Paghat’s Garden: Slug control

Yuck. Okay, after reading why he believes that spraying coffee does not kill slugs and snails (a good article, but I’m still making an extra cup for now), I ran across this article.  Sluggo has iron phosphate in it, which is also good if you don’t want any moss in your yard.

The Hack: using Sluggo, or some other version that has iron phosphate in it, “…The best time for long-term control is to treat the whole garden in the dampness of autumn. That way, come spring, there will be very few adult slugs to lay their eggs. Another treatment might be useful in late winter or early spring. I’ve found that twice a year does the trick. And of all the things I ever tried previously, none of them achieved the level of effectiveness I now take for granted. …”
Paghat’s Garden: Slug control.

See Also: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=805&storyType=garde

Or go to the EPA: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/ingredients/factsheets/factsheet_034903.htm

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Have a Morning Cuppa With Your Slimy Enemies

There are baits, brews, traps and tubs you can get rid of slugs with (okay I couldn’t think of anything else that started with the letter t…), but why not just use what you may already have in and around the house?  How about the cold cuppa that goes down the drain?  Put it to use, along with the grounds.

The Hack:  brew up a second cup for the slime balls in your garden.  Let it cool, or keep the half-a-cup that you didn’t finish, and pour it where they’re having their breakfast.  Cold coffee doesn’t hurt the plants, and it may perk them up, too!

“… This sounds like scientists chatting around the water cooler, so let’s look at a more real-life example: A cup of drip brewed coffee has about 115 milligrams of caffeine, an espresso (and percolated coffee) about 80mg, while instant coffee has about 65mgof caffeine. Thus, drip brewed coffee is about twice as strong as the instant stuff, which means you want to use drip brewed coffee for repelling slugs and snails.

Coffee grounds are already recommended as a home remedy for keeping slugs and snails at bay. Grounds repel slugs, Hollingsworth found, but a caffeine solution is much more effective, he says: “Slugs turn back immediately after contacting the [caffeinated soil].”

Personally, I’ve had good results (if you want to call making a slug uncomfortable “good results”) with sprinkling coffee grounds around plants as well as spraying slugs with brewed coffee–you know, the stuff that doesn’t get consumed in the morning and tastes really bad when you try to microwave it in the afternoon? Many other gardeners have told me they’ve had similar luck. …”

Slug and snail baits: How to safely fight the war on slime.

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Bethel Organics, Inc. Wins Top Honors at 2009 All Things Organic™ Trade Show for 100% Biodegradable DOT Pots™

100 percent organic - no binders or fillers!

Shows I’ve been asleep at the ingredients aisle – thought all the other peat pot type pots were 100% organic.  These pots are part of a great little seed starter kit.  The “Cow Pots” are made of manure and fiber, though what the fiber is, hasn’t been found as of yet.  80% less peat is great, but 100% less peat would be even better (like coir).
Currently (as of June 2009) peat pots cost:Qty=50@$15.00
while Cow Pots are ringing in around $Qty=50@$42
and the Bethel Organic DOTpots ring in at Qty=50@$12.95 (via Johnny’s Select Seeds) All prices exclude shipping and handling.  Buying in bulk helps bring the prices down drastically.

Bethel Organics, Inc. Wins Top Honors at 2009 All Things Organic™ Trade Show for 100% Biodegradable DOT Pots™.

The Hack:  Make your own pots from newspaper and save even more:
via Origami – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms7hUdbl8Ds
The Rolling Method –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_DYWmfRGfc

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Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter and Put Your Garden There Instead

"Gutter Garden" photo Courtesy Suzanne Forsling

"Gutter Garden" photo Courtesy Suzanne Forsling

Make your own “vertical veggie garden” with some gutter material and an exterior wall you’re not doing anything with anyway!

The Hack: Use a wall and some gutter material to make a vertical garden where no garden has dared to cling!

“… The idea is essential this: Why not put rain gutters in rows along the wood siding on the sunny side of the house. It might look weird, but that was where all the heat, sun and protection from damage is best. I talked to my husband, Pete, about it and he agreed it was worth a try.

We went to Home Depot and selected some “attractive” brown plastic gutters along with all the required parts so that we could mount them in one long row. (The total length or a row would be about 20 feet). Pete drilled some very small holes in the bottom of the gutters to let excess water drain out after he mounted them on the siding. …”

While this can be a convenient way of making use of unused space, there is the issue of the space needed for the plant’s root systems. Since you are using a six inch by perhaps twenty-four inch space per plant, minus the intermingling of the root systems with their neighbors, the size of your plants will probably be smaller. lettuce roots illustrated with one  foot deliniations Looking at the root development of lettuce, for instance, you will see that the tap root in regular soil goes down beyond three feet!(Click on illustration for better picture and link to text).  This illustration also shows why companion plants nearby also help each other owing to the fact that the root systems would intermingle.  It also raises the question does square foot gardening really make sense?  The confining nature of square foot gardens would inhibit the root systems, and the nutritional needs of the plants as well as their sunlight requirements could make a strong argument for more widely spaced plants that compliment each other (larger sun-loving plants giving shade to nearby lower growing plants that are harvested more frequently, such as lettuce grown on the north side of pole beans, etc.. Succession planting could still easily take place with faster growing crops, and the plants themselves may prove more nutritious with less need of fertilization since the plants would be drawing their nutrition from a wider area.

Original link via LifeHacker

You may also like:

Vertical Garden Pallet

Vertical Garden DIY

Earthworms from the compost bin by goosmurf on flickr.com

Don't Ask, Don't Till

lettuce roots illustrated with one foot deliniations

A Hidden World of Plant Roots

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vertical Garden DIY          Don’t Ask, Don’t Till          Hidden World of Plant Roots

 

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Make it Yourself – or not…

Great article, a small tangent from gardening but worth it. http://www.slate.com/id/2216611/pagenum/all/#p2

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Tomato-tainers – Growing a Portable Garden

DIY tomato containerMoving soon? Need to conserve space? Need (or want) to conserve water? How about saving loads of money by making your own container garden and forgoing the shipping and handling charges for the ones advertised in the sunday magazines? Here’s a great link to an excellent portable garden DIY. http://earthtainer.tomatofest.com/

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Got Fruit?

Passion Fruit via Ruth L at Flickr.com

Passion Fruit via Ruth L at Flickr.com

There are fruits, and then there are fruits.  Some you’ll never be able to pick, and will be littering your lawn, others are on public land and will be dropping on cars.  In either event, it would be a waste not to gather free food for yourself or for your food bank.  It’s a little early for the northeast, but it’s a good time to start looking and to register if you have trees that you’ll never be able to harvest.  Now to find the vegetable exchange… You can also list your vegetables! Read the FAQ’s for more information. via Lifehacker

Welcome to Neighborhood Fruit | neighborhoodfruit.com.

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Comfrey Makes a High Potash Garden Fertilizer

comfrey-by-amberdcGreat article from the-organic-gardener.com regarding Comfrey.

The Hack: make a concentrated liquid containing all of the big 3 nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in substantial amounts. NPK= 8 : 2.6 : 20.5 %.

“…Place the plant’s leaves into a large container, preferably one with a tap or hole at the bottom, and a tight lid at the top to exclude water and flies as well as keep any smell inside. Fill the container with leaves e.g. an empty Can-O-Worms container will do the job, filling the bottom module with tap, as well as the upper modules. Cut the leaves before the flower buds appear and before the ageing leaves develop infections. (I normally exclude rust infected leaves if I’m going to give any of the liquid away, otherwise rust is simply ‘part and parcel’ of the herb’s life.)

A block of wood and a brick could be placed on top of the pile to press it firmly and gently down, (without crushing). Fresh Comfrey leaves contain more nitrogen than farmyard manure and a black liquid smelling of ammonia will soon collect in the bottom. It is drained off into a screw topped collecting bottle. …”

Be sure to dilute it by adding 15-20 parts water before using, bringing it down to 0.5 : 0.4 : 3.8. – a high potash feed

Comfrey Makes Garden Fertilizer.

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LED Grow Light Panels: Prices Getting Reasonable!

The prices for LED grow lights are getting more reasonable – as more people and businesses are manufacturing them, the prices get better and better.  I’m currently using a set of T8 (Fluorescent tube) replacements which necessitated rewiring a shop light to remove the ballast from the circuit.  They’ve worked well as grow lights, but they’re not as long-lived as their components:  LED’s will last for up to 100,000 hours – but they’re only part of the overall circuitry.  The diodes and resistors take the brunt of the power fluctuations, and they’re what often fail.  One of my “bulbs” has gone completely dark, while the other is starting to fail as well, but the manufacturer is working on getting me replacements under warranty.  I’ll write further about them as things unfold, but I’m pretty optimistic.

The LED Growth lights look like a nice alternative to rewiring a shop light.  Two T8 LED tubes cover approximately 8 square feet, and cost $130.  Two LED Growth panels would cost $98 to cover 8 sq. ft. (3 for $130 covering 12 sq. ft.).

When it comes to starting seeds under LEDs, you have to put the LED’s 1″ above the soil: this won’t give you 4 square feet per panel initially, but once the plants start growing, you can raise the light higher, allowing you to finally reach the 4 square feet per panel ratio recommended.  If you did this with a metal halide lamp, you’d have baked soil; with regular fluorescent bulbs, you’d acheive good results but you’d find the soil would dry out faster, and you’d be using 80 watts of power as opposed to 28W.

If finances allow, I’ll be trying out at least one of these panels to see how well they work.  One of the down sides is that the plants look ghastly in the red/blue light, while the white light from the T8 LED replacements look fine, though the light is intense.

LED Growth.

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How Can I Give My Plants More Calcium?

Updated: From the University of Hawaii, Thanks to djeanis for the update! Link to U of HI paper on the process.
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/SA-10.pdf

Here’s a recipe I found and an interesting article, just don’t know how long to roast ’em for:
1. Roast/toast eggshells.
2. Soak roasted eggshells in equal volume of vinegar for two weeks until the vinegar dissolves the eggshells.
3. Dilute 1:20 parts water and spray on plants or water into plants.
4. Note below that this is best used during a specific period in the plants growth, just before flowering/fruiting.

This is from the BIM piece posted on an earlier thread:

“Calcium Phosphate

A lot of agriculture advisers have used calcium phosphate for better plant growth, health, pest and disease controls. Natural farmers use this very specific bionutrient. Under the theory of Nutrioperiodism developed by a Japanese horticulturist, Yasushi Inoue in the 1930�s, plants and animals need a very specific nutrient relative to the stage of their development. In the plant, there is the essential vegetative growth , changeover and the reproductive periods. In animals, like humans, there is the infantile, juvenile and adulthood. It is not only critical to provide the right nutrient at the right stage of the development, but also critical to use or apply specific nutrient of calcium phosphate in the juvenile or changeover period. For the plant, for example, we know that nitrogen is critical on the vegetative stage as potassium is critical in the flowering and fruiting stages. It is however, the changeover period that is most critical that will determine the quality of the final reproductive stage. At this stage, an additional nutrient is badly needed by the plant. And this is calcium phosphate. Calcium phosphate is good for plants� “morning sickness”. It is the stage that additional baby needs to be fed or the process where flower/fruit is about to come. Ash made from soybean stems are excellent for this purpose.

Here is a simple, natural method of generating calcium phosphate. Get eggshells and roast them enough to generate some good ashes. Afterwhich, dip these roasted eggshells on about equal visual volume of vinegar. Allow it to sit for a couple of weeks until eggshells are practically broken down by the vinegar acids. You may use this diluted 20 parts water and can be sprayed or watered to the plants during the changeover period.

When this is applied to that changeover period, it will improve plant health and productivity. The use of calcium phosphate is important to natural farmers. This however, does not mean that we shall forget the nutrient timing application of other critical nutrients for plant growth both macro and micro nutrients, given at the right stages and combinations.

We consider this very important bionutrient needed by the plants used by natural farmers.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0422555019136.html

[ed.] Thanks Olivia, good recipe for homemade calcium. I’d figure you’d probably roast / toast until they were just browning. Wonder how long the pickled eggshells last?

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