[electroherbalism] Chemical-free Gardening

[Guest guest]

" Chris Gupta " <chrisgupta

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:08:09 -0400

[electroherbalism] Chemical-free Gardening

 

 

 

 

 

Further to

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2006/06/13/pesticidefree_lawn_care.htm>Pe\

sticide-free

 

Lawn Care here is more from

<http://www.oevca.ca/wineseeds/speakers.html#harry>Harry Jongerden,

Head Gardener at Hamilton's world-famous <http://www.rbg.ca/>Royal

Botanical Gardens, that he presented at the

<http://www.oevca.ca/wineseeds/index.html>An Evening of Wine and Seeds.

 

Chris Gupta

http://tinyurl.com/zfg3d

 

See also:

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2005/04/21/grow_your_own_mineralized_orga\

nic_super_foods.htm>Grow

 

Your Own Mineralized Organic Super

<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2005/04/21/grow_your_own_mineralized_orga\

nic_super_foods.htm>Foods

--------------------------

 

CHEMICAL-FREE GARDENING

 

Harry Jongerden 23/02/06

 

We're going to talk about growing healthy and beautiful gardens - and

you won't need any chemicals!

 

1) Soil: There's nothing more important to the health of your plants

than the soil they grow in. Many houses, especially modern ones, have

flower or vegetable beds with their plants growing in the excavated

subsoil of the house's basement. After adding a couple of inches of

" topsoil " to the surface, people think lovely plants will thrive there.

 

Get " triple mix " topsoil. Never buy or add regular " topsoil " to your

garden. That kind of " topsoil " is shredded clay and you'll be very

sorry if ever you pay $10 or more a yard for soil that's impossible

to work with. Triple mix topsoil costs twice as much, but it's the

only way to go.

 

Alternatively, add manure or compost to your existing soil. If you

aren't making your own compost, buy some compost or manure and dig it

into your garden. It's as expensive as triple mix at $25 per cu. yd.,

but once you've got good garden soil, you can maintain its health

with your own composting, or by adding things such as shredded leaves

every fall. Healthy soil will produce healthy plants.

 

2) Watering: Watering correctly is very important to maintaining

healthy plants. You really don't have the option of allowing a

vegetable garden or ornamental plants to go dormant in drought

conditions. There are some plants which survive a lack of watering,

but not many of us would be satisfied with the limited plant choices

of a drought-tolerant garden. And you can forget about a veggie

garden if you don't water!

 

Plants don't like a shallow watering. Roots are deep so you need to

water deeply. For ornamental plants, water every third day, giving

them about 1 " of water. You can measure that by putting out a pan to

catch the water coming out of your sprinkler. When it's got an inch

in there, you'll know how long your sprinkler takes to put out 1 " of

water. For a vegetable garden you'll need to water every other day to

keep things like beans constantly on your plate.

 

Water in the morning if you can. Watering in the heat or bright sun

is hard on your plants. Watering late at night creates moist

conditions for fungal diseases and slugs. A morning watering gets

moisture into the ground and allows the plant's foliage to dry off as

the sun hits it. That being said, who's got time to water in the

morning? 2nd best would be early evening when the worst of the heat

is past and the plants have a chance to dry off before sundown.

 

Watering artificially, the way we do with our hoses and sprinklers,

is a tricky thing. For one thing, tap water's too cold. Too much or

too little can lead to fungal diseases, and doing it at the wrong

time of day can also be harmful. There's nothing better than a good

natural soak.

 

3) Drainage: We've covered the water above. Now let's talk about the

water below. A lot of ornamental plants, especially roses, hate to

have their roots sitting in the wetness of poorly-drained soil. They

will always be unhealthy. If you dig down a foot or two and water

pools in the hole you just dug, you've got problems. Either get going

with some gravel and drainage pipe to carry that water away, or plant

accordingly. There are a number of ornamental plants or vegetables

that can tolerate a heavy, poorly drained site. Just don't try

planting roses there.

 

One other option in a poorly drained location is to plant on raised

beds. Build up the soil so that your plants sit higher than the

normal surrounding grade. Raised beds have helped many gardeners

avoid costly and time-consuming drainage installation.

 

4) Plant Choice: Get out some helpful books and ask your friends for

advice. Choose the right plants for the conditions. Choose plants:

 

a) according to the amount of sunlight available

b) according to your soil conditions

c) according to your ability to give them enough water or attention

d) according to their hardiness (i.e. cold tolerance, disease

resistance, etc.)

 

There are so many informative books and catalogues to help you make

these choices. You can go shopping at the local garden centres and

pick out plants because they happen to look good the day you're

looking, but research is always worth doing, and fun. Remember,

choosing inappropriate plants will eventually give you unhealthy

plants unable to thrive. They'll get diseases, bugs will damage them,

and you'll be looking for solutions to a problem caused by your poor

planning.

 

At this point we can all hang our heads in shame. Because I suspect

there's none of us here, myself included, who haven't put the wrong

plant in the wrong place. We've all eyed something we just had to

have and then proceeded to slowly kill it by planting it somewhere it

didn't belong. We're all a bit foolish for planting our Hybrid Tea

roses when we know they're going to attract aphids, get powdery

mildew and drop their black spot-infested leaves. So let's look at

some ways to clean up these problems and make ourselves feel better

about our gardening abilities.

 

NON-CHEMICAL SOLUTIONS:

 

1) Dormant Oil: Dormant oil is an excellent treatment for your woody

plants to kill overwintering insects and the spores of fungal

diseases. It's called " dormant " oil because you can't ever spray it

on a plant with the leaves showing, only on a dormant plant with

tight unopened buds. Putting this mineral oil on leaves can damage

them severely. So, late March or early April, spray dormant oil on

things like roses, fruit trees, or on honeysuckle vines. It really

helps keep down powdery mildew, black spot, or in the case of fruit

trees, rust.

 

2) Compost Tea: My other main recommendation for combating fungal

diseases is compost tea. This isn't something you spray on your

plants when you see the white-grey mildew withering away the leaves.

Compost tea is a preventative spray that you apply to any or all of

your plants, particularly those plants prone to fungal disease. Start

in late May and reapply every two weeks until late August.

 

What you are doing is applying a supercharged concoction of microbial

activity to your plants. It acts as an inoculant against fungal

disease. Scientists aren't sure if the microbes attack the fungal

spores, or just keep them in check, but the fungal spores don't take

over and wipe out your plants the way they do if left unchecked.

 

I've sprayed with plenty of chemicals to fight powdery mildew, black

spot and rust over the years. Even using the whole chemical arsenal

doesn't prevent these diseases from beginning and spreading. You'll

see some of these diseases on the susceptible plants despite using

compost tea but the tea works at least as well as the chemicals at

keeping them in check. I would especially use compost tea on roses,

honeysuckle vine, phlox paniculata, hollyhocks, monarda and asters.

 

And what is compost tea? Although it's called " tea " , there's no heat

applied. It's water that's had a shovelful of well-rotted manure or

compost steeped in it at room temperature for a week. (5 parts water

to 1 part compost.) Strain out the particles and spray the liquid on

your plants. If you're going to faithfully spray every two weeks you

need to be brewing up new batches to always have some at hand. But

it's really simple.

 

3) Baking Soda: If you find the notion of Compost Tea icky, a 1%

baking soda solution also works well on plants susceptible to fungal

diseases. Some people combine it with a little vegetable oil to make

it stick to the leaves better. As with Compost Tea, this treatment

should begin early in the summer and be repeated every 10-14 days.

 

4) How To Handle Insects: Easy. Avoid the pesticides such as

malathion. These chemicals work well, but you're using a sledgehammer

where a fly swatter will do.

 

Learn to tolerate a few bugs on the plant. It's not so hard after

awhile. Our biggest bug problems here are probably aphids and spider

mites. Aphids are easy to see and fairly easy to kill. Spider mites

are tougher. They hang out on the underside of leaves so when you

spray for them you need to get down and spray from below in order to

hit them. In both cases, aphids and spider mites, you need to hit the

bug, not just the plant leaves and hope the bug moves into it. Direct

contact is required.

 

There are many effective alternatives to chemical pesticides. Diluted

garlic or hot pepper juice work very well. There are many other folk

remedies out there, including boiled rhubarb leaf water or cabbage

water. Have fun and experiment. Lots of different books are filled

with recipes and good advice, advice that you'll especially want to

use in your vegetable garden. It's hard to understand how people

could spray fungicides and insecticides on their food. We have plenty

of alternatives. Let's not take the easy way out and compromise our

health.

 

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