Friday June 19, 2020

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We, you know, we were part of a conglomerate with about four other organic companies and, you know, each one kind of has the organic piece of the puzzle, you could say. So they do a lot of like, they take like the organic amendments you would put in your soil and they digest them ahead of time.

So when they put them in a bottle also, when you use them, you’re using liquid digested, organic goodness. So every time you feed your plants, you’re feeding them what would naturally be released in the soil? So it’s like a really more innovative, what’s a new, innovative way to do organic gardening, I guess, in a more context of who they are to us, their, our, our partner company, where they provide the, the liquid organic nutrients.

And we provide the, the easy to use complex to use to keep the soil broken down and healthy. And then in cycling all the nutrients and making them available for the plants…

This is perfect. Did you get the email? Yes. Okay. So I’ll just introduce you and we’ll go from there before you drop any more golden seeds that listeners are going to want to hear. Okay, cool. Welcome to the green organic gardener podcast.

Today. It is Friday, June 19th, 2020.

And I have someone on the line who I think we’re going to really enjoy learning about. They have a, kind of a new green business that they’re going to tell us a little about, and also like how you can have better results in your gardens.

So it’s Cultured Biologix, Is that right, Tim? Yes. Yes, it is. Okay. And I’m not even sure. I know your last name, so welcome to the green organic gardener podcast. Well, I’m glad you’re here. So go ahead and tell us there’s a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, sure. So I’m the president of a company called Cultured Biologix. We make really good organic microbial, fertilizers, natural pesticides, you know, taking essential oils that are harmless to you, me, your dogs, you know, everything good in nature, but you know, detrimental to a lot of the pests that we experienced in our garden. So we started about three years ago.

We’ve been growing pretty steadily here in Colorado. So, you know, originally we kind of started off in the cannabis hemp seed, and now we’re kind of moving into home, home and garden kind of teaching people about, you know, the new ways to, to garden organically.

Okay. Well, I kind of always start out my show asking you about your very first garden experience, like where you were a kid, were you an adult? Was it recently, or like, what’d you grow? Who were you with?

 But I’ve been very fortunate to have a mother that’s been a horticulturalist for 35 years. So take your child to work day was to take, take Tim to the, to the greenhouse and have them water plants and pick off bugs. And that leaves up off the plants. So I’ve been, I’ve been doing it for most of my life. 29 year olds, 29 years old now. So I’ve been gardening good 20 years of my life. First gardening experience was probably my backyard with my, with my mom, helping her do annual prenup flowers.

That’s been her real big thing. So just kind of grew up with it and just kind of involved with, with just probably every, every day of my life. So probably is that how you learned how to grow organically from your mom? Yeah. Yeah. One of our organically, she definitely taught me the conventional ways, you know, in a lot of conventional greenhouses and whatnot, they, they use their super triple phosphate. They do their 20, 20, 20 jacks. You know, they did a pretty conventional stuff and he’s not assaults and synthetics.

And it wasn’t actually, until I, I got into chemistry is my that’s my background I’m I have a bachelor’s in science and chemistry. And so I got into kind of what the organic, what is to be organic garden.

And so the first grad at college, I got brought into an innovative fertilizer company and got into evolve with the really core organizations like United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and really starting to understand that, you know, there’s other ways that we can grow conventionally working with the United nations.

We we’ve, we figured out that, you know, it takes about a thousand years for one centimeter of soil, top soil to build. We, our whole, all of existence of nature is really dependent on the first six inches of top soil.

So it really got me into, it was understanding that conventional fertilizer on our conventional foreign land can degrade once in a year of soil in 10 years.

So we can destroy about a hundred times quicker than we could the earth naturally rebuild it!

Going into organic gardening, you start to really realize that, you know, it’s more about how we take care of the soil than just growing a plant.

So just kinda going into, I don’t know, a lot of the different verticals in agriculture, you can see how a lot of the conventional gardening, you know, it requires a lot more fertilizer than the organic gardening requires a lot less fertilizer!

Maybe more, more tending to the soil, maybe more tending to, you know, the aspects of, of a good ecosystem or really what.

What steered me into organic gardening was, was just working. We’re working within the fertilizer industry and realizing what conventional fertilizers were and, and what, or what the difference between organic was.

Well, you know, this is music to our ears. So, so then what happened?

We started working with a lot of these different countries that are part of the United Nations, and they started really looking back at what,

what is it to be healthy?

Where we’re at with all these large costs in our healthcare system? What do we really, how do we reduce this cost? How do we improve the system? Do we, do we have more endeavors and pharmaceuticals? Do we have more endeavors and biotechnology? Do we, do we focus more on healthcare professionals?

And at the end of the day, what they found is that it doesn’t really come down to how much money you put into your medical system and your healthcare system, because you’re always going to be kind of fighting uphill battle.

What they found was is that the true mutual, the true health to a human and to our, to our bodies is the food we eat. And so that’s really what propelled me into making innovative and new technologies is for organic gardening is realizing that the, the nutrition that we eat is actually in our produce.

It’s, it’s how we develop nutrient dense produce.

And we do that through growing organically and having a good micro ecosystem!

Having a good, good soil health. And if we really want to truly have good medicine to take care of you, me, or kids or family, then we all need to eat organic food. And we all need to be focused on nutrient dense produce.

Okay, Tim. So my listeners have repeatedly told me that what they want to know is how can they be more productive? And I have a feeling you have an answer for us. How can we grow more of that nutrient dense produce?

What’s some of this tech and other solutions that you’ve come up to help make organic gardeners more successful.

Hey, wait, can I just remind listeners? I’m sure you all cut this in the beginning question, but 29, another rockstar, millennial working for the UN ~ biochemistry degree!

I love it. Tim. I’m writing a book called rockstar millennials about them. Amazing rock star millennials on my show, because I think you guys are great!

Thank you. We’re excited. If you can’t tell?!.

Yeah. The, you know, it really comes down to, you know, the Native Americans have this theory. I’m a quarter Native American. And so I’ve really grown up with that in my, my, my, my childhood. And, you know, they have a saying that you are what you eat and while the plant is what it eats too.

So the, the, the biggest thing I’ve found and, you know, maybe not a lot of people, I don’t know if you guys have talked a lot about this or not, but the bricks level inside the plant it’s, it’s, it’s something not really taught a lot about in conventional agriculture, except for like grapes.

You know, when you’re making wine, you want the highest grade content. Do you have the artists highest amount of sugar content and not let you make good wine.

But really to have a hi. Hi. Hi. Hi, hi bricks con plant. And we do that through reducing the water soluble nutrients inside the plant and increasing more proteins, increasing organic cellular production at the plant. So, you know, nitrates are a good example of that. We can grow more nutrient and produce by utilizing alternative forms of nitrogen. 

Nitrates are one of the, one of the four forms of nitrogen and conventionally. You have nitrates ammonium, and you have a urea is the three forms of nitrogen. And that’s where we find a lot of, you know, inside like jacks or miracle grow, or, you know, a lot of assault based fertilizers.

What that does is that the nitrates can only exist inside the plant when there’s a large amount of water. So what that does is when a plant takes up the nitrates and use that as a main version of nitrogen, that’s good source, the plant has to have a large amount of water as well.

And what the large amount of water does is it dilutes the amount of nutrition in your produce. It dilutes the sugar, the SAP content inside your produce. So it’s not as packed with vitamins and minerals. So just by simply finding a different version of, of nitrogen, whether the vet, your top dressing with feather meal and putting down accomplished tea on top of that, whether you have some alfalfa or different organic versions of nutrition, we want to, we want to focus on the fourth type of, of nitrogen called protein nitrogen.

And you can get that through organic soybean extracts. You can get that through hydro ice fish, just using these more naturally natural versions of, of just nitrogen alone can increase the brix level inside the plant, which means your plants are going to have more, more nutrition in it.

Are you saying brinks like the brinks truck?

No, you’re fine. Brix B-R- I X, brix is a measurement of the carbohydrate content inside the plant.

And we find is there’s less brix and plants to have a high amount of water in them. And when you use a lot of nitrates are a lot of phosphate salts, the water content goes up really high inside the plant, which immediately reduces the amount of nutrients over trying to get, you know, dense new nutrient produce inside the plant, we want the nutrients to be as packed full per square inch as possible inside the plant.

So you, I guess in a simple sentence, it’s just a it’s it’s, you know, knowing what you’re feeding the plant!

you know, we should try to, we try to sway away from, from salt based fertilizers and go more towards like protein nitrogen, or more towards a bone meal or rock phosphorus source for the phosphorus.

And we do that. You can, you can kind of adjust the amount of water in the plant and how much nutrients the plant actually absorbing. And we find that you have higher Brix levels, which means more sugar content type of plant and more sugar content contains also more nutrients and more vitamins and minerals inside of the plant.

So how do you know what, like what the sugar level of that plant is? Or like, how do you even, is that like a soil test you’re doing to find that brix thing?

Yeah, you can, there’s a refractive index and that’s like the measurement scale of it. And we can use a refractometer and they’re pretty cheap online. And you just go through and you can do a chop a part of the branch off of a plant, and you can squeeze the juice out onto the lens and you just hold that up towards light and you can see where the sugar content is on refractometer.

So it’s a little more the, an experience type of gardening approach, but, you know, if you’re really trying to dial things in it’s, it’s really helpful to see like how healthy the plant is, because what we also found is, you know, higher the brix, the higher, the healthier the plant.

And if we have a healthier plant, you can use less pesticides and you have less bugs trying to get to the plant!

And that’s really overall what it is. You’re trying to make yourself, help yourself healthy. And you’re trying to make the plant healthy. And when the plant is healthy, you can use less chemicals and less chemicals immediately means healthier plants!

Golden seeds, Tim golden seeds! This is the kind of stuff that my listeners want to hear. So, and a lot of this stuff is like, so I just had this, she has her own little fan club on my show. Her name is Patti Armbruster, and she’s like a regenerative agriculture expert. And she actually was just at my place yesterday, giving me all sorts of tips and things that we could do.

And a lot of the things that I think you’re saying is what she’s talking about to like helping the plants be healthy, you know? Totally she’s just such a soil, like show passionate about, you know, feeding the soil organisms and the ecosystem. So it’s a healthy soil. So it feed your plant, like you’re saying.

And then my husband’s been adding like alfalfa meal, and I think, I want to say it was blood meal in that bone meal to kind of like give his plants a little boost this spring, but I dunno.

Do you have more to say, or do you want to answer the questions or where do you want to go from here?

Yeah, no, I mean, I, you know, I, I’m, I’m really a proponent on making sure that the, you know, we’re all picky about the food we eat. I’m a big proponent about being picky about what you feed your plants too. Right?

So a lot of it is, it goes into, if your plants are healthy, they’re going to have less, less bugs and less bugs means you’re going to have more or less pests. I’m sorry, which means you’re going to have more predators and you’re going to have a plant that releases less infrared.

And so really my whole soapbox schpeel I’ve been getting on lately is, is just adjusting the form of nitrogen, which also was just causing your plant to be healthier. If they plant, when plants take in a bunch of nitrates, they’ve released infrared radiation, the book, see infrared radiation and see that as like their prime food source and they come attack plant. So we can, we can make plants healthier and actually ward away the pests themselves by just feeding them non nitrate based food.

I guess I, the full circle to kind of let them what I’ve been preaching.

Speaker 1 (16m 5s): And so was that what, where my page go, the biologix, the culture biologix is like food that you give the plants to help them be healthier?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we give the, you know, we like to tackle it from a couple of different animals or a couple of different angles. One of the one which is, you know, adjusting the input of the food source.

So it makes sure, yeah, we definitely feed them better, you know, create a better organism.

The other is, is part of the biologix is using biological organisms to, you know, condition the soil

you know, we had in Colorado, we have a heavy clay based soil, not much sand here, a lot of rock. So what we’d like to do is put down like beneficial microorganisms that, that naturally break down clay and produce some more porise substrates to grow in.

So it’s not as compact and not as, not at that, doesn’t say as waterlogged for as long. So part of it is the inputs lot. And the other part of it is making sure we use the proper organisms at the proper timing to condition our soil.

So, like I said, you know, prior to, to working with United Nations, we did this soil degradation test.

And one way we found to increase the rate at which the soil regenerates the top soil is to use organisms that put carbon back into the soil.

And then, and by doing this, we find that we can, we can grow the soil at a faster rate than we can, can, we can decompose it through conventional agriculture because of the organisms we put in there.

Well, where do you get the organisms from?

We work with the micro-biotic lab out of Santa Rosa, California, good friends of ours. We like to work closely with, with good people. And so they make, we, we had them go to the international gene bank in Switzerland to find a couple, a couple of specific organisms that we want to use and put in, make a microbial blend for us.

So they make all of our, all of our custom blends of microorganisms. And we use them in and make them into an easy to use product, like instant compost teas and like, like an actual rooting product that uses rooting bacteria instead of rooting and hormones.

And there’s sure a lot of that going on these days isn’t there?

Oh yeah, yeah, there are. And you know, our, our whole thing is just a lot of, a lot of educating. Cause a lot of people don’t know what goes into the soil. A lot of people don’t know what, what they’re using because they buy a bottle that says, Hey, grows plants grow well.

Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for you, or it’s very good for the soil. So, you know, a lot of where, how we go about it is, is making sure that we one provide an easy to use product.

Also, you know, give the microorganisms that people need. You know, her, for example, a lot of people don’t know, am I crazy? Is, am I crazy and habits, 95% of all root systems on the faces earth? You know, that’s a very integral part of our products and knowing when, what that good bacteria used and what we know, what bacteria that you’re a phone guy, you need to break down what nutrients.

So we kinda custom tailor all of these complex micro mycology essentially and put them into a product that you can just use and give an education base so they can, so you can keep expanding your knowledge, you know.

Making it easy! Yeah. You’re so right. There’s definitely a need for education. Cause like one of the things that when Patti that I was telling you about is she said that some of the worst soils she’s seeing is actually on organic farms because they keep telling it up and they’re not feeding that soil web.

And she said, it’s just really sad that they’re seeing after 10 years of growing food, they’re struggling because they’re, they’re just not taking care of the soil enough. And then where did I read? I want to say it was Andrew Medford’s book, but I can’t remember.

But somewhere recently the spring, I read something about if you’re going to a plant nursery and they don’t sell it, it’s really hard to say, you said it really well, micro core desire rivers. They’re like, don’t go to that nursery if they don’t have it.

And they don’t know what it is. And I have had quite a few guests talk about it, especially Patti Armbrister, but you can’t probably talk about it enough. Like I have a very like yesterday when she was here, she was like going through in depth. And I just like, kind of kept my phone recording so that I can go back and replay it in my head over and over.

She explained the whole soil web, and this is feeding this, and this is this, and this is why you have to do that. And just like all these great tips, a lot of what you’re saying,

but what you don’t know is that one of the number one questions I’ve got the last two summers in a row over and over is what do I put in my organic lawn?

What do I put in my organic one?

Well, you should water it. Well, you can do, you know, same thing, composter this. Yeah. But what do I go to the store and buy? And like, even like I have one guest AJ who talked about putting just molasses.

Well, the, the one Jeff Lowenfels who wrote the books, you know, teaming with microbes and too nutrients. And he’s like just water and mow in the spring and it will be fine. But if you don’t want to do that, there’s the molasses and water trick where you put like a couple of molasses and a gallon of water, which I have not yet tried. I’m dying to try it.

But I mean, AJ has got all the proof on his website, but then I’m betting you probably have some kind of a solution for people.

I mean, I, yeah, I lawns, I don’t know. It’s so funny because people are love, love their lawns, but it doesn’t produce any food for us.

So having, you know, a lot of problems in Florida where they’ve been fertilizing their lawns, it’s just like nitrates and phosphates. It runs off into the water canals and they have to close down beaches because there’s a three mile algae bloom.

So it’s always been fascinating to me about like, how, how do you properly care for a long, so it’s good for it for the environment too.

One of the best things I have found for, for lawns is one, making sure we can go back to an accuracy, making sure you have a strong colonization in time, inside your turf. It acts as a secondary roof system. It goes, gets water for the turf.

They found that they have some studies that say that the , if there’s water on the Southwest corner of, of the acre and not on the Northeast corner, the microwaves, you can actually transport the water craft the entire acre to that corner.

It doesn’t have any water. So, you know, when we have like lawn lawn three house, you know, usually spotty, spotty watering, where you’ll have like a good condensed watering pattern, some places on the edge of the lawn, you know,

you’ll have like a little bit of dive back from them, not getting the water, a healthy mycorrhizae system can help transport nutrients. It can help transport water. It can help transport signaling molecules. If a bug tries to get in there and starts eating the roots of the grass.

So my, my, my go to always is, make sure you have a strong mycorrhizae application on your lawn. It will go a long way. And then, then when you feed it molasses, or when you feed it, anything else like a compost you on all you’re doing is reinvigorating the, my crazy calling me and, and, and the health of the soil. Then if we’re going to get into like one, like a nutrient specific type of suggestion, calcium, calcium, calcium, calcium, that’s up there with silica as well.

Calcium is really important for everybody, for, for cellular development and for every new cell inside the grass.

So when we chop our grass, it’s going to need to have new cells to replicate in order to grow again. Can’t do that without Calcium. So making sure the plant has a good amount of calcium for regrowth, and then making sure the plant has a silica.

The university of Florida did a really cool article and they did a study on, on silica. You normally hear about the NPK, you know, make sure you have your, your macro elements there, but every plant kind of reorganizes what it perceives as the, the, the dominant nutrients it needs.

So when they did a study for grass, actually it’s not the top, the three most abundant elements that the grass needs turf. Isn’t a DK, it’s actually nitrogen, silica phosphorus.

And so Silica is just as important as nitrogen when it comes to growing grass, because that is the strength. That is the support of the actual blade of grass. And so it can handle more, more wear and tear. It can handle more pet spots and it can just be, have a stronger, more, more, more structurally sound, a body to it just by adding silica to it.

And so that’s usually what I like to have people like focus on the micro IZEA, adding silica and keeping calcium. Free-flowing flowing pretty consistently with the lawns.

Tim, you’re just dropping golden seed after golden seed So I just got this weird thing from zoom saying we only have eight minutes left. So if we do get disconnected and we’re not done, I might have to like send you a new link to another meeting. 

I’ve never had that happen to me ever, but I I’ve always, they, they send me like this little thing that says you can only have 30 minutes for free, but anyway, this is just amazing. I know my listeners are gonna love it. So this is going to be a great episode.

Tell us about something that grew well this year in your garden, or maybe last year. I don’t know how much you have going this year already. Like we’re in Montana so.

It’s so hard to grow anything here. So when we get a good crop out of it, everything’s doing well. Living in a high altitude desert. It’s, it’s really tough. I mean, we’re 6,000 feet above sea level. So the intensity of the sun is really, really tough, but I mean, we grew some awesome peppers last year, super flavorful.

They’re nice, big, big chunkers. And we did so last year with it that we’re actually growing. It’s also a garden this year. So we have some

• ghost peppers
• reapers
• Habaneros
• jalapeños

We have two types of bell peppers this year. So we’re trying to really, really go heavy on the beverage this year. Cause I do so well out here.

Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll tell you. I’ve been having a hard time finding pepper plants. For some reason, Mike didn’t get a lot of pepper plants. Well, alright. I’m not gonna say I didn’t have a, but I am struggling. I bought two pepper plants at this one, organic nursery and got home and was like, I paid $12 for $2.60 each I’m like, well, I even get $6 worth of peppers off of them. And they’re not even bell peppers. Anyway. I probably shouldn’t be complaining about that on my show and be sure to be supporting local farmers, which I was trying to do.

But like, we would have liked to add 12 pepper plants, but I’m certainly campy, you know, $6 times, 12 number of clients. I was trying to grow some. I grew what was the nurse told me to grow San Marzano tomatoes. And she said, that’s going to be my secret to my salsa. And then I actually, I had a cilantro coming up.

I don’t know if we have a few, I think we have six peppers total, maybe the two I bought. And then I found two somewhere else. And Mike had two that he grew. Usually he grows a bunch of peppers, but he just, I don’t know what happened the spring.

Yes. We have to grow really big pepper plants. And then you can have those tablets for pepper plants to be a size, like eight pepper plants. And you’ve got a bunch of peppers.

Well, he did put each pepper plant is in its own. Like one of those black cloth, pretty large tubs of dirt. So they could grow really big. They might produce pretty well.

So is there something different you’re excited to try something new that you haven’t done before, or is that just growing all these pepper plants in your salsa garden?

We’re just doing a whole bunch of different types now. So I don’t know. I’m sure some varieties aren’t going to really like the height, the high intense UV radiation and the high heat with lack of rain.

We, we, we we’ll see our, our biggest thing is like how many different types of peppers can we grow in our salsa garden? That’s our big thing this year, either at our, actually at our warehouse or manufacturing facility, we have a pretty decent side side block. So I think we’re doing like a couple of

• four by eight beds,
• a couple of three by sixes.
• We’re doing five, two by fours.
• We’re doing eight three by two beds.

Oh, here’s one thing. One thing we’re really trying to do this year. It’s really hard to get lettuce to grow. If you’re not out here, do get a full head without a bolting in the dead heat.

So what we’re really trying to do is get enough shade cloth and put it in a specific part of our garden that isn’t going to get blasted with a high intense heat and heat and sun. And we’re gonna try to do some year round lettuce gardening.

I don’t know how all that’s going to go. I know it’s, you know, works out usually pretty well.

If we can get in there into the, have him in the ground beef by the end of the last frost. And you know, before the major heat wave comes and July, but we’re going to give it a sharp this year. I don’t know if we’re gonna that’s something were experimenting with,

We struggle with that too. I feel like we were spinach. I’m like I’m giving up on spinach and my spinach that we put in the spring already, like there’s one plant that hasn’t bolted and the rest of it all bolted before I even got to pick any of it. So I know how that goes.

And then we had a really hard time with lettuce germinating. So Mike put in a second bed and then I replaced the first bed of lettuce with I put broccoli plants in there. Tell us about something.

Let’s just get to the root of things.

Do you have a least favorite activity to do in the garden? Like is there something you to force yourself to get out there and go down?

My, yeah, my my least favorite is any, anything to deal with irrigation. I am the most. I am the most. I just am not inclined when it comes to irrigation and how things work. I usually at my house just take a hose and you know, I either do it hose and sprayer and water, the plants and anything outside of that.

Like we have like our system here, we have turn same five tote that we hook into like a automated watering system with timers and sprinkler heads. And, it’s just, it’s so not my expertise. It’s my least favorite thing to do is like.

I love gardening, like watering the plants, pruning the plants, trellising out plants. Getting all the garden smells on on me. I absolutely love.

But when it come to like the watering equipment, I just it’s like networking issues with your, like your router, your house or something like that. I just it’s it’s they give you such a bad headache that I can’t even express it.

I totally get it. So is your favorite, I love the way you said getting the garden smells on me. Is that your favorite activity to do in the garden?

Oh, absolutely. If I have a giant bed of tomatoes, just going wild in August and I have to get through there and nothing makes me happier than reaching through and climbing through the, whatever I need to do to inside the tomato bed. And then walking away after it just like smelling yourself a bold, all the tomato smells.

I totally get it. How about what’s the best gardening advice you’ve ever received?

Oh, best gardening advice.

How about you think about that? And I’m going to start another meeting, cause we’re about to go. It’s going to shut us off. Okay. Okay. I’ll send you the link.

He’s just as a soil nerd, he could talk to you about soil all day long.

Well, my listeners can listen to soil all day on their soil nerds too. So He’s fitting right in, but I’ll try to remember that at the end. Okay. What were we talking about? We were talking about, you were thinking of the best gardening advice. Okay. You’re up.

don’t being an over caring parent

Best advice I’ve ever gotten for gardening is don’t being an over caring parent and, you know, starting gardening. It’s really easy to like, you know, baby the seedlings and make sure they’re always wet and I should never dry out and make sure to have heat or this or that.

And a lot of times you gotta do at the point of nature and 10 didn’t just plant seeds and let them do their natural thing. You want to make sure the environment’s good, make sure that they have a good environment to grow up in, but you know, make sure you’re not overbearing with the nurture and care because that, you know, you can’t over-water, you know, you can have given too much light too soon.

Like my biggest weakness in a garden is whenever I take plants from inside and put it outside and they just fry up to a crisp and I just don’t even think about it, you know? So it’s just, yeah, there’ll be an over caring parent kind of let the plants do with an actually supposed to do.

You’re almost like seem like you need to be a little more of a caring parent and be like, I’m not putting my babies out to burn. I’m just thinking of my husband who like very tenderly, like puts the tomatoes on the porch for a few days and acclimates them before he puts them outside. And then he puts them like in the bed where they’re going to go just in case there’s going to be like a storm so we can still bring him in and he’s, but he’s probably learned his lesson.

There’ll be still be a caring parent, you know, definitely prepare for them. No, no one has any neglect, but you know, there’s a fine balance between too much and not enough, you know? And so it’s just, we’re just remind yourself to stay in that happy medium, you know.

Perfect. How about, do you have a favorite tool?

Like if you had to move and can only take one tool with you, what could you not live without?

One tool? Probably my pruning scissors. Cause I, I take them with me everywhere. I use them for small little snippets of this and that when it’s like, not even plant related.

They’re the most helpful tool. Whenever I have plants, I can, yeah. I don’t have to like bend them and tear them and rip the stock pretty scissors or my confidant in the garden.

You know, my mom gave me a really nice pair of pruners two years ago, and now I know why she spent her whole life walking around with them or a back pocket definitely, a great tool!

Do you have a favorite recipe you like to cook or eat from the garden?

Favorite recipe? I mean, I really, really love fresh salsa or like a fresh pesto. Those are like my go-tos. Just having like the blast of fresh, fresh veggies and fresh, you know, herbs and just like a blast of flavors. I love to be able to like taste spring! Does that makes sense?

That totally makes sense. I love like, that’s why I really like herbs because I feel like just the tiniest herbs can change a boring sandwich or any kind of meal. Like just potatoes would just like first sprig of Rosemary or like, I love to put arugula in everything.

Oh, one, one a really cool thing we’ve found. So I’ve been, I’ve been, I’ve had a few different gardens and a few different ways, you know, and you don’t want to raise bed, soil gardens. I’ve done. We’ve also done hydroponics. I’m not sure if you’ve ever grown anything hydroponically, like your herbs, or lettuce

I have not

I will say some of the best tasting partially and herbs I’ve ever gotten was from a hydroponic setup. And it’s just a simple, you know, take like a four inch pipe and you just angle it at a one degree incline and it just kind of, the water gravity feeds down and you just pump it back up.

But we were growing such nutrient rich and burst full herbs that you could use a quarter of the parsley you’d normally use. And like you could take a leaf and put your mouth and just blow your mouth with parsley.

The parsley.

And we were taking, were selling some of the produce at the time to some of the, some of the restaurants and then Florida at the time. And they’re using a quarter to half of what they normally would use just from having such flavorful parsley.

So herbs are, I guess, to the, my favorite thing to eat from the garden as a rich, probably herbs, because they just, they, they pack such a punch, you know,

 I totally agree.

Do you, are you a podcast or do you have a favorite of podcasts that you listen to? If not, that’s fine,

 I meander. I mean, I don’t really have a favorite per se. I just, I love, I love learning. I think he’s really what really makes me happy in life.

I just, I love to like listen to everybody else. I, I I’m forever the student and, you know.

I, I love hearing all the new innovations like Jeff Lowenfels, the, one of my favorite people to talk to we’ve, we’ve met several times and talked about soil science, a bunch of times taking goofy pictures together and just being able to hear and that, and Elaine Ingram.

She’s great. I just, all these different minds that we can utilize as a resource, you know, I just, I love it.

 I was thinking maybe you should have your own podcast on soil health. You seem like you like your talk.

 I, I love the subject.

 Sorry. I started a new job this week and I’m kind of feeding fast this Friday afternoon, either that, or like my dog kept me up all night. I don’t know. I’m struggling today. Sorry.

Anyway, do you have a favorite internet resource where you’d like to surf on the web?

Like, is it just checking out these other people and just learning from other people or,

Yeah, I mean, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a peer review journal nerd. I will be stuck inside the journal of science for that. So I do have my free time spare time, you know, like I just, I, I absolutely love to enjoy reading about and discussing about all this, any, anything gardening related?

I mean, we, a lot lately it’s been just been on these four on these like, you know, social media platforms and it just trying to connect as many people as I can just to talk about new ways to grow in gardening and teaching people.

There’s a real big chili community and chili head community on Facebook. We’ve been sharing chili recipes with hot sauces and the sell pepper starts. And, you know, it’s just really cool seeing all these like groups and networks of people that really enjoy the same type of pastime that we do.

And like, you know, the full time job and, and willing to do this as a hobby, you know, it’s just really, it’s good to be able to find like, like minds that you can kind of just connect with and talk to about all these things.

Thanks. You know,

Oh my gosh. I don’t know what I would do without my podcast listeners. Like, I feel like they keep me singing and leveled and like, so I can just breathe in this crazy time. We’re in.

Well, do you have a favorite book?

Oh, favorite book, like about gardening?

or soil health that you want to recommend?

Yeah, it is called the or Organic Manifesto: How Organic Food Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe

It’s by Maria Rodale. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve gotten, right. My mentor was a minister of agriculture for Costa Rica and he absolutely loves Rodale and their Organic Manifesto. And there’s one book I recommend to people who start their journey in organic or organic gardening take to heart the Organic Manifesto. It’s a really, really good book.

No, I love that. I love Marie Rodale. I can’t believe there’s no more organic gardening magazine or no more road deals at all. Like New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening or any of that. I’m like devastated.

I dreamed about working for Rodale’s for years. How I ended up with a podcast. I was going to like, like literally, like I applied to, like, I did an insured ship at the United nations for this woman’s organization, because to get to do an internship at Rodale’s you had to have previous successful internship experience.

And like, I was going to go to college at Columbia and get my master’s degree in communications, but that didn’t happen. And then they went out of business anyway. So anyway,

 It’s still there. It’s a good resource

About your business.

We liked to make gardening easy. We, we, you know, the protein nitrogen to using carbon based inputs to feed the soil, using pre-biotics and probiotics. You know, we took all these concepts and put them into some easy to use products.

So for example, instead of having to get my crazy and nasal spill and bacteria, and then get the pre-biotics and humic acids and the seaweed and the amino acids, we pull all that into one, easy to use product called Dr. Root.

And it uses, you know, rhizobium, beneficial microbes and, and, and all these compounds are good to promote root growth we put into these products.

Instead of having to brew a bunch of composts and then with molasses and water and let it air for 24 hours to make a compost tea that you really aren’t sure about. What’s in there. We make an easy to use powder, instant compost tea that you just mix with water, and it has all your probiotics. Pre-biotics has your plant foods in it.

You just mix it with water and you just put it on your plants!

So they’re just trying to make, you know, or organic gardening, easy through, through taking all these like really complex organic concepts and just putting it into like a one simple product or a couple of simple products to do the job you need, you need to get done!

And this can help save our planet by using this stuff!

Oh, absolutely.

It should be everybody’s goal to rebuild, to build the top, the top soil or of our earth.

And I said, all of all of life comes from the top six inches of soil.

So our should our duty as, as stewards of this earth to make sure we, we re we build and add carbon to the soil.

And all of our, all of our ingredients inside of our products are carbon based.

So when you put them inside soil work or go carbon machines like micro micro organisms, when you put it into the soil, you’re putting the carbon into the soil, you’re putting the microbes into the soil that are going to build the carbon layer.

And you know, when you look at the, you know, the 16 essential elements for plants, NPK, the calcium magnesium zinc, boron, manganese believed in them. One thing they don’t tell you or preach or even teach inside conventional agriculture commissional growing is carbon.

Carbon is an essential nutrient for the plant or central is our essential element for the plant. And you have to put carbon back into the soil. You can’t just let plants to take it out. So one of the really cool things about our products is everything.

Every nutrition inside of our product is carbon based. So you’re adding to the carbon, we’re adding to the top soil topsoil. We’re adding to the, the top layer to regrow and to keep our soils in our ecosystem, healthy by using our products.

Well, this is awesome, Tim, and it’s so needed. And just like I said, I have lots of people that call me up and say, but what can I just buy? I just want to go buy something. So this is a great solution for them.

Like I, Mike and I wrote this book called the Organic Oasis Guidebook. A lot of the comments I got was “I don’t want to do compost. I don’t want to have anything to do with compost, compost. You are, it’s too messy. It’s too sticky.”

Yada, yada, yada, which I think is like, I am usually like my big complaint about being the garden is I don’t really like to get dirty. Cause I usually have a full time job. And like on the days when I’m wearing my gardening pants, that’s fine.

But like when I’m going down to pick a salad for dinner, I don’t want to get all like dirty, but compost I’ll try the Pitchfork and the compost any day. Like, I don’t feel like it’s a dirty job, but I guess like people have kind of like, so I think this is filling a great need.

And like you said, it’s saving our planet. I just love your passion. I love how you just like, are into educating people. And you’re just so concerned about the soil food web and taking care of that. And by being able to produce more nutrient dense food like Mandy Gerth, it’s so funny. Cause I was just talking to this other woman right before you. And we were also talking about like Mandy Gerth was one of my all time favorite episodes.

Cause she’s just so passionate about being an organic farmer. And, but she was like one of the people who introduced me to nutrient dense food and like the Western A. Price Foundation and Sally Fallon and just how making sure,

like I get, I don’t know why, I guess I just didn’t realize, like I always really liked Red Leaf Lettuce, but I didn’t realize that it was so much better for me than, you know, iceberg lettuce or something, or just, it’s amazing how the quality of your food.

I mean, I think, you know, part of my show is that, you know, organic food is definitely healthier for you.

And I still go through that battle with my mom. Like we didn’t have to have that. We grew up well, when, when was the rise of pesticides, the late sixties, early seventies, like my whole life food has changed.

When I was a kid. It wasn’t such a big deal. You could buy regular food at the grocery store and it wasn’t inundated with glyphosate and all sorts of other chemicals and pesticides. And it was grown in soil that hadn’t been degraded over the years. But now, you know, the quality of food that you get.

Like sometimes I’m a school teacher by trade and like, I’ll see the, you know, they give the kids the healthy curates or the healthy snack at the end of the day. And I’m like, seriously, do you even really call that healthy when they get the little bag of nub carrots in that plastic bag or the piece of pineapple that comes in, I’m just like, ah, but it’s…

I don’t want to complain about it because the kids eat it. They love it. I mean, I think that food afternoon snack program is just amazing. Don’t tell me kids will need oranges or celery sticks!

They absolutely will.

 They absolutely what I bring in like those purple dragon tongue beams. And like, they’ll be asking me about them in Maine, in may they, like, why are you bringing any more dragon tongue beans in? We want some of those beads. I’m like, Mmm, you harvest those in the fall.

What also blows my mind is, you know, kids, they want something that tastes good.

I never thought I liked tomatoes until I grew a delicious organic tomato myself and picked it when it was ripe on the vine, it tastes like a fruit to me now. Like I love tomatoes.

I don’t like those bad tasting produce. And it took me a little while after, after even college, when I kind of readjusted my eating habits, I realized that like, it’s not that I don’t like spinach. It’s like, I don’t like bad spinach. It’s not, I don’t like brussels sprouts.

I actually love brussels sprouts. I just don’t like bad. Brussels sprouts you know, I think getting on the topic of kids, I think just getting them, you know, healthy, good tasting food is, is the, the kind of the shortcut to get them to just eating healthy and putting, you know, putting that down.

Absolutely. You are so on it. Well tell us, did we get to your website?

No, I don’t think so. I mean,

 And then Erin was talking about, there was some kind of like they could order listeners could order like samples if they just paid for the shipping and they could get to try the product.

Cultured Biologix

Yeah. Yeah. We’re we just launched eCommerce platform to really, before we’d sell to like stores, you know, nurturing home and garden stores, things like that, hydroponic shops. So you can go in and get your entire product off the shelves.

But recently with the, you know, the coronavirus and coven and kind of the shift where everybody has been staying at home lately, we wanted to get a platform that we could reach to every, every user at home. So we, we launched an eCommerce platform and you can go on there and you can get samples.

If you, if you’d like, it comes with, you know, an ounce of each of the powder, the Rudy powder, the two, the vege compost tea, the blooming’ fruiting compost tea. We talk about nitrogen.

I have a nitrogen product, so you don’t have to use nitrates if you want a nitrogen burst or a calcium burst called Dr. Growth. And we also, we also include an all natural insecticide in there called mercenary. That’s really good for soft bite insects:

• Thrips
• mites
• aphids
• white flies.

But yeah, you can go on there. You just pay for shipping.

I think shipping is like seven bucks and we just send it out to you. And if you do you like it and you want some more of it, there’s a, a purchasing platform on our website now. So you just add everyone to your cart and check out and it gets shipped directly to you.

Okay. But what if they don’t want the sample pack? They’re just looking for like one specific thing. Like how do they figure out what the one specific thing they’re looking for is, or like, how do they know how to use it? Like other directions on the bottles and things,

Yeah there’s definitely directions on there! It’s all real simple. Like I said, you don’t have to really do too much. Like, you know, Dr. Root is for when you need to grow roots, we’re using a compost tea.

You know, your plants are before they started flowering fruiting. You’re going to use EZT vege when they start a fruit or a flowering and fruiting, you used EZT bloom and just transition it.

Dr. Growth is for a nitrogen. Whenever you need a nitrogen boost or you just need a brief burst of growth. So they’re all pretty, pretty basic and simple. And all you do is just makes a teaspoon or a tablespoon of water, a gallon of water, mix it up and pour it right on your plants.

But all the, all the instructions and all the, the application usage is on there. And if they want one or one thing or a thing specifically, they can go on there and, you know, kind of itemize their selection and, and that would work for them.

Okay. Just so you know, in the future, that’s the part we all want to hear! That you use this before you start, for before starts to fruit and this one, you want it to bloom, and this is the burst of group, or at least last part I want, but who knows?

My listeners are all better gardeners than I am. Like I said, Mike’s the gardener. And I kind of like dabble and I mostly stick to herbs, but like, it’s his garden. So I don’t do anything without his approval. Which makes me be like, you tell me what to do and I’ll go buy it

Anyway, Tim, thank you so much.

You probably have no idea. Like, I don’t know what you guys are expecting. Maybe like a 15 minute, little, like this is our company call. And here you are at an hour later, sharing golden seed after golden seed.

I know my listeners are just going to love your passion, your story, and just everything about it. I mean, you are the perfect guest for my show and I wish you guys the best. And I hope things work out. And I hope things work out for my listeners that they give some of your products and it, it helps them build their microchorrizae.

I, you know, under their soil, whether it’s under their garden or in their food. I know they’ve heard those terms before on my show and we all know it’s important. And thank you for providing a solution that we can use.

Of course, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. He has done a name time, go on me back, please feel free to reach out to me. And then I, you know, it usually starts off with like a 15, 30 minute conversation that we expect to have. And it goes into an hour because I usually can’t stop talking about plaintiff’s soil. So

 The other lady I’m like, well, my show, I, it plays on progressive radio network on Monday nights. So I have to send them a file. That’s between 53 and 58 minutes. But usually that’s about where my guests go, unless they go really long. Like my guest this morning, we were on the phone for almost two hours. So I’m going to get off that probably didn’t help. And then I still have to work for the other guy besides today. He’s been like in the army and stuff. So anyway, you have a great day, Tim and I will send you the news when this is up. I’m your 326.

Let me see. I put out a show. I try to put out a show every Monday and I just put out three 20. I have one, two, three. I dunno. It’ll be like about a month. So it was that mid-July.

Speaker 1 (21m 58s): Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That’s this is fun.

Speaker 0 (22m 1s): I know podcasting is fun, right? Think about having your own show just huge time, but I’ve heard that like with anchor, they make it really easy. Like you can just like pretty much talk into your phone and it’s like a one and done solution. We need tons of experts like you out there. You know what I do want him, like, do you have a picture of you in the garden? I can put in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (22m 26s): Yeah. There’s a picture of me. I can email you over.

Speaker 0 (22m 28s): Okay, cool. Perfect. Okay. You guys have a great weekend!

Biologics started in the cannabis space, so he also knows a lot about that. Yeah, we could do a bonus episode.

Yes, that’d be great because you know, that’s certainly taking off more and more and more, and it’s something I’m very passionate about because I can’t stand like the indoor grows.

Like I just, and I also, like, I’m very concerned about all the chemicals people are, what frustrates me. My biggest frustration is, you know, how many people tell me I should eat hemp seed because I don’t eat meat. I do eat fish. But like, for the most part, like, I like to be, you know, I know you do dairy, but, but people was like, Oh, him protein, you should have protein. And I can’t grow my own hemp seeds. And just, and I just, and also like, again, like pupil are ingesting cannabis, like crazy anymore.

They’re just seeing these edibles. They’re smoking pot. Like there’s no tomorrow, but they have, there’s no regulation going on. There’s nobody. And there’s all these chemicals going in. Like, there’s even like people, you know, with their cloner saying, Oh, we’re using something to grow the roots that we’re organic, but then they’re putting this like chemical cloner on there, whatever it is.

And just there’s so much going on the waste of electricity that people have to grow it indoors when they could just grow a crop during the season, like people should be able to just grow it like tomatoes. You know, they say the number one grower of tomatoes in our country, our backyard growers, more people grow tomatoes in their gardens.

And I just feel like they should be growing it organically, locally sustainably. It’s something I’m super passionate about.

Yeah. It’s a very chemical-laden industry. And the kicker is, you know, we do have restrictions on the pesticides we can spray now. So that is a good step in the good, in the right direction.

You know, there are approved lists. It’s funny that we have, have approved pesticides. We can, and can’t use on cannabis. We don’t have approved pesticides. We can’t can’t use on food. It’s very comical to me. Then the other thing is,

Is that a Colorado that a it’s a state by state thing?

Oregon has a list. Washington has a list. Colorado has a list. Michigan just now is doing heavy metal testing and things like that. We actually have a lot of microbial analysis done on the flower because a flower can mold real easy.

So we do have a couple you know, progressive things they’re doing as far as like what they spray on it. But the funny part is, is there’s so many salts and chemicals and growth regulars used to grow this plant, it is ridiculous!

Enter any commercial facility. When you go Colorado, we maybe have 5% organic commercial facilities indoors.

You’re kidding. Oh, indoors. I’m not surprised at all.

So it’s a giant chemical industry. And the thing about Colorado is, is if you’re a gardener here in Colorado, you can’t really grow your cannabis outside. It is illegal.

The only way you can grow it is you have two layers of fencing. You have a padlock, you have cameras. They may get so extenuate that you can’t just grow it outside. And most counties have band it here.

So it’s, it’s this weird little conundrum of like, what do you, what do you do? Like you have to grow inside and you can’t grow outside. So then everybody’s telling you to grow with chemicals inside. And if you go outside, the police can come by and knock on your door and tell you to cut it down.

Yeah. Don’t even get me started, Tim. I got to go. We’ll talk again. another episode. Erin has my calendar and just book another day and we’ll talk for hours about this, so let’s do it. Alright. Well, thanks Tim.

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