A Note of Thanks

Last year Alberto Ferracuti, a coffee grower from El Salvador contacted me. He was having trouble getting good yields. I explained that I had no experience with coffee or soil from his region. He said that the people with experience in coffee had not helped him and wanted me to look at his soil samples.

After faxing me his soil tests we made recommendations. Due to the high cost of freight Alberto was unfortunately not able to use or products. He did follow our recommendations and he has called me twice this year to inform me of the dramatic improvements. Here is the last email I received from him.

Craig, I decided to email you this note of thanks, since I cannot buy your product due to its prohibitive cost (Freight to El Salvador). I have no doubt it is great, as is your comments in your blog.

I have witnessed how calcium has played a very important role in a variety of ways, the most evident being much better utilization of nutrients existing in soils, not to mention those applied in fertilizers. This year, when the rains started in May, I saw my coffee trees respond heavily to the high organic matter content (7%). Populations of earthworms are up, probably microbes and bacteria too. The end result is that we are now at july and I have not applied one ounce of nitrogen to the trees, you should see how they look!!! like you had applied nitrogen twice. I haveno doubt bacteria are at work nitrifying organic matter and to add nitrogen at this juncture would be giving excess nitrates to the soil. Maybe we could chat over the phone ? let me know.

Alberto

Thanks for the note and call Alberto, helping farmers grow better yields and better quality is what it is all about!

I would like to expand on how Craig's advice to my soil analysis and his various comments in the blog aided me. Craig has been thorough in how Calcium is first and foremost in what a farmer ought to look at. I had a PH of 4.4 in my soil,(it is now 5.9) and unbalanced cation bases. Craig helped me balance my soil cationic exchange capacity through his advice and blog. Once that was taken care of, a host of improvements in my coffee trees was noted, and better utilization of fertilizers. Oh yes, doubt not the importance of proper soil PH and balance the soil. Here's a list of improvements noted:
-Better health of coffee trees through the dry summer (it lasted 6 months from October through May)
-Greater growth (new wood--more flowers and crop next year)during this season since the rains started.
-Less fungus disease in the leaves.
-I skipped my first nitrogen application this year with no problem.
-I have seen less weeds grow this season.
-Better habitat for microbes and bacteria.