Another GMS Customer Author
Over the years, The Growers Solution has published articles that were written for other publications by GMS customers. Please see "Tiedjens' Science Can Save the Bay," originally published in Lancaster Farmer on August 18, 2018. It seems like once a GMS customer understands the scientific foundation of the Growers Program, they want to share that thought with their fellow farmers. As a company, Growers Chemical Corporation realizes that when GMS sales representatives receive customer referrals, the potential client has already had a nice in-depth discussion about the Growers Program mindset.
Tiedjens' Science Can Save the Bay
Editor:
I'm a farmer who has been getting undesirable crops as far as quality is concerned. I raise tobacco, corn and hay.
I wasn't happy with the nutritional value of my crops, so I started looking into different ways to feed the soil, using information other than what I was getting from the fertilizer sales rep.
I found Growers Mineral Solutions in Milan, Ohio, a company that was started in 1955.
The founders of that company were three farmers who were raised on farms. Victor Tiedjens was director of research and development from the time it started to his death in 1975.
He was a soil scientist who traveled to over 23 states, diagnosing farmer crop problems from orchards to dying produce to corn growth, and why yields were not meeting potential.
Using his advice, some farmers increased their yields two-fold without polluting the environment. He held winter meetings with farmers to teach them how to raise more food through soil science.
When he passed away, his successors continued holding educational meetings.
Tiedjens discovered that all the textbooks were wrong. He took agriculture courses in college and found that 90 percent of what he thought was true was wrong when he applied that knowledge to real life subjects.
So I, Norman, followed Mineral Solutions advice and applied more high calcium lime on my ground and took a subsoiler through and ribbed it up 16 inches deep, for I had a hardpan under the plow layer about 5 inches thick.
I got many benefits on my farm. The stormwater didn't run off near as much, the water seeped into the subsoil and the roots of the crops were going down into the subsoil and harvesting. The native minerals and also the crops get the moisture in dry weather and it reduced the fertilizer runoff to the creeks. It increased my crop yields in quantity and quality. It's the solution to the bay pollution.
We farmers could clean the bay waters up in five years, in my opinion. Victor Tiedjens lived to be 80 years old. About 8 years before he died, he wrote "More Food from Soil Science, The Natural Chemistry of Lime in Agriculture."*
It was written for the farmer. Every farmer should have this book. It greatly improved the farmer's living, the environment, and the animal and human health in the universe.
-Norman Martin, Denver, Pennsylvania
* The book "More Food from Soil Science, The Natural Chemistry of Lime in Agriculture" can be purchased from Growers Chemical Corporation. Call 1-800-437-4769 for information and to place an order.
This is an excerpt from the Winter Growers Solution (2019) written by Norman Martin.
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