I've heard about gopher plant, but not about sour clover. From what I've heard from most people, they've had only very limited success using plants to deter gophers. Have you actually had good results with sour clover?
Yes, I'm aware of what's in their products and decided to try them anyway for this next season. I am amazed at what the organic standards do allow that is funky, not to mention violations that some of the organic farms do that I've read about. Nothing they are using sounded too bad and I decided to just go for the full high brix experience. (I've read that some 40 percent of certified organic produce tests posative for pesticide residues).
My sense is that we could achieve this with other products, but it's much harder to know how to balance things ourselves.
I did try the Calcium-25 product (I was able to purchase a smaller quantity from them directly) which is OMRI certified and had really amazing results with it. Some of my plants literally turned greener within 10 minutes of spraying. I highly recommend that product even though it is quite expensive.
I'm also interested in the seawater thing. I will continue to experiment on part of my garden using my own program and see how the results compare with using their custom sprays. For the initial rock dust powders, I will just use their custom blend everywhere in my beds.
My intention is to transition from organic produce grown for the retail market to growing most if not all of my own food as organically as possible. I would like to eliminate animal products and then at some point produce all of my own fertilizers.
Why are my zucchini fruit turning yellow?
The High Brix methods used by aglabs are based on the work of Carey Reams. He used ionic (charged) solutions to draw the foliar sprays into the plants leaves. To create these solutions, they use food grade solutions of pure elemental compounds. They also use these solutions to carefully regulate the nitrate content of the spray, for high vegatative growth in one spray vs supporting fruiting/reproductive functions in other sprays. They tell me the amounts of these things are small.
The organic movement would instead use whats known as a spreader sticker (a replacement for the ionic compound). The simplest spreader sticker that people often use for homemade sprays is a natural soap. A better spreader sticker is plant sap based. For example the PVFS Brix MIx uses the "THERM X70 Yucca extract" which they also sell on their web site. The calcium-25 product also uses a plant sap based spreader sticker.
It's hard to tell if the PVFS BRIX and OMEGA products do anything more than vary the amount of nitrogen based fertilzers for higher vegitative vs fruit/reproductive growth. On the other hand, they do use blood and bone meal, which are definitely not food grade even if the organic standards allow them, and they warn on the label not to harvest the plants for one week after application.
We'll if one wants to support maintaining high brix by weekly foliar spray, the PVFS products won't work once in the harvest stage. In some ways, I might prefer a food grade solution of nitrates over some of the animal based products. My intention is a movement in the direction of using neither. The same could probably be achieved using sprays of things like the seawater, comfrey teas, alfalfa teas, and building the soil to where sprays are no longer needed, but it takes time to learn how to balance all that out myself and there's only so much I can do at one time, therefore I rely on something provided by someone else until I can implement this myself in another way.
Would someone please aim me at a definition of "brix", please? I'm a new newbe.
Thanks,
oldklingon
Brix is the measure of disolved solids in the plant sap. Many people are familiar with the terminology as a measure of sugar, in wine grapes or melons for example. My understanding is that a sharp line on the refractometer is more a measure of sugar, whereas a "fuzzy" line is more indicative of nutrient density. There more discussion on the raising brix thread here:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/644208/
Organic growing is a means towards a clean(er) food supply, but does not in itself guarantee nutrient density. So many soils have become depleted in minerals that the foods grown have little nutritional value. I'm trying to achieve both clean food and nutrient dense food.
nataraj, I sent my soil sample in to AG Labs and have asked for the organic recommendations to see what they suggest. The community garden that I am working in requires all organic products/techniques be used. I may have mentioned this before - I think the high brix movement will validate much of the biodynamic techniques. Different paths to the same truth. Steiner approaches from the spiritual path, Reams from the more scientific path. Both respecting the power of nature.
Some of the materials allowed under organic standards in the US are not allowed by organic standards in the EU. I don't know enough about chilean nitrates yet to understand the discrepancy in use. The organic movement may shift over time as the brix movement grows. Agree that the ingredients used in the aglabs formulations appear safe and generally sustainable. I want to get away from using any slaughterhouse wastes as fertilizers, but since I have the PVFS high brix solution, I will use what I have and see what results I achieve. I am hoping that a combination of rock dusts and green manures will be all that is needed once the soil is rebalanced.
Thanks Garden_Mermaid. Brix = How much Good is in the Green!
oldklingon
or red, or purple or yellow or orange etc. :D
In my experience, I keep coming back to the biointensive stuff. From the perspective that seems to resonate with the me the most, I suspect that I will use aglabs primarily for the mineral balancing with the rock dusts. I pretty much did everything a la carte with them, so I just got small amounts of many of their sprays to try and a custom rock dust blend with microbe's in it (useful until I get my own EM/bokashi going). I'll let you know how the sprays work.
If you are able to get some of the calcium-25 product I would folar spray that a day before using the brix mix. I saw amazing results when I did that, because it increases the absorption of the other nutrients. Also, what Aglabs clued me in on was to be really careful not to spray too much of the foliar sprays, so if you tend to spray alot on large plants with lots of foliage, dulute your sprays more. It's much better to start with less and work up then to over apply these things.
Thanks for the tips. I tend to dilute any foliar sprays or liquid fertilizers anyway.......sort of like the "half as much, twice as often" rule.
Just reallized that I never answered the gopher question. I've never tried growing the sour clover. I only recently learned about it. We did have some success with a combination of gopher purge and vibrating garden flowers.. Our cats took care of the rest. Rinconvitova may have some research or other information on it.
Thank you. I wish it were that easy, though from all the threads and people that I've talked to who have bad gopher problems, they say that the plants that repel gophers are not effective enough to be worth while.
Most people trap them. John Jeavons told me that gopher wire works if you dig the bed 3 feet deep and put it down there, then have wood sides on the bed that come 1-2 inches above the dirt level. He suggested doing a 5 ft length section of a bed at a time like this. Alot of work.
There also is some crazy machine that people buy that injects a flamable gas like propane into the tunnel and then lights it on fire. It takes care of things with a big boom which is not suitable for residential areas. http://www.gophernator.com/rodenator_faq The price tag is about $2000, a bit more than I was looking to spend.
It's been suggested that I'm having these problems because I dug my beds so well and the surrounding area is all hard clay, so the gophers come to where the soil is easier for them to build their tunnels.