i i just like staying away from especially bat guanos because a lot of it's um sourced
unethically and has heavy metals and there's some stuff you want to stay away from there so
have you ever heard that island where they made like a billion or 100 billion dollars off of
um seabird guano and they mined the whole island right then the whole iron island now is poverish
before that when i did the down to earth back one a person said isn't it heavy
and heavy metals and and we actually talked to down to earth and they're like well
yeah there could be you know but we have to follow like omri standards what amendments have
you found to be the most ethical of extraction that we can amend our soils with that will still
bring in those nicer higher quality yields i mean the only way to truly get around it is
i can't believe i'm saying this but have you ever wondered how your dry amendments are sourced well
in this video we're going to get into it you're here with mark batwell green goblin 510 and the
rest of the team here on perfect gardens tv please remember to like share and subscribe make sure to
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this leads actually into our first question for you is uh preferred organic amendments what
like when you're mending your soil what's your super soil mix or what's your what's
what's your amendment mix around that in your process um first when i started out i i went
through and i did the plasma coots blend you know how everybody's got the the one-third
compost slash vermicompost the one-third sphagnum peat moss one-third aeration and uh you know
kelp neem and a few other things that did a very basic soil recipe and then as i learned more
and more and more about organics and different amendments i i tend to mix and match a lot now
depending on what i can get a hold of easily and at a decent price but most everything is
plant-based i don't usually use a lot of different uh like guanos or other organic
amendments usually everything's uh plant-based or mineral-based you know this is really interesting
actually conversation because we've dave and i have actually talked about like you go to the
down-to-earth line you can you can create it like a vegan blend right where or you can have you know
the bone meal blood meal side but then also just not not to [ __ ] with your head a little bit but
i do think about this the isn't that why in the bible they were allowed to eat grasshoppers right
because grandpa isn't the grasshoppers eat bugs or not bikes but they eat leaf or something like that
because they eat leaf it's the same thing so they they in that old biblical text they consider that
to also be vegan or or vegetarian or something do you have you ever heard about that a little bit
okay can we do you want to add any thoughts to that because i always i think about this one
a little bit too on the members side the veganics versus we'll just say other um
it's super hard to be like a lot of people are really nitpicky when it comes to the what is it
veganics or is it from an animal product like a lot of people would say well using worm castings
is not veganic because you're using a casting from you know another animal a lot of people would say
that using concentrated humic acids and whatnot isn't necessarily veganic because you're not going
to find that too often in nature unless you go mining for it then you'll find a small spot at
concentrating humic acids i don't usually tote the line too much on that i i just like staying
away from especially bat guanos because a lot of it's sourced unethically and has heavy metals and
there's some stuff you want to stay away from there and a lot of the
seabird guano i like to stay away from a little bit too because of the methods of collection as
well as the blood meal most of it's a me not liking the way they collect that amendment
yeah and that's the important things is like we have all these ingredients we have all these
different companies and sticking to your core value like i said earlier you don't have to
use everything we've done videos on bat guano and other things and at the same time i don't
necessarily apply everything but these are options for people when they're in these situations and
stick to those core values it's important you can tell you do that and then it shows in your plants
oh absolutely like it so like when it comes to do i grow veganic or not veganic i just try to
grow clean yeah i like that i like that i like to grow clean right yeah you're gonna be
putting that in your lungs you kind of brought up that the whole thing about you made a little
connection for me that you know you're you're like damn it he just brought something up that brought
a level consciousness up that i now have to you know walk the line harder or i'm a chump you know
in a sellout because he just i just became aware of it you know i mean it's like you it's okay if
you're ignorant if you can or you don't know it's like it's all right but once you become
aware then you have a responsibility in some level and i just the connection i just realized
have you ever heard that island where they made like a billion or 100 billion dollars off of
seabird guano and they mined the whole island right and then and then they then the whole iron
island now is poverish before that before that it was like they had a good life even if it was
simple but then they had this huge wealth they misspented and then now everything is yeah it's
destroyed everything is destroyed the culture poverty i mean everything is complete have you
have you watched that documentary i think it's on netflix no i have yeah do you know what what is it
called do you know what the name of it i don't that's that's what you just made me realize is
now i'm wondering where did they get this bird [ __ ] from like how did they collect it like
it's not like they have a bunch of birds [ __ ] under under nets and they're just probably in
parking lots near walmarts and mcdonald's you know [ __ ] they're getting the first companies there's
some good companies that like sources themselves like they they built that boxes and stuff like
that and they live in like wherever they're at so it's just dependent on what you're looking at
it's very few companies that are trustworthy doing that yeah yeah just like with anything
like when we were like oh go ahead sorry oh sorry i was just saying the reason why there's high
metals in a lot of iguanos where they collected is i think they cut it with a little bit of their
their dirt that they have there and then they have high high amounts of those those metals and that's
why it ends up getting into there so they're doing like a lot of stuff yeah well especially like when
like they'll send like 12 or 13 year olds into different caves and different yeah
to collect the the bat guano and whatnot you're going to get the bat guano without a doubt but
these caves are also collecting well everything that's that's what caves are doing everything
runs down through the earth and collects it at the lowest spot and if you're in a cave you're gonna
get you're gonna have excess heavy metals you're gonna have a bunch of minerals you're gonna have
a bunch of sulfur that's you know you're gonna scoop up some heavy metals regardless
when you're harvesting it from there yeah that's kind of sketchy i like bat boxes
i would really love this channel to get to a point where it could one day actually travel to these
other countries and and see what their processing techniques are like actually physically seeing it
versus just you know get a marketing picture where everyone's wearing a nice hard hat
you know older men and then everyone multinational there's a black white korean yellow spanish all in
the picture and they're all mining [ __ ] and they're just like perfectly removed perfectly
set back with all the bugs living healthy i would i want to see behind that picture exactly
i don't know if you're going to want to see half the stuff like like goblin said some of this
stuff like i watched documentary on on on micah that's used for makeup and cosmetics and literally
their families that are digging these holes by the you know children oh i had two children die
it's so sad and they get paid pennies and then these people you know ship it to the us and they
get paid millions and stuff so you know we don't think of that with our fertilizers but yeah there
is a thought to where are we sourcing it and how we're sourcing it you know these are all concerns
that we should all have and keep up front and questioning it you know and that when i did
the down to earth back one a person said isn't it heavy in heavy metals and and we actually talked
to down to earth and they're like well yeah there could be you know but we have to follow like omri
standards you know so as that parts per million or billion acceptable to you if not then maybe it's
not a product for you um but you know this here's a company that they they're trying to follow
certain guidelines omri and stuff so that you kind of mentally already know what you're getting into
you know but it doesn't mean the source though too mix will also help render those heavy metals
down a bit and that is the one great thing about growing in a living soil or using biology is that
uh biology can help with a lot of these problems heavy metal contamination other contaminations
actual chemical contaminations now you may not want to grow in that soil that you're trying to
fix until you've done a few applications like there's a really awesome jedi microbial solution
in which you can go out and get a little bit of microbes from the forest and expand those in a
decent like a 30 gallon tote depending on the size of your area you're trying to fix or amend
and apply that two or three times before you even plant anything in it and it will cycle a bunch of
the bad stuff out and and cycle some nutrients and get fungal and bacterial colonies really built up
before you even go to plant and that's another a great way to get your cover crops going as
well so you can use your jedi microbial solution to get the cover crops really growing before you
plant your main crop in there get everything get the engine going get it to five thousand a
thousand rpms not just that idle and bad you know it everyone on the channel hasn't seen probably
we've spent maybe 35 to 50 hours with one of down to earth's main guys just talking to him
about you know getting diving deeper in this project at the end of the talk and then shooting
and then condensing it down into like 10 minutes i really like personally i really felt like we did
a higher level of due diligence even dave just going in there and doing even deeper dive and
bringing up more information then and then being able to like just learn more about what's
like the ingredients and what's actually in it besides what's on the label right because there's
a lot more in these products like and again i'll bring it back one example but now i'm questioning
it to even talk about it but bringing it back one how much calcium is in it but it's not on
the box right how much calcium is in all these other products but they don't list it you know or
or how many micronutrients but they don't list it for for certification reasons and then you kind
of dive in deeper i'm like wow we really learned a lot here but then in this conversation right
now it's just like just like now i want to go back to down to earth and be like bro you know
you and you and guy green are the two largest yeah yeah yeah pushers of the product where
can we go fly over and see where how they're extracting how you're extracting your products
like who has the most ethical way of doing it it would be nice and of course you know i i wonder
even how much they know about how their extraction processes are are being used like dude are they
just uh 20 years in their company just trying to sell their product and i wonder how many of
these are they just like talking to some guy from alabama uh trying to fill an order you know and
try to create uh phillip and you can't get drive members from alabama i'm pretty sure
but i'm just saying maybe i don't know um and it really makes me think a little bit more
and it really makes me want to look more to those alternatives and you brought that up
right there you like you were saying go to the forest get a handful of soil get the microbes
brewed up and expand your micro colony although not not but because of but disregards although
tell me explain to me don't don't we also need things like you know feather meal or
these other amendments because i don't want to say bat guano or bone meal or blood meal because those
three are are again wondering you think about the extraction blood meal is like where are they
pulling the blood from how are they killing the animals yada yada you start thinking
about that process but my guess my point is is what amendments have you found to be the
most ethical of extraction that we can amend our soils with that will still bring in those
nicer higher quality yields i mean the only way to truly get around it is to unfortunately you'll
have to learn quite a bit of plant identification and you'll have to live in an area in which you
have a decent amount of wildlands because you'll just go out and harvest these materials yourself
every plant is a bio accumulator of some kind whether it's in a super accumulator or not that's
a different story like kelp is a super accumulator it accumulates everything that's around itself
some plants just like to accumulate potassium some just like to accumulate silica some like to
you know accumulate different things calcium magnesium so if you learn about the different
plants and especially in your area if you do have wild lands around your area you can go around and
literally collect a lot of this biomass and make your own dry amendments because literally these
dry amendments are nothing but cut down plants at the correct time and dried out
yeah yeah a lot of them are weird they like it's like they throw them through a
like a like a grinder or whatever and then they'll have like a powdered form of that and
then they'll cover the actual leak material that like compact that together so that way
it's almost like a time release and and basically like the smaller that you grind up said plant
the quicker it will break down the easier it is for the microbes to break it down and you know
amend it to your soil so like just adding on to what you just said right there i like that because
like in my practices and i'm curious with yours i like to have both i want stuff that's slow and
i want stuff that's going to be more readily available during the growing like what i mean
by that is like oyster shell for example or even bigger eggshells i don't refine it into a powder
um i find i i personally like to have that diversity i think it helps with the structure of
the soil the drainage of the soil what do you find are you always going for those extreme powders or
do you like like myself a variety of sizes and you know you know i find pieces of shell that
are probably going on for you know three four or five rows it's like but it keeps getting it's it's
still doing stuff it's still breaking down the calcium and stuff what do you what do you find
through your observations oh absolutely especially in soil building slash re-amending uh i definitely
like a variety just like humans the best way for a human to remain healthy is to get a good variety
of all foods and same with the microbes you get a good variety of all foods whether it's big small
different types of foods different types of sugars variety is definitely key
when it comes to like a compost tea whether you're aerating that or making a fermented one
i like the more finely ground up materials yeah getting to i get thank you brother
getting to a water soluble state uh sooner sooner than later through your compost
so for example we we can't use serenade serenade is a bacillus pumilus because if we did i think
that would end up failing uh one of our microbials so it's not it's not approved for canopy in canada
uh where i believe in california you are allowed to use bacillus pimulus