradation has taken more lives than any pandemic in the last 100 years. Yes Covid-19, we see you.

L.R Oldeman in 1991 told us about how more than 50% of soils have been “significantly” degraded. Concern didn’t stop there, he drew light to the fact that African soils (developing nations), face soil degradation of up to “75%”.

Interestingly, desert area (highly oxidized, damaged soils) increase by over 500 km on the African continent (developing nations) in 2021

Phosphorus lacking soils?

Some time ago the United States department of agriculture supported an a very interesting article.

We all know that some nutrients in the soil makes eachother very uncomfortable or unusable (antagonistic)

Aluminum is one of those, this study explains clearly or fore-warns us that soil with higher aluminum content (andisolic/ volcanic, ferralitic / a lot of the red soils etc) can naturally be expected to have lower available contents of phosphorus to enrich our crops.

This means we must construct planting strategies & fertilizer applications to support this lack of available phosphorus to our plants.

Agroecological Phosphate Mining

Yes, we are still skipping the sciency stuff
(This explains why weeds are so important for our soils)

So interestingly alot of the phosphate may be in the deep layers of the soil usually due to: lesser feed potential by regular plants (shorter roots).

However most of active P (phosphorus) feeding would happen closer to the soil’s surface as usable P is usually in organic matter & that’s where most roots are.

These lower storage of P would have to be mined up by some of the longer standing forage or cover plant (I like bean 🫘)- as the graph showed they take more P up from the soil.

This P should then be stored in the upper soil areas extracted from “biomass” and stored as organic matter for use of the shorter duration plants that do not have developmental time necessary for such deep level mining.

Daily Morning Scouting.

Let’s talk cucumbers!

While it does most times exhibit vigorous growth, I wouldn’t say it is the easiest crop to maintain.

One of cucumber’s challenges is it’s high susceptibility to pest 🐛 & diseases 🦠.

Today however, we are seeing lady bug eggs 🐞 🥚 on an aphid infested cucumber plant 😏 he is going to be okay 👍.

Phosphorus Application
(As we continue our Phosphorus Conversation, today we speak about its application)

We always advise sub-surface application of granulated phosphorus. The idea is to get phosphate fertilizers around the root area of our plants.

Nitrogen & potassium are very mobile in the soil (they are transported around easily). Phosphorus is a little more “friendly”.

You see, phosphorus makes friends easily and decides to stay exactly where these friendships are made with other elements, if we add it on the topsoil it stays there for quite a long period of time, never really making its way to our crops root area.

Phosphorus & seedlings 🌱 .

Let’s talk about phosphorus, the root fertilizer.

Seedling actually grows more roots in the ABSENCE of phosphorus, so why are we always advised that plants need phosphorus post germination 🧐?

Well, 90% of a seedlings developmental “finances” goes into root development. At that time however, it has little roots and even smaller potential to accumulate resources.

“P” is actually used in the structure of roots (& young shoots also).

📌The idea is that a close supply of “P” affords the plant the luxury of spending less time and energy searching for it. Rather, plants may develop a lot faster giving them a competitive advantage.

📱 I’m always ready to have a conversation with farmers and growers. If you want to discuss this “competitive advantage” shoot me a DM.

Our pepper trials!

We recently experimented with 2 varieties of salad pepper 🙌.

We will post the results at a late date but for now, let me enjoy this salad.

the nation!

The world health organisation concluded almost a decade ago that unbalanced diets lacking fruits and vegetables were reasons for some of the more prevailing chronic diseases affecting our communities today.

They went far enough to say that lower fruit and vegetable diets accounts for almost 3 million deaths yearly❗️

📌This is interesting because Covid 19 (the global pandemic) claimed 6.3 million lives (as of July 2022) since its onset in 2019.

Yes Covid we see you but, in accessibility to healthy food is the pandemic.

WHO and FAO announce global initiative to promote consumption of fruit and vegetables Low fruit and vegetable intake a key risk factor for conditions such as heart disease, cancer and obesity, but supply needs to be improved to meet global needsWorld Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced today a unified approach to promote greater cons...

Phosphorus & Plants 🌱.

Hi Crop growers,
I’ve wanted to start this series for a while now.

Firstly, the world’s phosphorus (the root fertilizer) supply is dwindling, this may not affect its availability in the upcoming years but rather its price, making food production even more costly - in-tern, making consumption of food more costly.

Journey with me for the next few weeks as we look into plants & phosphorus nutrition 🙌.

Daily morning scouting 🙌.

In the past few months I’ve had the task of growing:

Brocoli - Syngenta Monitor

Cauliflower - Syngenta Spacestar

& Broco-flower - (I need to find my notes with the name of the cultivar)

The most fun has been this lovely broco-flower 🙌.
- They’re quite adapted to the soil.
- Well adapted to our tropical climate. 🌴
- Can be somewhat susceptible to Xanthomonas campestres however.

Wrapping up my gift, I mean a dorper sheep 😏
Yes, I bbq-ed most of it.

Planned to get a ton of work done this evening.
Let’s hope the rain holds up!

Soy bean trials!

The team has recently been contracted by an animal production enterprise to establish feed plots that are going to used in fodder production.

Upon the arrival of our requested seeds, our first thought is: ‘germination test’.

“Fertiliser prices have more than tripled in some cases, owing in part to high fuel prices that were rising as the world recovered from the economic shock of Covid-19 😷 but have been sent soaring by the war ⚔️in Ukraine.”

Using far less chemical fertiliser still produces high crop yields, study finds Climate-friendly practices can increase yields while improving ecosystem of farms, scientists say

“A Chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link” – Agriculture

We’ve always heard this saying with regard to most aspects of life, did you know that this law also hold with agriculture 🚜?

Click here for the full conversation
https://www.kasoncharles.com/agriculture-foundations/Chain-reactions

Hope you haven’t missed our latest publication on Crop Rotation!

This publication is a colorful look at the influence of the agricultural management practice of Crop Rotation on overall soil performance.

Click here to see the full conversation.

https://www.kasoncharles.com/publications

Foundations of soil health.

Plant encouraging fertile soils?

As our understanding of Plant – microbial symbiotic relationships develop, so does our understanding for their applications in sustainable agriculture and their applications in agro-ecologically sound plant growth and development.

https://www.kasoncharles.com/-advice/Plant-microbes