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Bloom is intense. Is there any other time when our trees go from bare to full solar panels, growing nuts, sucking up water, opening and closing stomata to regulate that water, converting carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates, and fighting off pests and disease. I’m tired just thinking about that. Now imagine what’s happening at the cellular level. The Krebs cycle, the shikimate pathway, Rubisco protein carbon fixation, the Calvin cycle, structural building blocks, stress management and nutrient translocation. Let’s just say there is a lot going on. How can we make it better?

Not All Nutrient Forms Perform the Same
Nutrients are not all created equal. SOP (sulfate of potash) is a great way to get massive amounts of potassium into your soil to amend it. But if sulfates are already high in your soil, applying that form is taking up space that other anions may perform more efficiently in. KTS is way more soluble, but too much too quickly can burn roots, just like potassium nitrate. Potassium hydroxide is as clean as it gets with K and OH, but its pH by itself is usually over 9, just like potassium acetate. Blending these nutrients with an acidic form of N or phosphoric acids can help very soluble, high pH chemistries perform better. Adding carbon to the mix can chelate or complex very soluble nutrients to hold them in the root zone longer for better uptake and less leaching. Keeping nutrients like K in the root zone longer, loosely held to a substance like carbon that makes up a huge percentage of what our trees are mostly made of, is not a bad idea. But that takes the right questions and a little research. Ask your advisor about the derivatives and what exactly you are doing at this moment and trying to achieve. Again, it is not what you put on your crops, but what you get in your crops that matters.

Meeting Early-Season Phosphorus Demand
Let’s move to phosphorus. Its highest demand is in the spring. Polyphosphate derivatives can take 100 days to break down into ortho forms, even with adequate biology such as pseudomonas working on it. Even if you put a good slug of P on in the fall, anything that didn’t get absorbed that week probably just tied up with calcium as things got wet and cold. P is used to make the energy currency for our plants. Insufficient levels early in the season will reduce our potential for optimal yield. Get it right early. Use multiple shots of plant-ready ortho phosphorus. If your N levels have historically been in the 4s at your April tissues, I’d argue that your P levels need to be almost 10% of that, or 0.40. Don’t skimp on the early P!

Calcium and Biology Drive Season-Long Performance
Calcium is critical. Period. It builds structure, regulates cell division and is used as much as N, if not more. Have you ever seen tissue tests that have ranges of adequacy from 1% to 5%? Can’t we dial this in better? 1% to 5% is too broad a range. I believe your July tissue tests need to be as much as or more than your N levels. N goes down from the beginning of the season to the end. Calcium rises all season long. Gypsum in the fall isn’t supplying all your needs. Spring CAN-17 shots aren’t supplying all your needs either. That formulation is 17% nitrogen but only 9% calcium. Take a look at your meq/L section of your soil tests. That’s just a water rinse analysis. If it’s 5 meq/L and your soil tests show 2,000 ppm calcium in the acetate extraction, you are only getting 5% of that calcium in the water. Let’s take that one step further. That’s a lab using deionized water, not the water coming out of your well or concrete channels delivering it to you. The actual number your plants are seeing is way worse. Feed them additional soluble calcium above and beyond your soil amending. CN-9, CATS or Thio Cal, or acidify your calcium after the solution master from the silo.

‘It is not what you put on your crops, but what you get in your crops that matters.’

Now add some biology. Pseudomonas, bacillus, actinomycetes, yeasts, fungi, mycorrhizae, worm castings, compost teas, etc., will help break down all your past applied nutrients. The secondary metabolites that are produced by digestion of many of these nutrients are in more stable forms for plants and healthy soil after biology has had its way with it. Induced systemic resistance, or ISR, often ensues as well as systemically acquired resistance, or SAR, after biology has worked over your nutrient applications. Gene upregulation, RNA and DNA replication and transcription, can get supercharged with proper available and absorbed nutrients for your plants to use.

Bloom and spring push are those times to get it right. It’s sad to think of third world countries with malnourished children. Many cannot ever overcome the damage inflicted early in life. Plants are no different. We feed them. They can’t even move. Give them what they need early and often. Right time, right place, right rate, right product! Derivatives matter. They have to be matched to what your soil already has and what your water is giving you. Don’t plan to fail by failing to plan. Talk to your advisors and ask what derivatives you are applying and how they will affect your soils. Then make sure you are applying them properly, in the root zone. Nutrients aren’t cheap. Make sure those that you are applying are actually getting into your crops.