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Thread: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

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    New Zealand Avalon Member Carmen's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Sounds like a great recipe for a healthy garden Joe! Yes, and compost tea is great. Used to make that and spray it over my vineyard.

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    Avalon Member joedjemal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    The plants needed for the biodynamic preparations are nettle, comfrey, valerian, dandilion, yarrow and oak. I use lunar plantings but things like stags hearts are hard to come by.

    The preparations sound like magic but what they're doing is acting to encourage specific groups of bacteria to activate your compost. I have a book somewhere with them all in but I find working by feel works as well.

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    Canada Avalon Member Swanette's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Carmody recommended this for my soil some months ago and I think he has mentioned before. This is great stuff! It is called Azomite.

    http://www.azomite.com/

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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Quote Posted by joedjemal (here)
    The plants needed for the biodynamic preparations are nettle, comfrey, valerian, dandilion, yarrow and oak. I use lunar plantings but things like stags hearts are hard to come by.

    The preparations sound like magic but what they're doing is acting to encourage specific groups of bacteria to activate your compost. I have a book somewhere with them all in but I find working by feel works as well.
    Making all that tea stuff sounds like a lot of effort to me.
    I have abundand yarrow, dandilion and nettles and I started comfrey last year so it will be a while.
    Can't I just lay cuttings of these plants into my beds as mulch and let them compost around the plants?


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    New Zealand Avalon Member Carmen's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Yes, Arrowwind, the bio-dynamic systems are quite complex and not easily understandable. To me the preps are homeopathic in nature and quite ethereal. Once one has done it a few times and noticed a difference, then they start to make sense. I'm a bit hit and miss with it. I sort of understand and sort of don't!!

    Some people swear by them and use them all the time. Maybe some members here use exclusively the bio- dynamics. Be interesting to get there perspective. Joe? Do you use the BD preps as you know about them?

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    The compost tea is a system of breeding up the micro-organisms that make for healthy soil and spraying on the land and the plants.

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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Quote Posted by Carmen (here)
    Yes, Arrowwind, the bio-dynamic systems are quite complex and not easily understandable. To me the preps are homeopathic in nature and quite ethereal. Once one has done it a few times and noticed a difference, then they start to make sense. I'm a bit hit and miss with it. I sort of understand and sort of don't!!

    Some people swear by them and use them all the time. Maybe some members here use exclusively the bio- dynamics. Be interesting to get there perspective. Joe? Do you use the BD preps as you know about them?

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    The compost tea is a system of breeding up the micro-organisms that make for healthy soil and spraying on the land and the plants.
    I'm afraid I don't use the preparations, mostly because some of the ingredients are hard to come by.

    Arrowind, compost tea is really easy. Find a big empty barrel, fill with comfrey and nettles (or just one of the ingredients it'll still work) add cold water and leave to rot down. I usually make it the year before as it stinks but the smell dies down after a while. Then just add it to your watering can as a plant food. It's free and just as good as any liquid feed you can buy in a shop.

    If you allow fresh herbs to rot down in your beds, the decomposition process will consume nutrients at first, it's best to just add them to your compost heap.

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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    The BayouGardener just got himself a new fan!

    Thanks, Mu2143, that was fantastic. I'm definitely gonna be bubbling some compost tea this spring!

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    New Zealand Avalon Member Carmen's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    No, the compost tea I made was different than what Joe is describing. Mine was brewed over twenty-four hours in a brewer with humid acid and other goodies that bred the micro organisms. The brew was oxygenated and agitated. The temperature had to be correct. It was not a stinky mixture. The resultant brew we then topped up with water in our sprayer unit and sprayed it over our vineyard, thus coating leaves and soil with live micro- organisms. We could send a sample away to be tested to see how well we were 'brewing'. Apart from the odd sulpher spray, this was the only thing we sprayed in our vineyard to keep the plants healthy. Dr Elaine Ingham of America was the source of our knowledge of this technology. The minerals in our soil had to be balanced also to produce healthy organic grapes.

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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Quote Posted by joedjemal (here)
    Quote Posted by Carmen (here)
    Yes, Arrowwind, the bio-dynamic systems are quite complex and not easily understandable. To me the preps are homeopathic in nature and quite ethereal. Once one has done it a few times and noticed a difference, then they start to make sense. I'm a bit hit and miss with it. I sort of understand and sort of don't!!
    Quote Posted by joedjemal (here)
    Quote Posted by Carmen (here)

    Some people swear by them and use them all the time. Maybe some members here use exclusively the bio- dynamics. Be interesting to get there perspective. Joe? Do you use the BD preps as you know about them?

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    The compost tea is a system of breeding up the micro-organisms that make for healthy soil and spraying on the land and the plants.
    I'm afraid I don't use the preparations, mostly because some of the ingredients are hard to come by.

    Arrowind, compost tea is really easy. Find a big empty barrel, fill with comfrey and nettles (or just one of the ingredients it'll still work) add cold water and leave to rot down. I usually make it the year before as it stinks but the smell dies down after a while. Then just add it to your watering can as a plant food. It's free and just as good as any liquid feed you can buy in a shop.

    If you allow fresh herbs to rot down in your beds, the decomposition process will consume nutrients at first, it's best to just add them to your compost heap.
    So Joe, if Im understanding right you add the herbs to your compost tea, along with the manurer? but then you say its best to add to the compost heap? Im confused now. I thought that the herbs were a tea unto themselves.

    Most of my gardening is all done in an active compost heap anyway as I do layered or lasagna gardening. Stuff from the compost pile goes to larger plots like for the corn where I haven't started lasagna gardening.

    With the lasagna method my plants are huge and beautiful. I dont see that they suffer from nutrient loss.
    but I put a lot of stuff in there like
    Bokoshi
    Paramagnetic rock
    Azomite
    Nature Guard

    along with layers of straw, alfalfa, leaves, grass clippings, goat manure and whatever else is around


    I have all those herbs in homeopathic potency already in my homoepathic kit. Can I use that?
    Last edited by Arrowwind; 17th February 2012 at 16:48.

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    Avalon Member joedjemal's Avatar
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    Default Re: Best fertilizer is crushed stone, not manure

    Quote Posted by Arrowwind (here)
    Quote Posted by joedjemal (here)
    Quote Posted by Carmen (here)
    Yes, Arrowwind, the bio-dynamic systems are quite complex and not easily understandable. To me the preps are homeopathic in nature and quite ethereal. Once one has done it a few times and noticed a difference, then they start to make sense. I'm a bit hit and miss with it. I sort of understand and sort of don't!!
    Quote Posted by joedjemal (here)
    Quote Posted by Carmen (here)

    Some people swear by them and use them all the time. Maybe some members here use exclusively the bio- dynamics. Be interesting to get there perspective. Joe? Do you use the BD preps as you know about them?

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    The compost tea is a system of breeding up the micro-organisms that make for healthy soil and spraying on the land and the plants.
    I'm afraid I don't use the preparations, mostly because some of the ingredients are hard to come by.

    Arrowind, compost tea is really easy. Find a big empty barrel, fill with comfrey and nettles (or just one of the ingredients it'll still work) add cold water and leave to rot down. I usually make it the year before as it stinks but the smell dies down after a while. Then just add it to your watering can as a plant food. It's free and just as good as any liquid feed you can buy in a shop.

    If you allow fresh herbs to rot down in your beds, the decomposition process will consume nutrients at first, it's best to just add them to your compost heap.


    So Joe, if Im understanding right you add the herbs to your compost tea, along with the manurer? but then you say its best to add to the compost heap? Im confused now.

    Most of my gardening is all done in an active compost heap anyway as I do layered or lasagna gardening. Stuff from the compost pile goes to larger plots like for the corn where I haven't started lasagna gardening.

    With the lasagna method my plants are huge and beautiful. I dont see that they suffer from nutrient loss.
    but I put a lot of stuff in there like
    Bokoshi
    Paramagnetic rock
    Azomite
    Nature Guard

    along with layers of straw, alfalfa, leaves, grass clippings, goat manure and whatever else is around


    I have all those herbs in homeopathic potency already in my homoepathic kit. Can I use that?
    The herbs are for the preparations, there are a half a dozen or so different ones can't remember them off the top of my head one is cow manure with one of the herbs buried on a specific date, another is a stags heart stuffed with 2 or 3 other herbs and buried on a different date, you then wait a few months, dig them up and sprinkle a little in your compost heap.

    Looked them up, it was chamomile not comfrey.


    http://cityfoodgrowers.com.au/biody_prep.php

    Edit: it's so many years since I last read them I got quite a lot wrong, it's a stags bladder with yarrow, oak bark with a sheep's skull etc. They're all at that link.
    Last edited by joedjemal; 17th February 2012 at 17:00.

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