Recently we planted around 15 4" annuals around our yard. Two or three of them are not growing as well as the others. Is there some kind of fertilizer you would recommend that we can feed them to help their growth? We live in Western Washington state. Thanks.
I like Osmocote (or a similar product) for annual bedding plants.
Osmocote (or the generic equivilent) works very well before you plant them, after planting, Miracle Grow works very well, my only complaint with that is that you have to reapply about every other week, because its basically a liquid fertilizer.
Hmmm...that seems VERY frequent.
The "purists" (not meant derogatorily) hold that Miracle Gro works on the *plants*, whereas "organic" fertilizers work on the *soil*. Idea being that when the soil is healthy, plants will do better than when they get an instant shot of fertilizer like Miracle Gro.
Not taking a position either way, as I'd have to grow stuff in two identical plots to have a control, required to verify the opposing (or complementary?) procedures scientifically.
Aspasia wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Absolutely, its very fequent. Miracle grow is a foliar feeder, and doesn't last long in the soil at all. There is no substitute for good healthy soil, its absolutely essential.
however that said, my gathering of the meaning of the post is that all they were looking for was a quick solution. Compost tea and some plant tone would most likely be a better long term solution.
Compost tea is hogwash. Just plain old compost would be much better.
So Travis another one of your silly one liners....
You and Paggers are welcome to your silly opinions, bsed on no experience....
For those with open minds...
Part I:
The following is a selection of recent science papers and on-farm test results on compost teas, composts, soil microbial diversity, biorationals, and disease-suppressive composts posted to the Compost Tea List on Yahoo!Groups.
Date: Fri Sep 17, 2004 12:59 pm Subject: Compost: A review of the composting process, biocontrol mechanisms, & suppression of turfgrass disease
The following excerpts are from the compost tea resource list I use to supplement my workshops and publications in my ATTRA work:
2.0 Literature Reviewsa.
Scheuerell, Steve, and Walter Mahaffee. 2002. Compost tea: Principles and prospects for plant disease control (Literature review). Compost Science & Utilization. Vol. 10, No. 4. (Autumn) p. 313 - 338.
This is the literature review published in Compost Science & Utilization by Steve Scheuerell and Walter Mahaffee of Oregon State University. It was part of Scheuerell's PhD disseration on compost teas. This is the most thorough and extensive literature review on compost teas published to date.
Compost Science & Utilization is a journal published by JG Press, Inc., which also publishes BioCycle, the trade magazine of the composting industry.
Archived articles in JG Press publications are available online for 3 each.
The JG Press, Inc. Archives
Organic Teas from Composts and Manures Richard Merrill, OFRF Grant Report 97?40
An Organic Farming Research Foundation report. This is the full OFRF report; a 51-page PDF download, with 88 literature references in the bibliography, "Selected References for Organic Tea Extract Studies."
This OFRF research report is based on work at Cabrillo Community College.
It has noteworthy background information on compost teas and the composting process. It provides an interesting explanation of the Four Paths of Organic Decay.
Of special interest, is the prototype homemade aerobic compost tea extractor, based on a double barrel design.
c.
Litterick, A.M., L. Harrier, P. Wallace, C. A. Watson, M. Wood.
2004. The Role of Uncomposted Materials, Composts, Manures, and Compost Extracts in Reducing Pest and Disease Incidence and Severity in Sustainable Temperate Agricultural and Horticultural Crop Production ? A Review. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. Volume 23, Number 6 (November-December). p. 453 - 479.This is a new (November-December 2004) literature review published in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences by a research group in Scotland and England. The Taylor & Francis Group, publisher of Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, provides access to the abstract for free on its Web site. Talk to your local librarian for assistance in obtaining the full
27-page literature review in PDF.Abstract in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences
6.0 On-Farm Research into Compost Teas
a.
Evaluating the Benefits of CompostTeas to the Small Market Grower Minnesota Greenbook 2003
Evaluating the Benefits of CompostTeas to the Small Market Grower Minnesota Greenbook 2002
Evaluating the Benefits of CompostTeas to the Small Market Grower Minnesota Greenbook 2001
These PDF papers are 4-6 pages each. They summarize on-farm research into compost teas, funded by the Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Program at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. They provide insight into compost tea preparation, microbial analysis, and compost tea use on the farm, with a summary of results.
b.
Compost Tea Brewer Test Results North Country Organics
Paul Sachs at North Country Organics, author of Edaphos: Dynamics of a Natural Soil System and Handbook of Successful Ecological Lawn Care, conducted a series of compost tea brewing trials. This Web site hosts the SFI microbial analysis reports from these trials. The parameters for each batch of compost tea are noted with each lab report. The parameters included volume of tea, brewing time, aeration time, water temperature, and the use of three compost tea additives known as Fungal Booster, Bacterial Booster, and Mineral Booster.
c.
EPM Compost Tea Test Results from SFI
Bruce Elliott at EPM, Inc. in Cottage Grove, Oregon, manufactures the Earth Tea Brewer. This Web site hosts SFI microbial analysis reports for compost teas brewed with EPM's 22-, 100-, and 500-gallon Earth Tea Brewers.
Part III:
Also see:
Compost Teas: Microbial Hygiene and Quality in Relation to Method of Preparation W. Brinton, P. Storms, et al Biodymamics | Summer 2004 | Vol. 2: 36-45.
Ted Peterson at EW/SOE can provide reports from completed projects submitted to municipalities as a part of its research and demonstration on the benefits and uses of composts and compost teas. Topical reports are available on:
Contact:
Earth-Wise/Spirit of the Earth
Just post the peer reviewed publications not all those yahoo group citations.
Travis,
I'm really not much intersted in convincing you of anything. Those links lead to data. If you're not willing to use the yahoo group links to the studies I could give a shit...
Fact is compost tea is a fantastic soil development tool. Lots of real world sustainable growers and farmers are using CT with great success. If those of us who garden and farm for a living waited for peer review we would have long ago lost our jobs and farms.
Save your one liners for the amateurs....
You don't deal with facts. You deal with vendor folklore, sales pitches which you may or may not personally believe but which originate from flimflam artists, & range from totally untrue assertions to exaggerations of smaller truths. In their elaborated forms promulgated by vendors of compost tea products, there is at most one "fact" for ever fifty false claims, & that one fact is misrepresented in a context that renders it no longer factual.
A "fact" would be something like Travis's "Just plain old compost would be much better." Even a best-case exaggerated scenario for compost tea should be willing to acknowledge THAT as a fact.
The request for peer-reviewed science is not one that would piss off vendors off so much if the science supported the claims. Vendors are wildly enamored of "findings" in non-peer-reviewed & irreproducible studies. The better the science, the more the vendors assert that science isn't required.
Precisely as watering is a fantastic soil development "tool." Watering the garden has the exact same influence on microorganism populations as does C.T. -- not more, not less. When vendors are confronted with this fact, they add additional alleged values, like the C.T. helps control diseases. But as Horticulturist Dr Chalker-Scott of the University of Washington, "In the peer-reviewed literature...field-tested compost tea reported no difference in disease control between compost tea & water." The two major claims for C.T.'s "soil development" tend to be lowering of pathogens maximizing of healthful microorganisms, but insofar as those mayh be "facts" they are not factuallyh improvements over regular watering, & any time spent manufacturing tea, & any money wasted on the expensive products associated with making the tea, is time & money wasted since just keeping things watered has the exact same value for maximizing microorganisms & minimizing pathogens.
The only thing C.T. has that plain water does not have are a few tepid nutrients beneficial sure but vastly inferior to actual compost, indeed inferior to every other known method of sustaining nutrients in the garden.
And there you go asserting that science isn't required. What you imagine here is an utter falsehood. Those who make a living farming keep abreast of the scientific data in order to improve their methods. Only in the world of charlatanry are wild claims made for products that have little to no proven added value. The correct question is does it have ADDED value. C.T. has no added value. That isn't to say it does nothing whatsoever, but it does nothing worth expending time & money to achieve since as a fertilizer it is inferior to every other method & for soil maintenance it is only equal to watering.
Save your "professional" flimflam for the marks. As I said before:
I still remember when Magic Light Box Glasses were being sold all over the city. If you put the light box on your head & adjusted the flashing lights for specific colors, you could cure any disease, restore perfect vision, & become increasingly intelligent. But of course that New Age tinfoil hat style flimflam didn't simultaneously benefit a facilitating industry, the way the Compost Tea fad is facilitated by nurseries. This one I'm afraid will be ripping people off for a long time to come.
-paggers
There is never any point in a discussion with you when you've dug yourself in.
Consider reading the introductory page of the last "Compost Science and Utilization.
Where exactly are the peer reviewed articles?
Interesting bunch here...peer review is valid unless we're discussing Monsanto and round up.....
Join Paggers in remaining clueless...or read...
surface. I try not to eat glysophate.
Indicative of your displayed garden talents...
To kill the aphids.
which also kills the ladybeetles, or at the very best, kills their food so they don't have the opportunity to kill the aphids in natural selection.
victoria
LOL insecticides for aphids? You're kidding, right?
I always give the highest authority to peer review science when the topic of the dangers of glyphosate arises. So don't shift your "science is worthless" values onto people who do value it. There is plenty of peer-reviewed science on compost teas. Vendors of compost teas prefer their own sales pitches for good reason.
ATTRA is Elaine R. Ingham, the crackpot who was bounced around from college to college unable to win tenure until she was asked to resign from her final position for using University of Oregon fascilities to promote her private business of selling compost tea. Her misrepresentations are numerous & ATTRA has leapt in as pre-believers who didn't compare Ingham's faked data with actual field studies. Although to be fair, ATTRA has not collectively produced this literature, it is strictly promo literature by one man, Steve Diver, who seems to have bamboozled the naifs at ATTRA into actually breaking the law & putting their funding at risk. Diver is a friend & business associate of Ingham. He's obviously approached compost tea as a religion, & taken Ingham as his priestess -- because it is hard work to avoid the actual data as he has done.
Diver says of Ingham's self-published promotional booklet on which he bases his information, "I highly recommend this mannual," & throughout the text cites & paraphrases Ingham as the primary authority -- not for scientific data (for which there is none to support her claims) but Diver just writes promotionally, as in this choice turn of phrase: "Dr. Elaine Ingham, a microbial ecologist, has elevated our collective knowledge of the soil foodweb," even incorporating Ingham's personal, invented titles (a doctor of microbial ecology, gimme a break), which is entirely promo-jargon. He even works in her company name, Soil Foodweb in a most novel context. One has to give Diver credit for not promoting his own tapes at the same time; he does sell them.
Diver might be a reliable source of OTHER agricultural information, but for compost tea is merely a vendor promotor. He has elsewhere posted advertisements on the web & in newsgroups for such things as Ingham's $50 slide & video set for others who want (like himself) to give presentations & sell compost tea products. A typical example of his Ingham promotion appears here:
Nowhere does Diver ever cite the peer-reviewed evidence, for the same reason Ingham dares not do so.
Bare in mind that the best scientific data available on the very slight but actual values of compost teas do not find that aerated teas are in any way superior, & in some ways inferior -- these promotions are for aerated teas because they require expensive equipment & it's a profitable scam. A true believer in compost teas, rather than a scoundrel out for a buck, would be showing how the pricy equipment is a complete waste of money. So even as believers go, Diver was ENTIRELY the wrong gent to be providing information for ATTRA to deposit on line exclusively & illegally to promote specific vendors of worthless products, rather than show fellow believers how to do it better for free.
Diver's other major "authority" is BBC Laboratories which is a sciency sounding name for yet another vendor of compost teas. All the information ATTRA fobs off on the public is vendor-provided.
By law ATTRA is not permitted to advertise or endorse specific products, companies, or individuals. In promoting Ingham, her business, & even including photographs of the recommended products, the ATTRA articles on compost tea are actually illegal. I will forward this post to ATTRA & to relevant congressmen, as they've definitely stepped over the line repeatedly promoting Ingham's business & products, which they wouldn't've been permitted to do even if she weren't a known crackpot & falsifier of data.
But it's lucky for you you found Ingham paraphrased as it would seem you've finally joined the ranks of the many vendors rightly embarrassed by their former Vendor Goddess & no longer willing to cite her directly, but only through her main remaining advocate. I'm sure it still stings that you mistakenly posted in this ng, in failed support of Ingham & compost teas, her paranoid replies to why actual field research keeps failing to support her claims.
She went totally loony inventing that idiotic story about the REASON field tests show aerated teas have no effect on pathogens is because the researchers sneak into the fields at night and POISON THEIR PLANTS ON PURPOSE so that the scientific evidence will be negative & against compost tea effectiveness. I also liked her stuff about scientists having a a secret "HIDDEN AGENDA" so nefarious & sinister she cannot make sense of it even to herself let alone to her letter's readers. This really is like a schizophrenic pretty convinced of things no matter how great the disconnect from reality. But what is certain, in Ingham's world, you can't trust the scientists -- you can trust only herself & other vendors for the truth.
She further claimed in that posted letter that her research WOULD be forthcoming in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. She lied. It remains exclusively self-published promotional literature.
She not only fabricates data, she fabricates her own educational background, taken to task by Dr. James Moore when she claimed to have done some of her research at his side. She later said it was a completely different James Moore, some chap who mows golf courses, but that seems to have been another of her Invisible Playmates since no lawn-mowing "Dr." Moore has ever come forward to substantiate her diluted claim.
It's unfortunate that greenies at ATTRA, who should know better, have embraced Ingham's laughable & entirely vendor-oriented pretend-research which has been rejected from every peer-reviewed agricultural journal so that she has to publish leaving out testable data.
It's tragic that ATTRA would lend its organization name to Steve Divers merelyh to put the stamp of approval on a crazy woman like Ingham & ignore all actual research. And I use the word "crazy" advisedly since Ingham has shown a tendency toward paranoid delusions & conspiracy theories when confronted by actual research data.
Anyone who wants to believe the myths will naturally be drawn AWAY from the peer reviewed science & to this crackpot's notorious promotional literature. I will separately repost a bit of our old discussion of Ingham form the last time you talked yourself into a painted corner searching your heart out for any real science & lighting exclusively on Crazy Ingham. Anyone who just wants to sell the products, like Divers & I would guess yourself, will also not care that Ingham fabricates data, fabricates her expertise, & self-publishes her non-science after failing to convince any peer-reviewed agricultural journal to take her seriously.
-paggers
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.