The power of COMAND soil

COMAND is a unique turbocharged compost. It’s created naturally through a proprietary process of microbial inoculation and stabilization. COMAND helps restore soil health, providing the perfect growing environment for your turf, flowers, vegetables or citrus crops. 

Join our guest speaker - Mark from Life Soils, as he shares his experience and expertise with us on this topic. 

Whether you’re a gardener, a landscaper, or simply someone who cares about the environment, you’ll walk away from today’s episode with practical insights about the power of COMAND and how it can transform the way we think about soil health. 

https://youtu.be/bQCObBXCRW4https://yardstopgardencenter.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi guys, welcome back to the Yard Stop Garden Center podcast. My name is Zoe and we have a special guest today, Mark with Command Soils. I'm super excited about this conversation today as Command is one of our bestsellers here at the Yard Stop. So Mark, for someone who doesn't know what Command is, could you explain what that is and maybe the story behind it?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Sure. So Command is a high-quality biologically active soil amendment and top dressing produced right here in Florida. It's used in agricultural applications from citrus, sod production. It's used in landscaping applications from everything from top dressing, commercial and residential lawns to amending soil prior to landscape installation. The fact that it is biologically active is part of the reason why it is so beneficial, and it's part of the reason why it was produced and how it was produced. Darren Midlane created the product in England in the early 90s, I want to say 1990. It's right around the time I cut my mullet, so it's that time. Darren created the product as a way to replace native peat that was banned for extraction in England to preserve native lands and some of the areas of the area of the UK where he was from. He created the product utilizing um naturally occurring soil biology, using that to help break down compostable material. He went through trial and error and found one that really, really worked well, used that product to break down existing carbon sources and different biological available products through food waste composting and different compostables. It's a biologically active compost where many, many different types of compost take you know close to a year or more to really reach that level of biological activity. We can reach that within you know three to four months, which greatly increases the ability to produce the product. And that biological activity is what makes it so beneficial to end users. So landscapers, especially in Central Florida area, if we have soil conditions that are less than ideal because of typical construction methods of digging up detention ponds and spreading that poor soil out across and then trying to grow landscaping on it, that biological activity and the stabilized organic matter that it brings to that situation increases the ability for those plants to thrive. Well, most folks, especially if if you consider new construction, homeowners come from all over the country moving to Florida, thousand homeowners a day coming to Florida still. Those areas of new development typically come with very standardized landscaping installations. Like I mentioned before, most of those new developments are built on subsurface soil. So when you start a new development, they come in and they scoop out the detention or retention ponds, take that subsurface soil, spread it throughout the community. That soil has very low organic matter in there and the very low biological activity. It's not typical topsoil, it is it is much less beneficial to plant growth. And then they have these beautiful landscapes installed on top of those, on top of that less than ideal soil, and they struggle quite a bit. They struggle with keeping it hydrated because there's no stabilized organic matter to hold moisture in the plant. There's no biological activity available to cycle nutrients. So in many cases, they're forced to water more than necessary, and they're forced to fertilize are more than ideal just to try to get the results that they're expecting from their new homes. Um, command can help change that dynamic very, very quickly. Um, most of the customers, especially early on in our our our lifetime of or you know, our life as a company, folks were calling us because they they either have a neighbor that was using the product and saw how beneficial it was, or they just got on the web looking for a solution to the trouble that they were having. So it it really has been a game changer in the landscaping industry in particular, which is really what you're servicing here at the yard stop. Um, I learned of the product as an applicator. I worked for a family-owned landscape company, somebody that started right here in the Mount Dora area, um, expanded throughout the state of Florida. Most of our business, our primary customer base was that new construction. And I would put together a very comprehensive fertilizer program. We worked very closely with the irrigation team to try to figure out exactly what we could do to maximize our the benefit of our program, reduce our inputs overall, um, as far as fertilizer and chemical applications go and the runtimes of the irrigation. And my fertilizer provider at the time, I was buying fertilizer from a very large distribution company, suggested that I try command as a so as a solution for those products, and it was an instant you know game changer for us. You know, we started utilizing it first as a top dressing, and then we started using utilizing it as a soil amendment. So when we had replacement um either through an upsell to a customer um or to um as a warranty for something where we maybe we didn't get the results we were looking for, and we had to replace plants or replace turf, we would amend that soil prior to putting the new plants in and they would thrive and we could reduce the amount of water that was needed to maintain those. We could reduce the amount of fertilizer that was required to maintain those plants, and it was an absolute game changer for us.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

So obviously, you would recommend command rather than a basic topsoil, but for a customer that comes in and doesn't want to pay the extra money for the command, why how could you convince them that that's the right well for for topsoil, a typical topsoil that you're buying from a supplier is not always going to be topsoil.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

So when you think of the term topsoil, that is the living portion of the soil profile that is naturally occurring. So if you go to a wooded area or an area that's been naturally growing for a long period of time, there has been a natural composting process that has been taking place over time to build a layer of topsoil. Um, in that process, it's plant growth that's been living and dying over years, you know, animal activity, worms that grow and live in that top layer of topsoil, um that have died over time, the the biology itself going through a cycle, you know, as that stabilized organic material starts to break down, that biology breaks that down even further. Just the the biology that's there adds to the the richness of that topsoil. So, what command is because we've gone through a composting process and created that humus material, you are actually recreating that process by amending your soil with command. Command, because it goes through that process and reaches high heat, you have no weed seeds that are in there. It's it's a clean, um, very healthy soil amendment and that you can add to your soil to create or recreate a naturally occurring topsoil. If you're buying topsoil from uh someplace, you don't know where that came from. It could just be a dark stained soil that's someone scraped off from an area. You may get lucky and have a really good, high-performing topsoil, or it just may be a dark pile of soil that they scrape from you know somewhere else, and it could be really contaminated. One thing that we've seen in communities that have brought in that topsoil is all kind of material that have been brought in. Everything from bricks to wood material to garbage to trash. I mean, it could be it could vary very widely the condition. With command, you know what you're getting. You're getting a very rich soil amendment that can take your existing soil, raise the level of nutrition, raise the level of organic matter, and mimic a natural topsoil. And in many cases, a much lower application than bringing in a full topsoil. You know, the application rate for command to amend existing soil is four cubic yards per 1,000 square feet. So you just need four cubic yards of product to make a really productive topsoil, right? Where if you were to bring in topsoil, you may have to put in six inches of soil to get the same level. And there's no guarantee that you're gonna have the same biological activity. There's no guarantee that you're gonna have the same benefits of doing that. You may save a bit of money, but in the long run, I don't think you really do. Right. Um, so it's a much different process. Um, sports turf alone, the fact that they're using it on golf courses and using it on professional sports turf show you that there is a quality difference. If there was if it was all about just getting topsoil replacement, they would just bring in topsoil. Um, so there is a difference between topsoil and command. Yeah. Um, I think it only takes one opportunity to see the difference in the field to understand that there is a benefit.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

I agree. Yeah. Um, so the minute we sell commandscape and command turf, could you tell people what the difference is between those that are interested in getting command?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Sure. So command turf is used exclusively in the in the management of turf in landscaped areas. It can be used both as a soil amendment applied prior to plant and turf installation. You would just till that in four cubic yards per 1,000 square feet, till that into the top four to six inches of turf that creates um of soil, it recreates native topsoil and allows for the plants to perform at a high level, increases the ability for the soil to hold plant available water, produces the you know the microbes that are really necessary for the soil to be as productive as possible. What happens in that native topsoil? Um, many, many benefits. You can also use that as a top dressing. The application rate is much lower at one half to one cubic yard per 1,000 square feet, applied just right over the top of your turf or shrubs, if you wanted to put it in your shrub beds. That still provides the ability for nutrients to be slowly released into the soil. It actually helps break down some of the existing thatch layers or some of the existing plant material that might be dying, so that organic matter that falls into the thatch layer is broken down by the biology to add to the stabilized organic material or organic matter in the soil, so it builds soil over time. Um, and not everyone can take your turf out and then I'm in the soil and put the turf back. So it should be part of a maintenance practice to top dress. So that's command turf. Command scape is a planting soil, so that is our command. 50% of the mix is command, and 50% is a composted pine bark. And that is technically a planting soil you can actually plant into that. That product is used from raised beds, it can be used in larger pots, it can be used in gardens as a garden soil, placed in the ground as a garden soil. One of the biggest uses throughout the state is annual changeouts. So when a company comes in and they change out their annuals typically two to three times per year, they can refresh the soil and you can plant directly in Commandscape. We have a very large community, one of the largest communities in the country that uses that product as their primary planting soil for their annual beds, and that community has some of the most beautiful annuals anywhere. Right. You know, as you ride through there, they really stand out. So if you have an annual bed that you want to replace as a professional, we would recommend that you use CommandScape. If you have if you're a homeowner and you're planting a garden or if you're planting raised beds, that's the product that we would put you in touch with. So one is an amendment, one is a planting soil.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

For someone that, let's just say have an example of someone has plants that are in the ground and they have the Florida soil, which is basically sandy, um, and they did put in the command soil with their current. How long would it take, would you say, to see results of a difference in that plant?

SPEAKER_00 13:26

A lot of that is based on the time of year and the growing conditions that the plants are in. In the cooler months, it naturally occurring lower light, so you have shorter days. Plants are typically growing slower. Part of that, too, is going to be because soil temperatures are cooler and there's naturally less soil biology activity during that time of year. So it depends on the time of year, but during the growing season, especially on plants that have been managed, meaning that if they've received some fertilizer and they're just not performing because the soil conditions aren't there, you can see results within days. You know, we've had folks call back and we've seen pictures and taken pictures of turf areas that have responded over a weekend after an application. You know, it it can be part of an existing fertilizer program. And the ones that we want to see the most and the ones that we want to see pictures of the most are the ones where people have been spinning their wheels. So in professional turf, one of the most challenging um customers or one of the most challenging areas are commercial sports fields, like a a city park or a county park where they just get so much play that the kids are just beating the fields down. That's what they're designed for. But in many cases, the management team have been coming out and applying fertilizer and trying to get these fields to grow, and they just don't respond. There's they're just too beat up, there's not any soil biology because they've been making fertilizer applications and chemical applications, whether it's weed control or insect control. It's been detrimental to the biology in the soil. When they apply top dressing, a command top dressing, typically one application, all of that effort comes together really quickly. And we've seen complete changes in those fields to the point where they've gone from devastation to you know almost perfection within two to three weeks. And it's it's really incredible to see that. So it just depends on the type of year or the time of year. If you are applying that in December, so to speak, or to say, it's the results are going to be much less responsive. Right. Um, so we would recommend for the folks that need to see a visual response to wait until you know the grass is actively growing. That's a great way to think, anyway, with any type of fertilizer application, you don't want to put something out on something that's not actively growing. So we would say apply that when you start to see the weather change. Yeah. And then you're going to get a response, a a better, more um robust response when the weather conditions are favorable.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

How is command typically applied?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Um it for a top dressing application, command is most commonly applied with professional top dressing equipment. Um, something that has a live bottom works best. Something that's designed to put out top dressing sand or a composting top dressing. It does not go out well in traditional spreaders. Um it will bridge, meaning that the product will fall out of the bottom and then there'll be a bridge of product inside of the spreader. So it does not typically work very well. Um, those can typically be rented from rental applications, um, rental spots, um, or hiring a professional applicator. There are more and more of those available throughout the state, um, several in the Mount Dora area that can be reached just by simply Googling top dressing. I would call the folks here at Yard Stop, and I'm sure they can put you in contact with some of those folks that are purchasing their product here. For a homeowner, um, they do make, and I know you rent um commercial applicators here. They're actually rollers that are designed for putting out peat. They work very, very well for putting out top dressing. If you're doing a smaller area, let's say your yard is you know less than 2,000 square feet, you know, those are something that you can put out within an hour or two. You know, one bag of command top dressing covers a 10 by 10 section when you're top dressing, and those rollers are a pretty easy way to get those that product out. Um it just depends on the size of the application, you know, at hand. I think um the vast majority of folks putting it out are either hiring a top dressing company with professional equipment or they're renting it from someone in their area and doing it that way.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Thanks so much for joining us for our podcast. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us and we can get you in touch with Mark. Stay tuned for next week's.