0:00Hi guys, Jonathan here with Farmers Friend. I'm at Bountiful Blessings Farm with my dad, John. And this morning,

0:05we're going to be talking about how to most efficiently apply soil amendments,

0:09at least according to Farmer John. So,

0:14well, I'm not the last word on this. You know, somebody else may have a better solution, but um for years and years,

0:23we've used an Earthway. It's the model 3100. And you know, you go to most

0:30stores and they've got these tiny little canvas bag kind of spreaders that just don't hold much of anything, but this

0:38will hold 40 lbs. Mhm. So, it's it's good back exercise to stay straight with it. But um basically you've got a simple

0:47harness thing that clips on here and you put your amendments or cover crop seed

0:55in there and um you put the amendments or seed when it's on the ground and then kind of hold

1:03it up and clip. Yeah. Or you know use the back of a golf cart or something to

1:11Yeah. And you know, it's it's adjustable here. And it's got three holes inside

1:19here that also are adjustable. So, it's quite quite uh you know, you can really

1:26work with your spread pattern and everything. And and so then, you know, if we're doing amendments on a pad,

1:34usually we've got eight beds per pad. We just go down between the second and third

1:42bed. And obviously the the faster you spin it, the further it's going to go.

1:50So you just want to start here and you're looking to make sure you're covering to the middle and to the edge

1:59and you know going faster or slower with your spinning depending on

2:06you know your how heavy the material is that you're putting on there. But it works great. you know, both for

2:14amendments and for cover crops, with just a little bit of practice, you can get a very even

2:21spread. And up until yesterday, this was the only 40 lb chest spreader that was out

2:30there. And these last that you were aware of that I was aware of. Yeah.

2:35Um, you know, this is my second one in 27 years, but you will see, you know,

2:42because it's got a metal base, a lot of the amendments that we apply, you know, like uh copper sulfate

2:51and and different things, uh, potassium sulfate,

2:56they will they will corrode and so eventually it'll wear out. But I was googling yesterday online to see if

3:06there were any other options out there and I did find another option that looks intriguing, promising. It's called a

3:13Hoie Man. It's not quite as big. It's 35 lbs, but it has some really unique

3:21um it would seem improvements. I haven't tried it. But anyway, you know, this one

3:28this one has definitely been used and tried and it works well, but I'd like to

3:35try the new one. And so, there's a little bit of art to this one as far as h how fast you crank and and how much

3:42you you open the the gate, but and how fast you walk. Yeah. But in a in a way

3:49that's probably, you know, beneficial features over, let's say, a push one because you don't have as much control.

3:55Maybe you you'd have to like speed up and slow down to get the different spreads. So, so I think this is a an improvement and also just easier to get

4:03in and out of tight, you know, areas and green houses and whatever. It works well for that. So, Oh, yeah. I wouldn't want to push one. So, of course, we did a

4:11demonstration on top of fabric, but we would be doing this on a on a bare field plot or when you're doing your bed prep

4:20um before laying down fabric to make sure those amendments get integrated into the soil. Some of the the

4:27micronutrients are often in a powdered form and that doesn't work well. It's a mess. So, how do you do do you just uh

4:36hand broadcast that or do you have a different Yeah, there's Well, I one little trick with copper sulfate, that's

4:44the one that's really rough to to put on it. It's I don't like working with

4:50copper sulfate, but I found if I put it with

4:56C90, the granulated C90, C90 is sticky enough that it'll hold on to the copper

5:04sulfate. Okay. And I just mix it in with that and then I can apply it with this and I don't get that powder. Okay, cool.

5:12Well, but other powders we just put on by hand. a lot of different ways of doing things, but somebody that's been

5:20doing it as long as you has kind of settled into some techniques that work.

5:24So, thanks for sharing. Appreciate you guys watching. If you have any questions, reach out to the Farmersfriend customer service team at farmersfriend.com.