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Stop Treating Symptoms: What Pests Really Teach Us! | Stefan Sobkowiak - The Permaculture Orchard | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Stop Treating Symptoms: What Pests Really Teach Us!
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Video Transcript
Hey Pops, are you ready for
today's episode? I am ready,
and it's such an important topic. If you
grow anything in a garden, on a homestead,
on a farm, even your houseplants, we're going to
look at indicators and how important they are,
what kind they are. I mean, the only thing I know
about indicators is your Indicator YouTube series,
so I'm probably not going to be chipping in
too much here. But in terms of indicators,
what exactly did you want to talk about?
Well, indicators are, I look at them,
they're kind of like if you have a car, you have
a series of little warning lights. They're called
indicator lights. Why? Because, oh, something's
not right with your engine, there's a problem,
you have a check engine light, or your brake fluid
is running low in the cylinder. These are warning
signs to you. You can do, I think it was Big Bang
Theory where Sheldon saw that Penny would tape
over this, oh, 'cause the light's always on, so I
just put a piece of tape so I don't see it. Okay,
if you happen to have something that's a
problem, could be a disease, could be an insect,
could be a plant, could be an animal, they
are there as indicators, and you maybe look
at it and go, ah, I don't want to see that,
I'm going to put a piece of tape over it,
or I'm going to try and just, I don't want to.
Well, that's why I know, like I was saying,
from YouTube, the big one was the dandelion,
so I'm assuming that's an indicator of, yeah,
dandelions are great, they actually, many of
them are really good indicators. So what is
dandelion as an indicator? It really shows
you what is going on with your soil. Some of
the best keys for dandelion is that if your soil
is lacking in calcium, dandelion often shows up,
and that's why there's patches where you'll have,
like, somebody's lawn, and there's, I don't know,
right here, but then there's nothing there.
It can really be that precise, it's kind of,
it'll probably be overall, okay, but it's not
always manifested equally over the whole area.
You remember the farm in the first year when
we bought, and you were a little kid? Yes,
and you have pictures of it, and we're just in a
lane, and there's, it's just yellow, it's yellow,
exactly. So it was like we lived through seeing
how dandelion is an indicator. You can't imagine
how, if we would bend down at that time, and it
was springtime, if you bent down and you looked
up an aisle, yeah, all you would see was yellow,
you would not see green. And you know what? Until
filming this right now, I never really thought
about it, but it's true, yeah, where did they
go? Like, it was, they just disappeared, right?
Okay, well, they are an indicator, and in their
case, great job, they indicate lack of calcium
in the soil, lack of calcium brought on by, like,
very frequent use of synthetic fertilizers. Okay,
so the guy that you bought the property off of,
so because they used synthetic fertilizers on
a several-times-a-season basis, it basically
makes calcium drop off the face of the earth?
Well, drop, exactly, so the calcium in the soil
would be liberated, basically freed up from the
soil, would go into a liquid phase, so it would
be caught up in the water, and then when you get
rain, that calcium, now that's no longer attached
to some organic matter, whatever, just leeches,
it just goes down, okay? So it would go down,
and in different, it could go down right to the
water table, or it could just go down further, and
I mean further in the sense that, and that's what
most people have, if they have dandelions, it's
further than the roots of the grass's reach, okay?
So you can imagine, let's say you have grass or
lawn, which is, grass is different species, you
could have a mix of species, and then you have,
maybe you have some clover, and then you have
a lot of dandelion, and you go, ah, dandelion,
terrible. But did you know that, because, yeah,
like I said, to give context, he's being 100%
transparent, there was, it was just yellow, that's
all you would see, so it wasn't only dandelion,
but when they're in flower, and there were so
many, yeah, I remember, like, you, I don't know
where, we didn't find that picture of Sarah with,
sure, bouquet, huge bouquet of dandelions, yes,
because I remember it was just dandelions. So
how did you, I guess, indicator, I don't know,
did you know that was indicating that at the time?
Yeah, I mean, when I saw it, it was like,
wow, I'd been doing other projects, and we knew
that, okay, dandelion is known as a good indicator
of really two things, mostly is lack of calcium,
and the second one is soil compaction. And I
guess now, because you still went through with the
purchase, you bought the property, so that's not,
we didn't see it, like, it wasn't in flower, I
didn't, I mean, I knew there were several things
going on with the orchard, but we just wanted
to buy it, okay, okay, I knew that. 'Cause my
question would have been, I guess, then, that is
very fixable if you know what you're looking for?
Absolutely, and it, so that's why I was, yeah,
that's not an issue, because now, I mean, I still,
like, we had to film B-roll for his Master Class,
and he spoke about it, so I remember Stephan and
I having to go and find a dandelion to take a
video of a dandelion, yeah, you have to look now,
yes. So to go from that to where it was when we
were younger, obviously you figured out, I guess,
and it didn't take 30 years, like, it's been 30
years, but it happened, I remember, like you say,
it was, it was just covered in dandelions, yeah.
And I remember the reason why I remember it so
well is I was young, but, like, when you're that
age, that's, like, impressive, yes, you're like,
wow, okay, like, look at all these flowers, and
you don't hate dandelions as a kid, you like,
you know what I mean? I remember they used to go
to seed, and we would be picking them, and you're,
like, blowing the dandelions, but, like, yeah,
it wasn't, uh, yeah, and I didn't notice the
gradual decrease, mhm, but I did notice when they
were scarce, because at that time, you remember,
we've had all kinds of animals, and we had geese
one year, or a few years, but we had geese,
and we had enough rain that the ground softened
up, and I remember hearing a great commotion,
the geese were just, like, I thought one of them
was caught 'cause they were just really vocal.
I don't remember this, but I remember this in
your dandelion video, yeah, and went over to
look what's going on with the geese, and they were
having a fight over a dandelion root, and because
the ground was softened, so they could grab hold
of the crown, or the, you know, just under the
leaves, root it, and rip it up, because they, they
would work it, and then they'd pull up the whole,
and you worked at it, they worked at it for
long enough that then they didn't want to share,
it's like, hey, I got it, and the other one
next to would grab it, and they'd have, yes,
I remember, I did the Finding Nemo edit where
it's, mine, mine, mine, okay, yes, I remember
this, that is, it was, that's really what it
was, each of them wanted that dandelion root.
But that moment when I thought, wait a minute, why
are they fighting over a dandelion root when they
were everywhere, and that was the, oh, wow,
they're not everywhere anymore, they're rare,
it was, and it wasn't because the geese ate
them out, but they just gradually disappeared,
why? One, I added some basalt rock dust in
the first years, you remember the rock dust,
the pile, yeah, so rock dust has got quite a good
load of calcium, so that was, without adding,
you could add limestone, which is a high
calcium, but this was a more broad mineral
addition by putting rock dust, so put that, so
that helped. The second one was, uh, we didn't
mow on a regular basis, so that helped too, and
we stopped, we didn't put synthetic fertilizers,
so you stop leaching the calcium down deeper.
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Master Class bundle. And now, back to the episode.
Dandelion, in that sense, or dandelions, I know
some of you are triggered by how we pronounce it,
we're in Quebec, and dandelion comes from the
French "dent de lion," which is lion's tooth,
so it's pronounced a bit differently here. I
mean, we also say "eh" apparently at the end
of everything, so "dan-de-lion," when you leave
it, and that's the key, don't keep pulling it up,
okay? 'Cause they're an indicator, they are
trying to fix the problem, so they indicate a
lack of calcium, they indicate compaction, and
they indicate often a soil that's more acid or
acidic than what the grasses want. That's why
they do well, and you say the patches, yeah,
the grass is no longer in its optimal situation,
and it leaves holes and patches, and that's where
that plant is just trying to fill, 'cause in
nature, you don't want to waste sunlight. If
there's enough water, if there's enough nutrients,
something, something will grow; it may not be what
you want, and that's a whole other matter. You
need to start looking at why don't you want,
but dandelion is a great indicator.
So by stopping those things and allowing,
'cause that's really what's happening, it's
an indicator and a repairer, so it indicates
something, and because the dandelion root is
so much longer and deeper than the grassroots,
it'll go down beyond the grass-root zone, probably
to the place where calcium has parked itself, if
you like, and it starts pulling it up. And because
it's pulling it from deeper, it has access to it,
it pulls it up, puts it in the leaves; that's why
dandelion leaves are so therapeutic and medicinal,
because they're loaded with minerals, okay?
And so it puts it in the leaves. Now, if you
go around and you say, I don't put herbicide,
you know, I'm okay, so you pull it up, yeah,
but if you pull it up and you throw it away, all
those minerals are in those leaves; they were
going to recycle onto your soil, but now you take
them away, the cycle starts again, okay? You've
never allowed, you're not solving the problem,
you're not, you're trying to just put a Band-Aid.
So I guess that's why all these, not fertilizer,
but, like, pesticide companies that sell, what is
it, Roundup and herbicide, they're just selling
you a Band-Aid, like, if you use the product,
it doesn't get rid of the problem, you're saying,
like, next year it'll come back? It's actually,
it's a great business model, because not only
doesn't it solve the problem, it adds to it,
it adds other problems, so, yes, it Band-Aids
it, gets rid of it for now, because it never gets
rid of it, it just gets rid of it for now, but
that plant will come back because you've never
solved the source problem, and it'll probably
bring on other problems, understand? Okay.
So one good example is, uh, let's say
lamb's quarter. We have some lamb's quarter;
that's an indicator, but in another way, it
indicates your soil is actually really good,
there's great fertility, there's good nutrient and
mineral balance, okay? So I say lamb's quarter,
it's a quinoa, it's related to quinoa. If you've
ever seen the grain quinoa, and there's many other
names, we call it lamb's quarter; if you look
under a lamb's quarter, you'll see what it looks
like, but it's, in French, we call it "chou gras"
or fat cabbage. It's a delicious green; you could,
I eat it all the time, and I see it in the spring,
and that one indicates your soil is really good,
it's a great place. So if you see that one coming
up, that's a great spot to put your garden,
okay? See, and then I'm sure a lot of people at
home, they don't have your however many years of
expertise on plants and everything, but lucky for
everybody, we do have this new technology with the
phone. I'm sure Android has a similar thing, but
now you can take a picture, and it'll actually
tell you what that plant is, right? It won't
always tell you what it's an indicator of, but
what I'm saying is then you, everybody at home,
can do their own research, so you don't have to
be as knowledgeable as you in the amount of years
that you spent. But if you see, like, observing,
okay, I have this plant here, nothing grows there,
what, first off, what is this plant? Take out your
phone, click, oh, that's what it is, okay.
I would say, if you know, that's a great
solution. If you're looking, why do I have,
you're, if you ask, why do I have that plant,
you're really thinking correctly. Well, I'm
just saying it because I edited your observation
course, so I know you kind of, that's exactly the
observation. So you see it, you take a picture of
it, you identify it, and I would say, if it
says dandelion, type in, do a search, put in
"dandelion indicator," okay, you'll come up with
our video, yeah, he probably will. Let's say you,
I don't know, chickweed, sure, you have other
plants, put that plant and write "an indicator
of" or "what is this plant an indicator of,"
and there are, government often has put series
of things, especially for weeds, they're great
indicators. Weeds are great indicators of, often,
it's a specific mineral lack, yes, so it will say,
or, in many cases, it's also drainage, so your
soil is too wet, or it's, do they provide you with
alternatives, like, okay, if this is the problem,
then maybe plant this with it to remedy that, or?
No, they're going to, usually the indicator
is also the one that can solve that problem,
oh, okay, okay. So if you have, like I said,
with dandelion, the root will go and access, so
the root itself, because it's such a deep taproot,
will access, it'll go down until it finds a layer
of, um, whatever, and it will get enough calcium,
bring it up into the leaves. If you don't
cut, just mow it, you mow it, you take those
pieces of leaf that are really calcium and
other mineral-rich, put it back on the soil,
it'll put it in, if you don't rake it. So you've
got to chop it, drop it, and let it decompose,
and that cycle, which is what we did at
the farm, so because we'd mow on occasion,
and we had sheep as well, so the sheep would do
that, would eat, they would recycle it, and then
their manure became much, much richer in calcium,
and that calcium was returned, and gradually,
um, in fact, the sheep, they selectively ate
the flowers off, and they'd leave the leaves,
and they leave everything else, no, they would
eat the leaves too, but if there were flowers,
they would absolutely, that's what they like, oh,
yellow spot, I'm going for it, I'm going for it.
And then, I, the only reason why I guess I have
a little bit of insight is because I edited the
Master Class for you, and specifically that
observation course, but I feel like, out of
all your courses, that's one that's probably
overlooked a lot. Why or how did you even come
upon, like, oh, you know what, like, let me take
a step back and, oh, how come that is doing that,
and then taking notes? Because, not a shot at
you, but you're very scatterbrained in real life,
so how do you focus on something like,
where it goes over so many people's heads,
and then the normal things that a normal
person would pick up on, you're just
like a robot, and it goes right over your head?
That, I mean, part of it came to, one, growing up,
I was very curious, so I would spend a lot of
time just observing, just watching. I can remember
spending, but you know how that's, like, weird for
most people, like, you're just, I don't think so,
I think it's curiosity, Pops. Someone will come,
and they'll be, like, oh, I'm a big fan, whatever,
and they're wearing, like, a red shirt, and then
they'll come and see you, like, I don't know, 20
minutes later, and it's like you've never met the
person before, but you're telling me you can look
at a lawn, and you're, like, okay, well, why is
that? Well, that's 'cause I've been very observant
of the natural world, I've been curious, I'm not
as, I mean, I'm not as curious about people, okay,
so I'll remember their names often, but I won't,
like, it's just focusing. I focused all my life,
especially then, you know, growing up, I was very
curious about nature, and I looked at it, and
then becoming a biologist, where you're trained
to observe, okay, so that helped a lot. I mean,
you know, I spent months up in the tower just
observing, previous podcast, so that reinforced
how to observe, what am I looking for, anything.
And, like I said, in the observation course,
observation, one of the most valuable things
observing is to know what is your baseline,
what is the normal situation of your property, of
your lawn, of your garden. Once you get that kind
of fixed in your head, this is how things are now,
yeah, so if there's any little bit up or down,
you're, like, oh, why, oh, why, why is this
appearing, why is this insect showing up, oh,
why is this plant this year coming up all over
the place? So that's the value of observing,
is you have your baseline, you know what the
normal situation is, and in some cases, you're
observing your soil is getting better, so, look,
these plants are less, maybe this insect is less,
you're getting more of this happening, so those
are the, oh, okay, now, and then it just becomes
practice. What you learned there, you can take it
and put it somewhere else in your property, yeah.
So for dandelions, it was just, I mean, I was
observant, but by then I had, I had been working
on several projects, and it's, like, wow, we
got a lot of this, what is, and there were,
there are some really good resources out there to
talk about indicator plants, and it makes sense,
an indicator, not just plant, could be an insect,
could be a disease, and it could be an animal,
they are there when the conditions are ideal or
are right, they appear, change the conditions, and
all of a sudden, huh, they disappear. So, like,
we put basalt, if we had just done that, we would
already have seen dandelions change, not changing
anything else, but then, because we returned
all the organic matter, all the clippings,
anything to the soil, that, that speeds it up.
And then, do you do one thing at a time, so that
you have enough of a time to see a difference or
a change, kind of did it all, and, okay, so you
can have the timeframe, you know, nature's not
in a hurry, it's like, nature's timeframe,
um, we're in between two glacial periods,
we have about 10,000 years, and it's been 10,000
years since the last glacier, like, you know what,
we're due for another one, and then the last
100,000 years, so it's, like, 100,000 years,
no big deal, you know, even 10,000 years, we think
10,000 years, like, that seems like all of human,
all of human history, well, we've been around for
longer than that, but, so nature isn't in a hurry,
so, but we can always speed up, or you make things
work faster or slower, it's really just up to us
and basically on our knowledge, how, what do
we know about this, some of it is just trial
and error, just try something, I mean.
So often people, I just try something,
that kind of leads me to a historical context for
plants, so one of the best examples I saw was when
the settlers first settled, and there were people
here, but when the settlers were moving in, they
were looking for indicator plants, yeah, and the
one that was kind of the most used, at least for
temperate climate in North America, eastern North
America, was to look for black walnut, and because
black walnut had kind of specific requirements
where it grew best, it grew best on a deep soil,
meaning a soil that's, you could go down quite
a bit to the water table, so that's a deep soil,
it was growing on well-drained, fertile soil, so
that's kind of, like, hmm, I want to grow crops,
where would I grow it, oh, okay, a deep,
well-drained, fertile soil, so they were looking
for those trees as indicators of a great place
to, let's clear this area, let's plant our crops.
But how would, did they know that before coming,
or they would observe, like, what the people here
were doing? I mean, there are walnuts in Europe,
so it's a similar niche that they would occupy,
okay, so they probably had an idea, and then
they saw, hey, here's a different kind of walnut,
I mean, common sense, like you said, trial
and error, yeah, the first person that does,
but you know, if they said, wow, where these trees
grow, look at, I mean, the soil is amazing here,
yeah, so it didn't take that long for people to
go, let's just look for where these trees grow,
ideally something where there's a rocky hillside
or something rocky, and we put the house higher,
'cause often those trees grew in floodplains,
like, infrequent floodplains, 'cause it's okay,
you could have a flood once in a while, just
not every year for those trees, and so, yeah,
it was common-sense observation, people did
a lot more when your life, do you think we've
kind of gotten away from that with, I guess,
TV and whatever, it's, we're not really, like,
for me, what you say in the course makes so much
sense, like, you're going to go buy a property,
how many of us go online, and you search, and
you're, like, okay, this meets my price range,
budget, whatever, and you show up, and you
look at the house, and you're, like, yep,
this is, this is it, you take maybe one walk
on the property, but you're, like, I'm sold,
this is, like, and it's winter, sure, sure.
So you don't see any of it, but now, that's
what it is, and you've bought this, or you've
committed this life savings or whatever, and
the next spring, when you take full hold of your
new property, oh, well, look, I got this here, and
I got that there, so I guess what I'm getting at
is, if you learn that one crucial little element,
oh man, how much time, money, effort, like, it's
one of those things where I agree with you, I feel
like it's overlooked. I've had people contact
me and ask, and when I looked, not even going,
but when I looked even from Google Earth, yeah, I
said, it's true, I didn't even think of that, you
could definitely do that now, yeah, you could, you
could do a lot with, I mean, if you understand how
to read a map, especially a photo map like Google
Earth, you could get so much information from it,
and when I looked, I thought, you want to put an
orchard here, I have suggested to people, you know
what, I mean, I'll be honest with you, if this was
me, I would sell it and look for a better place,
because, as he says, you may have bought it
because the house, I'm just saying, because I
feel like that's what I would have done, that's
what, you know, that's what you're thinking.
But if you're thinking my primary purpose for
this piece of land will be to put in an orchard,
yeah, then the first thing you should consider
is, is this site a great site for an orchard?
And he's talking from experience, because you've
gone on record, you've said it multiple times,
the orchard that you have, if you could go back,
would you have bought that same plot of land to
do what you wanted to do? It's not the best site
for an orchard, yeah, like, we know historically,
the best orchard sites in our part of the
country is sugar maple hillsides, okay, okay,
because sugar maple here are the best indicators
of a fertile, we don't have really black walnut,
but sugar maple is second to, we don't
have any of that near the orchard, yeah,
the ones we have are the ones I planted, sure,
I don't see any of that, but, um, sugar maple
needs a well-drained, fertile hillside, they
don't grow really in the floodplain even, okay.
So that's perfect conditions, so you'll use that
as an indicator, and all the historical orchards
in our part of the country is on hillsides that
had sugar maple, and they just take sugar maple
out, put in orchard, and there you go. So you
can use certain trees as indicators, you don't
have to go as specific as looking at dandelions,
because dandelions are fine for indicators of,
for example, hey, is my lawn going to do well?
Well, if you have really a lot of dandelions,
you might not have a very good lawn, because
they can tolerate more shade than grass does,
okay, 'cause that was a thing, you know, now
when I look, where is dandelion in the orchard,
yeah, maybe it's usually on the
north side of the biggest trees,
it just happens to be a little too shady for
the grass, and it creates openings in the grass,
something will grow, and they come in, okay, yeah.
And if you freak out about, oh, I get all these
dandelions because my neighbor has them, and
they go to seed, and they're falling, look,
let me make something pretty darn clear, it's not
because your neighbor knocked in a thousand seeds
on your property, because every soil has what's
called a seed bank, it's like a bank of seeds,
you don't know what's there, but as soon as
you disturb the soil, you will see, hey, didn't
we, we didn't get all of a sudden all these seeds,
no, they're in the seed bank of the soil, which,
if you think about it, makes sense, because it's
just years and years and years of accumulating
and accumulating. Somebody did a study, they call
a quadrat, it's like a 1-meter-by-1-meter square
that they threw just randomly someplace, and
they were sampling the seeds that fell on that
quadrant, nobody put seeds, it just, they come in,
birds are going by, and a seed falls, a deer walks
by, and a seed falls off, you know, the fox and
everything else, and the wind blowing the seeds.
So they were counting, that's 110 seeds per year
on a one-square-meter quadrant, imagine what,
what would you get in nine years, you'd have a
thousand seeds fell on that, a thousand seeds,
like, how many seeds do you put in a square meter,
and that's accumulating every year for decades and
decades, so think of it, does your seed bank,
or does your soil bank, have enough seeds,
when the conditions are right, that, so that
seed will exhibit and will come up? And now,
if you put pesticides on it, does that affect,
like, they, amount of, I guess, layer or, uh,
it won't kill the seeds, okay, it only affects
them if they go to germinate, okay, okay.
So as long as, like, seeds can be dormant for
hundreds of years, in fact, people are finding
where they are grazing animals on a rotational
basis, closer to what the bison would do,
when the bison roamed all the plains, when, and
there again, when it was the time of the bison,
there were seeds deposited for thousands of
years, and even though we've plowed that soil,
and we've tilled that soil, and whatever, there's
still a big seed bank. So when you stop tilling,
you let grasses come up, and you graze them
rotationally on a long, a fairly long rest period,
when the soil gets to sufficient fertility, all
of a sudden, you get these grasses that show up,
that's, like, I didn't, I've haven't seen this
seed for how long, and so, when the conditions
are right, the plant will show up, and it's not
like it just came because there's none around,
but they show up because they're in the seed bank.
And then, remember when we did the ant video?
Yeah, well, ants are a great mover of seeds,
because let's say the ants are tunneling down,
you know, 2 feet in their ant hole, well, 2
feet down, there's seeds there, been there for
thousands of years, yeah, hundreds at least, you
know, 'cause it's usually about a quarter-inch a
year the soil comes up, so they're taking the sand
from down below, and they're bringing it back up,
sand and seeds, so that's how often you get a
seed that comes from, it's been covered, and it's,
you know, there hasn't been new seeds of that
species put down in, let's say, 100 years, yeah,
but below that level, and so often what they're
finding is where you have a chipmunk burrow,
where you have a gopher, where you have a fox den,
where a groundhog has dug, anyone that dug down
deep enough and brings that soil, now you have the
conditions where that seed is back at the surface,
and now it can exhibit itself, so ants
are also a great one to move seeds around.
I guess then, yeah, following suit from plants
to animals, uh, the other big indicator, we did
a video, but not an Indicator series video, but
was always your caterpillar, like, I know you've
talked about it on YouTube, there's a video there,
or two videos on it, but I remember that was,
I guess, your lowest point, where you had already
started observing, but I guess my question is,
what took so long for it to click and observe why
you were getting that caterpillar? 'Cause it was,
if I'm being honest, I remember it was a couple
years that, I guess, I don't know, you must have,
you obviously saw them, but you didn't, uh,
heed your own advice and be, like, hm, why?
One of the things, we would get them, and
I refused to treat, I could have treated,
I could have put, and we were organic at the time,
so I could have put an organic insecticide, but
I just, I just didn't want to be killing as one
of the solutions to getting the orchard to grow,
'cause they got pretty bad at one point, yeah, I
know we've spoken about it before, but, like, that
too, I guess, provide more context, unfortunately
we can't show pictures, but they would monopolize,
like, I remember at least a third of some of
your trees, it was just covered in caterpillars,
more like a third of the orchard, they would
absolutely, yeah, but I'm saying per tree, and,
like, completely, uh, defoliate certain trees, no
leaves, it looked skeletal, there was just, like,
all the nests in the tree, and I remember
it was just dead caterpillar carcasses,
and it would go from one tree to the
next tree to the next tree, yeah.
So that was, they were also an indicator, but
that's what I'm saying, so, but why, I guess my
question, maybe I didn't, you didn't understand,
was why did it take so many years for you to,
I guess, cue in and be, like, oh, okay, this is,
like, the dandelion problem all over again? Right,
they were one that I can remember, like, that
was the one where it, they humbled me, they
absolutely, 'cause, again, sorry to cut you off,
but this was before the permaculture, yes, this
was when we had an organic mono apple orchard,
which we started with the, you know, there was
4,000 apple trees, and the caterpillars, first
few years, it was, like, okay, I can control,
I can go and cut the nests out, okay, that's
why you, yeah, I would cut them out, so it's,
like, okay, 100 nests, I'd go along, and I'd cut
them, and, okay, 100 was still quite, quite a lot,
because a lot of times they were pretty high,
so, and I could do it, but every three years,
there's a big year, and every 30 years, there's
an eruption year, it's like a mega-big year,
it's like big year squared, and so we had
one of those years almost about 30 years ago,
and it's, like, wow, that absolutely humbled me.
Because now I realized, I did a quick, uh, like,
extrapolated, I walked down, like, two rows and
counted how many nests of caterpillars there are,
and I realized, there's no way, like, there's
thousands of caterpillar nests, I wouldn't be
able to get to everyone, cut it, or if I did,
I mean, I would be cutting for, yeah, yeah,
you're spending weeks there, so then it just,
for practical point of view, there was no way
I could get rid of them all, and I didn't want to
spray, so that was basically, you know, sometimes
things in life happen, and you have to
ask yourself, is this happening to me,
or is this happening for me? And it's humbling
if it happens for you, in that you have to be
willing to learn the lesson, and that was
a, that was, like, okay, and it humbled me
enough to actually ask the caterpillar, it's,
like, okay, you're here, I see you're here,
what are you trying to teach me?
Because, in fact, it was this book
by Sir Albert Howard, and I had been reading
it, and I'd been studying it for several years,
it's called "The Soil and Health," and he's got
another one called "An Agricultural Testament,"
and in there he says pests and disease are
not the problem, they are actually pointing to
the problem. So it was, like, if I understand
this book, 'cause you could read a lot of things,
you can watch a lot of videos, you can hear a lot
of things, and you know superficially, you know,
mentally, that that's what's going on, but it's
never impacted your life, it's never affected you,
where now you've got to face what it says, and I
was in that moment where it was, okay, if you're,
if that's true, that the pests and disease are not
the problem but pointing to the problem, I ended
up going to the caterpillar and saying, okay, you
got me, you know, you've humbled me, I'm willing
to accept, what are you trying to teach me?
And I mean, I remember I was at the back in
the Spartan, and it was, like, well, you've
created a buffet for me, and it was, you know,
and if your caterpillar talks to you, or you
think, well, this kind of in my head, but it was,
it really caught me off guard, I was, I thought,
I'm open to learning why, but it's, like, bang,
you get the answer, you want the answer,
here's the answer. So hearing the answer and
then thinking all the consequences to changing
that, you know, you said, why didn't you just,
it was, like, here we have a, by then we had about
3,000-tree organic orchard, and the caterpillar's
telling you, you created a buffet, so you're an
indicator insect telling me that I've created a
buffet, I mean, well, you didn't, the guy before
you did, but I bought it, then I left it that way,
so it was, okay, now it's on me.
I created a buffet, in that it's a
perfect situation for the caterpillar, that's the
only thing that it, like, well, it's not the only
thing, but it's, it loves mainly, yeah, and that's
all there is. Well, you had other trees planted,
especially at the back where you're talking about,
did they even go onto those other trees, or? No,
the ones that we planted were in the hedgerow,
they weren't even in the rows at that point,
okay, but there were no caterpillars on those? No,
okay, so, yeah, that's kind of proof of concept,
if, but I mean, I understood right away that
the problem was that it was all the same plant,
and that if that plant was amenable and liked
by that insect, yeah, there's nothing here in
any way to stop it, so it was, like, huh, yes, and
it was every variety, it was just the apple trees,
'cause I remember there was no discrimination,
cultivars, and they were all liked, it was not,
like, oh, I don't really, no, no, they liked them
all, and the more the apple tree was stressed,
the more they liked it, it's, like, they
pile on, and that's what nature does.
If something is weakened, you know, if a, I don't
know, lion, if a lion gets its leg injured, oh,
well, all of a sudden, you know what, the flies
will start coming, and the flies bring disease,
and this and that, and it just starts a snowball,
and next thing you know, yeah, that lion's not
with the pride anymore, so the same thing, this
was a perfect condition for apple, but it was a
perfect condition for the tent caterpillar. So
for me to swallow and realize, okay, I need to
move away from monoculture, yeah, that meant what,
probably the logical thing would have been to say,
okay, sell this, we didn't, we didn't do that,
what did we do, we do that, or what did you do?
We started, eventually, we started a nursery,
so that we would have the trees to replant,
and in the meantime, started cutting down
trees, which, because I didn't know at the time,
I could have overgrafted a third of the trees,
and we ripped them all out, we got them all out,
and then replanted the whole thing, yep, with
a trio system and nitrogen fixers, and I took
a year off school, two fruit trees, and, yeah.
So anyway, that's why, that's why I'm so adamant
that, you know, get the Master Class, 'cause all
the lessons we learned, they're all in there,
and you'll save so much time and money that it's,
like, that's why, I don't know when this is going
to come out, but I really want to do that YouTube
video of maybe me planting two trios, just to show
everybody, just purely off editing the Master
Class, what somebody like me and everybody else
would be able to do with that information,
because it's packed full of, yeah, all the,
all the mistakes and everything, all the money
you've spent, and it's really, you put everything
into that, yeah. So every problem, every insect or
plant, can be a learning experience, yeah, if you
stop looking at them as, oh, I got this problem,
yeah, think of it as, I have this indicator,
it's not a natural shift, but as soon as you
adopt that mindset, I agree, everything changes,
'cause now you're not looking at, how
do I treat this problem, you look at,
why do I have this problem, and what is it
trying to teach me, and then when you accept
what it is trying to teach you, and you make the
correction, it's basically, like, the question,
and now you go find the answer, that's all it is.
And the answers aren't that hard to find nowadays,
especially now, that's what I'm saying, especially
nowadays, versus when you were doing it, okay,
you had gone to school, and you had done
all kinds of, but, like, one good example,
we're talking about insects, let's talk about
aphids, and aphids, I always, I'm excited when,
you know, I never even knew what aphids were
before doing all this, so we're putting context,
many people may not, sure, you can have them on
your houseplants, you can easily have them on your
plants outdoors, they're a, basically, a sucking
insect, it's, like, a lice kind of, yeah, sort of,
just these little, they can be almost translucent,
little balls of liquid, when I was filming them,
some were red, some were brown, depending on
what they're eating and drinking, but they're
basically just sucking insects that are trying
to get the plant to overwinter successfully,
I always look at it, 'cause they'll always be
on the tender tips, usually, that are growing
too fast, and they're a perfect indicator of
improper protein synthesis, that's really what,
that's their biggest role, protein, in that
sense, usually it's nitrogen cycle is messed up.
And so it means you're putting fertilizer, you're
putting too much fertilizer, you're putting too
unbalanced of a fertilizer, often the case is
you're just putting a nitrogen fertilizer, uh, but
any fertilization with nitrogen can cause that, so
somebody could put manure, you could put compost,
and get aphids show up, so aphids are a great
indicator, they're just trying to slow that excess
growth down, so that the plant will actually,
like, today would be a great example, because it's
the middle of winter, yeah, and it's really cold,
well, any plant that grew too fast, too tender,
too late into the season, those branch tips will
just be burnt right back, they won't survive,
so the aphids are there trying to slow it down.
I'll give you one of the best examples I saw
for aphids was when we were doing a tour in New
Zealand, and I was just talking about these things
and talked about, I guess, indicators, and so I
had mentioned about Sir Albert Howard, how the
pests and disease aren't the problem, so one lady
came at the end, and she said, I have a bunch of
lemon trees in the yard, but I have one lemon tree
that is loaded with aphids, said, okay, you were
saying how, you know, they're not the problem,
so, okay, I'll just try and diagnose what's the
problem. So my first reaction is, okay, they're
not the problem, they're showing us something, so
why does that lemon tree have an excess or a lot
of aphids, because there shouldn't be any, but you
can have a few, so I was asking her, I said, okay,
do you fertilize that lemon tree? No, alright, uh,
do you give it compost? No, no compost, okay,
uh, so I'm looking for in my head, thinking,
going over the checklist, yeah, my checklist
of what are the sources of excess nitrogen.
So I said, okay, how long have you been at that
property, because then I was thinking, well,
sometimes if you had a manure pile, and then
it was bought, and it was put into residential,
but that spot where the manure pile was would
still have, for years later, might still have
an excess of nitrogen, so I said, with, oh,
no, she says, we've been here for 25 years,
and it was just an open field, huh, so
I'm thinking, wow, I'm running out of,
I remember thinking, I'm, there's something, but
I said, I don't, I can't imagine what it could be,
and at that point, her husband, who was kind
of a little bit in the background there, says,
well, uh, dear, he's, he's not exactly wrong, we
both kind of look at him, like, huh, what are you
talking? He says, well, you know, I get up before
you in the morning, and he says, it's still dark,
so I go out, open the window, open the door, and
that lemon tree is the closest to the back door,
and he says, that's usually where I go and
relieve myself first thing in the morning.
Okay, so I'm thinking, alright, so I said, uh,
how many doses do you think you give it a day? He
said, no, he said, pretty, at least 300, oh, there
it is, I said, okay, and the numbers work out to,
a normal fruit tree only needs the equivalent dose
of nitrogen through urine of about 20 urinations,
how do you know all this, you looked it up?
I remember going through the numbers, and it,
you know, a tree would need, I don't remember what
the number was, and how much is in a one dose,
in actual amount of nitrogen, and thinking, huh,
okay, so it's had 15 times more, is that right,
300, uh, no, 15 times more nitrogen
than it actually needs, so I said,
well, don't have to look any further, I said,
there's, there's the, see, that's the why.
So I said, it's not a bad thing to do, but I said,
just spread it out over all the trees in the yard,
and you probably take a walk, they probably
all could get, and that would be okay,
none of them would be overdosed, but that one
lemon tree was absolutely overdosed, so that kind
of, I guess, it's, like, maybe that's why I like
shows about the inspectors, it's that asking why,
like, the reverse engineering, yeah, why, why
is that happening? So that was a good example,
and so I don't look at it as the problem, I look
at it as an indicator, and when you adopt that,
you go, okay, so I should ask why and
start digging a little deeper, why is that,
and it could be a change you have in that spot, it
could be a change in how you deal with that plant,
it could be, I've seen cases where it was just
too much pruning, and now the tree just thinks
it's going to go back into juvenile mode and grow
excessively, so there's several reasons that are
possible, and go through them and figure it out.
And I guess you do the same, because, again, you
don't spray, so with diseases and stuff, like, on
the leaves and the fruit, is that also indicating,
I guess, some mineral deficiency, or? It's
usually, it's mineral, yeah, in disease,
it's, I mean, most insect and disease are because
of a mineral, either imbalance, 'cause minerals
have to be in a certain ratio, balance one to
another, or complete deficiency, because you also,
you do spray, but you don't spray pesticides
on the tree, you're spraying, like, whey, yeah,
whey is a cheese byproduct, and it's a great thing
to add, because, but do you do that to every tree,
or you're doing that, you're going and
you're looking, you're, like, okay, these,
no, I just do it to all of them, okay, actually,
I don't spray the nitrogen fixers, 'cause it's,
like, no, they don't need, I mean, they could
get it, but I just put it for the fruit trees,
uh, yeah, it provides the equivalent of
a fungicide spray, not that it kills,
and that's why I use it, because it doesn't kill
the fungus, which is what fungicides are made to
do, but it creates, it outcompetes the fungus
for a spot on the leaf or on the tree, okay.
So because it outcompetes, it takes up
the spot that the disease would take up,
and at the same time, it is a great foliar
feed, so I can tell it's feeding the tree,
because if I put, especially about five or six
doses, I actually see a change in the leaves,
the leaves are bigger, they're shinier, uh, they
just look healthier, they're better fed than they
were without anything, 'cause we haven't used
a fertilizer in 15 years in the permaculture
orchard, so it's that, it is a feeding, uh, not
a huge amount, but it's significant enough that
it shows up on the leaves. Diseases is also an
indicator, so, um, each disease can indicate,
and you'd have to go back to whatever disease
you've got, but there is no disease that can't
be eliminated with the proper nutrition.
And I wonder if that's going to be a thing
where you could take a picture of the fruit,
and it'll be able to diagnose what that disease
is? I'm sure it's a matter of, it's a matter of,
probably less than two years, there's going to be,
you think? Yeah, that, I've heard discussions
on it, that would be cool, that's, like, where
there'll be, like, a, it's like a phone, but it's
a thing where you'll be able to, don't take, but
I'm not even saying to take, like, another thing,
I'm saying to use what you already have, and just
take a picture, and it comes up for everybody,
like, oh, this is this, and at least then you
have a name, it will, yeah, it'll be, like, an
in-the-field diagnosis of, here's the minerals,
and because every plant puts out a spectrum of
light, it's, like, it shines in a certain way,
and based on what minerals are lacking, it
shines higher in one spectrum than another,
and by being able to read that and having a big
enough database of, okay, when it's showing this,
it's lacking that, okay, and then they just, it's
basically, it's, like, the plant identification
things, yeah, but it's for insects and disease
and the nutritional state of the plant.
See, that's going to be a game-changer, it's
exciting to see, like, all the stuff that's going
to come out within, I would say, at least 5 years,
conservatively, let's, closer than that, 'cause
it's, I'm not sure if they're doing the beta
testing now, but, yeah, it's going to be released,
uh, that's cool. And that will be, imagine you
take this, let's say it costs, I presume it'll be,
like, $1,000 at least, you know, there's no way
it'll be less expensive than a phone, but still,
as a tool that will give you precise information
as to, why do I have scab in my apple tree, mhm,
you take it, you scan the leaf, let's say, because
it's usually best on leaves, not fruit, so you'd
scan your leaf, and it'll say, oh, you have a
cobalt deficiency, and scab is well correlated
with cobalt deficiency, cobalt, like, how much
cobalt? Cobalt, if you're deficient in cobalt,
it's grams per acre, where do you get cobalt?
Well, it's, there's rocks that are high in cobalt,
and you can just, like, mine, yeah, but it's
put into a liquid, and then you would spray it,
'cause it's so easy to overdose, so it would be,
you know, it's, see, now get a little complex.
Imagine you take a, you know, like, a one-gallon
container, and you have enough for 50 acres, okay,
of orchard, to spray, to give them those few
grams of cobalt they need, so you just send up
the drone, and it'll do it for you, absolutely,
but think of how game-changing that is, because,
totally, we now know that every insect and every
disease, again, it comes, I mean, this isn't new,
Sir Albert Howard, this book is 1947, "The Soil
and Health," yeah, so it came out years ago,
and that information still is true, we have
since got tools that will measure much better,
but his observational skills were
there, that, you know what, you just
need a good balance of minerals and organic
matter, and you will eliminate the problem.
And so, for what he would use, and his way of
solving it was simple, he would make compost,
and he would add layers of mud when he made the
compost, and that was important, because the mud
is basically a liquid, a semi-liquid rock dust,
so the minerals, so you have the organic matter,
and you have the minerals, you put that, and
you get rid of, like, your plant will not be
susceptible, and it's not, oh, yeah, now you're
fixing the problem, it's not a Band-Aid effect,
and that's so important, because all the industry
wants you to do is keep buying Band-Aids, well,
yeah, that, buy a Band-Aid.
I remember a friend of mine,
when we did a project, he said, you know, a
capitalist dream is to create a product that
costs a dime to make, that sells for a dollar, and
that leaves a habit behind, and I thought, wow,
that really is, you know, tobacco, pesticides,
fertilizers, they're perfect, what do you do,
it costs you 10 cents to make a quantity, it costs
you a dollar to buy it, what's the recurring,
and it leaves a habit behind, meaning, oh, I used
this to treat the Band-Aid, so it worked today for
a year, a season, or whatever, maybe a season,
'cause a lot of times you have to apply once,
treat, but two times or three times or four times
in the year, I mean, it's evil, but it's smart,
that's the exact word, that's always what
I'm, it's, that's an evil system, it's, like,
that's just cigarettes, all the addictive things.
But you see, those are addictive things for the
soil, you've never solved, you've never given the
plant what it needs to have a fully functioning
immune system, and so you're always relying on
just treating the symptom, kick the can, kick
it down the road, kick it down the road, kick it,
it's, like, a country's debt, you know, it's okay,
kick it, the kids will have to figure it out,
so just kick it to them and keep pushing it,
we don't say, hey, you know what, if we went for
10 years of budget surplus, no, we wouldn't do
that. Well, the one thing that, now, I don't know,
I guess I feel like, personally, I see a changing,
I don't know if it's because I'm more involved
in the niche with you, but I definitely am
starting to see a change, like, even my friends,
people are tending to try, I know prices are very
expensive nowadays, but if they can afford
it, they're trying to go the organic route,
and people are even trying to learn to grow home
gardens now, and I feel like 10 years ago, from
what I was seeing, that wasn't really a thing,
people would just go to the grocery store and
just buy whatever they had, but it's definitely
positive to see a little shift happening.
Another tool that will shift that even more is,
I don't know if it's going to be as a plug-in to
your smartphone, okay, but it will be a spectral
reader, again, so it reads the spectrum of light
coming off of fruit and vegetables, yeah, imagine
going, you buy from the store, yeah, something
you bought, so imagine going to the grocery store
and scan your thing, and you can see how healthy
that is, here's, I want to get some celery,
you scan it, and it tells you, you know, this
is below average, yeah, maybe try the next one
over, maybe from a different farm, or maybe from
a different store, yeah, and that will, what that
will bring the power back to the people, wait, is
this one of your ideas, or somebody actually doing
that? This, yeah, this is, it's, this is already
being tested too, so it's, idea, it's amazing.
Could you imagine now, but it's a question of
bringing the price down, well, that's it,
they need to make it accessible enough,
like, that, could do that, if you just had one
out of 50 people scanning and going, oh, wow,
I found some carrots, look, these carrots from,
scored a 95 or whatever, Carrot Man Farms or
whatever show up, Carrot Man Farms, I don't know
if it exists, I'm just giving a name that I'm
making up, but imagine these carrots from Carrot
Man Farms score above 95%, and the crazy thing is,
we know now that between, let's say you had three
batches of carrots, right, from the store, three,
just three different places they come from, sure,
one can be average, meaning it has an average
level of nutrients, one can have just 10% of the
nutrients, and one can be 10 times higher than
average, so between the low and the high, there
can be a hundred times, we're not talking 100%.
So something like selenium in carrots, you
might have a hundred times more selenium, say,
well, that must be bad, no, if you don't have
enough selenium, you're deficient, it could be,
how much zinc is in these carrots, wow, it scores,
like, right up at the roof for zinc, and so,
if you could just buy your shopping, basically
say, yeah, no, this, I agree, this sounds, like,
I would get one of those, what would the farmers
do then? It's, like, my carrots can't sell, like,
people are scanning, and they won't buy my
carrots, so it's, like, well, get your stuff
in order, yeah, yeah, and you better start giving
them some rock dust, better start, or stop, well,
stop with the pest, yeah, stop the Band-Aids.
And so that will be a way, and the farmer,
obviously, will be able to measure their own
produce, so they'll go, you know what, from that,
this deserves this amount of price, versus the way
I was, my neighbor's doing it or whatever, yeah,
they could charge, now you could charge more, or,
but I feel, I feel like the people would pay more,
I definitely, I 100%, if you're faced with,
you eat one carrot from this group that had 10
times more, yeah, what does that mean, you eat
one carrot, and the other guy's got to eat 10,
exactly, like, how, how can you even,
you think there, I can eat 10 carrots,
okay, like, obviously I care about the price
difference, but if it's anything reasonable, sure,
I'm taking that one all day. I mean, we've known
this for quite a while, like, eggs, for example,
eggs can have many times more vitamin D, vitamin
E, you know, selenium, all these different omega
fatty acids, why? Well, 'cause the ones that, the
chickens never seen outside, obviously vitamin D
is going to be low, unless it's supplemented as
a synthetic vitamin D, chicken that's outside,
that's exposed, the sunlight naturally, through
the, it goes through the feathers onto the skin,
and it actually absorbs vitamin D from the
sun, mhm, it's, yeah, okay, no, I didn't
know about that, that sounds interesting.
That, those, there will be indicators of
deficiencies, and especially when we can
measure it more easily, that will make a
massive difference, I agree, like, we need to be
able to know what's going on, so this whole thing
about treating the condition, hopefully we're on
the last era of it, okay, that would be great,
if the idea of people, oh, I'm going to treat the
symptoms, no, you treat the, find, go right to the
source, oh, and, but that too, more people
are just becoming aware of it, there's more
information being shared online, right, and I see
it being positive, like I said, I didn't even know
about that other thing, so if that's in the, if
this episode catches a chord for you, and you go,
I didn't know that, share it with somebody, that,
like, I take it for granted he does, and that's
why, because that's why I like having Zachary here
with me, because I need things that, it's, like,
well, yeah, everybody knows this, no, I hate that,
I'm going to be in the comments, this kid is just
plugging the courses, but I'm doing his course
editing, especially, I would say, the observation
course, out of all of them, I feel like it's super
slept on, because what you actually share in that,
you can apply to so many different sources
in life in general, in a potential project,
a property, all kinds of different things.
And, like we said at the beginning of the show,
he's not in tune with people, but for some reason,
it just clicks with him for other aspects, yeah,
so let's stop treating the underlying, and
the symptoms, and start really addressing why,
and the underlying, if we do the symptoms, we're
not getting to the root of the problem, we'll just
kick it down the road, so we need to, and most
of it is nutritional, majority of the cases,
and you think, well, I'm feeding my, yes, but
you're not feeding them with what the plant needs,
you're feeding them with what the salesperson is
telling you, but is the plant telling you that?
The plant is telling you, the animal is telling
you, the insect is telling you, like Sir Albert
Howard used to say, the birthright of every plant
and animal is health, they should be absolutely
healthy, when they're properly fed or nourished,
their immune system works perfectly, and insects
and disease and pests do not, cannot get attached
to them, it's, like, well, no, yes, it's not new,
it's been around for a hundred years.
And I bet Sir Albert Howard, in his day,
had that as common knowledge from every farmer,
that, oh, you know what, 'cause they were,
they did, they weren't up in their tractors, not
able to see that, oh, you know what, I got a spot
here of a patch here, why do I have a patch here
of this plant all of a sudden, or these insects
are here, huh, so they were far more observant.
Well, actually, I think this might be the most
informative podcast we've done so far, I learned
quite a bit, and on that note, uh, good job, Pops.
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