> Amanda thought to herself, "This is a method I can well use in my garden and on > the right-of-way." > > "Andrew, can you show me your test plots that you put the foliar sprays on and > how to extract juice from a plant and encourage the veggies and discourage the > weeds?" > > "How did you make your juicing pliers?" > > She remembered the second year of her first weed grant, how she'd struggled > with those test plots trying to find something that worked. The third year she > had needed a way to evaluate the plots besides just counting weeds, and a way > to tell right away if a foliar spray was right. > And she had wanted to make a Lovel field broadcaster that year too. > > "These guys in Australia are way ahead of the Americans on radionics. > Our laws discourage creativity and hog-tie us." > > She thought about the piece she had written to be published in the Bonner > County Daily Bee... > > TO ORGANIC HOMEOWNERS > I'm writing this on my own, not as a member of the Weed Committee." > > She'd had a lot of calls about that letter...Andrew had gone on ahead and she > started after him at a fast trot...
Andrew came out of the garden shed with a plastic bucket that had four squirt bottles hanging over the edge and a square metal hoop a yard across, the refractometer was in his pocket and pliers under his feet as they drove back down the lane. They walked out about fifty yards into the crop and he placed the square of metal down, aligned with the seeder rows, took out a spray bottle labeled no 1, shook it and after clearing the nozzle into the ground, gave ten quick squirts evenly across the area inside the metal hoop. " See my field sprayer puts on 50 litres per hectare, the square is a square meter, and I've calibrated these bottle sprayers to give 50 litres /ha with ten squirts." He marked the plot with his boot heel then moved several yards along the seeder row and repeated the spraying " got to have some room between plots so we dont get overspray effects". repeated again until all four bottles had been sprayed and the plots marked, the bucket was left with a couple of rocks in the bottom to mark the patch. As they walked back out to the car she asked " what happens with the spray plots" " We go have a look at a broadcaster pipe, by the time we do that and get back here we should see something happening - 45 minutes or so is usually long enough" The next paddock along was crop also but this time they drove in along a track by the creek to the middle of the paddock where a broadcaster pipe poked skywards. " Its a little different to the one I saw at the BD conference" she was looking quite intently at the top half " what do you see?" " Oh My! its like a halo - goes out quite a ways - I see colours too - is that right ?" she is a little in awe. " Hmmmm I cant see it but the halo will show on a polaroid photo - I see a shimmer about an inch out from the pipe - sometimes wonder if its just heat haze" he stoops and removes the bottom well cap, carefully taking out some small vials with a pair of plastic tweezers - these are the perfume bottles she'd seen earlier in the workroom - filled with a clear liquid and labelled. "Earth energy preps" he explains " BC, 500, 2,3,4,5,and the winter horn clay for balance, also got some stuff in for detoxing herbicides, a map to tell it where to broadcast and 'me little prayer of intent -- including for the good of all and the detriment of no one -most important to always say that." He replaces the reagents and map, closes the well, " I built it pretty close to Hugh Lovel's specs, but I put these angled well jar tees in cause I use liquid in the vials and occasionally they will blow the lids off in the heat, it saves trouble cleaning up." Amanda looks a little puzzled " You must have studied this for many years to have got this far with it" " No , not really, I was lucky I got pointed in the right direction, but I'm observant and I saw results early on so I've kept at it - but the BD and broadcasting is only part of the deal - you know - you have to have basic minerals in place or the whole thing crashes - we spread a bit of rock dust - we put out some lime - we use a non acid fertiliser on our crops - we put out deficient trace minerals with that - zinc, copper, molybdenum, boron - we use fish, seaweed, humic acid and molasses - we dont use big licks of anything and I think we're lucky this is such a stoney farm - its an awful trouble working some of it but we have all that parent material to break down still. As the BD and microbial activity gets going I expect we'll be able to cut back a lot on those things but its unrealistic to expect to be able to eliminate inputs and keep sending produce out the gate "Hey enough of the sermon , lets go see what happened with the test plots" Back at the test site she is surprised how quickly the work proceeds . He plucks a thimble full of leaves from plants at random, (from the same leaf position on each plant she notices) rolls them up, thumb pushes down into the juicing chamber, pliers snap shut, refractometer comes out of left pocket and the lid flips up, pliers close over the glass viewing plate,and the first drop of sap drops straight on, lid flips down refractometer up to the eye -" thats untreated 10.2 " - now a fresh tissue comes out to wipe down the instrument face then the pliers are cleaned off . the whole proceedure seemed to only take a minute. The readings proceed and after the fourth test bottle a further untreated is taken - six in all - took about ten minutes we have UT 10.2, 1 - 9.6, 2 - 12.8, 3 -13, 4 -11, UT 10.4, "So what does that all mean" asks Amanda. " Well now we look for brix of the weeds in those two best ones" It takes much longer this time to get the samples and he does two tests for each treatment plus a couple of untreated weed tests. "We have some small capeweed at 4 brix and 3 brix against 6 for untreated so thats good on both brews. There is also some ryegrass at 5 brix and 9 brix against 7 for untreated so that means the 2 bottle brew for sure. It will raise my crop reading from 10.5 to 12.8 at the same time the weeds both go down - ryegrass is the worst of the two and we will need to work on it with the broadcaster as well - need to get that reading down to four or less if we can do it." "So" she asks "whats in that magic bottle" "OK - per hectare 50 litres of water, 2 litres of my biological tank brew, 2 litres of molasses, 400mls of liquid fish, 350 mls of food grade phosphoric acid, and citric acid to bring the pH down to 4.8 (about a beancan per 1000litres) but that will be different next time and next paddock , the brix response is the key"
