Hi all,
I am trying to get the Weed Supervisor to O.K. the purchase of a
refractometer on the Rapid Lightning cost/share grant. He never heard
of one and wants me to find someone in our county who has before he will
O.K. it. I have called Bob Wilson, the Extension Agent, but he hasn't
returned my call. Called again. Surely he or someone can help, but
failing that I will just have to try and convince the Weed Supervisor of
the value of being able to test plants for their vigor 30 minutes after
various applications.
I have questions. Do I want ATC or not?
What is the significance of .02 and .05 accuracy?
What is the significance of the great cost difference among
refractometers? How good a one do I need?
What are people's experiences with their refractometers and which ones
do you recommend and why? There must be more brands than I have named.
I went over my old BD Now emails on the subject and came up with the
following below.
Thank you,
Merla
Rex Harrill P.O. Box 6, Keedysville, MD 21756 (301) 432-2979
Westover RHB-32ATC (automatic temperature control)
$135 + $4.00 shipping by priority mail [probably out of date]
Pike Instruments, Agri-Lab Supplies Inc., RR2, Box 710 Strong, ME 04983
(207) 684-5131 $125 (Acres USA)
Gemplers, www.gemplers.com 1-800-382-8437
Economy Vista $164 +-.05 accuracy
Atago N-la $189 +-.02 accuracy
Atago ATC-1E $330
Char Downer, National Industrial Supply, 392 S. Miraleste Drive, #492,
San Pedro, CA 90732
RHB-32 $59.99
RHB-32 ATC 65.99
www.brixpage.com
www.crossroads.ws/brixbook/BBook.htm (Rex Harrill's booklet)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Brix Talk
On list awhile ago...
Lloyd Charles
I know that (but dont understand why) a lot of organic and BD
certified
producers are philosophicaly opposed to foliar nutrient applications.
When farmers are in the situation where we dont have our soils in
balance yet, or something else is wrong that has put our system off the
track for a while and we are suffering insect or disease attack, or poor
plant growth due to some nutritional disorder then is when we can make a
major improvement in quality of produce by using the brix meter to
monitor the crops response to a range of available foliar nutrients. And
there are plenty of nice things to use this includes the BD preps, fish
emulsion, kelp, worm juice, compost teas, manure teas, molasses, sugar,
vinegar, etc etc as well as the host of proprietary brand stuff, and the
so called nasties from the chemical companies ( we often use small
quantities of say calcium nitrate -1/2 to 1 kg per hectare -combined
with molasses and fish emulsion or 300 to 500 ml of food grade
phosphoric acid with a molasses - kelp - fish - homebrew tea )
I use four small pump spray bottles from the supermarket to test for
crop
response - mix the different brews in the exact proportion that will be
put
out with the field sprayer, spray a meter square plot of each and
measure
the brix response half an hour later, you will often get a down response
from a perfectly good material that is just not appropriate at the time
-
whichever bottle mix gives the best crop response (increased brix of
crop
and decreased brix of any weeds) is the one to use and less quantity is
usually better than more
The crop response (yield and quality ) that can be achieved at low cost
using this method can be truly amazing. We have had several times where
brews that ran around a dollar an acre material cost have given several
bushels per acre more wheat as well as lessening the vigour of weeds in
the crop.
This is not rocket science and its not new either
I read the brix mans online book this morning and would recommend it to
all - and while it seems written more for the consumer than the producer
-
its good information - as also the book by Arden Andersen that is
referred
to there
* * * * *
Tony Robinson
There is a method called Brix testing that a farmer can do
himself. It uses a refractometer to measure suger levels in plants and
fruit. When suger levels get above a certain level for each group of
plants then you have reached a balanced soil energy level. A figure
between 9-15 is my understanding. This is also subject that I would like
to study this coming year. It is one of the means which Dan Skow uses in
his book Mainline farming for the 21st Century to get his soil nutrient
levels to balance and you can do it your self.
* * * * * *
Hugh Lovel
Brix can be very revealing. But it is a bit more complex than just "High
brix equals high sugar and good taste with insect and disease
resistance."
Brix is a measure of dissolved solids, not all of which are sugars by
any means. Salts and amino acids enter the picture for starters. High
brix in the morning generally indicates the plant has not translocated
its sugars to its roots and shed them to the soil overnight, feeding the
soil food web. This, believe it or not, is highly desirable. If the
plant does this it gets the soil food web stoked up and cranking out
highly elaborated nutrients. Probably the most important of these are
complex amino acids. If the plant gets its nitrogen as amino acids
instead of nitrogen salts the assembly into proteins in the cells
becomes rich and full blown as there are no nitrogen salts to interfere.
Then one gets plenty of long chain aminos. That's mostly where the great
flavor comes in for people. But for insects with their more rudimentary
digestion they greatly prefer short chain aminos and can't digest the
long chain stuff. So they leave
such plants alone.
If you have (relatively) high brix in the morning, then this is
undesirable. Almost surely it means boron deficiency, as the plant would
otherwise respond with adequate boron by translocating its carbon
fixings (mostly sugars) to the roots at night--what Elaine Ingam calls
carbon shedding.
When a plant sheds carbon compounds abundantly at its roots it really
grows like gangbusters. If you can get this going well enough you can
grow corn as a soil improvement crop without fertilizer while getting
superior (in every way) yields. With a BD program that's really clicking
this is nearly a cinch. Horn clay, however, is a must.
High brix in the afternoon means your plant has been building an
abundant inventory of sugars during its daytime photosynthesis. That's
great stuff, of course. But take care to consider what time of day you
take your reading.
Also, sometimes plants will send their sugars to the roots in the
afternoon if the barometer drops enough, anticipating a severe
thunderstorm. If you take your reading just before such an event and get
low brix, you have a healthy, with-the-program plant that has adequate
boron despite the low reading in the afternoon.
So use your refractometers intelligently. They are great tools, and
probably the quickest way to evaluate low boron (which may be occurring
in more than 70% of crops in the US).
