IMO5 Explained, Flea Beetle Fix With Calcium, Drone Spraying
Drake untangles IMO5: Master Cho uses the term for several different things (pig pen floor, chicken pen floor, fermented mixed compost), but Drake defines it as fermented mixed compost, a regular compost pile blended with 10% IMO4. IMO4 builds soil workers into new soil; IMO5 is an amendment added once plants are already growing.
A listener in Germany asks about soil fleas eating cabbage seedlings. Drake calls them flea beetles and recommends spraying water-soluble calcium (reproduction) at 1:1000 plus seawater minerals at 1:25 to harden plant tissue so beetles won't want to eat it, rather than trying to kill the beetles directly.
Drake shows drone footage of Greta spraying his bananas for bunchy top virus at full Master Cho rate, 25 gallons per acre, and his pasture at a lighter half rate, about 12 gallons per acre, flying 7 feet per second. He uses the KNF Solutions app to calculate dilutions for each 55-gallon batch.
He covers KNF food plants to grow: comfrey and mugwort for juice, plus kudzu and Japanese knotweed as invasive but useful fermenting plants. For IMO4 carbon sources he suggests macadamia nut husks and breadfruit in Hawaiʻi, or acorns, hickory, and black walnut elsewhere, and explains steaming sweet potatoes before tumbling them with wood chips in a cement mixer. He closes with a warning that oil prices are climbing again.
Questions answered
- 13:52 What is IMO5? — Master Cho calls several different things IMO5, but Drake defines it as fermented mixed compost: a regular compost pile blended with 10% IMO4.
- 20:50 How does IMO5 differ from IMO4 and when do you use each? — IMO4 or adapted IMO builds soil workers into new soil at the start, while IMO5 (fermented mixed compost) is an amendment added once plants are already growing.
- 24:06 What causes soil fleas or flea beetles on cabbage seedlings, and how do I stop them? — Spray water-soluble calcium (reproduction) at 1:1000 plus seawater minerals at 1:25 to harden the plant so beetles won't want to eat it.
- 25:20 Why does over-amended soil make seedlings more vulnerable to beetles? — Rich soil pushes soft, overgrown tissue, like serving a baby a steak dinner, so start seedlings in poorer soil and amend more as they grow.
- 34:56 How much KNF solution does the drone spray per acre? — Full Master Cho rate is 25 gallons per acre on the bunchy-top banana treatment; pasture gets a lighter half rate, about 12 gallons per acre.
- 50:54 Which plants should I grow for KNF food inputs? — Grow comfrey and mugwort: comfrey yields the most juice and regrows from a root cutting, mugwort spreads like a weed but still makes strong juice.
- 55:45 Is kudzu good for KNF food? — It ferments well, but it is extremely invasive, so plant it with caution.
- 56:28 What about Japanese knotweed (donkey rhubarb)? — It ferments great and stays manageable if you continually prune the shoots, but left alone it can break up concrete.
- 58:03 What local carbon sources work for an IMO4 pile? — In Hawaiʻi try macadamia nut husks and crush or breadfruit; elsewhere try acorns, hickory, or black walnut, watching out for juglone.
- 1:01:01 Can I culture lion's mane mushroom spores on rice like IMO2? — Drake isn't sure, but thinks it might work with airflow and no direct air contact, and points to the book Radical Mycology.
- 1:03:12 How do I prepare sweet potatoes for an IMO4 pile? — Steam them 25 to 50 pounds at a time in a big steamer, then tumble them in a cement mixer with wood chips to break them apart.
- 1:05:25 Why bring up oil prices? — Oil is spiking again like it did last year during high inflation, so Drake says get your garden going now since energy drives everything.
KNF Office Hours is a free live Q&A every Sunday at 9 AM HST. Bring your question to pureknf.org/learn/questions or join live.
In this episode
- 0:00 Count Down
- 3:31 Intro and Welcome
- 5:51 I Ching Reading and Reflection
- 13:52 What Is IMO5?
- 20:50 IMO5 and How It's Used
- 23:25 No-Turn Compost
- 24:06 Fix Flea Beetles With Liquid Calcium and Seawater
- 34:17 Getting Prepped to Share the Next Thing
- 34:56 Ag Drone Spraying Bananas and Pasture
- 50:54 Growing Comfrey and Mugwort for KNF Food
- 55:45 Kudzu for Unlimited KNF Food
- 56:28 Japanese Knotweed (Donkey Rhubarb) for KNF Food
- 58:03 Carbon Sources for Your IMO4 Pile
- 1:01:01 Culturing Mushroom Spores on Rice
- 1:03:12 Steaming Sweet Potatoes for IMO4
- 1:05:25 Oil Prices on the Rise
- 1:07:43 Thanks and Sign-Off
Transcript
Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.
4:00 hello from germany no i'm still in the way but solar gourmet is up in germany how's it what's up printer bear good day to all hope everyone is having a good day It is September 17th, 2023. And yeah, welcome to Korean Natural Farming Office Hours. Taking Master Cho's knowledge with the Peer Vicana Foundation's help and bringing it to you around the world. hope you enjoy um being a better person being uh you know a part of the solution
4:51 i was thinking this morning like you know i'm not that hopeful but you ever seen the lord of the rings after uh gandalf gandalf he dies well he doesn't die but the balrog takes him down to the pits of hell and uh and then all the hobbits come out and they're all like worried about lunch and they turn to Strider and they say, well, how can we go with no hope? And he says, sometimes you just have to carry on without hope. So anyway, before I get into it, before I dive in, I'll just leave you with that because sometimes I'm not all that hopeful for things,
5:29 but I still show up, carry on, and you guys are showing up too. And that's, you know, maybe you do feel hopeful from this. Maybe you don't. But carrying on, you know. Yeah, it's a good thing. So before I get too much into my own rabbit hole, let's go get some higher wisdom because that'll probably be like STFU, just like last week. Get the conflict. Let's see here. Oh, well, here you go. And perhaps this is the perhaps this is the solution here for all that where I'm like non hopeful and stuff. It's the joyous lake. True joy is experienced by those who are strong within
6:18 and gentle without. The hexagram Tui teaches us how to come into possession of joy. in our search for success and happiness we are prone to think we must take aggressive actions to achieve them the instructions of the Yi Xing is just the opposite only those who practice innocence acceptance, detachment inherit true joy in this world we often see around us how forcible effort brings about what appears to be progress
7:05 our egos tempt us to believe that these gains are lasting and valuable but the truth is otherwise whatever is won by desirous, ambitious, demanding manipulations of the ego will soon be lost. Others can always be temporarily browbeaten into doing things our way. But only hearts won by friendliness and sincere goodwill are true over time. the I Ching teaches us again again again and again that joy and success cannot be forced
7:54 or stolen they're achieved gradually but steadily by those who relate correctly to others and to the higher power to relate correctly means to steadfastly practice innocence detachment acceptance modesty and gentleness life is full of shortcuts but this is the only route that leads to true joy the image of the image of the image the image of the hexagram is that of two lakes joined together to keep from drying up it is encouragement to us to join with like-minded
8:45 friends now in discussion and contemplation of higher things if we engage in an ongoing conversation about proper principles with our friends, our relationship to truth is steady and our ego cannot seduce us into doubt, fear, anxiety, and subsequently lead us away from joy. In your heart, be firm to holding to what is good and honest and correct. in your thoughts and actions. Be gentle and accepting. Those who persevere on this path
9:35 will meet with true joy and lasting success. So there you go. That's gonna kind of want to say the itching. It's so weird. It's always like, I was talking to Suze about it the other day and I was just like it's always it's always on man it's always on it knows like because it's it's kind of the fundamental understand um um reality that we live in is somehow directly related to uh an 8-bit system uh six-bit system eight-bit system I don't know anyway uh 64 hexagrams and somehow it always picks the right one, even what I was talking about, right? Like, you know, even though there's no hope,
10:24 you must carry on and continue, you know, and that's what, um, that's what they did in the Lord of the Rings. They kind of got together as a group and continued to persevere on the task and, um, gently, steadily, you know, they didn't just, uh, take a Zeppelin and fly to Mordor and just throw the ring in from 30,000 feet. They walked. I mean, you know, imagine the Lord of the Rings with a helicopter or a Zeppelin, you know, why not just fly there, bro? Um, you know, fast, quick, easy, because it wouldn't bring lasting results or long-term things. And that's, that's
11:02 how I feel with this KNF, with organizing this, you know, I was thinking about it always, like, I guess why I don't have that much hope is because I always was like running to push forward and wanting to do things now and achieve my goals immediately, you know, and when I don't see that progress, I think, oh no, we're doomed. There's no progress. What's not happening. But then again, here, you know, you guys tuning in, we're all, we're all here together. We're all in this. And even if you don't see necessary results right away, um, the long lasting results that are,
11:32 you know, achieved peacefully, gently, um, those things, I guess, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's God's way of like giving me a little bit of hope, lifting me up a little bit to be like, you know, slow and steady getting there. So yeah. Um, you know, Lone Star's wife needs this today, but you know, I think we all do in a certain sense of it is good and, uh, creative soil. Did you check out Tyler and Hannah? Those good folks in OKC. Um, they're, they're great. They have a coffee shop and then, oh man, his garden, I showed it on a couple episodes again.
12:08 you know um yeah sounds like creative soil is also into uh what's that guy uh wolfgang uh no what's his name uh the guy that does the breathing and sits in the cold tubs um yeah um yeah so um uh wim hof wim hof that's his name i don't know what i called him before but um yeah um eating beef that's why i'm now raising i'm more than ever cattle you know i started off with two cows uh 10 years ago to you know almost 20 years ago i don't know 2007 till now almost 20 years um growing cows and then now i have a herd of about six cows i have six cows now because beef
13:03 and milk milk it's also really good um so yeah all those things man learning endurance um you know checking out different types of meditation those things always good you know the simplest the cheapest is the best just sit there with your eyes closed and relax and let let god drive for a bit you know we're so we're so like i need to do this and it's like I need to ask God for help. It's like, how about you just let God do it for you? What's up, West Africa? We got a whole world here. Senegal, man. Wild. At one point in my life,
13:41 I probably would have liked to go there and to do things and try and spread natural farming. Now, I just do it digitally through the internet. Way more effective, let me tell you. Cam 2. Okay, we got a question. So I'm going to jump into that and then I'm going to get into, I filmed, I filmed, you know, talking about solutions, higher things, but that why not gives me a chance to talk about KNF support. Cause let me just, um, let me just go here. Not that I want to like be like, oh, you know, don't ask questions or whatever.
14:16 Um, cause definitely ask questions and I'm glad to go over it again and all this. But since we're here, I'm going to bring that right like this and get that sweet and cherry. And then right here on, this is knfsupport.com. This is by the Pure KNF Foundation. This is one of the main projects we run. It has the office hours here, right here, but you can also search it here. And let's just, let's just put in a thing for IMO five and see what that returns us. So I'm just going to search the office hour videos here real quick. And it always, you
14:52 know, I know people that tune in all the time are like, man, I already know about this, man. I already know. And for some reason, this one isn't giving a result, but maybe it's just because it's searching for IMO. In fact, I think it is just searching for IMO. That's why it's not giving us any results. The five messed it up. So apparently there's more bugs to fix, but let's just search IMO. In fact, we can search IMO five one word. But the reason I'm going through this exercise of searching for it is because IMO5 is a commonly talked about topic on here. So here, this is,
15:30 this is, I just searched IMO5, no space. Apparently if you put spaces or you do multiple characters, it's not going to, just because the JavaScript that I have to like narrow down the times when it actually returned a result is not working properly for anything with spaces in there. So don't search for multiple keywords because you won't find them, which I guess I should fix that. It seems a little bit, maybe it's the exact, um, spaces, but, and if they're all in a line, maybe it'll work. I don't know. Um, but how does ferment and mixed compost differ from IMO five?
16:06 And this is a classic one because, um, master Cho calls like 10 things. IMO five, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but literally he said like, like you can make it from manure. You can make it from compost. You can make it from all like the animal waste, the stuff that comes out of the pig pen, all those things he calls IMO five. And it's just like, I don't know if it's the translator or master Cho, but it gets super confusing. So there is a thing called fermented mixed compost FMC. And that's if you're just making an IMO five by taking your compost pile and blending in 10% IMO four into it.
16:46 So activated microorganisms, the soil and everything all done through that entirely process, very, very precise process to get up to what Master Cho would call IMO4, what I would call activated IMOs. And you just make a regular compost pile like you would, you know, browns to greens, you know, the nitrogen to carbon ratio, get it balanced, and then add in 10% IMO4. That would make a fermented mixed compost for you. And that is an IMO-5. And how does it differ? There's a bunch of different things. And then so, again, IMO-5 equals fermented mixed compost. I was saying that in that episode.
17:29 So a lot of times I try to get to that and talk about it. But, you know, and then here's someone asking, should I apply IMO-5 instead of 4 to enrich the soil, which is another topic to get into where it's kind of like IMO-4 or adapted IMO, like the activated adapted IMO really brings in the, it's tuned to your soil. So you're building soil workers with IMO 4 or adapted IMO, you're building, you know, they're adapted to your soil and you're going to put soil workers in there versus IMO 5 or a fermented mixed compost is more
18:05 of an amendment. So you don't use it in the very beginning when you're trying to build your soil and get your soil microbes there, you use it once your plants are growing. And that's be more of an IMO5 type of, or ferment and mix compost. Because if I use IMO5, it gets confusing. But ferment and mix compost application. And then, can I make IMO5 beds four inch tall with cardboard underneath? You know, the answer to that was probably, you know, TLDR, yes. TLDL, too long, didn't listen. Um, and then raw manure for IMO five, you know, great way to process, um, manure by blending it
18:48 with, um, you know, uh, the proper amounts of carbon, the proper amounts of 10% IMO four, you know, they get that activated IMO in there, make IMO five and, um, talked about again, fermented mixed compost here and, um, the chicken pen floor. So I encourage you to go to kind of support watch these episodes and watch these specific time stamps so you know this one's this one was at seven minutes 44 seconds so if i go here play go to seven minutes 44 seconds here let's see can i get it yeah let's see chose methodology those things can be somewhat
19:27 confusing because he calls fermented mixed compost so taking you know a compost pile and blending an imo4 to it imo5 he also calls the floor of the pig pen imo5 and he also calls the chicken pen floor imo5 and there's about i don't i don't know like in in the translation it's kind of actually one of the things that gets lost in translation he calls several things im05 so so again you know i'm just saying the same things i've always been saying uh master chose things but um there's tons of past episodes so going back not please ask questions here right like now live in the present
20:16 i'm always happy to go back but also just trying to reference existing material show you where you can find more resources than just this here in live, but canfsupport.com to go find these older episodes. And I'm trying to make the website better so that it will always return good results for you. Um, you know, but, um, but go in there doing this, you know, look at that. There's five answers already, you know, probably 15, 20 minutes of information for you. Um, so yeah um and my knowledge on this one you know if you're if you're asking for my knowledge on this
20:53 one uh you're saying what is im05 uh yeah like i said im05 it's it's like it's many things um oh here's my pooch you see my pooch she's trying to play piano she doesn't have thumbs um but um so it's many things um but fermented mixed compost is a great amendment um it is amazing if you're especially if you're mixing in manures um you can make uh it's great for amending um like like for instance if you're growing onions and after the onions you know start to sprout up and then you um like i kind of one way to grow onions is in a little trench um you know you
21:37 plant them in a divot instead of planting them on a mound you plant them in a divot and then as the onions are coming up, then you can amend back and kind of fill in that trench with IMO5. And if you do that two or three times throughout the growing cycle, it will just power those onions up. So you'll get massive, huge, great, sweet onions. So looks like my pooch has fleas, man. I got a soap soap bath or with sulfur, I get rid of them. Um, uh, but, um, yeah, so, uh, my, you know, you wanted my knowledge on this one. Um, yeah, that's, that's what it is. Um, I, you know,
22:20 I use a lot of the pig pen stuff, uh, making compost teas out of it. Um, it's a great amendment that way. Um, yeah. So, um, in fact, I was just thinking about that last night. I'm like, oh man, I really should fix my pig pen because I was, I was thinking I was going to get out of pigs and not do pigs anymore because, um, the food supply and everything, it's, it's, it's a challenge, man. Pigs are not easy and I don't really have a good market and I'm not really getting them to breed at the right time. So, but the pig pen floor that they make is so valuable
22:52 that it's hard to, um, it's hard to be like, not have my IMO workers constantly out there. Like, that's what my pigs do for me. They make the best IMO on the planet, hands down, better than I could ever make. The pigs are doing it 24 seven. They eat the food, they crap and they pee and they turn and they make the world's best IMO five, which is again, Master Cho calls the same thing IMO five. And, um, so my wisdom on it is, um, you know, is there. So, um, yeah. And also, you know, one thing again um also for me uh i'm not the world's biggest composter because i don't like
23:34 turning big piles um so i typically will in situ compost and just let you know a static pile go type thing um and or you know turning im04 is important but that's not the same as like turning a huge like once you got compost you got all this heavy material and even with a tractor with a bucket. I'm just not a big turning guy. It's like my back hurts. I got better things to do. Um, you know, so just let nature take care of it in situ, try and set things up and let them go. Um, okay. So, um, let's see. Solar, solar gourmet here. Um, our CSA has a problem with soil fleas,
24:19 right word in English. I'm not sure. When growing seedlings, especially cabbages, any suggestions? Soil fleas, like soil gnats? I'm not sure. Soil fleas. I'm not sure if that's the right translation. I've never heard of soil fleas. I mean, I've heard of water fleas. They get on you to bite you. It sucks. They call them no-seems here. If you go swim in Hilo Bay, just like itch everywhere and you never see anything it's just waterfellies um let's see does anyone else know one know what he's talking about um hey bird thank you super chats yeah super
25:04 chats woo thanks those those are always good too thank you for being me yeah they're just you thanks for being you um it's good good resources good things coming in um Soil gnats, growing seedlings. What would I even do with soil gnats? Erdflor? Flea beetle? Yeah, let me just see what the heck. I don't know if my translation is going to be any better than yours. I'm just going to look at the Wikipedia page. Oh, it looks like a beetle. Yeah, it's a beetle. Um, I'm just, I just pulled up the wiki, I just put in that word and looked up this and this is like the German thing.
25:53 Um, of course I, you know, I'll just put it in English here and see what it gives me, but flea beetles. Okay. So it's a, uh, soil beetle, like a beetle of some sort, uh, from the leaf beetle. Okay. Um, okay. Well, number one, like, okay, so beetles are traditionally hard to kill, right? So this is a beetle of some sort. And it's an organic gardening club. So they probably – so number one is if a beetle is eating your plant, adding more calcium phosphate.
26:40 So either the structure or the reproduction, those two will toughen it up so that the beetle won't want to eat your plant. The structure is like giving it good bones so it can kind of hold itself up. And the reproduction comes from the eggshell. So I call it reproduction. I mean, I always thought about the reproduction. Maybe that's like it's really used later, but it's really like armor. And maybe that's even a KNF armor is a better translation of it. But it helps like calcium does so many different things.
27:23 But it leads me to believe that if you took water-soluble calcium, the KNF reproduction. Let me as well, while I'm here, just pull that up here. um so i'll get this on this side and bring this over like this so in the in the book here the recipe i'm talking about are these um these two so so um the reproduction number eight this dissolved eggshells and um number six the dissolved bones both these have calcium calcium um this one has calcium phosphate in it. Um, and it says here helps to harden a plant from pests and recover
28:08 from being obese. Okay. So harden a plant from pests is one of the things that calcium phosphate does. Um, and also so does this one, but it didn't, that didn't make it into the short translation, but basically those are, you know, the one sentence translation, but these recipes do that. um you know the i'm going to go down here to um the water soluble calcium you're getting it from the eggshells dissolving them in vinegar and that eggshell helps to put more armor against the edge of your plant and so most likely um your cabbages for some reason are getting too much um like
28:53 overgrowth like to maybe maybe your ground is too fertile like if you use compost too early and if you're amending a whole bunch of stuff with seedlings then they can overgrow and make their tissue soft it's actually like too much nitrogen type of idea i mean talking about it chemically is hard hard to do but it's it's too much overgrowth and you need to harden it up and the calcium helps to do that so my guess if you didn't want to go and just kill the beetles but you instead want to discourage the beetles from eating your plants um the cow like just spraying
29:26 the liquid calcium on them um so you know you can do this plus a little bit of seawater so dilute this um you know follow um follow standard dilutions here like this one has it in there a reproduction one to a thousand and then also include the seawater the minerals at one to 25 And you could use just this solution right here alone. And you could actually also add the structure into it. I don't know if you guys can see my cursor. I didn't make it bigger today. But don't put fuel on it right now. And just structure, minerals, reproduction.
30:05 So structure 1 to 1,000, reproduction 1 to 1,000, minerals 1 to 25. And you could actually even do those 1 to 750, 1 to 500, somewhere in there. like that range of the reproduction and the minerals. And all this will help to strengthen that up. And then the beetle won't be able to eat your leaves and mess up your crop as easily. And that's probably more in alignment with like an organic solution. And then, you know, the other, it's still like Omri approved would be to go try and kill the beetle directly with like more of Young Song's types of methodology where you get some sulfur and
30:50 soap and you go after the beetle itself and kill that. But I don't really want to go into that right now. I'd rather go with this type of solution first and put a little bit more calcium. And it's probably, my guess is, I'm just saying is that the soil was over amended and the plant is growing. It's like Master Cho, the reason I would say that is Master Cho, and he would talk about this, is if you amend your soil really well for seedlings, which is his classic gardening, is people amend their soil and then they plant their seeds. It's like taking a baby and serving
31:27 them a five-course steak dinner. It's everything it needs, right? But the baby can't eat the steak dinner. Really what it needs is just like a little bit of milk, some calcium, um, you know, uh, and then the baby then can establish itself and grow. And then later as it starts to grow, then you're putting in compost, then you're amending on the surface more. So in the beginning, you just want to set up the environment, like the baby, you want to make the nice crib. You want to have the thing so that your, your baby has, um, you know, a nice environment, but not too much
32:02 food. Right. So, so that's, you know, getting your soil foundation correct when you're putting in seeds, um, you know, making sure the IMOs are there, feeding your soil, making sure that's all good, but not putting like compost down because compost is too rich. Um, it's your, your, you actually want to have it start kind of in like poorer soil and then amend it later because at first if it's poor soil it'll reach out further it'll put out more roots it will strengthen itself you know kids that kids that grow up on the street you know they're they're tough right i mean if
32:44 they're not too emaciated right i'm not saying like over emaciate your things but like you grow up in the country you're tough and then versus like city kids that have everything you know it's like well these days i mean pretty much you know everybody has everything at least in in the developed world here of like developed, um, you know, anywhere you can get Amazon and you can, and you have a credit card, you can pretty much get whatever. So pooch. Um, yeah. So, um, so start them off a little tough, less amending to start and then amend them later as they grow.
33:16 And you'll probably avoid those types of issues. I know, I know it's like, it's almost like a dogma of certain people. So talking to the gardeners may be, um, maybe challenging that way, but, um, do a side-by-side, you know, or try the calcium just straight up, just spray that and just pretend like you're going to do a miracle and maybe you will. Um, and then, yeah, that, that should work. Oh, let's see. Pooch, Pooch wanted to, Pooch wanted to come on the show a little bit. What's up pooch um she's a good girl um so anyway yeah hopefully that helps and then um oh pooch give me
34:00 kisses right on them okay um pooch loves giving kisses but if i kiss her oh she's not yeah anyway there's a pooch hello hello um yeah so um let's see so what i what i wanted to show you folks here i know you probably can't hear me as well because i'm a little bit further away because pooch is in the house um but let's see here so what i wanted to get into and show you guys here is uh let's see I'm going to do this one here and bring up this here. So, um, so the other day I was able to,
34:47 um, let's see, let's do it. Can I hang on one sec? Yeah, that, okay. So, um, so I was flying the drone and, um, and I was able to film it a little bit. So here, here you go. This is, um, this is Greta Thunberg flying over and this is my banana field here let's turn that volume way down because that's just the generator and you don't need to hear that although you can hear a little bit of it so let's see let it go away but anyway this is the drone just kind of flying autonomously and you can see like you see how
35:30 much wind it puts out down below so it sprays off the back there's two little nozzles there that spray and um all that downdraft from the drone it's you know it's it's what 100 pounds 150 pounds flying over so to keep that much in the air it does it but you can see down in the bottom left kind of its autonomous little um route that it's flying and it shows you where the tank will get empty. And then the radar is telling me about all those obstacles and things, but it's, it's pretty good. It's set, you see how it just went down and then it went back up. Like it's set to stay at
36:06 about 15 feet above ground level spraying. And it does this pretty, you know, autonomously here. It'll just fly back and forth doing this thing. So this, these are the bananas that I'm treating right now for um for bunchy top and there's there's some sugar cane these ones here you know they don't have bunchy top as bad as that um as that section coming up here on the right and then this is my pig pen barn right now we're flying over the chickens there's my little drench tank there um i gotta get up there and clean that roof but i have it set so it turns off the sprayer when
36:44 it's flying over the building but you can just see its wind pattern and up here on the right These are the bananas that really need help. That patch got hit hard by the bunchy top. And again, it didn't spread everywhere. If it was a rampant virus going, it would spread everywhere, right? But it doesn't. And you can see my polyculture kind of thing. Got some gunpowder trees in there. Actually, I'm going to chainsaw that on that tree this week. But you can see the spray. I don't know if you can see the spray. I can see the spray kind of spraying down.
37:17 I kind of panned up and down as I was flying over. But the drone basically flies, you know, back and forth on this autonomous route with the route spacing to do its thing and flies over. I got to cut down that tree too. You see how the drone flies up to get above and stay 15 feet above it. It's like if I can just cut down those trees that do me no good there. Now the drone's coming back down because there's not that obstacle under it. some pele, tea leaves, sugar cane, that other tree I should probably cut cut that tree down,
37:52 chip that thing too, but tea leaves, cassavas flying over, and then this looks like that that tree right there coming up almost in the crosshairs right now. It got bunchy top again pretty bad, so it's kind of just random how the bunchy top goes, and the vast majority of the bananas, you look at them they're nice there's an ulu tree that thing got pruned pretty heavy last time i was grazing the cows in there um and then you can see as you get out to the very end you know certain hey what's up cheryl thanks thanks cheryl it's good to see you and then you come in just hard
38:29 with a super chat how's that awesome um but yeah all these bananas and the bananas down at the very bottom you know not doing as well because they just have grass so they don't have that my cilial web and all the good soil but this grass great california grass so i'm gonna graze my my dairy cow in there while we're not milking her and get her together um but this is the difference of grass that this grass was i grazed it not too long ago but i largely don't graze this past her okay i'm gonna put pooch down pooch go down oh shit oh wire's getting stuck on pooch
39:09 okay i think i think i'm going yeah okay pooch didn't damage things too bad she did kick the mouse there so eventually yeah the tank it just it just lets me know it flies to the empty point And then it kind of tells me how many acres were done, how much is remaining, how much I need to refill it. You know, it sprayed out 10.5 gallons in five minutes here. It covered, so far, almost 0.8 acres. And then it'll do a manual landing, or automatic landing here.
39:57 so uh land that sucker down oh i guess maybe i was blocking some of that my uh my thing was blocking you guys couldn't see it was behind there but uh drone lands and then um and then we come out and do the thing so so that's you know i've been doing that once a week how do i um let's see let's transition over and then yeah so i've been doing that once a week flying over the bananas and then um you know um doing doing the thing here and then this this one um this this is the so i didn't realize it but it records sound from like the remote but this is this is the pasture
40:43 and so this is where i'm running my dairy cow so i'm also been spraying the pastures here and um this one i'm i'm flying at seven feet per second so you see it's going much quicker so this one in the bananas over there i'm doing full master cho 25 gallons per acre um type of thing and on this pasture here i'm doing what i call like half cho which is about 12 gallons per acre so it can fly much quicker and the drone itself can fly much quicker this thing can fly like like 30 miles an hour i don't know like even even faster than that especially
41:23 when it's unloaded it can just it can halt but you gotta cross there so these ones here where you know the pasture i it's kind of a test i'm not exactly sure um what level but you can see where i'm grazing so this part here uh was just rotated she's rotating this way into these taller grasses um and so but i'm flying you know and my goal is you see this grass here this tall kind of stubby stuff this is broom grass and it it's a it's not really the best sign of good health of a pasture um so i'm i'm i'm seeing you know if i do this for long enough will this broom grass go
42:05 away away from this this and then a wild pig got in here and destroyed all this part of the pasture It came right through the fence right here and just destroyed all this. We snared them and then composted them into the bushes. But the drone's pretty nice. It sees the edge. It comes up by itself. It's not like I'm flying this. I mean, I'm flying and I'm watching it. But, you know, it knows its own height for where it's going, does its thing. It's spraying three gallons a minute here. You know, you can kind of see it's creating this rotor wash.
42:37 and you can't really see the liquid at least i can't really on here but um but you i mean you can see it and just all this coming out and spraying and you know it's going uh you know seven feet a second forward and you know trying to maintain about 15 feet above the ground is what it's doing um and it'll tell you how much it's completed 0.6 of an acre you know and so um it basically takes you know two two tanks to do this two acres here it's about 12 gallons an acre you know um the drone holds about 10 gallons i'm not sure if its exact flow rate is calibrated but
43:20 um and then these piles here are where we put down fish and imos we just dropped um you know fish waste and imos on it and that really helped to boost the pasture back to life and then here where this grass is green is where we ended up processing a cow in the field that was fudge fudge was processed right there so you can definitely see the you know the fertility and the you know the amending making a difference and then look at this big ulu tree here so again it just flies until it has no liquid payload hovers when it's done and then it's up
44:01 to me on the controller to, I just push return to home and then it returns to home, you know, comes back. And I just have it fly up to about 50 feet and come back over, you know. And then again, it'll tell you this readout, which let me see, let me just go to, let me just, this one. And just so you see this readout on the right side here. It tells you, you know, how many how much area it covered, you know, covered point. Let me let me go back. Let me go back in the video just a little bit, but it'll show you. Let me pause this here.
44:45 I don't want to beat, but it'll show you, you know, it just in four minutes, it was able to do almost, you know, point seven nine acres. It sprayed 10 gallons out there on this. um and i think the one before it's cumulative so each flight it's going to add these numbers but this time it did this much here and um was able to spray you know so so remaining for this field there's a um you know half half acre left to spray and i need 6.5 gallons to cover that so i know if i want to just spray that just fill the drone basically seven gallons and then
45:24 set it to go out again because in this field that it's doing is 1.52 acres and um and i leave 0.2 acres on the edge because if i have i'm getting the rtk system but if it flies right to the edge it will uh interfere with trees and such and so forth but um but these you know it's really nice gives you this readout you know you can see how much battery everything's left um and then you know it comes in automatic return to home it puts the camera down comes down there's the generator running charging the batteries
46:02 and it comes in and it'll just auto land for me and do that and um it'll be even more precise once we get the rtk together but the radar picking up all those um all those things and I just have it land in the same spot. We basically, um, we fill up, um, you know, 55 gallon drum, mix all the proper KNF solutions using my pooch is dancing, using the, um, you know, the KNF solution app here, right? Cause each time, each time I'm doing this, I'm coming up with different solutions. And so it's like, how much do I, so I just 55 gallons
46:51 calculate. It gives me the exact, um, milliliters and stuff to drop in there on the app. So can't have solutions app on the Android and iOS stores. It's back on the Android store, by the way. Um, I don't know if it, yeah, it's back there. Um, and then you can plug in those formulas, dilute the things properly and that way then I'm getting you know the the recommended dosage out there it's all proper correct um and um you know trying to automate as much of this as possible um I was thinking maybe I could get the drone to land and then just have the the um uh what you
47:34 call the refilling arm to just in his fill and then go back up that'd be even cooler yeah the app is awesome. It is. It is. And it's funny because, um, yeah, I think it works for newer Androids. I fixed it up. I, I, um, I, in fact, I gotta, I probably gotta go click some boxes and do some things. I don't know, but it was, it was live on the store the other day. I'm certain of that. Um, and it does work on newer Androids. I had to, um, I had to update some things and do, do some stuff, you know? Um, but yeah, if it's not, let me know. And I will, um, I'll double
48:11 check that I have, you know, may as well. It's, it's so useful. I mean, the thing is like, I put it up and I sell it to people, but in truth, it's like, I built it for me and I use it all the time and it's more correct. There's, there's other KNF calculators out there, but they're not as accurate to what Master Cho says. This is exact Master Cho's recommendations. And there are other calculators out there on the internet that are just not what Master Cho says. It's some other people making up things the way they are making up things. And so it follows, you know, these.
48:50 And even in, well, I mean, the truth be told, and this is something that Goofman caught the other day is that even master chose formulas aren't necessarily 100% from source to source. Depends where you're sourcing them. And, you know, but the key is to get them, you know, as close to correct. So I try to be as accurate as possible. And that's, you know, so, so let's see. um so i yeah wanted to share the drone update with you i have not flown my small drone around because i crashed into a tree last week and you know so it goes um
49:38 but we'll be getting that up we'll be getting precision gps coming over here and then once i got the precision, precision GPS base station here. Now I'm thinking about all these other, like I was thinking about automating a mower and automating just all kinds of stuff. Like, you know, once you have precision GPS, it's like, what else can I automate? You know, get little things to, um, I don't, I don't know. Anyway, I love nerding out that way, doing those things. Um, but yeah, any, any other questions on other things? I don't, um,
50:19 I was, I was gonna share a little bit by going back to the archives, but if anybody has anything they want to dive into, we can definitely do that, but otherwise I was going to go check out, wait for this hard drive to spin up. Yeah, I was going to go back to like this here. um so printer bear is asking for a mixed garden should i be prioritizing some harvest for making
51:08 can of food for next year most the food i've been using are abundant weeds um i would say for sure to do a comfrey. So let me just go this way. Let me just do this here and pull up comfrey. Assume it, you know, it matters where you are. But let me just, let me see images here. this plant here this comfrey plant um it is one of the highest yielding like um i don't know why
51:54 all the pictures are of flowers it's not really the best when it's flowering but these leaves um they call it green milk it's like so rich so abundant and i would grow a few of these in your garden um on purpose like these this is what it looks like when it grows here because It doesn't really seed that much here. But this plant, like it is so easy to harvest and it makes so much juice and it's so abundant that I would definitely get some of this. And apparently it used to grow in Russia or it's called Russian comfrey, some of it. So it tolerates freezing, no problem.
52:34 My aunt grows it in California. Yeah, New England can do comfrey. I would definitely get some of this and plant it. And then you can always, it's really easy to propagate. You just take a chunk of the root and once you get it going, you just, you know, you can make multiple of these. And I would highly recommend growing this plant. It's just amazing. It would, yeah, in all ways. And then the other is one of Master Cho's favorites, this mugwort here. And I would grow some of this because it also is like a weed. It grows so easy. It's amazing.
53:20 And I would definitely put some of this in. However, do be careful because it is like a weed and this thing will spread. um so do we you know and even some people consider uh comfrey a nuisance but but these this this mugwort here um it's it's it makes amazing plant juice it doesn't yield that much amazingly like you you gotta you know have a make like comfrey yields way more if you're making a juice it yields way more but the mugwort um huh here's somebody like jarring it i wonder if they're doing
53:59 Korean natural farming. No, but anyway, if you, and also mugwort, if you put it in your pillowcase and go to sleep, um, you will have amazing dreams. It just unlocks that whole thing. I don't know. It's pretty magic. Um, and so mugwort is another thing that'll grow in your area. And master Cho also recommends, um, dropwort, which is like, um, dry land watercress. This, this is actually it here. Sort of like a celery type of thing. Um, but the Korean cooking ingredient, uh, water dropwort, this is, this is the one you want. Uh, these, these other ones, I'm not exactly
54:37 sure, um, what they are, but this one right here, um, water dropwort, it's, uh, and it, it also makes an amazing juice um and master cho always recommends that um and then um so so growing and these will grow like in a garden type scenario you know dropwort just a small patch of that mug wort small patch of that come for you know a few plants and you'll have tons of juice from them it depends on you know how much area and whatever you know calculate that out of how many gallons you want for a season and then kind of work backwards for how much you plant. And just to
55:17 let you know, mugwort does not yield that much, but it says Scottish wildlife blog. So apparently this is growing in Scotland or the Isle of Arran, whatever. So this is the same dropwort growing. These things, I'm not sure. This is not the dropwort I'm looking for. That's not how it looks of the one I'm trying to grow. It looks more like angelica. And, you know, if you got a big kudzu, you know, if you want half your area to be taken over, you know, plant some kudzu vine, right? People hate this thing, but it's actually a really good
55:57 thing to ferment. But look at this, it's just taking over all these forests. So be careful where you plant it. Like, look at this. It's just eating someone's building. Um, but, um, but you know, um, but this is another one that would do quite well. I mean, not, not that you want to like, I was talking the other day about invasives and how I actually am like a strong fan of invasives, but this looks pretty invasive. I wouldn't bring this one around. And then the other one is um donkey rhubarb um I don't think I spelled that right uh it's and knotweed yeah that's what it is um
56:40 knotweed I always remember it by donkey rhubarb because that's the but Japanese knotweed this is another super good thing to ferment but people will hate you for this because it's so um you know it's so invasive it'll like break up concrete and stuff but this one you get the shoots of it it grows so well you just continually prune it back it looks almost like false ava but you just continually prune this thing back like this sort of you just cut it cut it cut it and just use these shoots i mean i'm not i guess you know i probably shouldn't say all these like invasive type things
57:15 to grow but the but you know comfrey is probably the safest out of all those it's the least invasive um but but this one again man what to talk about a champion grows in all environments you can't stop it and a plant you can't stop from growing you know just keep it small like this just just a row of this and in a planter where it's like and you just keep it and just just continually prune it make juice from it all year long it'll just it'll just hammer um so yeah i do recommend growing a few things for yourself you know um but and solar gourmet got it full of comfrey at 52 north
57:55 that's wow that's um it's frigid man yeah um um so jim is asking do i know of carb sources to use with wood chips and im03 preferably local inputs i'm used i'm interested in trying different carbs to see what happens. Any thoughts on this? If you're saying aloha, maybe you're in Hawaii, and one of the best things to do is get like MacNut Crush. If you're talking about making IMOs, MacNut Waste. In fact, the MacNut Waste itself is like pretty much perfect. you can take the husks and the mac nut crush blend that and you will get a super good imo
58:46 but local carbs again you know around here tons of ulu may as well let me just put in its regular name of breadfruit so carbs around here let's just go images because pictures are louder than words bread fruits grow really well you can take them early steam them up a little bit get them nice and steamed like this maybe you don't need to add the seasoning to it but um get them steamed like this oh you're in pennsylvania man you're faking me out with the aloha but either that or just cook them like this and eat it and then um pennsylvania carbs i don't know man um what do
59:34 they have up there probably uh wheat um what chocolate uh chocolate husks i don't know pennsylvania i'm i'm actually not too familiar with pennsylvania never been to pennsylvania it's one of the into a lot of places what's up pooch but not um acorn yeah acorns acorns that's that's a great source pooch wait later five minutes um hickory yeah see other these other guys they know what's up um me i'm i'm over here so i think you know breadfruit what else did i think of sweet potato you know if i was gonna look for carbs like these you know sweet potatoes
1:00:18 probably you'll get them up there these orange ones i don't i don't know where do sweet potatoes grow they definitely grow here um but look at this you know look at all those carbs you know put a little bit wood chips with this that's gonna make a really good IMO fungal heaven right there oh this one oh yeah the butter definitely good black walnut is plentiful but worried about jug alone um yeah yeah acorns acorns you're gonna battle the squirrels for the acorns um um do you think you can catch lion mane spores the way i collect imo2 using rice and the box
1:01:08 um maybe um just taking like a lion's mane and putting it upside down on rice and then trying to have it grow out maybe um i that's i that's i'm not too familiar with trying to grow specific strains of mushrooms um you know i know you could take like a like um probably though um you know uh when i was reading some mycology books they were talking about storing the spores in grains and like grain storage of spores and so it would lead me to believe that it would go into the grain the only thing that i could see being of issue there
1:01:57 is that you might get other contamination. So if you're able to like put it directly on like a lion's mane mushroom directly on rice in a box, you know, where it's still got airflow, but not direct contact to air, it might work. But that's, you know, something like that. Like, I don't know, you know, Most of the time people do sporing like on tin foil, you know, and you can look that up how they do it. And then they'll take that and mix it into like a serum and then inoculate that onto a sterilized medium for growing specific mushrooms. I'm not an expert at that kind of stuff.
1:02:48 Although I probably should, you know, I would imagine teaming with fungi. There was some book I was reading about. Oh, actually, you know the book I was reading, I think it was called Radical Mycology that that was in. So I would check out that book, the Radical Mycology whole thing. They have a whole movement of folks that are into Radical Mycology and that type of stuff. So I would check out that. And then here asking how would I prepare the sweet potatoes for IMO3. I would get a big steamer and steam them just like this, you know, and then, you know, like, so let's see.
1:03:35 Big steamer. Let's see what the images have. Yeah, something like this where you can get some, you know, big steamer, put a bunch of, you know, sweet potatoes in there and water at the bottom and just steam like, you know, 25, 50 pounds at a time. And then try to, you know, something like this, but bigger and, you know, something you could throw over a fire and just steam them up. or, uh, you know, an instant pot type of thing, but, uh, big steamer. Oh, here's a quad stack, you know, something like this, this thing looks like electric, so you could run off like solar
1:04:21 panel, get it pretty inexpensive here. Um, you know, and steam a bunch of potatoes, even, even the acorns, those types of things, soften them up before you cook them. Um, you know, Oh, look at this one, 23 inches. It's as big as you could steam a kid if you wanted to. Right. Yeah. Let's see. Yeah, that's how I would do it. Steam those things up and, you know, then throw them in a cement mixer and then have that kind of tumble it around with a little bit of wood chips and then eventually blend in more wood chips to kind of get it to tumble and kind of break apart in there so it'll
1:05:10 kind of um turn you know or you know you can dry it out and powder it um but i would try to go as low energy as you possibly can on everything because energy is money and that's um you know that's the deal. So, um, yeah. So anyway, uh, just before I go, and since I was on the topic of energy, I always think it's prudent to, um, to just give small, not that I'm into a whole bunch of this, but, um, I mean, personally, this is personally what I follow, but, um, just so you know, you know, oil prices, they were low. This is like you're looking at one year and oil was
1:05:54 expensive beginning of last year. You know, around this time last year, it was real expensive. It was up here and we're going through another thing. And this is when inflation was really high. And so just just a word, word to the wise of, you know, get your gardens going and be ready for, I think inflation coming back and more as oil prices spike around the world. Oil energy is the bottom line of everything. And I reckon this, this is, you know, over here is when the strategic petroleum reserve was being emptied and now they have to refill it and it's empty. So be ready for
1:06:34 more, more inflation, more things. So teach yourself natural farming, learn more, learn how to minimize the amount of energy using because oil is the energy the world uses and it is getting more expensive so just um and it's going fast it's rising pretty fast right now not to say it won't go back down like it rose up here and it went back down again you know you can never i i never know you know but i just always see when i see a spike like this i know that um it will have repercussions into our larger economy and global economy because the whole globe runs on oil
1:07:10 and um so you know do your best to get off oil and uh get systems that work i mean every but the bottom line is everything's oil you know it's all based on energy our whole everything we do no matter how far you try to avoid it but um just you know little bonus at the end some overtime for you of just if you weren't aware of that maybe you should be and um oil is on the rise so hope that helps you hope that helps me coming together like a lake thank you for being here thank me for being here thank the pure fit knf foundation all thanks to master cho who knows
1:07:50 where i'd be without him thanks to flat eric thanks to pooch um thanks to the whole pure knf foundation board and all its members helping make things like this happen i will see you next week another office hour so have a great week um more more drone spraying between now and then and getting more microbes out there you know long live the natural farmer and all that and yeah love you aloha uh let's see which one should we do i'm gonna close the curtain today okay bye