Organic Fanatics - Australia

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Cheers boys!

Feel free to ask questions and post up pics of any organics in action or recommend a product.

With regards to the lemon juice and citric acid as ph down: I was mixing up a batch of liquid feed last night and realised the calcium phospate and my fermented plant extract of pineapple are both acidic.

I guess the cal phos with vinegar would be bit stronger.

It is good to know the ph levels of different ingredients.

 

[luvaduck]

Does anyone use silica? I had some misfortune turn out to be more fortuitous than I had originally envisioned last year when I met by circumstance a fine certified organic vegetable grower. She used silica spray as one of her main forms of pest control, and also as a plant 'tonic'.
Not only did she pick and drink fresh aloe vera every morning, she used the aloe scraps as a compost accelerator. She looked about 50 but later told me she was approaching 70 years old.
On a different note, I turned one of the vege patches yesterday which I let rest in rotation. All my fish frames end up in the resting patch after a good haul of fish. When it was turned yesterday, i noticed fish bones surrounded by fine root hairs from nearby plants. All the surrounding beds are well fertilised which can only make me summise that the plants will go a long way for a good feed of fish. Better go fishing again soon....

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Hey luvaduck.

The Proganics Stimulate has good amount silica which i use mainly in the feed. I really should foliar more often with it but. Especially with the soiless mixes as they dont as a rule contain any. Good soil will have more available. What did the lady use as silica source duk?

Diatomaceous earth is 80-90% silica.


Use in agriculture

Natural freshwater diatomaceous earth is used in agriculture for grain storage as an anticaking agent, as well as an insecticide.[16] It is approved by the US Department of Agriculture as a feed supplement.

It is also used as a neutral anthelmintic (dewormer). Some farmers add it to their livestock and poultry feed to improve the health of animals.[17] "Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth" is widely available in agricultural feed supply stores. It is acceptable as organic feed additive for livestock.

Hydroponics

Freshwater diatomite can be used as a growing medium in hydroponic gardens.

It is also used as a growing medium in potted plants, particularly as bonsai soil. Bonsai enthusiasts use it as a soil additive, or pot a bonsai tree in 100% diatomaceous earth. Like perlite, vermiculite, and expanded clay, it retains water and nutrients, while draining fast and freely, allowing high oxygen circulation within the growing medium.

Have managed to eliminate 2 different types of spider mites (one arrived in the mail) using a lavender soak as a foliar. Just put lavender flowers in a container with fresh water and leave for a day or two. Then strain em and dilute a bit for spraying. Less is more but i havent had any burning or leaf mould etc with regular applications. Combine that with a touch of neem oil (not every spray) and should be smothering the eggs too

If you switch up the varieties of lavender the mites cant build up resistance either.

Thanks to brother Jaykush for that little nugget.

Fish frames sound very nice! Havta get the fishing rod out

 

[van der trev]

Respekt

 

[wilbur]

lavender oil! not quite cannabis but my rellies with a dairy farm use lavender oil to combat buffallo fly on their moo cows. the upshot of their moving away from chems has been a surge in soil-based organisms and dung beetle larvae ... and a population explosion of willy wagtails due to the extra food (mostly buffallo fly larvae)!

 

[luvaduck]

Silver Surfer, I'm pretty sure she used the same foliar feed that I do (as an additive).
Does Bat Phone sound right? I'm sure that's the brand name. I bought some of their products a few years ago but haven't seen them recently.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Yeah lavender is amazing stuff! So many uses and safe to put neat on a babys bum

Been on a bit of a leaf collection past couple days from couple big maple trees. Going to go around picking up some animal poo next week and pull lots of green weeds out of my garden for some nice compost.

Now i did mention bio-char a few posts back. Its amazing stuff. All the info is on my terra preta thread (see my sig) but its worth posting some info in here.

Wikipedia puts it like this:

Terra preta (which means "dark soil" in Portuguese) refers to expanses of very dark soils found in the Amazon Basin. It is also known as "Amazonian dark earth" or "Indian black earth". In Portuguese its full name is Terra preta do indio or Terra preta de indio.

Terra preta is distinguished from terra comum, or "common soil", which refers to the reddish or yellowish ferralsols that predominate under tropical soils. The soil is believed to be the result of past indigenous activities in the forest and is thus considered to be anthropic and/or anthropogenic, possibly from a pre-Columbian civilization.

Terra preta consists of low temperature charcoal, pottery shards, plant residues, animal faeces, fish bones, and perhaps some biological agent like a special ecosystem of healthy microorganisms. As it is very rich in nutrients to this day local farmers and caboclos in Amazonian basin seek it out for use as compost.

Origin of Terra preta

For a long time, the origins of the Amazonian dark earths were not immediately clear and several theories were considered. One idea was that they resulted from ashfall from volcanoes in the Andes, since they occur more frequently on the brows of higher terraces. Another theory considered formation as a result of sedimentation in Tertiary lakes or in recent ponds.

However, because of their elevated charcoal content and the common presence of pottery remains, it is now widely accepted that these soils are a product of indigenous soil management involving a labor intensive technique termed slash-and-char. The technique is differentiated from slash and burn by a lower temperature burn and in being a tool for soil improvement. Amending soil with low temperature charcoal produced from a mix of wood and leafy biomass (termed biochar) has been observed to increase the activity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. It is theorized that terra preta self-propagates via this mechanism; a virtuous cycle established as the fungus spreads from the charcoal, fixing additional carbon and stabilizing the soil with glomalin, and increasing nutrient availability for nearby plants. The widespread peregrine earthworm Pontoscolex corethrurus (Oligochaeta: Glossoscolecidae), which thrives after burning of the rainforest, due to its tolerance of a low content of the soil in organic matter, has been shown to ingest pieces of charcoal and to mix them in a finely ground form with the mineral soil, pointing to its possible role in the formation of terra preta.

About 10% of the original terra comum appears to have converted to terra preta. Whether all Amazonian dark earth was intentionally created for soil improvement or whether the lightest variants are a by-product of habitation is not clear at present time. This is in part due to the varied features of the dark earths throughout the Amazon Basin. Thus suggesting the existence of an extensive ancient native civilization dating back 500 to 2500 years bp.

Product of an advanced pre-Columbian civilization?

The Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana, the 16th C explorer who was the first European to transverse the Amazon River, reported densely populated regions running hundreds of kilometers along the river, suggesting population levels exceeding even those of today. The only reason this population left no lasting monuments was simply that they happened to use local wood as their construction material, which unfortunately rotted in the humid climate. (Stone was unavailable.) While it is possible Orellana may have exaggerated the level of development among the Amazonians, their semi-nomadic descendants have the odd distinction among tribal indigenous societies of a hereditary, yet landless, aristocracy, a historical anomaly for a society without a sedentary, agrarian culture. This suggests they were once more settled and agrarian but after the demographic collapse of the 16th and 17th century due to European introduced diseases they reverted to less complex modes of existence but maintained certain traditions. Moreover, many indigenous people were forced to adapt to a more mobile lifestyle in order to protect themselves against colonialism. This might have made the benefits of terra preta, such as its self-renewing capacity, less attractive — farmers would not have been able to enjoy the use of renewed soil because they would have been forced to move for safety. Slash-and-burn might have been an adaptation to these conditions.

I mixed up a batch of charcoal using a recipe from Gardening Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/video/default.htm?url=clips/petes_patch_ep37_2007.htm

The recipe:
Use one third of a standard bucket of pulverised wood charcoal

Half a cup of fish emulsion, half a cup of seaweed concentrate and 4 teaspoons of mixed, soluble trace elements all dissolved into 2-3 litres of water in a separate bucket to make a strong, nutrient concentrate.

Method:
1 Place the charcoal safely in a strong bag. Moisten a little for safety reasons. Use a hammer or similar implement to crush and pulverise it into a fine dust. Then place the dust into an extra-large bucket. Avoid inhaling the dust – you might wear a protective face mask or respirator.
2 Pour the fertiliser-based nutrient concentrate into the charcoal dust. Leave to soak for 3 days.
3 Then add one third of a bucketful each of dry river (pit) sand and ordinary soil (not clay). Mix together thoroughly.
4 Don’t use a stronger mixture than suggested.

Now it does say not to make it stronger but i figured this is weed and added an extra half cup of Indonesian bat guano for extra P

I soaked just over a third of a bucket of wood charcoal with a half cup each of Seasol (kelp), Powerfeed (fish emulsion), Indo bat guano, 4 tsp Azomite and drop of Superthrive in 5 litres water. I left this overnight and mixed with equal amounts sand and soil. I then made a mix of 1/3 coco, 1/3 perlite and 1/3 soil.





Thats my charcoal mix there in the white bucket. It has a smell of rotting seaweed.



Heres some of the most useful links i have found for the home gardener

http://www.holon.se/folke/carbon/simplechar/simplechar.shtml

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/content/biochar-retort-vs-pit-trials-ahualoa-hawaii

 

[wilbur]

VOM! how's yr liquid goat poo brewing? and how rich is goat poo in comparison with other animal manures? is there a hierarchy of potency re animal manures? like, I know pigpoo is richer than cowpoo. what's richest what's weakest? does anyone know this? cheers all ...

 

[Guest50138]

Hey wilbur thanks for the prod I been meaning to get this up for the last week
this is what I wind up with ,it took a while to get there because of the cold weather ,you know when its ready because its stopped foaming up and just turns to dark water,I have been using it at 1 part to 10 but I have had to correct the ph because it has been a little high I guess because of the chicken manure,I run it through a sieve so i can put it through a water can.I leave the air stone bubbling in it to stop it getting smelly I find it best to make it as you need it...
Always check your PH so easy to do and can save you a lot of grief

 

[Guest50138]

This link has some good info about NPK values of various manure's and compost
http://www.allotment.org.uk/fertilizer/npk-manures-compost.php
Approximate NPK Values of Various Animal Manures*
Animal
% nitrogen
% phosphoric acid
% potash
Dairy cow
0.57
0.23
0.62
Beef steer
0.73
0.48
0.55
Horse
0.70
0.25
0.77
Swine
0.49
0.34
0.47
Sheep/Goat
1.44
0.50
1.21
Rabbit
2.40 1.40 0.60
Chicken
1.00 0.80 0.39

 

[wilbur]

thanks so much for that relativity chart VOM. I realised too late I have asked about relative strength of different manures before (this may have something to do with the large amounts of oil I have been ingesting lately fogging my memory. and because I haven't seen another white man around here for three days now).

your liquid manure looks potent! when I make mine I hang a bag of poo in a bucket and so am working with strong tea colored stuff which I dilute further before application. how will you apply what you have in the bucket?

 

[wilbur]

?

 

[wilbur]

guys, I have half a truckload of good quality grass hay that I purchased for mulch ... just before this summer's many feet of rain. now I have a (still) steaming pile of black stuff like peat moss with the odd bit of straw sticking out of it. I guess I have compost ... right?

so if you were me, how best would you put this black stuff to use in the garden?

 

[Guest50138]

with a shovel

 

[luvaduck]

with a shovel

lmfao!

 

[Guest50138]

Hey wilbur get some of that goat shit you said you can get and mix it with your composted hay ..50/50 break those black sods up as much as possible (with a shovel ) and use it as a mulch, get it on asap and throw it on nice and thick about 4-6 inches and let it break down for a while before your going to plant out..winter's the time to be doing all this type of work

 

[Squiggles]

i love winter, digging up my garden and laying all the mulch
sitting down to a cuppa at smoko joint in hand dreaming of what will come

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Mmmmmmmmmm love that mulchy goodness

Its pissed it down here for few days and had to postpone my poo collection and compost making. Got about 1/3 of 2 heaps finished. Will get them finished next few days.

If you want to make your compost go further you can make teas or just a soak and use your watering can.

A shovel is hard to beat but.

 

[wilbur]

thought I 'd let people know about www.ecosanres.org a danish organisation dedicated to the recycling of human waste.

they say that the pee from one adult human on one square meter for twenty four hours is sufficient to fertilise a plant for its crop life.

the org is concerned that world potash and phophate supplies are diminishing faster than oil is diminishing and there won't be any remaining to mine soon.

anyway it's worth a look, I think. cheers Shovellers!

 

[High Country]

thought I 'd let people know about www.ecosanres.org a danish organisation dedicated to the recycling of human waste.

they say that the pee from one adult human on one square meter for twenty four hours is sufficient to fertilise a plant for its crop life.

the org is concerned that world potash and phophate supplies are diminishing faster than oil is diminishing and there won't be any remaining to mine soon.

anyway it's worth a look, I think. cheers Shovellers!

F...that, I'm not pissing on my plants.