00:00 Got a field report here today. It is a beautiful day. We actually had to put jackets on this morning with 49 50 degrees in June. I don't ever remember that in my lifetime. I'm sure it probably happened, 00:11 I just don't remember it. We got concept ag agritech, uh, we got Mr. Kyle here, and then we got Brandon. Brandon, uh, new agronomist. 00:18 So one of the things when Kyle come to us, um, we are doing things a little bit different with extreme ag, with concept a agritech this issue here in North Carolina is we wanted to figure 00:27 out what are some things we can do that we can incorporate across the whole farm, uh, that's relevant to the state that, 00:35 that you see with most growers. And uh, this is just standard. This is a 22,000 population right here. 00:42 This is 160, 180 bushel yield gold dry land is what we've got. And if it don't rain on this farm, we're probably going to be 1 30, 1 50. 00:52 That's just, that represents North Carolina pretty well. Yes. And uh, that's about right. Yep. So, you know, we, 00:57 we got some great soils and then we got some that's, you know, we're grateful to have and, um, and we make due of what we got. 01:05 So one of the things is feeding the microbial life of the plants and trying to enhance. And so we are looking at pgs, 01:13 we're looking at all kinds of stuff this year. Every year it's something different, but it seems like we've been focused on that. 01:19 Well then I got thinking about before we really influenced ourselves looking at PGRs, 01:24 we always wanted to figure out how we could get more zinc on the plants into the seed, whether we're seed treatments. I've treated seed with it. 01:30 I've tried all kinds of stuff with zinc. And when I mentioned this to you and Bert, uh, the agronomist for AG concept AgTech, he mo he brought up, 01:41 uh, product Z nine. Yes, sir. Which is a zinc product that you, you can put in furrow. Yes, sir. My concern was is, you know, 01:49 am I going to kill some of my biology in the plant, in the tank mix, adding that zinc? Cause that can happen easily. And so, 01:57 well this is a test plot. We need to see what's going to happen. I will tell you, Brandon and I went out and Kyle and Miss Danielle, 02:06 and we went out, walked out through the plant, the field and found the plots. We got it stripped up. It's a hundred acres in this section right here. 02:15 And we have 24 rows every 48 rows with a check that's untreated. It has zero zinc in the tank air. The only difference in this infer a mix is the zinc, the Z nine. 02:30 Honestly, I didn't expect to see much, but I will tell you, um, Brandon, it is kind of shocking what we've seen. Yeah. 02:40 And, uh, we've got pictures of 'em laid on the hood. We didn't have a whiteboard, but we had a Chevrolet. And being, it wasn't a dodge or a ram, I said, it's okay. 02:47 Just put 'em on the hood of their truck. It ain't, it ain't gonna hurt that Chevrolet truck, but it'll be all right. But, um, we laid 'em up there, and you'll be looking at the pictures here, 02:56 and the two plants on the right side are treated with Z nine. The two plants on the left side are untreated. These were at random and they were not from the same row. Um, Brandon, 03:10 you did not want to do that. You s Yeah, I watched you, you said no, I, these here and we got 'em out of a group where they was all consistent 03:19 plants. Yes. And so there was no handpick. I dug 'em up the best I could. One thing struck out was the, the root mass on adding to zinc. 03:30 Zinc feeds the microbial activity. That's the candy for the microbes is what I've always been taught. Looks like it works. Yeah. Um, so we got measuring after crown. 03:42 We're at 16.1 millimeters on that plant. This in here where we split it in half, we're at 14.3 millimeters. These are the treated, 03:56 now we're gonna go to the untreated. We're at 11 millimeters. Let's see if I can get a little more, 04:04 I can get 12 mil now about 12.1 millimeters right there on that one. Let's look at this one. 12.9, basically two millimeters. Mm-hmm. 04:14 Less diameter at the same growth stage. Yeah. Brandon, you're, you're agronomist. I'm a farmer. Yeah. So 04:24 I would've thought I, I wouldn't have thought I'd have seen anything. So does this correlate to yield? We 04:28 Won't know that until this fall. But, you know, starting these plants off healthy, getting that extra root mass, that extra stem diameter in there early on, 04:38 we're really kind of helping hedge our bets against some of these stressors that are gonna come in in the future mm-hmm. On this crop. You know, 04:45 when it turns off hot and dry, we've got more roots there to pick that water up, um, move more nutrients into these plants. 04:53 And you can kind of see just from the, from the health of the plant above the ground as well. There's a pretty big difference when you put 'em side by side. So I think, 05:03 I think, you know, we've started off on a really good foot for this crop and, uh, think if everything plays, plays nice the rest of the season, 05:11 we can see some pretty big differences here. You know, this is a lot of fun though, that we can only have one product here. That's a difference. The only variable is the Z is the Z nine. Um, 05:23 you know, and my goal has been trying to find something I could put in a seed treatment that played well with other stuff. Mm-hmm. 05:29 It didn't hurt my biology and I really hadn't found that product. I, I've used a bunch of products mm-hmm. Over the years with our seed treater, but, 05:38 um, we did put it in the tank like what Burt recommended. Yes, sir. And, um, the rate, I want to say a quart, does that sound right? 05:46 I believe you did a court, we've had some people do different rates kinda depending on their soil test or what they seeing tissue testing pass by. 05:51 I believe you did a court and like you said, it's um, you know, perfectly safe to run infer and we've blended it with all kinds of our other 05:58 products and yeah. No blend issues or anything like that. So it's very easy and safe to use. And I was asking you earlier, is this, 06:04 you know, a field that, you know, you've seen zinc deficiencies in the past and the soil test or anything back you said? No, you know, the zinc level has always come back, you know, good to add 06:12 Everything looks good. Yeah. So that would, that created more doubt in my mind that we'd see a difference. I thought you had some zinc deficient fields. We were trying to fix a problem, 06:19 but it's, it's really amazing to see that, you know, even in a sufficient or, you know, good level, uh, field that we can create this much of a difference. 06:27 Another challenge we had here, much like, uh, down in, uh, towards Union County, Monroe area, is we had tremendous dry grass pressure. We, 06:36 we sprayed it with a roundup real heavy back early in the late winter, early spring, got rid of it. Um, then it, 06:43 it just didn't act like it wanted to die, so we didn't get rid of it. So we come back, sprayed it heavy with Gramoxone and when we planted, 06:50 it was crispy brown and nothing. And 12 days after we planted that stuff had suckered out and so we had to come and do our by earlier. 06:59 And so it's been about five days since we laid it by with a post and hit it pretty hard. So it's, um, 07:07 this is just a normal Piedmont Western North Carolina field. So if we can get a yield out of this, you know, we're gonna learn something here. I don't know, you know, 07:19 hopefully it'll make us money, but it, this is interesting everybody. We appreciate it. Uh, stay tuned. 07:24 It's kind of interesting when you just get one part that might, could be, uh, add two or three or four bushels to you and give you five, $10 net roi. 07:32 You never know. So, uh, just follow us. If we can help you, send us a question, email and we'll do what we can and stay safe.