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| One4'x8' and another 1/2 same size bed together holding about 50 tomato plants ~ 2012 |
Yesterday I mentioned making compost tea .. It's really not made from compost .. but from green 'weeds' such as dandelion greens or comfrey leaves.
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| 2012 crop ripened in basement |
I had this 'brewing' all summer; it takes about two weeks. Here is a
link with directions. I mixed 1 cup of tea concentrate to one gallon of water and applied weekly starting mid summer.
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| part of 2012 crop ripening in the basement |
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| two teardrop tomato plants produce oodles of goodness |
If you read the comments in the linked post (particularly #2) some people make it by just throwing the greens into a bucket drilled with holes in the bottom .. and catch the liquid below in another bucket .. then use this super concentrated version .. diluted .. it's supposed to NOT smell. Unfortunately .. my version is rather smelly and needs to be strained. I'm going to try both methods this summer.
Another few
links to homemade tomato fertilizer ... I have not tried these but
found them interesting.
8 comments:
Excellent. Strong tea and water once a week. I can do that.
My worst headache now is finding sand. Everyone's talking about using sand to making the soil better. I honestly haven't seen sand in the plant shops. I guess sand found near the sea will be too salty?
Felisol .. make sure to dilute 'strong tea' ... as far as sand, I read somewhere that beach sand is too fine. If you have some coarser sand (contractors sand) that would work. I'm not sure about the ratio .. but you don't need too much .. it helps with drainage. I bought several yards of garden soil already amended with the sand when we made the raised beds two years ago. I found it didn't have enough clay mixed in.. so had to add some clay last year. A good ratio of rich compost, sand and clay is works well. I'm going to test my soil this year .. not sure what to expect from the readings.
Craig has been experimenting with "tea" too and having some amazing results.
I've been looking for Comfrey and wondered where you found your plants?
Hi Georgene .. I used dandelion weeds and other nitrogen rich weeds last year .. Here's a place to order comfrey if you're in the u.s.a. Thanks for stopping by.
http://www.thegrowers-exchange.com/Comfrey_Common_p/her-com01.htm
Here's another option for buying comfrey seeds: http://www.amazon.com/Outsidepride-Herb-Seed-Comfrey-seeds/dp/B00BQ03TE2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1363357118&sr=8-3&keywords=comfrey+seed
Thanks for posting the link to "tea". I will check it out, as we can always use more nutrients on the plants, and homemade is even better. I started seedlings last weekend... peppers, eggplant and at least 6 tomatoes, including Mortgage Lifter.
Beautiful photos of your crops. You are doing so well. I'm afraid I stick to English breakfast tea and nothing else will do but I like to read about other recipes.
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