(light music) - Most people know that my husband worked at the Horticulture Gardens in Morris.

In addition to the flowers, there was also an organic dairy herd at the station.

Well, cows being cows, many of them reached through the fence to graze.

As we all know, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

That meant that the station had to be very careful about what they could use to fertilize the grass near the cows.

Let's go learn what product that worked and was safe to use.

(light music) - [Voiceover] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering ACIRA.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yael Jolene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden", visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Mary] Several years ago, Tom and I attended a horticulture show in the Twin Cities.

One of the companies exhibiting there was Sustane fertilizer.

And I got to visit with the owner, Craig Holden.

He explained a little about how they make the Sustane products, and it sounded so interesting.

Last month, I called Craig to ask if "Prairie Yard and Garden" could come to learn about his fertilizer.

And he said that would be just fine.

Thanks so much, Craig, for letting us come.

- You're most welcome.

- Please tell me, how did Sustane fertilizer get started?

- I grew up in a mixed livestock crop farm near here about 15 miles to the west by Northfield.

We raised turkeys and pigs and a number of other livestock.

When I returned from college, we started looking for better ways to utilize the manure.

Our crop land had been in the family for four generations.

We were nutrient rich soils and a local agronomist had suggested that we start a giveaway program to neighboring crop farmers that had gone to crop production but didn't have livestock for manure.

And ironically, nobody wanted it when it was free.

We looked at a better way to store it.

We produced turkeys year-round in Minnesota, so we cleaned barns year-round, but we can only apply manure during the spring or fall.

The composting process destroys pathogens through the metabolic energy of the microbes that break it down.

The piles get very hot, and that enable us to safely store manure on the farm that wouldn't cause any or spread any disease from our previous flock to the young flocks.

It also makes a homogenous product that's easier to deliver and apply at agronomic rates.

So, aerial composting was sort of new at the time and we took it as an opportunity to transform a waste material into a valuable resource that it is.

I started my first experimental composting in 1979.

We made our first product in 1980, a little bit, a few hundred ton, and we sold to a crop farmer that actually lives right near here, or near Kenyon, Minnesota.

Turkey litter is the combination of the droppings from the birds, a little bit of spilled feed and spilled water from the barns, and the litter.

The litter is the bedding that we raised the turkeys on.

It's usually soft wood pine shavings, or sometimes rice hulls or oat hulls.

But, as you know, turkeys are not raised on cage floors.

So the manure has to be collected and you have to have a nice soft bedding for them to walk on.

So it's a combination of manure droppings and carbonations bedding primarily.

The composting process is taking an organic material, and you can use any organic material like leaves or grass glazings or dairy manure.

And it's basically decomposing it from its raw form into a stable form of humus.

And humus is, by definition, the point at which organic matter has sort of reached its maximum decomposition.

It's a stable material.

The composting process uses nitrogen which we get from the droppings, carbon which we get from the bedding, oxygen we get from the atmosphere, and water that we get from rainfall.

So those four elements, under the right environment, mixed together, start decomposing material very rapidly.

And our process is called aerobic, meaning in the presence of oxygen.

Thermophilic, heat loving microorganisms that decompose the raw organic matter and change it into from a heterogeneous material into a homogeneous material that's very uniform and very stable biologically.

Turkey litter is delivered here year-round as barns are cleaned.

They're laid out in these long ricks, which we call windrows.

And we have a windrow turning machine, you can see it in the distance, that's aerating the material.

It's turning the material inside out.

Fresh supply of oxygen for the microbes that are indigenous in the material.

They in turn metabolize and heat up the piles to very high temperatures and break down the product in the process.

- [Mary] How do you monitor the temperature in the piles?

- [Craig] We have a long-stem thermometer probe with a digital readout, and the temperatures are monitor every week to make sure that we're hitting what's called the thermophilic zone, which is about between 120 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then we know we're getting rapid and thorough decomposition.

And by turning them rows inside and out, all particles are eventually exposed so that those internal temperatures.

- [Mary] How long does this process go on here?

- [Craig] It varies with the material you're composting, but we've learned over many years of doing this that it takes our material 26 weeks to achieve complete biological stability.

- [Mary] So then, you keep this going even in the winter time?

- [Craig] We compost year-round.

Nothing slows us down except maybe a blizzard.

Other than that, the microbes are busy working all the time and the windrows never freeze.

- [Mary] Craig, do you have to worry about smell from the facility?

- [Craig] There is some odor when we're turning or aerating the rows, but we're very fortunate this site is about one mile in any direction from the closest neighbor.

And the odor is pretty minimal, or I should say it doesn't last very long.

As a material compost, the odor goes away.

But with the fresh manure, there is some but it's not really any different than most farming operations.

- [Mary] Do you have to worry about controlling runoff from all of this?

- We do.

This is a MPCA, Pollution Control Agency permanent facility.

And so we had to create an engineered site.

We've got compacted clay pad that slopes.

There's drainage to the south, or all the precipitation that comes in contact with the windrows is contained within runoff containment ponds.

So, there's never any water that spills over.

The water's either recycled back on the rows, or when we have excess, like this past spring, we had a knife the excess water into the area cropland.

There's seven groundwater monitoring wells surrounding the site.

And we actually were required to monitor those two times a year for the past 35 years.

And 'cause that was a big concern about permitting originally.

That's gonna contaminate groundwater.

And as costly as it was to put in these wells and do all that monitoring for so many years with a hydrogeologist, the state just informed us this past spring that they're no longer requiring groundwater monitoring 'cause there's never been any change in environment.

So we're very pleased about that.

We work really hard to maintain a clean ship and to be a good neighbor.

It's very important to us.

- [Mary] So where does the compost go from here?

- [Craig] Once the compost is mature after 26 weeks, it's loaded up into a semi end dump and transported to our manufacturing plant in Cannon Falls where we dehydrate, granulate, blend, package, and ship.

- [Mary] Well, can we go see that too?

- [Craig] By all means, let's go.

(light relaxing music) - Taking care of our bodies is an important part of life.

Eating a balanced diet with a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, proper exercise, and ample sleep all play a vital role in our continued health and longevity.

We often think of heart and mental health as two of the most important areas to monitor.

But what about your skin?

Think about it.

Your skin is the largest organ in your body.

Not taking proper care of it can severely impact your health at any age.

Your skin acts as a barrier to our internal systems that are imperative to our health and wellbeing.

Soaps and lotions play an important role in keeping your skin healthy.

Skincare products have been a booming industry for decades, but a rise in small batch, all-natural skincare products have been increasing in popularity.

That's why today, we're visiting Country Sunshine near Brainerd, where Veronica Geisenhof, her husband Wade, and their young daughters grow seasonal cut flowers, annuals, perennials, and vegetable plants on her family's former dairy farm.

- Goat milk products diversify my business, Country Sunshine, 'cause it all goes back to the roots.

I had dairy goats growing up as a kid as a 4-H project.

And so, when I took the business over from my parents, the greenhouse and cut flower business, I added goat milk products being soap and lotion.

I'm too old for 4-H. My kids show goats at the fairs, but I collect the milk from the goats, feed it to the babies, and then any additional milk goes into making products, soap and lotion, which then I sell in my business.

It's important to me to have locally grown products from the farm because it really connects people with where their food comes from, where their flowers come from, where there's beauty products like soap and lotion come from.

It's an experience when they come out and they can see where the milk comes from that goes into the soap and lotion that they then buy and use.

And it's just all in all, it's a experience.

That's why it's important to me.

- So the next time you are looking to improve and maintain your skin health, consider products made with all-natural goats milk.

To find goat milk or other all-natural health and beauty products in your area, visit minnesotagrown.com.

Blaze, please tell us what your job is here at the company.

- I'm the Vice President of Operations.

So my responsibilities are primarily related to production.

So I'm responsible for managing the compost site as well as the manufacturing plant and the shipping and receiving and finances.

- [Mary] We were at the compost site.

And so, where do the trucks dump when they come here to this facility?

- [Blaze] So here, we bring it into the beginning of our plant and we dump it on the compost pad, where the skid loader operator will put the compost away into the storage bays.

So every day of the week, the semi end dumps are delivering compost into our facility throughout the day.

So, they'll bring 25 ton truckloads multiple times through the day and we'll put it away and feed it into the system as they deliver it.

- Can you please walk me through the steps of what happens to it here at your company?

- [Blaze] Sure.

The first step of the process is to dehydrate the compost.

So the compost comes in at about 40% moisture and we wanna dry it down to about 5% moisture.

So it'll go through a rotary drum dryer to dehydrate the compost.

One is to make it easier to store as well as to package and to ship.

And so by removing the water, we're avoiding shipping water weight around the country and around the world.

So after dehydration it goes through a gravity density separator, which will remove stones from the process.

The turkeys on the farm are fed grit to help with the digestion, and those very small stones need to be taken out of the fertilizer before we granulate it.

And then after the stone removal, it will go through a screening process to select a specific particle size.

We make two different particle sizes here.

We make a fine grade, which is a one millimeter particle, and we make a medium grade, which is a two millimeter particle.

And so depending on what product we're running, we'll screen it to the correct size and then it'll go into the finished product bin.

And any material that's not the correct size will then go back to the beginning of the process and get ground up and re-granulated.

- Then, how do you keep track of the batches that you sell?

- So we have a lot numbering system.

So we make a variety of different NPK products or fertilizer products, and we'll make 'em in batches, generally 10 or 20 ton batches, and that will be assigned a lot number or production number for tracking purposes.

- Now, some of our viewers won't know what N, P, and K refers to.

- Sure.

- Can you tell us?

- Yeah, so most fertilizers are identified by their primary macronutrients, which are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

So we refer to that as NPK.

Those are the three primary nutrients that all plants need, and that's how most fertilizers are classified.

So those three nutrients have very important roles in plant development.

Nitrogen is utilized for vegetative growth.

So to grow large, green leafy plants.

Phosphorus is used for root development as well as fruit and flower development.

And potassium helps regulate the passage of nutrients through the plant.

- How many different sizes or kinds of packages do you produce?

- We sell the fertilizer in a wide variety of different packages sizes.

Anything from as small as a 21 gram teabag size package, all the way up to a 25 ton bulk truckload.

Most of the product goes out in either 50 pound bags or in 2,000 pound tote sacks for the commercial markets.

We also have a retail line of fertilizers that we sell through garden centers and hardware stores.

And those package sizes will be smaller, five pounds or 20 pounds generally.

And then we do a very small pack, which is a compost tea bag which contains 21 grams of compost that's meant to be put into water and steeped into a compost tea and fed to your plants.

- [Mary] So some of those smaller packages, it can be for people like me.

- [Blaze] Yep, so those are for home gardeners.

We make fertilizers for flowers and vegetables as well as home lawns.

- [Mary] How many people does it take to produce all of this?

- [Blaze] So we generally have about 30 employees.

We run 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and then we run 12 hours a day on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday.

You know, one shift in the manufacturing plant will take three or four employees and there'll be another three and four employees in the packaging per shift.

- [Mary] Do your products contain any micronutrients too?

- [Blaze] Yep, they do.

The composted turkey litter is very rich in micronutrients.

Turkeys are fed a very complex diet, and so the resulting turkey litter has a wide variety of different micronutrients.

So it'll contain calcium, magnesium, sulfur, manganese, iron, zinc, and all 17 micronutrients that are required for plant growth.

- [Mary] How did you come up with the name Sustane?

- [Blaze] Huh, well, that's a good question.

You know, our roots are in sustainability.

The purpose of the product is to recycle an agricultural resource as well as to build healthy and sustainable soils.

So Sustane fit our mission very well.

- [Mary] Well, I think it's a great and appropriate name.

- [Blaze] I agree.

(light upbeat music) - I have a question.

I just heard the term foodscaping.

What is this?

- A foodscape is a term that was actually developed in the field of geography, and it talks about how our relationship is with food.

How we talk about food, how we cook food, how we relate to food.

Foodscaping is similar to that except it incorporates the term scaping, meaning more of landscaping.

And in foodscaping, you're taking beautiful food products or food plants and you're combining them with maybe more ornamental plants.

So we want to celebrate the beauty of food here at the landscape, at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

We're up at the Farm at the Arb and it is a wonderful place to see an example of foodscaping.

Some things that you'll see around this area, you'll see pollinator plants, plants that we can't really eat, but the pollinators can.

Those plants are mixed into plants that we can eat like beets.

We have plants that you maybe have never seen before, like edible dahlias.

The tubers of dahlias are edible.

And this is dahlia coccina, which is one of the species that's grown sometimes for its tubers.

We use things like cabbages for their texture and their big, purple leaves.

Kales for the same, their height, we have some very tall kales.

They add structure and that really creates a lot of interest in a landscape, but you can also eat them.

So we're doing a lot of mixing and matching with textures, forms, colors, and the edibility or maybe sometimes an ornamental.

- [Voiceover] Ask the Arboretum experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research, and education.

(light upbeat music) - Blaze, are your products considered organic products?

- They are.

We make a wide variety of different organic and sustainable fertilizers, and several of 'em are allowed for organic use for growing organic crops.

- [Mary] Why is that important?

- [Blaze] Well, it's important for a variety of reasons.

Consumers and home gardeners wanna know what inputs are being used on in their gardens and on their vegetables, especially if it's food crops.

It's important to know that there are no chemicals or synthetic ingredients in there or pesticides used.

And it's also important for sustainability reasons, to ensure healthy soils and avoid using non-renewable resources.

- I've seen the initials O-M-R-I when it comes to organic.

What are those and what does that mean?

- So OMRI stands for the Organic Material Review Institute.

It's a non-profit organization that reviews and approves products for use in organic production.

So, under the National Organic Program, the USDA will certify organic crops as organics.

But inputs are not certified the same way that food crops would be.

So, there's a third party that will review inputs to determine if they are allowed under the National Organic Program.

So we have several products that are approved by OMRI and that are on the OMRI list.

And so for those products, we will undergo a annual review program where we provide OMRI with documentation on the ingredients that are used in the manufacturing process so that they can verify that no synthetic or chemical ingredients are used in the product or the process and that it complies with the National Organic Program standards.

- When you add the product to the soil, do you have to worry about trying to feed the microbes so that they can break down the sustained product?

- Well, having a vibrant soil microbiome is very important, especially for organic growing.

The soil microorganisms will break materials down and release nutrients and make 'em available to the plant.

And so that's a very, very important component of all organic growing, including using Sustane.

So Sustane is considered a slow release fertilizer, and that means that the nutrients will remain in the soil until microorganisms break that material down and activate the nutrients and release them so that they're available to the plant.

And that process will take anywhere from six to 12 weeks depending on soil and weather conditions.

It helps match the nutrient availability with the demand by the plant.

So when it's cold out and the plant's not growing, there's very little nutrient release happening in the soil because the soil microorganisms are dormant or inactive.

And then when the soil starts to warm up and the plant starts to grow and demand more nutrients, that's also when the soil microorganisms will activate and start breaking down the nutrients and making the plant available.

The Sustane compost, because of the composting process, is very rich in beneficial microorganisms.

We grow very large populations of beneficial microbes during composting, and then we dehydrate that compost at a low temperature so that we preserve the microorganisms so that they're available in the soil when it's applied.

- How long does the fertilizer tend to last in the soil?

- So the nutrients will release over a six to 12 week time period, and that's gonna be dependent on soil temperatures and moisture availability.

So, in a very dry soil, it will last longer, maybe 10 to 12 weeks, or in cool soils or in the early spring it will last for a longer period of time.

And then in the middle of the summer when the soil temperatures are high and if there's enough moisture present, it'll release quicker and then it'll be closer to six to eight weeks.

So we say six to 12 weeks, but it's gonna depend on your climate and soil temperatures.

- Do you have a lab where you can verify what the active ingredients are in your fertilizers?

- We do, yep.

So we operate an in-house lab where we test each production run to confirm the guaranteed analysis.

So we talked about NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

So each of our products will guarantee a certain level of those nutrients on the bag.

And so after we make the product, we test each batch to make sure that the nutrient concentration in the fertilizer meets or exceeds the guarantee on the bag.

And then we also send samples out from each run to a third party lab to verify our testing as well.

- [Mary] Who buys your products?

- [Blaze] We sell our product to a very wide range, diverse population of people throughout the world.

So we'll sell it to anywhere from home gardeners to large scale organic farms.

We also sell it to the turf and ornamental market.

So landscapers, lawn care operators, golf courses.

Nurseries and greenhouses for ornamental plants.

And then we also service the erosion control and revegetation market, and that is areas where they're trying to regrow grass, typically to stabilize soil or reclaim damage or depleted soils and they'll use Sustane to establish new plants.

- [Mary] Do you have a lot of repeat customers?

- [Blaze] We do, yep, yep.

So once you use Sustane, you'll oftentimes be a Sustane user for life.

We're a performance and research-based company, so the Sustane fertilizers work exceptionally well agronomically.

And so, once either professional growers or home gardeners have used Sustane, they oftentimes will see the results very quickly and will continue to use the product.

- [Mary] Do you sell your product all over the United States or into other countries too?

- [Blaze] We do, we sell it worldwide.

We ship it to about 60 different countries.

About 50% of our business is in the United States.

We ship quite a bit into Canada as well as to Europe and the Middle East and to Asia.

And Sustane is the only manure based organic fertilizer company that has a permit to ship to the EU and to ship to China.

- [Mary] Well, this has been so interesting.

Thanks so much to you and to Craig for letting us come and learn all about your fertilizer products.

- [Blaze] Sure.

You're most welcome.

We're very glad to have you and we love to share our story and our products.

(light upbeat music) - [Voiceover] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering ACIRA.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yael Jolene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden", visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(bright upbeat music)