|
Dear Hugh,
This morning I was pulling up some grass in the
raspberries and saw some ants and aphids and the roots of one of the
plants. I thought I remember you talking about aphids on roots at one
point but can't remember what you said. Can you or someone comment on this
again?
Thanks
Daniel
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 5:12
AM
Subject: Re: Insect peppers
Dear Essie,
Would it be possible to get a sample of each
of your peppers? A gram or two in a tiny ziploc bag would do. And can you
determine what species(s) of slug you have? I take it there are several. I
would like to send them off to England and have Malcolm Rae cards made. That
way we can make up potencies as appropriate to each location. I gather you are
using the straight pepper in your broadcaster without potentization. I guess
we'll see how that works, but I have a feeling potencies are safer and will
work better.
Also, it is my belief that you do NOT want to burn
everything to ash. You need some of the original carbon framework to have the
pattern of that unique species. But, of course, you want to drive off ALL of
the moisture and things related to moisture.
As for fungus on
strawberries, the old one--two punch involves tieing up the nitrates in the
soil with an evening time drench of oak bark (505) and then spraying the
foliage with the equisetum the next morning. The oak bark holds back the
nitrates from the lime side so the plant is less salty and watery, while the
horsetail draws in warmth from the silica side and hardens the
plant.
Best,
Hugh
At 09:40 PM 6/24/02 -0400, Allan wrote:
Essie - would you mind including a little more 'how to'
info on your pepper making?
What's your track record
like?
-Allan
Allan -
Here's the procedure,
as I've done it.
Collect as many specimens as you feel necessary. I
collected a good 100 slugs, most adolescent, a couple of adults. All in one
pass through the potatoes. Probably 50 potato beetles (dead), and maybe 70
potato beetle larvae (from lilies). The count is not exact. First I cooked
the slugs. Put them in a small glass saucepan with cover (turned on the
stove fan), and cooked them slowly until they were blackened. Then I
crunched them up and cooked them some more until they were mostly (not
entirely, however - I didn't have quite enough patience) white ash. Then
cooled them a bit and put the ash into a small glass vial and put vial into
bottom well of field broadcaster (slugs crawl rather than fly - hence bottom
well).
I followed the same process with the adult potato beetles, but
put that vial into the upper well (since they fly).
I followed the
same process with the larvae, putting that vial into the bottom well. The
larvae were shredding my Casa Blanca lilies (no others), and the shredded
leaves were covered with what clearly was excrement, with larvae in the
middle of the excrement. They definitely eat where they shit. And vice
versa.
Now, I've previously only peppered with slugs. Five years ago,
I did it once and had (truly) an 80 percent reduction in two weeks. The next
year I did it again and had an 80-85 percent reduction. Until this year, I
was virtually slug-free since then. But this year the potatoes were
innundated, with both slugs and adult potato beetles. The lilies were
shredded by potato beetle larvae, and I've never had that problem before,
ever. My area is low and wet, easily prone to slugs. Also, I used a great
deal of leaf mulch this year as well - which apparently served as a "Y'all
come" to the slug legions.
Now, I made all peppers yesterday.
Tonight, on patrol, I found two slugs, one beetle larva, and 11 adult
beetles (10 of them copulating, two by two. The odd duck was doing something
that could've been self-stimulating, but it was dark, the flashlight was
weak, and I felt that the least I could do was to respect his/her privacy
before squashing him/her. We've had a drastic change in weather since
yesterday - from days of rain and drizzle to high pressure with some strong
breezes and sun. The weather change definitely could influence the change in
population. Stay tuned.
I'll report on population levels every few
days. Now, I also do have flea beetles and no stinging nettle to make a tea.
They are too small to catch and pepper, or, believe me, I'd do
that.
Just to tack on a marginally related question - would
application of equisetum tea be a good preventative for fungus on
strawberries? Putting plants into tub with bubblers for a couple of days and
then diluting a bit (how much?)?
Best,
Essie
"CIA stands for
Capitalism's Invisible Army"
Buckminster
Fuller
Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
|
