Harley Smith, Plant Researcher

About a year ago I noticed a gentleman who worked out at the same gym where Mrs ERJ and I walk and where I lift weights.

He would use some of the machines and then walk as a cool-down.

One day he was wearing a nerdy, chemistry tee-shirt and I made some kind of nerdy, off-the-wall comment about it.

It turns out that he is a semi-retired research scientist who specializes in formulating fertilizers for niche markets. Suppose you want to market potted mums that are more vividly red than any of your competitors or grow the most massive pumpkins imaginable. Harley is the man.

The last time we crossed paths he shared that he was even more specialized than I thought. He is a whiz-bang at hydroponics. Some of the reasons that is tricky is because soil automatically buffers pH and resident bacteria and fungi can make insoluble nutrients available to roots. You can't just mix random sources of various nutrients and expect them to stay soluble in the water. Some of them will want to combine into insoluble molecules and drop out of the water as sludge.

Furthermore, it turns out that he is a neighbor AND he produces a podcast. He was chuckling because his partner in many of the productions is an organic grower in Idaho while he is a wing-of-bat, eye-of-newt guy. And they both bring valuable insights to the party and both respect what the other can do.

With no further ado, here are Harley Smith's Youtube videos. There may be one-or-two random videos that leak into the mix because "Smith" is a common name...but most of them are his. If I was to recommend one video that is most likely to appeal to the broadest range of my readers, it is Microbial Inoculants and Compost Tea.