Five Great Organic Formulas plus…
“Gardens are not made by singing “Oh how beautiful” and
sitting in the shade.”
–Rudyard Kipling
- If you access to the seashore, you have one of the best
plant foods and mulches available-kelp. It contains more than sixty mineral,
potassium, and cytokinins that stimulate both growth and flower formation. Put
in your compost. You can also make a “kelp tea.”
- Compost Tea – Fill a mesh bag with kelp, or finished
compost, or manure. Stir the mixture daily and let the blend age for 7 or 10
days. Use the liquid blend immediately for watering.
- Wood ashes are rich in calcium, phosphorous, and
potassium. Mixed with Epson salts high in sulfur and magnesium, will get your
bulbs going in the spring. Mix 4 dry gallons of ash with 1/2 cup of Epson
salts and put around your growing bulbs.
- Rust and Black Spot - I have 10 foot hollyhocks and they
can become infected with Rust. For rust-free hollyhocks and roses, use this
spray.
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda.
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/2 teaspoon soap
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 gallon water
Blend ingredients and pour into a spray bottle. Apply weekly to tops and
bottoms of leaves. Always remove diseased foliage from the plant and ground
and put in the trash can.
- Mighty-Milk Tomato Blight Cure for your tomatoes.
This suggestion comes from organic gardener Marion
Hess. Marion credits milk with her amazing tomato track record of no diseases,
ever. “I have never even had to rotate my crop,” she marvels.
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons powdered nonfat milk
¼ cup Epsom salts (optional)
1 shovelful of compost (optional)
Prepare your planting site by digging a hole.
Sprinkle the powdered nonfat milk into the planting hole. Add the Epsom salts
and compost or manure, if desired.
Mix the ingredients into the soil and plant your
tomato. Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons additional nonfat milk around the plant.
Add 2 tablespoons of the powder every few weeks throughout the growing season.
- Try putting the Milk on your leaves for
mildew-infected
plants.
1 cup of milk
9 cups water
Shake well and pour into a spray bottle. Apply twice weekly. Refrigerate
between usage.
- A good hosing on hot summer afternoons will wash mildew
spores away and help provide a barrier against new spores, but when the
problem persist use the formulas below.
- Roses with mildew – This blend is effective for weeks.
2 teaspoon baking soda
2 quarts water
1/2 teaspoon liquid soap or Murphy’s Oil
Spray when needed. The soap increases the moisture on plant leaves so spores
are unable to germinate.
- To protect Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and green
cabbage varieties from cabbageworms, dust flour on the cabbage, the
caterpillars eat the flour, which expands in their digestive system, and die.
After a few days use a hose to wash the flour off the plants.
- Cats and Dogs - To prevent dogs from returning to the
same spot on your lawn and causing yellow burn spots, dissolve one cup of
baking soda in one gallon water and saturate the urine spots every three days.
The baking soda deodorizes the area and neutralizes the acidity of the urine,
enabling the grass to regain its green color again.
Cats-Dissolve
two tablespoons flour, two tablespoons yellow mustard one
tablespoon ground red pepper, and two cups water in a sixteen-ounce
trigger-spray bottle, and mix well. Spray around the areas where you do not
want the cats to go.
Use white vinegar on areas where the cat used to mark their territory.
Vinegar neutralizes the smell of cat urine.
Thank you,
Barbara |
