The three amigos
Calcium, boron and silicon are the concrete. Change the recipe in the bag, then ask yourself: would you build a house on that?
with Steve Martin
Healthy Plants are the Root of your Profit.
Learn why your crop does what it does, and plan your season around it. Practical plant nutrition, from a grower who's done it.
plain talk,
real paddocks
Meet Steve Martin
Most programs start in the soil. Steve starts with the plant.
Steve teaches from the farmer's side of the fence, the way he'd explain it standing in your paddock: plain, practical, and usually with an analogy.
“This is what I struggle with as a farmer.”
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Plant first, soil second.
“The scorecard for health is your plant.” Get the plant right and the soil follows.
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Yield isn't the profit.
“It's the recoveries on the yield.” Quality is the second lever, and Steve pulls both.
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Ask why.
Before you spray, ask “why is that pest there?” It's often telling you something about the plant.
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Trust the data, but stay in the field.
One sap test is a single number. A run of them shows how it's shifting. Your boots tell you the rest.
Try it free
Start on your own farm today.
Two things to do before you join. Both are free, and both stay on your phone as you go.One thing to do before you join. It’s free, and it stays on your phone as you go.
Program builder
Write your program
Plan the season stage by stage, checked as you go, and print it for the shed wall.
Start your programFarm audit
Take your farm audit
Walk one block with your phone: your best plant, a typical one, and the checks for the stage it’s at. Send it complete, and your first month in the hub is on us.
Take the auditThe Course · coming soon
From the plant’s perspective.
How a plant really works, and how to turn that into recoveries at the packing shed. Taught by a grower, for growers, in three parts.
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1
The problem
Why isn’t my program working as well as it should?
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2
The solution
What would I do differently, and why?
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3
The proof and the pathway
Can I afford to try it, and where do I start?
Three ways in
Learn it. Keep learning.
Put it to work.
The Course
Learn it properly
About the CourseLearning hub
Keep learning
Opening soon, for members: your program with QuorumAI, the Crop Walk for your own crop each week, your sap and soil tests, and questions to Steve, answered within the week.Open now, for members: your program with QuorumAI, the Crop Walk for your own crop each week, your sap and soil tests, the wiki, and questions to Steve, answered within the week.
About the hubJoin the hubConsulting
Put it to work
Work with SteveQuorumAI
Ask it like you'd ask Steve.
QuorumAI answers from Steve's own teaching, in the wiki and the program builder. Plain answers, with where each one came from.
“Quorum's a signal.”
QuorumAI
Crop's looking pale and soft. Should I throw more nitrogen at it?
Test before you add more. Pale can mean the crop is short of nitrogen. But pale and soft can mean it has plenty, and isn't turning it into protein. More nitrogen makes that worse.
A sap test tells you which. As Steve puts it: nitrogen is a liability until it becomes a protein.
Wiki · Nitrogen
Wiki · Sap testing
An example answer. QuorumAI gives general information, not advice for your farm.
How Steve explains it
Big ideas, paddock-sized.
Steve learns by seeing how a thing works, so that's how he teaches: one picture, one take-home.
The lone wolf, Mr Potassium
Potassium fills the house, but only once the foundation's poured. Earn the right to use it.
Know your plant like your tractor
You can quote your tractor down to the horsepower. So why take your agronomy on faith?
A liability until it's a protein
Nitrogen sitting in the plant is a cost and a risk until the plant turns it into protein. And all nitrogen is not equal.
Farming for profit
Yield isn't the profit. The recoveries are.
Yield is how much you grow. Recoveries are how much of it makes it through grading and gets paid for. Most programs only chase the first.
The yield lever. How much you grow.
The quality lever. How much of it you're paid for.
Episode one starts here, and ends on the number that settles it: what a kilogram costs you to grow.
See what’s in episode one
Consulting
Want Steve on your farm?
Steve works with growers directly: walking the crop, reading sap tests through the season, and building a program around each stage of your crop.
- Farm walks and crop assessments
- Sap testing and trend reading, all season
- A program built around your crop’s critical stages: its flight plan
Performance flight plan
An example crop · 140 days