What your thoughts on Ecotea

Interesting

Seedman on the other forum has been using this for several years. In particular they spray it on flax straw and it breaks down nicely over winter and he says it's like wheat stubble in the spring. That intrigues me greatly.

I'd dearly love to get off the fungicide treadmill, and if we could reduce nitrogen and other inputs, that would be great too. From what I've read, there is evidence to suggest synthetic fertilizers are reducing our organic matter levels over time. That and fungicides are bad for them too. I agree that snake oil is snake oil. But I can't help but think our current methods are slowly losing their sustainability.

I don't appreciate the marketing BS that companies like Ecotea use, though.  "100% sustainable product" which is meaningless mumbo jumbo.

And for me the big holdup is always the logistics.  Even getting a hold of these products is difficult.  Then there's the application. I'm already running the sprayer nearly full time.  Trying to fit in another pass of this stuff is difficult.

Yeah, there so much microbe-level soil stuff that we don't understand, and might work in one area (or field) but bubkiss on another.

Pretty separate story, but figured I'd share because I thought it was cool to learn (and gave some credence to "even the microbiologists don't know whats going on with dirt").

Went to the Bayer yard north of Osler this summer to check out their phytobac system (pretty much just takes sprayer rinsate/chem and keeps spraying it onto dirt/straw mix and it breaks down the chem).

They were finding that as they used this pretty much tub of dirt/straw with their sprayer droppings over the (I think 2-3 years), they found the tub pretty much flourishing of microbes that broke down the chemicals way quicker than the first time they put chem into the bin. All in all, in biological side of things, it makes sense, you are putting food there and whatever can eat it is going to reproduce. Again, because there is Bayer money into using it, they can get more lab tests or whatnot done, which I thought was neat.

Asked them more about it and they mentioned one system that was set up in Texas that had been in use for however many seasons, and they were plotting out the trial to spread it out over an area (think it was just wild land/reclamation, not cropping land) to monitor it and see what goes on. Pretty much after that year(s) of spreading it, it started growing a native Texan flower that was like thought to be extinct. Soil tests were finding new microbes/bacteria in it that hadn't been discovered before, and some that were cited to being like the 'millions of years old' kind of microbes.

Again, pretty neat (no agenda to be pushed here), but all they were pretty much able to come back with is that if the conditions allow for proliferation of whatever you want, it'll come eventually, and you probably can't do much about it. lol

For a lot of the snake-oil type products, seems like there is always that one who has used it and swears by it and can use it, but might always be one of the 'your dirt was different than mine, so maybe thats why", but no one is going to have the bucks to look into it more than that unless the results of normal methods are lacking.

And yeah...100% sustainable = 100% suspicious in my books for sure. Usually if it is sustainable, it just means it would be sustainable until it goes mainstream and has demand.

Yeah, I think a lot of the broad-spectrum solutions to stuff is going to have its work cut out for it (and it has for probably the last 15+ years) as there are a whole lot of different ways to manage field/fertility/chem, so a 'one-size-fits-all' might be too much to ask for.

That being said I've seen some really cool stuff that has been tested which might be ground breaking yet, as long as it actually does what it needs to.
Think one of the cooler ones was applying CO2 in controlled form every handful of days to stimulate higher levels of photosynthesis to reduce crop days by like 5-7 days.
It might make a bigger difference in the parts of Saskatchewan where you have like 12hr of sun during most of the growing season. 5-7 days off growing time would mean you can grow varieties and crops that wouldn't be possible before.

Again, unless you are getting huge yield $ gains, or new variety income $ gains, it'll be uphill battle for a while for sure.

Yeah, for Biobeds, makes more sense in some areas for sure. Depending what is usually getting sprayed, some chems might tie up in soil several times longer than others.

As far as adjusting rate to spray out in the field would be ideal to cut down rate for sure, but there is still the ~20-30gal in the boom that'd need a solid rinse out that you might feel a bit sketchy spraying out if you dont have continuous rinse (not many do yet).

Can make more sense too if your typical filling spots are close to wells and that kind of stuff as theres always some runoff.

All in all, an option to be a bit more controlled with what comes out. Doesn't mean everyone would use it, but might be a bit of weight off your back when considering those same kind of spots that have no growth for a while.

The Bayer group here brought us in as kind of an outside group to get an idea on real life applications or how these biobeds would actually be used, and pretty much what I figured most of the value would be in them (in Canada, in current situations):
1. For RMs/Organizations that dump rinsate in the same yard/etc as filling. (Permanent Biobed structure - perhaps with burm for spraying out spray boom as well)
2. For farm yards that fill in the yard (permanent structure - perhaps with burm for spraying out booms as well. The bayer layout had a good structure for using the same burm to send rain water to seperate tank for spraying when not in use for dumping rinsate)
3. Portable/Forkliftable tote biobeds that can be dropped off in fill locations (or key locations) by farmer for relatively accessible rinsate disposal. (pretty much it'd be a kit that you chop off a tote top and add a tank/pump and a bit of plumbing. Maybe even solar powered pump, as is almost possible as a drip system if you had means to gravity feed the tote slow enough)
4. Portable tote biobed that'd be on water tender. Same idea as #3.

Again, it isn't just the biobed that would make a difference, it'd also be stuff like continuous rinsing, recirc (with flow back to rinsate tank or outlet to dump), or other means to get rid of all the rinsate out of the boom with the least amount of both human contact and handling.


All in all, it'll have to be cost effective (not spending $10k to lay out a concrete pad with geotextiling with fancy pump/tank and metering setup that'd run another $15K) and make sense.