EpicOzGrow
Active Member
Hello everyone yet again. The tips & tricks to having a perfect healthy living organic soil?
Its all here & i have even broken it down for easier understanding.
Here are some suggestions to help you create healthy soil:
Stop using harmful chemicals. Synthetic fertilizer salts and pesticides kill the good organisms and encourage more pathogenic activity.
Feed the soil. This means put materials in the soil that feeds the bacteria and fungus that is GOOD for your plants. Good general foods are kelp, fish emulsion, and manure (bat guano, aged cow manure, etc). Don't put fresh manure on your plants - it will burn them.
Healthy plants are less likely to succumb to disease, but if they do, realize there are cleaner methods of dealing with pathogens, and also realize that some problems are a sign of unhealthy soil. You can use lots of safe soaps, oils, herbal concoctions that can repel or destroy unwanted critters. You can also introduce beneficial insects like lacewings, praying mantis, or ladybugs to do the dirty work for you!
Start a compost pile. If done right a good compost can be a great medium for hosting lots of beneficial microbes. You can try worm composting too, sometimes called vermiculture. Worm castings are among the greatest foods for plants and soil. If you cannot make your own compost, purchase good compost (it should have a deep dark brown black coffee color; if it is totally black, it probably went anaerobic and is not good).
Use compost tea. A lot goes into compost tea but there is a simple home kit you can get relatively inexpensively that you can use to make your own.
Learn more about your plants and what they really need, especially as related to your particular climate. Know your limitations. Don't try to grow things that will just always suffer where you live. It will always attract pathogens.
Try beneficial insects: there are many available on the market that are specific to particular pests. There are some great generalists too. Praying mantis are great generalists, as are lacewing larvae, and several species of nematodes.
Be careful of what some companies sell as "organic" fertilizer. Often they still put inorganic salts like sulfur or phosphorus or nitrogen. If you use kelp, get it dried (the liquid kelps often have sulfur or some other preservative). And you can make your own fish emulsion. Just take whatever you don't eat from a fresh fish, puree in a blender with some water, and voila! Your own fish emulsion.
Thank you for reading, I might post about perfect enviroment conditions next but for now Good bye!
Its all here & i have even broken it down for easier understanding.
Here are some suggestions to help you create healthy soil:
Stop using harmful chemicals. Synthetic fertilizer salts and pesticides kill the good organisms and encourage more pathogenic activity.
Feed the soil. This means put materials in the soil that feeds the bacteria and fungus that is GOOD for your plants. Good general foods are kelp, fish emulsion, and manure (bat guano, aged cow manure, etc). Don't put fresh manure on your plants - it will burn them.
Healthy plants are less likely to succumb to disease, but if they do, realize there are cleaner methods of dealing with pathogens, and also realize that some problems are a sign of unhealthy soil. You can use lots of safe soaps, oils, herbal concoctions that can repel or destroy unwanted critters. You can also introduce beneficial insects like lacewings, praying mantis, or ladybugs to do the dirty work for you!
Start a compost pile. If done right a good compost can be a great medium for hosting lots of beneficial microbes. You can try worm composting too, sometimes called vermiculture. Worm castings are among the greatest foods for plants and soil. If you cannot make your own compost, purchase good compost (it should have a deep dark brown black coffee color; if it is totally black, it probably went anaerobic and is not good).
Use compost tea. A lot goes into compost tea but there is a simple home kit you can get relatively inexpensively that you can use to make your own.
Learn more about your plants and what they really need, especially as related to your particular climate. Know your limitations. Don't try to grow things that will just always suffer where you live. It will always attract pathogens.
Try beneficial insects: there are many available on the market that are specific to particular pests. There are some great generalists too. Praying mantis are great generalists, as are lacewing larvae, and several species of nematodes.
Be careful of what some companies sell as "organic" fertilizer. Often they still put inorganic salts like sulfur or phosphorus or nitrogen. If you use kelp, get it dried (the liquid kelps often have sulfur or some other preservative). And you can make your own fish emulsion. Just take whatever you don't eat from a fresh fish, puree in a blender with some water, and voila! Your own fish emulsion.
Thank you for reading, I might post about perfect enviroment conditions next but for now Good bye!
