VF-11 "The Champagne Of Plant Foods"

So Jan, you would dump out that food on the ground and they all would come running for lunch from underground? That would be a sight. The snails would love it too I would guess. So what do worms usually eat in the dirt? I have a lot when I dig and I am sure not feeding them.

Annapet, I do not see any Lowes near you. I wonder if they have one planned soon though.
http://stores.lowes.com/lowes/cgi/selection?mapid=US&lang=en&design=default&svv=true&sp=2&city=corte+madera®ion=CA%2CUS&zip=94925&place=&storeNum=&submit.x=39&submit.y=15

Kell, the Nursery is Central Wholesale Nursery in San Jose. This was my first wholesale nursery and I thought the pricing was awesome. I got gallon plants for about the same price as I paid for 4" pots at Osh and Home Depot. Plus they have things I've never seen at those places.

Jeanette, I am lucky that I can overwinter my worms in the compost bins. I just put a heavy mulch of leaves and pine straw over them and they did well last year. I wonder if any of yours would survive if you put them in the ground and mulched? If not, there are probably worm eggs that hatch when the soil warms up.

Jan is right, Kell. As long as the worms have a food source, they will stay. You must have good, healthy soil to already have worms. When we moved into our home about 4 years ago, the soil was heavy clay and rock hard. The areas that I worked the good stuff into, I added worms to it and they help to keep it aerated. You can mulch with compost and they come up to eat it, then go back down. It's like they help you with your digging which my back sure appreciates.

I only spread it around on top of the soil, usually behind or under plants where it can't me seen by anyone thinking I'm a garbage dump.LOL . It doesn't last but I don't sit around waiting to watch the feast. Hum... Could start a new past time!
Jan...

raising worms: advanced level, i think. lol. my 2nd year trying to garden barely started.

Well too many earthworms can be a problem... and the way they are being harvested and redistributed.. introduced at a greater rate than they could normaly spread... fishermen discarding a full tub of worms after a fishing trip... I never hought might be a problem... but it seems to be an emerging
one
http://www.wnrmag.com/stories/2005/aug05/eworm.htm
Personally... there never were earth worms on my roof... but have successfully introduced them a decade ago.. and they are acclimated and are doing well... in the planters .. the lawn and throughout the pots now.. about the only thing I find more of in the dirt is peanuts from the squirrels storage... they know the pots and planters on the roof willl heat up and thaw out much before the ground burried peanuts they have... so that during thoes late winter trips .. they will have nuts for their effort...
there is a shoot on site bounty for a squirrel pelt here ... Gordon...

Gordon, the eathworm article is food for thought since Ive always thought of worms as friends to all areas...where I live I was taught to go out into the woods and dig for worms to fish...this of course is in the west Michigan area so Im not sure how much farther north would be considered the area they are talking about....and I have to agree about the furry friends pellet..around here the squirrel thinks its king...we have a bird store down the road and the lady feeds them all kinds of goodies...they come from miles around to get the expensive stuff from her so the neighborhood is like a 4 star restaurant..they come into my yard thinking everything I have is up for grabs ...lolol..Judy

wow, what an interesting article. thanks, gordon.

judy, the squirrels are cute, but i'm not very fond of them anymore. lol. sometimes the branches that they cut from my pine trees are dangerously big already...and somehow, they are curious about every seed, i plant. digs them.

interesting article , Right now there are about 20 birds in my yard eating them . This month we have had about 7 inches of rain . Ground is saturated with water and the worms come to top to get air .

Tony, had enough rain yet?? The sun is so trying to come out. My backyard goes sqiush squish as I walk. I may go out and dig in a few more bulbs. i still have so many that need to get dug in.

OK, if I buy more worms, I will put them in a corner that I will dump food on. Worm gardening without a box.

PS Anglea...... so can anyone go buy at Central Wholesale Nursery or do you need a wholesale license?

This message was edited Dec 31, 2005 3:21 PM

This is a very good thread. Thank you all. I grew red worms and kept them on the back deck and they were doing great and I could tell all most at once the change in the flowers. It was wonderful until the maggots found them. In three weeks there were five or six hundred and of course they eat all of the red worms. They are evil. At first I started putting them in straight clorox and it did not faze them. It realy is good for the plants and my brugs thought they had died and gone to heaven.

I would love to hear from any one who has a way of keeping out the bad things and letting the worms grow.

Have a wonderful year every one. Joan

OK, now I am totally grossed out. LOL

Good interesting reading thread. Hopefully my compost containers have still got some red worms in them. Too dark and too wet to go check them out. For the first 3 weeks of Dec. this area broke a record of temp. since the late 1800s. Temps never got close to 32 degrees in that time, the coldest here at my house was 5 degrees above zero, and the warmest was about 20 degrees some few days. The just before Christmas got warmer that normal and rainy. Rained all our frozen snow away.

The ground even thawed out. This week we have been having some rain, some snow. Maybe 1" of snow now on the ground. Temp. just at freezing at night and 35 to 40 degrees daytime.

Happy New Year Everyone. DonnaS

So here's how I do my worm/compost. It's in two bins, with lots of grass clippings and leaves for nutrients. I do compost kitchen scaps that are non-meat/dairy, bu when I add these to composters, I dig them down in and bury wih the garden composting stuff...no flies. I only use finished compost in the garden and during the summer my worms quickly compost the stuff in the bins. I am sure it is much faster with the worms in than without.

Kell, anyone can go to the nursery, no license required. I found the best bulbs there this year, too. They were twice the size, half the price and in gorgeous colors I hadn't seen before. I got some pretty apricot, picotee ranunculus that I can hardly wait to see in spring. Tony, I will look up the address for you.

I'm going to have to check out your article, Gordon. I have read that if you place worms in soil that doesn't provide the nutrients, they may eat your plants roots.

Kell you are right for weeks I could not get those horrible thing out of my mind.

the rain has stopped, and the local nurseries reopened.

i should be able to get my VF-11 supply. lol.

happy new year!

Oh Angela, now I have to get down there. I have so many places on my want to go list. Do you think they have bareroot roses too? I have to do my Safeway trick for some more cash........ my DH never catches on. LOL. An extra $50! He does most of the grocery shopping too, but he never questions all my charges. LOL He is my true love!

kell, yardbird's in san rafael has tree roses for $22, and they look great. their "wild blue yonder" roses are $11 and with bigger canes than costco's.

i have my VF-11 now, and i know it's january but i'll foliar feed tomorrow. testing to see the "difference" in just one dose.

i'm very hopeful.

=)

Moonglow, you don't give them any leaway do you? LOL I am going to do the same thing with my Messenger in the spring. One shot.

Joan, I am a wuss! LOL!! And to think I could so sorry for a bunch of worms.

Angela, I almost made it to the Central Wholesale Nursery . I even printed out the directions. I took my boy to the Gilroy Outlets Friday before he left for school yesterday. As we approached San Jose I said lets take a little detour................... he was willing but we decided to do it on the way back if we had time. We had to be back to go to sushi at 4. And we had no time!! I almost drove down today but the call of 2 nurseries in Oakland was stronger. And they were a big disapointment!

Funny you mention Yardbirds, Annapet. On my home today I thought I need to go to at Yardbirds!! LOL I go to that one when I go to the Farmers' market at the Marin Civic Center. I went from Oakland to across the San Mateo bridge to a different Costco just for Abraham Darby. But those were sickly so I got a Baby Blanket tree instead. Then stopped at Orchards for a peek and walked out with a Lavender Simplicity rose and a tree Black Cherry. I didn't want or need any of those!! What did you get at Yardbirds?? Did they have different ones? I notice they all have pretty much the same ones.

I started spraying my brugs with VH-11 a couple of days ago when it started to feel like spring. And they immediately perked up. I added H2O2 to it too. LOL

Gordon, maybe I misread your post and it was way back there and I may just be remembering it wrong, but it sounds like it's possible that you don't change your soil yearly. If that is correct, obviously you are having no problem. I've only done brugs two growing seasons and the first season they were potted up new, but I changed the soil last season and, wow, it really seemed to work great but if there is a way to get around it (lotz of work, lotz of bucks), I'm all ears...

Sherry...
Well.. I grow only in containers and pots... aside from the small patch of lawn I have on the roof..maybe 120-150 sq ft of grass.. I set it up over a number of years... maybe8-12 years ago..at that time I used piles of ProMix in big bales... bags of potting soil.. both of these are mostly peat moss... and wicks out moisture rapidly... To slow this wicking down some and to give the roots a bit of something to hold ontl I added bags of garden loam and bags of dirtand lots of manure... All of this aside from the manure is about compleatly devoid of nutrients really... so I feed my ferts and top dress often with manure.
New cuttings start off in fresh new potting soil.. they are potted up into little larger pots useing new potting soil.. the next potting up takes this root ball of new potting soil and places it in the bigger pots and is filled around the outside with this older potting soil... further potting up uses this older stuff also.. The bigger planters keep the older soil from year to year... with added maunre.. usually decomposed and dehydrated.. from bags.. Some winters I remember to buy while I'm down south the alfalfa pellets for rabbit/horse food... this is worked into the soil and makes a big difference come spring.. fluffly and full of nutrients.. I buy alot of nursery stock which comes in new soil... and there is some breaking down so I'm allways introducing new stuff to the mix.. but the core is stilll the decades old soil..which gets somewhat renewed ammended and enhanced all of the time... but it's still the same old stuff.... a plant once it gets into a big big pot... gets to live there undisturbed except for some top dressing of manure ... greensand.. or perhaps some volcanite to improve the paramagnetic properties .. [ the magnetic energy of the earth.. focused twards the metalic nature of volcanic soils ]
I feel the disruptionof an established root ball is more detramental to the plants growth... than the benefit of having new potting soil around it... some might be pulled from their pots to be root pruned some... but not drasticly... but then refilled with the same old stuff ..but perhaps from another planter .. all potting soil is put inot the pots on a bed of perhpas 1"-2" of white styrofoam broken up into perhaps 1" chunks.. this keeps the drainage holes open... and as the roots grow into and through the foam... it anchors the plant to the soil in the same way a dense , heavy , natural soil might ..
I hope this helps there are more optimum ways... like your changing out the dirt... but it's impossible for me... I'm sure to be into the thousands for soil... notto mention the lugging it up to the roof... Gordon

gordon, thanks for the info! sherry, thanks for asking.

kell, i was a good girl, and only bought VF-11. i will go back for sure. their WBYs are just too fat to pass. so what if i end up with 4. lol.

what a glorious day. i sprayed my roses and brugs with VF-11 and neem oil mixture. a little experiment for some excitement. please do not try this at home. ha-ha.

hmnnn...i love sushi.

I posted on the rose forum asking if anyone had tried VF-11 (it's "all the rage" with some of the folks in the AV & Gessies forum, but I haven't tried it yet)... was pointed to this thread... Moonglow, I'll look forward to hearing the results of your experiment! :-)

Annapet went and got a job and now she hardly gets to play with us!! Annapet, tell your new employers you need the summer off! We miss you too much!

oh, kell. i'm the one missing out on everything and everyone.

i finally went to the armstrong garden center in novato, and fell in love. that's my new fave place now, and conveniently located very near costco. surprisingly, i went home without plants in tow, but with those pretty fiber glass pots. 20% off. my sort of promise to myself this year is to repot plants and get rid most of the black nursery pots.

I did that about 10 years ago. I went to all ceramic pots up to 25 gallon in my courtyard. Then I got into brugs and back came the black nursery pots. LOL. As I am getting rid of a lot of my older brugs, I am getting back to the ceramic pots. Brugs dry out too fast in ceramic. I bought a lot of them in bright blue last year. I love the bright blue. I have all chartreuse ones inside. LOL, yes . I am truly a gaud queen the older I get. When I start gluing on PINK sparkles you will know it is time to take me away.

I was thinking of you last night. Worried actually. You are on a hillside aren't you? Is it holding up OK? Things are getting downright scary!

Next time I come out that way I am going to stop at that nursery. I may have to add it to my nursery hop. I wonder if Zuzu made it there yet. I told her about it. I love the Dublin one. You know you can order their roses early and you get 30% off and they deliver them to the store for you in October. Well maybe you order in October and they deliver them the next month. LOL

BE SAFE!

I have just started to use it. I will let you know in a month or two what happens. I know it works well on seeds. Well I use Supper thrive and Tea Tree Oil, too. I mix them all together and have had wonderful luck on germination. Now I am using all three as a spray for the bugs on the plants. It is doing well on white fly but I will have to let you know about other bugs.

I have some tea tree oil... and I've had white fly crop up occasionally on my pelargoniums this winter... What dilution do you use?

I put 2 or 3 drops in a spray bottle (qt. size) and a drop of dish soap. The VF-11 and Supper thrive are suppose to make the plant stronger. I just have been using it 3 or 4 mo. I bet Kel could tell you a lot more I think she said lots of years.

Sounds good! BTW, Violet_Treasure (over in the AV forum) is a big fan of VF-11, and she's always saying to use it entirely on its own, not in combination with Super Thrive or anything else. I haven't tried the VF-11 (yet), so can't really comment...

I will look her up. Thank you. Joan

She's posted information about VF-11 on the AV forum a number of times... should be easy to find. :-)

I have lots! of VF-11.... I've been using it on my African Violets and even some of the other house plants. I'm new at brugs, and I have a nice one, putting on some new growth - it looks happy! I have two questions though: WHEN should one start giving brugs some VF-11 help, and WHEN is a good time to move this to a larger (prettier) pot. It's still in its black plastic thing....

I can hardly wait to see my first blooms!!

Thanks for the help.

Sanna

***Bump***

WHEN is a good time to move my 1-gal to a larger pot.... any help?

Thanks!

Sanna

I start spraying as soon as they come up with VF11 and a drop of Tea Tree Oil and a drop of dish soap.

Sanna, I'm pretty new to brugs, but mine are in 2 gallon pots now and starting to put on a pretty good growth spurt... I'm going to check them next week, and if their roots have (as I suspect) quite filled their current pot, then I will put them into a bigger pot. If they aren't looking rootbound, I will let them stay as they are for now, as I am planning to plant them into the freshly tilled bed by the deck! I topped up the bed with a few more inches of nice compost today, so I hope they will do well there.

edited to add... I know that response was probably of limited value, so you may want to post your question in the subject line of a new thread so it catches the collective eye of the experts here!

This message was edited Apr 27, 2006 12:16 AM

That's fine! Thanks for the advice.... I've managed to get some seedlings going! Some from a trade and some from a donation from other DGers. And some daturas! So, I have lots to work with here.

I had intended to put this particular brug in a larger pot, but now I'm toying with the idea of in the ground, as you mentioned. My climate is warm enough I don't need to overwinter them inside.... soooo.... I'll see what this weekend or next brings! Our weather isn't so great this weekend. :o( Oh well, I have African Violets to prepare for shipping! :o)

Take care,

Sanna