Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Increasing beneficial soil organisms

This is my first entry for this new blog. I have been meaning to create one forever and felt that now is the time to get going.

So, welcome to the Russian River Gardener blog! And, don't forget to listen to my radio show every Sunday at 11 am on KGGV LP Guerneville, 95.1 FM on your radio.

The big thing in gardening right now, in my opinion, is creating optimum conditions in your soil so that you can grow just about anything organically and without using chemicals to increase yields. That means focusing on soil microbiology - increasing beneficial soil organisms such as bacteria and fungi.

In an article from the April/May 2010 edition of Organic Gardening Magazine entitled "Roses Come Clean" (by G. Michael Shoup), the author discusses using aerated compost tea to feed roses. Shoup also mentions that ground fish carcasses, another food for fungi is used in the aerated brew. I took immediate notice of this because many people like to use fish emulsion in fertilizing their plants and I bought a gallon of the stuff several months ago. It is a great fertilizer even though it smells to high heaven. But what I did not know is that it it might be helping to feed and enhance beneficial bacteria and fungi in my soil.

You can make your own fish emulsion and there is a recipe on the GardenWeb site at http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2002080041031662.html but it seems like an incredibly messy and odoriferous process that I am inclined to avoid. Gardeners in the old days just made compost tea or dug a hole and threw in a whole fish or a dead rabbit, tossed in some soil to cover it and then planted over it. The soil bacteria must have bloomed magnificently as the fish or animal decayed. I am not inclined to do that either. I'll stick to commercially made fish emulsion and compost tea and the newer fertilizer blends that contain soil microorganisms, thank you.

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